Nature's Symphony for Freshly Made Sketches 726

 I love those autumn days where it's cool in the morning and evenings but then we're treated to a brilliant warm, blue day in between. That's what happened today and, as an added bonus, I found that I had the house to myself for a few hours this afternoon. Hmmm... start some jobs... or escape to the craft room? No contest really! 

I turned to the latest sketch at Freshly Made Sketches for inspiration. 

Sometimes, it's good to get outside of your comfort zone. Today, I revelled in being well inside mine! I think most of my crafty friends would look at this card and suspect it was mine before they even saw the watermark. 😀

Starting with the choice of bundle. Nature's Symphony is right up my alley with glorious leafy images and die cuts. I even like the coordinating Nature Walk DSP and have used my favourite sheet for the vertical elements of the sketch. I tore the pieces rather than cut them to give a more rustic feel. 

The Basic White card front was embossed with the Exposed Brick folder - a favourite of mine. 

The big leafy foliage die from the bundle is glorious and, thinking of autumn, I cut if from the coppery piece from Textured Metallic Specialty Paper. 

I stamped the large foliage stamp using a mix of inks applied with a sponge dauber: Old Olive, Crushed Curry, Cajun Craze and some touches of Cherry Cobbler. After die-cutting it out, I popped it up on dimensionals. 

The sentiment, from the set, is stamped in Early Espresso (to tie in with the card base) then cut using Stylish Shapes. I've layered it with a matching banner in Early Espresso.

For embellishment, I've added a triple bow of Linen Thread and some Faux Bronze Pentagons.

If you live in New Zealand and don't have a Stampin' Up Demonstrator, I'd love to be yours. I can help you with ideas, get you catalogues and provide you with Stampin' Up products. You can leave a message in the comments or contact me using any of the methods listed in the Contact Me tab at the top of the page. 

You can stamp with me, and shop with me, from anywhere in New Zealand. Click here.

Friendly Gnomes for The Paper Players 775

The lovely Christy is our hostess this week and she has a great theme for us - Mythical Creatures. More on why that caused me problems later because first I want to thank everyone who entered my sketch challenge last week. What creativity came from that one sketch! It was a pleasure to tour the gallery and a headache to choose the Cut Above!

Now Christy's challenge caused me a wee problem because, although I am a big fantasy fan possessed of a large fantasy fiction library, it seems this does not translate into the acquisition of stamps! Not a single dragon, unicorn, orc, troll, giant or harpy was to be found. I did find my Dalek stamp set but that wasn't quite in the ball park.... 

In stepped one of my downlines who lent me her Friendly Gnome bundle (retired). It was fun to play with, so maybe I'll have to do something to remedy my lack of fantasy inspired stamp sets soon!

It turned out that the dies that come with this set are awesome. I had fun playing around with some stamped gnomes (there's one on the inside of the card) but it was that die cut bearded beastie that I kept coming back to. So he has a Cherry Cobbler had, shaded with some White coloured pencil, Secret Sea boots and a Petal Pink nose.

I also cut some toadstool caps, where I coloured the impressions with more White colouring pencil, some Crumb Cake stems and some Old Olive grass.

I stamped the sentiment in Secret Sea at the base of the card front then embossed the rest using the Beautiful Pattern embossing folder. After masking off the sentiment section, I stamped in some grass along the base and sponged on some Old Olive with a blending brush.

After that, it was just a matter of arranging the gnome, the toadstool and die cut grasses into the background scene. Once that was done, I added in some Sparkle Dot Essentials in Secret Sea to lead the eye down to the words. Mission complete!

What mythological creaturs will you bring out to play? You can see what the rest of the team have done and link up your entry at The Paper Players.

Here's a quick recap of our challenge rules:

1. Create a new paper-craft project specifically for this challenge.
2. Upload your creation to your blog with a link back to us.
3. Please provide a direct link to the post featuring your challenge entry.
4. Please link your card to no more than four challenges, TOTAL, including ours
5. Have fun, and thank you for playing with us!

Don't forget to check out the great inspiration from the rest of the design team.

Jaydee

LeAnne Pugliese

Claire Broadwater

Joanne James

Anne Marie Hile (on leave)

Ann Schach

Jan Clothier - You are here

Stef Perry

Christy Stanford

You can stamp with me, and shop with me, from anywhere in New Zealand. Click here.

Friendly Foliage for As You See It 367

Well, you either love it or hate it but it's SPEED CHALLENGE this week at As You See It. Every sixth challenge is one of these and if you've never played one before, they're interesting. All you have to do is create a project that uses the theme and complete it in UNDER TEN MINUTES. This time, the theme is PURPLE.

