My poor hubby!

My lovely hubby had an operation last week and I made him a get well card for his stay in hospital. This card was kind of a challenge as I had only a small bag containing my most basic card making items in it. I knew I wanted to use my new French Foliage stamp set and some colours from the Regals collection. I threw in some things that I thought would work and this is the result:

Materials:
Cardstock: Crumb Cake, Very Vanilla.
Ink: Always Artichoke, Not Quite Navy, Bravo Burgundy, Versamark.
Stamps: French Foliage, So Happy For You.
Other: None
Non Stampin' Up: Charcoal grosgrain ribbon, black rhinestones, Perfect Pearls Mist in Heirloom Gold, edge distresser tool.
 
Tips and Tricks:
1. After I stamped the card base, I spritzed the card with the Perfect Pearls mist for a nice gold sheen. You can see it above the sentiment layer where the camera flash highlights it.
2. I also spritzed the sentiment layer after crumpling the cardstock because it was too bare and new.
3. Some of the leaves have been stamped after first stamping off on a scrap piece of paper. This softens the colour and produces a lighter effect.
4. The Versamark has been used to stamp splodges from the French Foliage set over the leaves, on the sentiment layer and inside the card.

Stuff Ups:
1. I originally used the masking technique to create the background of leaves and gold spritz and left a blank centre rectangle for the sentiment but it didn't look right. Essentially, the Very Vanilla hides some mistakes. The Very Vanilla cardstock may be too bright and I could have used more Crumb Cake I suppose. I didn't have any with me and I like the Vanilla as it is.
2. The charcoal ribbon doesn't quite match but I don't have any black.
3. The placement of the rhinestones could be more precise.
4. I need to learn how to make pretty bows instead of snaggly lopsided ones!