The Paper Players 372 - Design Team Card

Last week, I had so many favourites in The Paper Players gallery that it was hard to choose only one. Fortunately, the rest of the team picked quite a few of my others, so I was happy! This week, the amazing Joanne - aka The Crafty Owl - has a sketch for you. I couldn't wait to get started on it and I hope you'll be just as keen to play.

I've opted for a 90 degree turn, so the orientation is portrait rather than landscape.

The Delicate Ornaments framelit has been used to frame a starry forest scene. One tree is gold embossed and the stars have been embossed in silver to echo the colours in the Cheers to the Year DSP.  There are two ornaments, one in plain Island Indigo tucked in behind to create a shadow effect.

We'd love to have you join us in this sketch challenge. If you do, there's just a couple of things to remember.

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!

If you live anywhere in New Zealand and don't have a Stampin' Up demonstrator, I'd love to help you with ideas and Stampin' Up products. Please message me through my Facebook page, linked in the sidebar of this blog or leave a comment below. If you live in New Zealand and you would like to join my Stampin' Up team, message me for a chat. And, of course, you can shop with me from anywhere in New Zealand.

Ingredients

Card: Island Indigo, Whisper White, Cheers to the Year DSP, gold foil

Stamps: Lovely as a Tree, Oh What Fun, Hearts Come Home

Ink: Island Indigo, Garden Green, Versamark

Other: Delicate Ornaments framelits, Softly Falling embossing folder, gold and silver embossing powder, Cheers to the Year embellishment, narrow gold ribbon, sponges and post-it notes, dimensionals

All products are Stampin' Up.

Retro Rubber 76 - Design Team Card

Many of you had a great deal of fun with our colour inspiration challenge last week. This week at Retro Rubber, we have one of your favourites: Anything Goes.

Now, since it's Retro Rubber, it's not quite Anything Goes. You must still use at least one stamp older than a year, tell us the approximate age of your stamps, and don't link up to more than ten challenges in total.

So, I enjoyed doing this Anything Goes because I used it as a chance to enter a challenge, something I often don't seem to get to do very often these days. I'm going to enter the Fab Friday Sketch Challenge with this too.

I'm very fond of Best Birds by Stampin' Up, first seen in the 2016-17 Annual Catalogue, so used that as the central image. I love that bird and his branch and enjoy colouring him in. I usually watercolour but this time, I used my new Stampin' Blends - Stampin' Up's new line of alcohol markers. I'm really happy with the results - the colours blended nicely, the colours are pretty and work well together.

The background embossing is done with a Couture embossing folder I picked up cheaply in The Warehouse a couple of years ago. It's called Jazmyne and I like the big, bold leaves and boughs.

The sweet sentiment is from a retired set, but one that is not quite a year old: Special Reason from last year's Occasions Catalogue.

Please. join us in our Anything Goes - with an old stamp. We'd love to see what you do.

Update: Delighted to be the Fab Fave at Fab Friday!

Ingredients

Card: Old Olive, Whisper White, Calypso Coral

Stamps: Best Birds, Special Reason

Inks: Tuxedo Black, Crumb Cake

Blends: Old Olive, Crumb Cake, Calypso Coral, Daffodil Delight

Other: Birds and Blooms framelits, pearls, Oval layering framelits, Jazmyne embossing folder by Couture.

The Paper Players 371 - Design Team Card

White on white, last week's challenge at The Paper Players, was a great challenge. So many different ways of interpreting it and all so lovely. It made choosing a winner difficult for the whole team!

This week, it's Sandy's CAS Warm and Cosy challenge.

With summer fast approaching, it was a challenge in itself to get into the warm and cosy mindset. I always think warm and cosy when I see a tartan, especially a red one. So the starting point of this card was actually the red tartan from last year's aptly named Warmth and Cheer DSP stack.

Then it was a short step to giving the stag from Merry Patterns a matching Cherry Cobbler jersey.

I chose copper as an accent to add more warmth to the overall tone. 

We'd love to have you join us at The Paper Players this week. If you do, please remember 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!

If you live anywhere in New Zealand and don't have a Stampin' Up demonstrator, I'd love to help you with ideas and Stampin' Up products. Please message me through my Facebook page, linked in the sidebar of this blog or leave a comment below. If you live in New Zealand and you would like to join my Stampin' Up team, message me for a chat.

Ingredients - all ingredients Stampin' Up

Card: Whisper White, Copper foil, Warmth and Cheer DSP (retired), scrap of Basic Black.