You'll be pleased to hear that set up and clean up are not included in your ten minutes. The rules are simple. There are things you can do before the clock starts:

• You can plan out what you're going to  make
• You can get out your equipment and have it set up to go. For instance you can get out your stamp set and block the stamps you intend to use. Your inkpads can be on the table as can things like embossing folders, dies or embellishments.

BUT 

once you cut anything, ink anything or emboss/die cut anything then the timer is on. 

I had my babywipes and ink bottles to hand and  quickly made a temporary ink pad using Gorgeous Grape, Petunia Pop and Fresh Freesia ink. I stamped the image from Friendly Foliage, making sure to be across all the different purples on the baby wipe. 

Then I die cut it out. 

Then I embossed the card front with the Beautiful Patterns folder and adhered it to my Gorgeous Grape card base. Then I centred the die cut foliage and adhered it to the card front. 

Next I stamped a sentiment in Gorgeous Grape, cut it using a banner from Stylish Shapes and popped it up on dimensionals over the foliage die cut.

The finishing touch was the addition of a trio of Purple Gems. 

The Basic White inner got a quick foliage stamp before I attached it to the inside.

With racing heart, I stopped the timer....

Anyone who says stamping isn't an adrenaline sport has obviously never done a speed challenge! What will you do?

Visit the As You See It page to link up your entry and to see the rest of the team's inspirations.

If you live in New Zealand and don't have a Stampin' Up Demonstrator, I'd love to be yours. I can help you with ideas, get you catalogues and provide you with Stampin' Up products. You can leave a message in the comments or contact me using any of the methods listed in the Contact Me tab at the top of the page. 

You can stamp with me, and shop with me, from anywhere in New Zealand. Click here.

Rolling Waves for Colour INKspiration 204

Welcome to the 204th challenge at Colour INKspiration! Thanks for all the gorgeous entries for our first challenge of the year. We have another pretty combination for you this time around, chosen by crew member Lou Kitzelman.

This challenge runs for nearly two weeks and will finish on Monday 9 March, 5pm AEST.

If you haven't played with us before, we are a group of Stampin' Up Demonstrators from the South Pacific. Challenges are shown and entered via our Facebook Group page. If you don't belong, and would like to, click here. Don't forget to answer the three easy questions you'll be asked when you ask to join the group.

Each challenge, Top Picks and a winner are chosen by the crew and the winner offered a chance to Guest Design with us for a future challenge. We welcome Mariel Altamirano as our Guest Designer for this challenge.

If you don't have an exact challenge colour, feel free to replace it with whatever you have that's closest, for example Melon Mambo for Flirty Flamingo. Black, White, Very Vanilla, Crumb Cake, Basic Beige and metallics are free colours, as are flesh-toned Stampin' Blends.

Although I was tempted to go floral for these colours, instead I wanted to play with my new bundle, Rolling Waves. I thought they could pass as beach colours too. 

I started by stamping a wall of water in a mix of Soft Sea Foam and Lost Lagoon. I added a lacy die cut at the top to suggest a foamy wave and a different lacy die cut to suggest the water running in to the sand. The sand was stamped in Crumb Cake. Once the scene was set, I cut out a flag using one of the Party Banner dies. 

Then I cut another set of the lacy die cuts to create horizontals across the card front. Then I popped the flagged beach scene over the top of them.

 

I used the dies to cut some seashells in Petal Pink and Flirty Flamingo. Then I added some to the beach to complete the scene. 

I added a sentiment to the top of the banner, then stamped a 'Happy Birthday' on the inside. 

The finishing touch was a trio of Pearlised Faceted gems. 

You can see what the rest of the Design Team have done with these colours in the Crew Inspiration Album on the Colour INKspiration Challenge Facebook page.

If you live in New Zealand and don't have a Stampin' Up Demonstrator, I'd love to be yours. I can help you with ideas, get you catalogues and provide you with Stampin' Up products. You can leave a message in the comments or contact me using any of the methods listed in the Contact Me tab at the top of the page. 

You can stamp with me, and shop with me, from anywhere in New Zealand. Click here.

Delicate Dreams for Paper Players 774

Stef's CAS theme challenge brought us a wonderful gallery and the team were delighted by your entries. This week, I'm the hostess and I've got a sketch for you. Sketches are my favourite kind of challenge and I love seeing the diverse creations that all come from the same starting point. I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone does with this one!

I've been playing with the about-to-be-released Delicate Dreams suite. This is one of the March Online Exclusive offerings. I do gravitate towards foliage sets and this one has some lovely die cuts in addition to the stamped images. The DSP is a lovely specialty paper with coppery/bronze accents. 

So here's what I came up with....

Although it hasn't photographed particularly well, the Secret Sea DSP with the bronze flower outlines is very pretty in real life.  The spray is built up with a base floral image stamped in Gray Granite with various die cuts in Secret Sea, Gray Granite, Textured Metallic Specialty paper and Delicate Dreams DSP. 

