Silly Old Bear for Paper Players 804

Thank you for all the lovely entries in LeAnne's colour challenge last week. There were stunning cards in the gallery. Let's see what you do with Christy's Clean and Simple Challenge this week. At The Paper Players, we take Clean and Simple to mean an uncluttered design with lots of open space, minimal layers and few embellishments. 

So this week, it's a double challenge: to make a card on the theme of BEARS and in a CAS style.

I'm a big fan of Winnie the Pooh (original, not Disney) as are my children and granddaughter. The stories, while seemingly simple, work well with both adults and children. They're possessed of both quiet humour and wisdom while the characters are iconic. And, it's the 100th birthday of the first publication of Pooh this year.

I was very disappointed that when Stampin' Up! brought out the Silly Old Bear suite it was only available in the American market. I was delighted to receive it due to the kindness of a friend. What a gift!

This card was my first play around with the suite. I used an Early Espresso card base and a Very Vanilla card front. 

I partially embossed the card front with the embossing folder that has the Hundred Acre Wood map on it - recognisable from the endpapers of many editions of the book. 

I stamped the image of Pooh and Piglet in Early Espresso then coloured them with Stampin' Blends in Golden Glow, Barely There and Hydrangea Hue. I die cut them out and popped them up on dimensionals beside the sentiment. 

I added in a trio of Flat Pearls in Hydrangea Hue.

We'd love to see your bear creations - and don't forget to make them in a Clean and Simple style.

You can see what the rest of the team have done, and link up your entry, on 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

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.

Elegant Leaves for Paper Players 803

Many thanks to everyone who entered into Joanne's candle theme challenge last week. This week, our hostess is LeAnne and she's chosen an autumnal colour palette for us to play with. As always, you can include black and white too. 

Here in New Zealand, we're moving towards spring but I love leaves so am always happy for an excuse to break out a foliage set. In this case, it's the newly released Elegant Leaves bundle. Although the leaves have many options for layering, I've just used the large leaf skeleton die cut and cut one from each of the three colours. 

Then, I've used one of the leaf stamps and randomly stamped over each of the leaves in the same coloured ink to give some colour variations. 

Before attaching the leaves to the card front, I used the bark pattern embossing die to create a horizontal for the leaves to lie on.

After that, it was a simple matter to add a sentiment, attach the card front to the Crushed Curry mat layer and then add it to Basic Black card base. 

To finish, I added a trio of sequins from the Sunset Sparkle sequins to finish off.

The team and I would love to see what you do with these colours. Will it be leaves or something completely different?

You can see what the rest of the team have done, and link up your entry, on 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

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.

Silly Old Bear for Freshly Made Sketches 753

I'm back from a lovely holiday and have finally made it back into the craft room, now that the unpacking is done and the washing mountain is taken care of. I was looking for inspiration to try out a wonderful gift from a friend and that came from the sketch at Freshly Made Sketches.

And that was the beautiful Silly Old Bear suite. I don't think anyone of Commonwealth background doesn't love Winnie the Pooh, especially with the original EH Shepard illustrations. I loved it as a child, my children did and now, so does my granddaughter. Oh, to be frolicking in the Hundred Acre Wood in pursuit of a heffalump!

I was torn between hoarding the irreplaceable items forever and cracking on and using some of them. You can see that I have no willpower...

I enjoyed getting out the papers, dies and stamps and just having a good old play. I think I'm in love with the Hundred Acre Wood map embossing folder already!

Unfortunately, this suite of products is not available in New Zealand, Australia, Canada or the United Kingdom.

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.

Fern & Flora for As You See It 381

 The latest challenge at As You See It is a colour challenge chosen by ... me. 😀

I was intrigued by the colour combination of two grays with a bright pop of blue. Feel free to use black, white and metallics as free colours, as long as the three main colours are obvious. I hope you enjoy playing with these colours, as I did. 

I often play around with circles and I started here by cutting three stitched circles of various sizes from Stylish Shapes. I layered them together then cut the them in half, then attached them to the card front with the hemispheres off set. 

The card base is Basic Gray and the card front, Smoky Slate. I used a retired hexagon folder for this to tie in with the pattern on the DSP circle. The DSP is from the Ordinary Beautiful Life DSP, which has a black and white pattern on the reverse side of each piece.

I cut two ferns from the Fern & Flora die set, one in Azure Afternoon and Smoky Slate and layered them over the offset circles.

The sentiment is foiled in silver from the Sweetly Sentimental hot foil dies. To finish, I found some retired Basic Gray pearls in my embellishments box.

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.

