The Paper Players 355 - DT Card

Welcome to a new challenge at The Paper Players! I loved seeing the different takes on last week's sketch. This week, we have a Tic Tac Toe challenge. Simply choose a line and make sure you include those three elements in your creation.

I've worked with the right hand vertical line: birthday - pink - circle and have used Beautiful Bouquet as the basis for this card.

There are a number of circles in this card. The whole thing is a circular easel card with a Blushing Bride circle matting the Whisper White centre circle. The flowers are circular in form and the pearls are also round. There are circular twists of copper metallic thread tucked in as well.

There are three different pinks: Flirty Flamingo, Blushing Bride and Powder Pink. This is what it looks like closed...

There are a few simple rules to abide by when you play with The Paper Players.

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.Entries linked to more than 4 challenges, including ours, will be deleted without notification.
5. Have fun!

We'd love to see how you play Tic Tac Toe with us.

If you live in New Zealand and don't have a demonstrator, I'd love help you find the pleasure of using Stampin' Up products. You can shop with me, or ask me for  stamping help, from anywhere in New Zealand. You can contact me by clicking on the link to my Facebook page in the sidebar of this blog, or by leaving me a comment with your contact details. (These won't be published.)

Ingredients

Card: Flirty Flamingo, Blushing Bride, Whisper White, Wild Wasabi

Stamps: Beautiful Bouquet

Inks: Flirty Flamingo, Blushing Bride, Powder Pink, Versamark

Other: Bouquet Bunch framelits, Copper embossing powder, Copper Metallic thread, pearls, dimensionals

As You See It 155 - DT card

As lovely as holidays are, it's good to be back home and back in my craft room. I did think I'd miss the challenge  deadline this week at As You See It but it turned out to be the perfect challenge for me at this moment. After two weeks on a tropical island holiday, a return home to depressing winter, a bit of jet lag and an in-at-the-deep-end return to work my mojo was definitely still on holiday! Yet the challenge at As You See It this week is the perfect antidote for this...

So, what do I do when I lose my craft mojo? Well, what I do it look for a challenge to enter. This does a couple of things for me. It gives me a reason to hunt for mojo but more importantly, it gives me a really useful tool for managing mojo loss: limitation. One of the most inhibiting things to mojo, I think, is when you have no clear idea where to start because you're in your normally happy place: the well-stocked craft room. A sketch or colour challenge is really good for limiting your choice and making the task more accessible. 

If I'm in real mojo trouble, I limit things even further. I might make myself use a particular stamp set, or I might make myself only use retired stock or things I got in my last Big Brown Box, or to use a particular technique.

What I did today was decide that I'd find a sketch challenge and that I'd use a current favourite bundle (Dragonfly Dreams) and a current favourite technique (sponging and masking). After a bit of a hunt around, I chose the sketch at Fab Friday.

Even so, sailing was not plain. There were two false starts before I got a dragonfly I was happy enough with to use. In the end, he was stamped in StazOn, painted in Sweet Sugarplum and Fresh Fig, washed with clear Wink of Stella and highlighted with a white gel pen and rhinestones. He's layered and mounted on the raised sentiment strip.

The circle was sponged through a circular mask. The colours blended were Sweet Sugarplum, Calypso Coral and Daffodil Delight. The leaves were stamped in Fresh Fig and then some Wink of Stella splatters were added in before the mask was removed.

I will enter this at Fab Friday. You can enter our challenge at As You See It over the next two weeks and we'd love to see what you do and to hear what you do when your mojo is AWOL. Just link up by 11.55 pm, Wednesday 9 August PST.

If you live anywhere in New Zealand and don't have a demonstrator, I'd love to help you find your stamping mojo. You can contact me by leaving me a message in the comments or by clicking on my Facebook page in the sidebar of this blog.

Update: Delighted to be in the Fave Four at Fab Friday with this card. 

The mojo must be working!

Ingredients - all products Stampin' Up.

Card: Fresh Fig, Sweet Sugarplum, Whisper White

Stamps: Dragonfly Dreams, Butterfly Basics, Thoughtful Banners

Inks: Sweet Sugarplum, Calypso Coral, Daffodil Delight, Fresh Fig, Black Stazon

Other: clear Wink of Stella, Layering circle framelits (to make the mask), sponges, dimensionals, rhinestones, Detailed Dragonfly thinlits, white gel pen, aquapainter

The Paper Players 354 - DT card

Welcome back to another exciting challenge at The Paper Players. This time, Jaydee has given us a fantastic sketch to work with. Aren't the possibilities just endless?

I've used an old, but still current, set called Best Birds. A couple of weekends ago, I was part of a local Stampin' Up Extravaganza and I got to thinking about one of the projects I taught there last year, which was an acetate window card front with an aquarium scene in behind. From that idea came this card for Jaydee's sketch.