The rectangular panel and sentiment are cut with dies from Textured Notes. The embellishments are Iridescent Foil Gems and the card front is embossed with the Exposed Brick folder.

I can't wait to see what you do with this sketch! You can see what the rest of the team have done and link up your entry at The Paper Players.

Here's a quick recap of our challenge rules:

1. Create a new paper-craft project specifically for this challenge.
2. Upload your creation to your blog with a link back to us.
3. Please provide a direct link to the post featuring your challenge entry.
4. Please link your card to no more than four challenges, TOTAL, including ours
5. Have fun, and thank you for playing with us!

Don't forget to check out the great inspiration from the rest of the design team.

Jaydee

LeAnne Pugliese

Claire Broadwater

Joanne James

Anne Marie Hile (on leave)

Ann Schach

Jan Clothier - You are here

Stef Perry

Eliz Stewart

Christy Stanford

You can stamp with me, and shop with me, from anywhere in New Zealand. Click here.

Wildflower Birthday for Paper Players 773

Welcome to a new challenge at The Paper Players! Our hostess this week is the wonderful Stef and she has a clean and simple challenge for us: Balloons and Birthdays. 

Many thanks to all of you who played along with Ann's dreamy colour challenge - the gallery was gorgeous!

I did have to remind myself that this is not only a birthday and balloons challenge but also a Clean-and-Simple challenge, so there had to be lots of white space and minimal embellishment in the design. Fortunately, I like a clean and simple design. More challenging was to find some balloons in my stash! You wouldn't think it would be that hard... but turned out it was. 

To the rescue came the Wildflower Celebrations DSP, which came with two sheets of punch out ephemera. I used the balloon and a separate one of tiny flowers to create the focal point and worked from there. I used  two scraps of the paper to create steps for the balloon to rest on. Sadly, this paper seems to be retired. 

I used the Beautiful Pattern embossing folder to give the card front some interest. After attaching the paper steps, I added the balloon but popped it up on dimensionals for some lift. 

The sentiment, stamped in Blueberry Bushel to match the DSP, is from Sweet Jar. It's cut with my favourite banner from Stylish Shapes. It's finished off with a trio of pink gems.

What will you do with this Clean and Simple Theme? You can see what the rest of the team have done, and link up your entry, at The Paper Players page. 

Here's a quick recap of our challenge rules:

1. Create a new paper-craft project specifically for this challenge.
2. Upload your creation to your blog with a link back to us.
3. Please provide a direct link to the post featuring your challenge entry.
4. Please link your card to no more than four challenges, TOTAL, including ours
5. Have fun, and thank you for playing with us!

Don't forget to check out the great inspiration from the rest of the design team.

Jaydee

LeAnne Pugliese

Claire Broadwater

Joanne James

Anne Marie Hile (on leave)

Ann Schach

Jan Clothier - You are here

Stef Perry

Eliz Stewart

Christy Stanford

You can stamp with me, and shop with me, from anywhere in New Zealand. Click here.

Sweet Jar for As You See It 366

Welcome to theme week at As You See It Challenge. It's an interesting one this week... 'candy' or lollies or sweets if you're in New Zealand or Australia. Thanks to everyone who played along with our Rhapsody in Red Recipe Challenge. The entries were stunning and choosing a Featured Artist was tricky. 

One bundle I have that's been really underused is Sweet Jar but it was perfect for this challenge. To pep things up a bit, I decided to create an arched card base using the Everyday Arches dies. I used the largest die and Melon Mambo card for the base, then a next size down in Pretty in Pink for the matte, then the next size down in Basic White for the stamped panel. Before layering them together, I used the small pattern stamp to add some tone-on-tone stamping to the Melon Mambo base. 

On a separate piece of paper, I stamped the outline of the jar in Tuxedo Black. I stamped the jelly bean shapes in Pretty in Pink then added the patterning in Melon Mambo. I punched it out with the matching punch and punched out a separate lid in Basic Black.

The sentiment is in two parts, so I could add in the 'sweetness' in Melon Mambo. I used the small heart stamps in Pretty in Pink around the panel to create a background before adding the sweet jar, popped up on dimensionals.

So, what will you do with this sweet theme?

Visit the As You See It page to link up your entry and to see the rest of the team's inspirations.

If you live in New Zealand and don't have a Stampin' Up Demonstrator, I'd love to be yours. I can help you with ideas, get you catalogues and provide you with Stampin' Up products. You can leave a message in the comments or contact me using any of the methods listed in the Contact Me tab at the top of the page. 

You can stamp with me, and shop with me, from anywhere in New Zealand. Click here.