Stamps: Merry Patterns

Inks: Early Espresso, Cherry Cobbler, Garden Green, Versamark

Other: Copper embossing powder, Assorted sequin pack, Stitched Shapes framelits, Metallic copper thread.

As You See It 163 - Design Team Card

This week, there's a new sketch on offer at As You See It. 

I'll admit that to begin with, those little banners had me a bit flummoxed. I've been running some extra Christmas card classes lately and I had out Holly Berry Happiness. Those boughs of holly started looking like the banner elements in the sketch and so an idea was born. Here's how it turned out.

There was a bit of fussy cutting involved on the holly, which I stamped in black and coloured using the new Stampin' Blends alcohol markers. I'm enjoying learning to use them, having never had alcohol markers before. They are now available for purchase.

You have until 11.55 p.m. Wednesday 29 November PST to join in and show us how you see the sketch. We love to see what you do.

If you live anywhere in New Zealand and don't have a Stampin' Up demonstrator, I'd love to help you with ideas and Stampin' Up products. Please message me through my Facebook page, linked in the sidebar of this blog or leave a comment below. If you live in New Zealand and you would like to join my Stampin' Up team, message me for a chat.

Ingredients

Card: Old Olive, Whisper White, Merry Little Christmas DSP

Stamps: Merry Mistletoe, Holly Berry Happiness

Inks: Cherry Cobbler, Stampin' Blends Old Olive, Cherry Cobbler (lights and darks)

Other: Holly embossing folder, Holly Berry builder punch, Lots of Labels framelits, linen twine.

Paper Players 370 - Design Team Card

LeAnne's Holiday Pines challenge last week gave us so many beautiful cards - I was gobsmacked and choosing just one to be Cut Above kept me deliberating for quite a bit of Saturday morning. So, I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with Nance's interesting colour challenge: white on white.

An interesting challenge, where I think texture will play a greater role than usual. Here's what I came up with.

The Petal Burst embossing folder makes up the background, while on a plain white banner some die cuts from Colourful Seasons take centre stage. 

The sentiment caused a couple of headaches. White on white just didn't seem to work with words, although I did consider embossing white on vellum. In the end, I decided that a limited use of a neutral is usually acceptable in a colour challenge, at least for outlines and sentiments. So I went with that and used silver embossing, in keeping with the cool, white theme.

We'd love to have you join us this week at The Paper Players. There's just a few things to remember, if you do:

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!

If you live anywhere in New Zealand and don't have a Stampin' Up demonstrator, I'd love to help you with ideas and Stampin' Up products. Please message me through my Facebook page, linked in the sidebar of this blog or leave a comment below. If you live in New Zealand and you would like to join my Stampin' Up team, message me for a chat.

Ingredients - all products Stampin' Up

Card: Whisper White

Stamps: Colourful Seasons

Inks: versamark

Other: silver embossing powder, Petal Burst embossing folder, Seasonal Layers thinlits, dimensional

Retro Rubber 75 - DT Card

We had some really clever takes on our last sketch challenge at Retro Rubber.  I look forward to seeing what you do with this new challenge. It's a colour challenge - all you have to do is use the colours in the picture as inspiration and make sure you use stamps older than a year to make your card.

I liked the weathered grey look of the seat, so chose that as the background for my flowers. The purples and pinks took my eye the most and so I made those my main colours. I used the Pinewood Planks dynamic textured impression embossing folder for the wood grain then lightly sponged the surface with Smoky Slate to bring out the texture further.

The stamps are both stamps I've had for a while. The sentiment is Winnie&Walter's Big, Bold and Party which I got soon after I started serious stamping, so sometime late 2014/early 2015. The gorgeous blooms are Altenew's Peony Bouquet. I'm not sure of the date but I've had them for about eighteen months.  They are so very, very beautiful and I wanted to try out my new Stampin' Blend alcohol markers. I've never had alcohol markers before, so I felt like a kid on Christmas morning!

So, today my watermark is wrong - images are not by Stampin' Up but Altenew.

If you'd like to join us at Retro Rubber, we'd love to see what you do. The rules are really easy: Use a stamp that's at least a year old, tell us the approximate age of it and don't link up to more than ten challenges in total.

If you live anywhere in New Zealand and don't have a Stampin' Up demonstrator, I'd love to help you with ideas and Stampin' Up products. Please message me through my Facebook page, linked in the sidebar of this blog or leave a comment below.