The bird, the branch and leaves, and flowers were stamped onto watercolour paper, painted and cut using the matching dies. The bird is layered to give him more depth.

The 'congratulations' and the  cross-hatching on the inside are both embossed using copper embossing powder and there's a twist of copper metallic thread in behind the greeting too.

I used the ever-faithful Softly Falling embossing folder for the front.

I like the clean finish of this card. I think it would work well for a baby girl, or an engagement or even a wedding. A useful one for my stash!

Please join us in the wonderful sketch challenge. There are a few simple rules to keep in mind:

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. Entries linked to more than 4 challenges, including ours, will be deleted without notification.
5. Have fun!

You have until Friday 8 p.m. EST to join us and I'd love to see what you do with it.

If you live in New Zealand, I'd love to be your demonstrator. You can reach by through my Facebook Page - just click in the sidebar.

Ingredients

Card: Whisper White, watercolour paper, acetate window sheet.

Stamps: Best Birds

Inks: Soft Suede, Blushing Bride, Peekaboo Peach, Pear Pizzazz, versamark

Other: Birds and Blooms thinlits, Copper embossing powder, copper metallic thread, Softly Falling Embossing folder, glue dots, aquapainter, pearls.

All products Stampin' Up.

Colour Inkspiration 13

Our lovely winter holiday to somewhere warm is sadly now over and it's back to school tomorrow.
Tahiti must have been a good location for a holiday because never once did I hanker for my craft room! With the laundry mountain under control and the bags unpacked, I did cheer myself up at the return to winter with a retreat into my room to play with the gorgeous colours on offer at Colour INKspiration.

I really wanted to explore the possibilities of Beautiful Bouquet, a set I've owned since June but haven't really had much of a chance to play with. So, this is how it turned out ....

The tulip buds are stamped in either Sweet Sugarplum or Fresh Fig, while the tulip flowers I've inked up in Sweet Sugarplum and then daubed near the bottom with Fresh Fig. The sentiment was inked the same way. The leaves are inked in Lemon-Lime Twist with the lower part daubed with Wild Wasabi. The stems are a mixture of Lemon-Lime Twist and Wild Wasabi.

I stamped a few leaves and flowers and die-cut them to add depth and perspective to the garden scene.

I like how this turned out and I think that Beautiful Bouquet is going to be one wonderful stamp set.

Ingredients

Card: Fresh Fig, Lemon-Lime Twist, Whisper White

Stamps: Beautiful Bouquet, One Big Meaning

Inks: Fresh Fig, Sweet Sugarplum, Wild Wasabi, Lemon-Lime Twist

Other: Fresh Fig woven ribbon, Bouquet Bunch framelits, dimensionals (Mini and standard), Fresh Fig marker to colour edge of sentiment strip.

Retro Rubber 67 - DT Card

Well, there's lot of ways you can go with this week's challenge at Retro Rubber - Rainbows.

As always, the rules are simple: use a stamp that's at least a year old, tell us how old it is (approximately) and don't link up to more that ten challenges in total.

Playful Backgrounds and Thoughtful Banners came out during in the 2016-17 Annual Catalogue and Crazy About You came out in the 2015 Occasions catalogue. Thoughtful Banners was a set I always thought I'd use a lot but really haven't, so it was good to get it out and use the words for this card.

So, please join in our Rainbow Challenge - we'd love to see what you do.

Ingredients

Card: Basic Black, Calypso Coral, Whisper White,  Marina Mist, Elegant Eggplant

Stamps: Thoughtful Banners, Playful Backgrounds, Crazy About You

Inks: Rose Red, Calypso Coral, So Saffron, Wild Wasabi, Marina Mist, Perfect Plum, Elegant Eggplant, Tuxedo Black

Other: Stitched circle framelits, Elegant Eggplant twine, Hello You thinlits, dimensionals, Calypso Coral star enamel shape

The Paper Players 353 - DT card

Welcome to Claire's CAS Summer Fun in the Water challenge at The Paper Players. I have to tell you that this challenge has special significance to me because as this post goes live, my husband and I will be enjoying the fun and sun in Tahiti, where we've gone for a winter get-away.

As gloom and winter ills have surrounded us for the last few weeks, the prospect of a warm beach and sunshine seemed very attractive so I was drawn to my new Colourful Seasons set and the deckchairs in it. I hope I'm sitting on one right now! I gave them a masked and sponged background: sand, sea and sky. I made the sponging a bit rougher than usual to add to the sense of ocean movement and sandiness.