I hope you enjoy playing around with these colours as I did. You can see what the rest of the team have done, and link up your entry, on the As You See It page.

Neutral Noel for Paper Players 802

I hope everyone had a great time playing with Jaydee's Tic Tac Toe challenge last week. From the wonderful entries we had in the gallery, it would seem you did!

This week, our hostess is Joanne and she has a theme challenge for us: Candles. Birthday, Christmas, whenever... you decide. 

I'm afraid that I was rather literal in my interpretation of the theme. I was looking through my stamp library seeing what inspired me with candles and I kept coming back to some fun stamped candles I did a couple of years ago. 

I took myself down to the local discount store to see what they had in the way of plain white candles. I wasn't too happy with the size of them as I'd hoped for something more substantial but sometimes, you just have to make do. 😀

Anyway, I assembled my supplies: Noel Tidings and Welcome Noel stamps, Mossy Meadow and Pecan Pie Ink, Daffodil Delight blend, plain white tissue paper, some waxed lunch wrap and a heat tool.

If you've never stamped on candles before, it's really very easy to do. 

1. Stamp the design you want onto tissue paper.
2. Do any colouring you like. I've coloured the windows of the house.
3. Trim around the stamping, leaving about 2-3mm. There's not really a rule about the margin but you don't need a lot of excess tissue to deal with. 
4. Place the tissue design on the desired position on the candle.
5. Cut a strip of waxed lunch wrap that's tall enough to cover the stamped area and that is long enough to wrap around the candle with some overlap so you can hold the ends and keep the waxed paper tight over the tissue paper. Make sure the waxy side is towards the candle.
6. Gently heat the stamped area with a heat tool. This won't take very long. Within seconds, you'll see the waxed paper go glossy. That's enough. Lift the waxed paper off carefully. You shouldn't be able to see any tissue paper - it should be sealed over with wax. 
7. If you can still identify the tissue paper, then reposition the waxy paper and give it another few seconds of heat. 
8. That's all there is to it!

The team and I would love to see your take on the candle theme. You can see what everyone has done and link up your entry at The Paper Players. And again, thank you for continuing to play along with us!

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

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.

Butterfly Flight for Paper Players 801

Jaydee has an exciting Tic-Tac-Toe Challenge for us this week at The Paper Players. Firstly though, a big thank you to everyone who played along with our 800th challenge. The look back to the very first sketch challenge brought out such gorgeous entries to the gallery, it was even more difficult than usual to choose winners. I hope you all have as much fun with this week's inspiration. 

I've chosen the centre column: things that fly, free and texture. Butterflies are my things that fly, my free choice is Hot Foiling and texture comes from an embossing folder and tone-on-tone diecuts.

I started by using the Butterfly Flight Hot Foil dies and silver foil to create the butterflies. I coloured them using the Butterfly Flight decorative masks, blending brushes and Fresh Freesia, Highland Heather and Gorgeous Grape inks.

After die cutting them out, I cut a second set of outlines in Fresh Freesia so that I could add them as shadows under the dimesionaled up butterflies on the card front.

I cut out a Basic White rounded corner rectangle from Nested Essentials. Then I cut some foliage from the Butterfly Flight Hot Foil dies and added them to the rectangle for a background for the butterflies.

The sentiment is hot foiled in silver with the Sweetly Sentimental Hot Foil dies.

The card front is embossed with the Floral Spray 3D embossing folder, because butterflies need flowers, right?

To finish off, I added a trio of Purple Shimmer Gems (retired).

The team and I would love to see what you will choose to use from the Tic Tac Toe Challenge. You can see what everyone has done and link up your entry at The Paper Players. And again, thank you for continuing to play along with us!

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

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.

Butterfly Flight for As You See It 380

It's time for at new challenge at As You See It and sketch week is always my favourite. I love sketch challenges because they give guidance but also give plenty of leeway to do your own thing. I'm also always amazed at the way the one sketch can lead to so many different interpretations.

For the quartered panels, I used pieces embossed with the Stone & Vine 3D folder. 

For the horizontal, I used a fishtailed banner, embossed with the retired Subtle 3D folder. Then for the sentiment, I used one the sentiments from the Sweetly Sentimental Hot Foil dies.

The sentiment was mounted onto one of the butterflies from the Butterfly Flight Hot Foil dies. The butterfly was coloured with the Butterfly Flight decorative masks. I used blending brushes with Flirty Flamingo and Melon Mambo inks.

To finish off, I added a trio of retired pink gems.

You can see what the rest of the Design Team have done, and link up your entry, on the As You See It page. The team and I are all keen to see how you see it!

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.