Ingredients - Stampin' Up unless otherwise noted.

Card: Smoky Slate, Whisper White

Stamps: Altenew Peony Bouquet, W&W Big, Bold and Party

Inks: Tuxedo Black, Smoky Slate

Stampin' Blends: Rich Razzleberry, Pink Pirouette, Old Olive - lights and darks, Colour Lifter pen

Other: Altenew Peony Bouquet dies, Pinewood Planks impressions folder, Enamel shapes, dimensionals, sponges

The Paper Players 369 - Design Team Card

Jaydee's fabulous tic tac toe challenge at The Paper Players gave us some real beauties in the gallery. I know I had about five favourites and it was hard to just pick one! So, I'm looking forward to seeing what you all do with LeAnne's lovely theme challenge this week.

I've had my eye on a set called Lovely as A Tree for some time. It's been in every annual catalogue I've ever seen from Stampin' Up. I read somewhere that it's the set that holds the record for being available for the longest time. So I've havered but recently I used some Stampin' Rewards and added it to my order.  I'm so pleased I did. It's an all-season set but the lone pine makes a great Christmas tree.

The Eclipse technique has been all over the internet in recent weeks and this challenge seemed like a good chance to try it out. You can use any die for this technique but I also recently added the Large Letter framelits to my collection and wanted to try them out too. They were something else I'd wanted for a long time but the expense of them put me off. I was lucky enough to earn them almost for free, using my Demonstrator flex points - another good reason for joining up with Stampin' Up.

The trees are a mix of gold embossing and Garden Green. I like the effect of adding in a part emboss of the Softly Falling folder to give the illusion of snow, too.

We'd love to have you join us this week at The Paper Players. There's just a few things to remember, if you do:

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!

If you live anywhere in New Zealand and don't have a Stampin' Up demonstrator, I'd love to help you with ideas and Stampin' Up products. Please message me through my Facebook page, linked in the sidebar of this blog or leave a comment below. If you live in New Zealand and you would like to join my Stampin' Up team, message me for a chat.

Ingredients - All products Stampin' Up.

Card: Cherry Cobbler, Garden Green, Whisper White

Stamps: Lovely as a Tree

Inks: Island Indigo, Garden Green, versamark

Other: Large Letter framelits, Softly Falling embossing folder, sponges, gold embossing powder, foam strips

Freshly Made Sketches 311

It's been a busy card weekend as I've prepped for all my November classes in the past 36 hours. So as a reward, I played with the challenge at Freshly Made Sketches.

This is such a great sketch! Here's how it turned out for me this time.

I like the elegance of the gold, black and white and I'm pleased that the pop of red and green draws the eye to the understated sentiment.  I haven't played with this bundle nearly enough!

Update: Delighted to be a Perfect Princess at Freshly Made Sketches.

Ingredients

Card: Basic Black, Gold Foil, Whisper White, Real Red, Gold Glimmer paper

Stamps: Oh So Eclectic, Special Reason

Inks: Real Red, Old Olive, Tuxedo Black

Other: Eclectic Layers dies, Gold faceted gem, dimensionals

All products Stampin' Up

As You See It 162 - Design Team card

Welcome to a new challenge at As You See It. This week we have an interesting sketch for you to play with.

I've broken out Beachy Little Christmas for this one. I started with the beach hut and used my brand new Stampin' Blend alcohol markers to colour it in. 

Then I picked up the colours used in the hut to make a water-colour wash to match the three strips in the sketch. I white-embossed the shells and crab with a branch to match the elements at the left-hand end of the strips.

For the first time ever, I used a staple to attach something to a card - and it felt good!

We'd love to see what you do with this sketch - and for you to show us how YOU see it.
You have until 11.55 p.m. on Wednesday 15 November PST to join us.

If you live anywhere in New Zealand and don't have a Stampin' Up demonstrator, I'd love to help you with ideas and Stampin' Up products. Please message me through my Facebook page, linked in the sidebar of this blog or leave a comment below.

Ingredients - all products Stampin' Up

Card: Bermuda Bay, Whisper White, watercolour paper

Stamps: Beachy LIttle Christmas

Inks: Bermuda Bay, Daffodil Delight, Calypso Coral, Crumb Cake, Versamark, Stampin' Blend markers: Bermuda Bay, Daffodil Delight, Calypso Coral, Crumb Cake, Old Olive, Pool Party (lights and darks)

Other: White embossing powder, Burlap ribbon, staple