The chairs are a two-step stamp so I stamped the base on to the sand but I paper-pieced the seat using papers from the Colour Theory paper stack. To get the shape right, I stamped the seat using versamark and clear embossed it before fussy cutting it. Then I shaded under the seat to give some solidity to the chairs. 

The drinks are popped up on dimensionals. I hope I've got some of those on the beach with me too!

I cut one of the snowflakes in Crushed Curry to be a stylised sun to ground the sentiment, which is from Clearly Besotted's Say it in Style. And I added in some starfish from By the Shore for some more marine life. 

I do hope you'll join us for this fun CAS challenge. Here's a reminder of our few 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. Entries linked to more than 4 challenges, including ours, will be deleted without notification.
5. Have fun!

Ingredients

Card: Bermuda Bay, Watercolour paper, Colour Theory DSP

Stamps: Colourful Seasons, By the shore, Clearly Besotted Say it in Style.

Inks: Bermuda Bay, Dapper Denim, Crushed Curry, Crumb Cake, Early Espresso, versamark

Other: Seasonal Layers thinlits, dimensionals, clear embossing powder, glitter enamel dots, sponges

As You See It 154 - DT Card

Welcome to another As You See It Challenge. Today we've got a sketch for you and I can't wait to see how you see it. I found the asymmetry of the panel a bit tricky to get looking right, so much so that I wished I'd ignored it and done a curve!

I did enjoy getting out Happy Birthday Gorgeous from the new annual catalogue. It's got some great birthday greetings and some lovely balloons that I've used a few times but I'd largely ignored the many little floral bits and bobs that come with it.

So I used the little stylised flowers, stamping the outline in Fresh Fig and stamping the filler in Powder Pink. Then I had a choice of four different leaves but settled for these simple little ones in Garden Green for the base layer.

Then to decorate the top panel, I used the larger of two roses and a pair of other leaves. The rose was originally Fresh Fig on white but when I got out the Wink of Stella, the ink smeared a bit to give this very pale pink.

It doesn't really show up in the picture but there are a pair of score lines across the very top of the pink panel, just to add a bit of interest. I'd originally intended to use the 'Happy Birthday' on the inside but I've actually left it blank because it seemed to me that 'It's Your Day' could cover many things.

You have two weeks to show us how you see this sketch and we'd love to see what you do!

Please join us.

Ingredients

Card: Fresh Fig, Powder Pink, Whisper White

Stamps: Happy Birthday Gorgeous

Ink: Fresh Fig, Powder Pink, Garden Green

Other: dimensional, clear Wink of Stella, scoring blade

The Paper Players 352 - DT card

Welcome back to a new challenge at The Paper Players. This week we have an opulent colour challenge from LeAnne.

I had such a lot of fun with these colours. I started by sponging Rich Razzleberry to Berry Burst to Sweet Sugarplum, bottom to top, onto a piece of watercolour paper. I flicked it with water to lift the colour in spots and flicked it with clear Wink of Stella to add some shine. Sadly, these bits of glimmer haven't shown up so well in the photo.

Then I stamped the flowers from Awesomely Artistic in Razzleberry in the bottom zone and then in Berry Burst towards the centre. The dragonflies are also in Berry Burst. Finally, I used a rectangular mask and sponged on a layer of Berry Burst along the bottom and left side of the panel to create the illusion of depth.

The finishing touches were the frame stamped in Berry Burst, which I fussy cut. The greeting is from Sunshine Wishes. The greeting is grounded on some twists of  gold metallic thread. The sponged panel is matted onto Sweet Sugarplum and is on a Basic Black card base.

There are a few rules to keep in mind.

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.Entries linked to more than 4 challenges, including ours, will be deleted without notification.
5. Have fun!

I'd love to see what you do with these glorious colours. You have until noon on Friday 14 July, PST, to join in.

Global Design Project 94

Today is a rainy, cold wintry day; the kind where you don't feel bad about being in your craft room with the heater on. I unpacked and put away all the gear from yesterday, when I was part of a local Stampin' Up Extravaganza, then looked at a huge backlog of feeds from various challenges. I was pleased to discover that there was still time to enter at Global Design Project -  as long as I got my skates on.

I don't often use DSP, but I had this piece of bold black and white stripes left from last year's Pop of Pink and thought it would look well against some of the bolder and brighter of this year's In-Colours.

I've only just started to play with the my newly acquired Beautiful Bouquet stamp and die combination but I can see it's going to be fabulous.

I also discovered that the new mini-dimensionals are just perfect for cut out letters from Labeller Alphabet, which means I'll probably be using that set more now.

Simple, bright and cheerful: a perfect hello.

