Beautiful Gallery for AYSI 365

It's time for a recipe challenge at As You See It. All you have to do is create something using the five given ingredients plus whatever you've got in your stash. 

I think that the ingredients: A celebrate theme, vellum, shades of red, punch or die and bling is a recipe for going completely over the top - not my comfort zone! But I've given it a good crack....

It all started with a single card front of that delicious DSP. It was all I had left from two packs of the Traditions of Christmas DSP from the September- December mini catalogue. This last remnant seemed perfect for the blingy redness of the recipe!

I've used vellum to tone it down to provide a resting place for the floral spray and sentiment. The 'celebrate' is from Beautiful Motifs so it seemed sensible to look at Beautiful Gallery to give me a focal point. I do love that spray of three flowers. I gold embossed it to be in keeping with the DSP then coloured it with Cherry Cobbler and Real Red Stampin' Blends, along with some touches of Daffodil Delight and Old Olive. 

The sentiment is stamped in Cherry Cobbler to match the card base and cut using Stylish Shapes. The bling element of the recipe is some of the bright gold Flower Accent embellishments. 

What will you do with this recipe? You can see what the rest of the team have done - and link up your own entry - at the As You See It Challenge page.

You can join in with us until Wednesday February 11 11.55pm PST. 

f 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.

 

Beautiful Gallery for The Paper Players 756

Welcome to a new challenge at The Paper Players. Thank you to everyone who played along with LeAnne's subtle colour challenge. As always, the entries were gorgeous. 

This week, it's my pleasure to be the hostess for our Clean and Simple challenge and I've chosen the theme of Watercolour. So maybe you'd like to stamp or emboss an image then use your inks to watercolour, maybe you'd like to get down and dirty with some ink smooshing, or maybe you'd like to try something wild like blowing the ink or using salts. However you'd like to play with water colouring, this is your challenge. 

Just remember that it's also a CLEAN AND SIMPLE CHALLENGE, so your finished item should:

• have lots of open white space
• have a single focal point
• have minimal layers and embellishments

I started this challenge by die cutting some of the foliage and flowers from the Gallery Blooms dies from Fluid 100 Watercolor paper. After wetting the die cuts with a Water Painter, I coloured them using Summer Splash, Pretty in Pink and Petunia Pop inks. I like using inks on wet paper as the colours more readily move and flow. Once they were dry, I arranged them on a tag cut from the sadly retired Tailor Made Tags die set.

I cut a second tag from Basic White and did a second watercolour technique with it. I used the floral stamp from Beautiful Motifs and Pretty in Pink ink for this. 

I wet the cut tag with a Water Painter, then stamped the floral image onto the damp card. This meant that the edges of the stamped image bled a little and gave a softer finish. If you're doing this on Basic White card stock, then be light handed on the water. If you're using Fluid 100 Watercolor paper, then go for it. 

The embossing folder on the card front is Damask Designs, also part of the Beautiful Gallery suite. The sentiment, stamped in Gray Granite, is from Beautiful Motifs and is cut using a banner die from Stylish Shapes. The Gray Granite twine is from the Baker's Twine Essentials pack. The embellishments are In Color Flat Pearls in Pretty in Pink.

What magic will you work with water colour? And remember it's also a Clean and Simple Challenge. 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

Anne Marie Hile (on leave)

Ann Schach

Jan Clothier - You are here

Stef Perry

Eliz Stewart

Christy Stanford

Beautiful Gallery for AYSI 349

 Time moves quickly and it's already rolled around to our most feared challenge of the roster - the SPEED CHALLENGE! For this challenge,  the theme is water but the time remains the same: create your card in ten minutes or less. 

Before you decide that's impossible, here's how it works.

1. Thinking time is not included. So you can have it all planned out before you start the timer.
2. Prepping equipment is not included. So you can get out the stamps and have them blocked up, the embellishments and dies can be on the table ready to go. The cardstock can be on the desk. 
3. Thankfully, clean up is not included either. 

BUT

The moment you ink a stamp, cut a piece of card, die-cut or emboss anything, then the timer has to start. 

Over the years of doing the speed challenge, I've worked out a couple of tricks. One is to use pretty papers so they'll do all the heavy lifting that time-consuming techniques would usually do. 

In this instance, I've turned to the Beautiful Gallery 6x6 DSP stack and I chose a moody water scene.

Part of the Gallery Blooms dies is one that cuts out three inset rectangles in a single pass. So I used it once on the scenic DSP and once on a piece of Cloud Cover. Then I replaced the centre scene rectangle with the matching Cloud Cover piece.

I stamped the sentiment, from Beautiful Motifs, in Secret Sea onto the Cloud Cover frame.  The whole thing was adhered to a Secret Sea card base. 

As I still had some time to spare, I added in three Secret Sea In Color Flat Pearls. 

How long did this take? I was pleasantly surprised to see that it only took...

The whole team would love to see what marvels you can create in ten minutes or less.  You can see what the rest of the team have done, and link up your entry, at the As You See It Challenge 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.

5minutes 17 seconds

Gallery Blooms for Freshly Made Sketches 684

 I haven't been very good at keeping up my New Year Crafting Resolution to play along with more challenges just for fun. After just completing a run of customised wedding invitations, I sat at my desk and decided to play 'just for fun'. I turned to the sketch at Freshly Made Sketches for inspiration.

 I wanted to give the Beautiful Gallery suite a bit of a try out so the choice was easy about what to play with. Here's how that ended up...

I used the Gallery Blooms bundle and twice stamped one of the images, then coloured in with Stampin' Blends in Lost Lagoon, Petal Pink and Calypso Coral. I die cut some flowers and foliage in Lost Lagoon, Petal Pink and Crumb Cake.  These were arranged into a bouquet on a small circle from the Stylish Shapes dies. 

I used DSP from the Beautiful Gallery DSP 6x6 stack for the right edge panel, then used a torn edge showing the reverse as the scalloped vertical in the sketch. 

I used the Damask Designs embossing folder for the card front and some of the Pressed Flower Motif embellishments to finish off.

The sentiment is from the second stamp set in the suite, Beautiful Motifs, and is cut from using another of the dies from Stylish Shapes.

All of the elements of the Beautiful Gallery Suite will be available from 6 May. 

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.