Ingredients

Card: Lemon-Lime Twist, Berry Burst, scrap of Whisper White, Pop of Pink DSP

Stamps: Beautiful Bouquet, Labeller Alphabet

Inks: Berry Burst, Tuxedo Black

Other: Bouquet Bunch thinlits, Sparkle embossing folder, mini-dimensionals, rhinestone.

All products Stampin' Up.

Retro Rubber 66 - DT Card

So much fun in this week's challenge at Retro Rubber - it's wedding time! That's right - get out your old stamps and create a wedding card. Just use at least one stamp older than a year and don't forget to tell us how old it is.

There's a lot of old stuff in this wedding card. The embossing folder and the dies are both older than a year as well. The stamp is from SU's Floral Phrases, new in the 2016-17 catalogue. That's where the stamp on the inside, and on the envelope, came from too.

Please join us in the challenge - we love to see what you do. Apart from the rule about an old stamp and telling us how old it is, the only other thing to remember is not to link up to more than ten challenges in total.

Ingredients

Card: Very Vanilla, Acetate window sheet, Early Espresso. Gold foil

Stamps: Floral Phrases

Ink: Early Espresso (inside and envelope), versamark

Other: Gold embossing powder, Sunshine Wishes thinlits, dimensionals, Hearts embossing folder.

All products Stampin' Up.

Global Design Project 93

The colours at Global Design Project were so bright and cheery that I made time to play with them today and I might even scrape in before the deadline!

I did go back to an old, old favourite, Awesomely Artistic as a base for this card but added in some newer products, Dragonfly Dreams (certainly destined to be a future long time favourite) and Happy Birthday Gorgeous.

The colours were so vibrant, airy and delicious, they directed the direction of this card no matter quite what I'd thought at the outset. I started by using an acrylic block to stamp the background, then built up some detail with a mix of stamping and embossing.

The dragonfly has a soft shimmer from a coat of clear Wink of Stella and has a Lemon-Lime Twist underling that peeks out from certain angles.

The butterfly is also stamped in Pool Party to give him some detailing.

Thanks for such a fun challenge!

Ingredients

Card: Pool Party, Berry Burst, Lemon-Lime Twist, watercolour paper

Stamps: Awesomely Artistic, Dragonfly Dreams, Happy Birthday Gorgeous

Inks: Pool Party, Berry Burst, Lemon-Lime Twist, Tuxedo Black, Versamark

Other: Detailed Dragonfly thinlits, Stitched Shapes framelits, White embossing powder, clear Wink of Stella, Berry Burst finely woven ribbon, rhinestones, mini-dimensionals, dimensionals.

The Paper Players 351 - DT Card

I can't tell you how delighted I am to be joining The Paper Players as a guest designer for the next few months! I feel as though I've won a lottery! This is a challenge that I've loved to play along with ever since I first discovered challenges in 2014. In fact, it was the first challenge I was ever brave enough to enter and the first I ever made the prize list.  So I feel very humbled and very privileged to be joining them for a while. Thank you all, for having me.

This week, we have a theme challenge for you.

For this card, I stuck to some tried and tested Black Tie event colours: Very Vanilla, Basic Black and Gold. I've had this little Simon Says Stamp Confetti die for a few years now and I don't use it enough. I love the way it looks a bit like an exploding firework or a sunburst - certainly it looks like fun and a celebration.

The 'congrats' is layered up to give some height and heft to it.

The bottom layer is in gold foil, off-set to give a liquid gold shadow to the 'congrats'.

We'd love to see what kind of education related congratulations or thanks you dream up. Join us and show us!

Ingredients

Card: Basic Black, Very Vanilla, Gold Glimmer, Gold Foil

Stamps: Sunshine Sayings

Inks: Tuxedo Black

Other: SSS Circle Confetti die, Sunshine Wishes thinlits

Freshly Made Sketches 294

I've been very busy of late, trying to get ahead on design team commitments before going on holiday so it was with pleasure that I realised that I had some time to just play with some of my new stuff. I took inspiration from the sketch at Freshly Made Sketches as I wanted some time to experiment with Floral Statements, a set new and fresh from the 2017-8 Annual Catalogue.

I thought of several ways to colour this lovely image but, in the end, opted for watercolour pencils as they go on so smoothly and blend so well.

Also new from the box is this fabulous new embossing folder, Garden Trellis. Even though I've only had it a couple of weeks, it's cost per use rate is already right down!

So delighted to be The Queen of Clean at Freshly Made Sketches!

Ingredients

Card: Rich Razzleberry, Shimmery White cardstock, Foil acetate, Old Olive.

Stamps: Floral Statements

Inks: Jet Black Stazon, SU Watercolour pencils, blender pen

Other: Garden Trellis embossing folder, metallic shapes, clear Wink of Stella (flower centres)