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

Gallery Blooms for As You See It 356

Welcome to a new challenge at As You See It. This week, we have a sketch to inspire you.

I enjoy a sketch challenge and I particularly like seeing the varied projects that arise from the same starting point. 

I had the Beautiful Gallery DSP on my desk. It's so pretty and I really haven't made enough use of it... yet. 

I started by choosing a design from the DSP stack and cutting it to a suitable width. Then I cut it into horizontally into three pieces the same width. 

I embossed the Basic White card front with the Damask Designs embossing folder, which is part of the Beautiful Gallery suite. After attaching that to the Secret Sea card base, I added the three strips of DSP, making sure to  preserve the pattern and to space them evenly while keeping them to the left, as in the sketch. 

I used the sentiment from Beautiful Motifs and cut it out using a banner from Stylish Shapes. As the colours in the DSP were Cloud Cover and Secret Sea, I cut out some small foliage using the Gallery Blooms dies and arranged them in behind the popped up sentiment banner. 

To finish, I added three large Flat Pearls in Secret Sea to the left of the DSP strips, to suit the sketch, and added two smaller ones to accent the sentiment. 

I'd love to see how you see this sketch!  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.

 

Gallery Blooms for Colour Inkspiration 193

 

Welcome to the 193rd challenge at Colour INKspiration. This challenge runs for nearly two weeks and will finish on Monday August 25, 7pm AEST.

This colour palette was chosen for us by Crew Member, Vicki Boucher. Isn't this just the most gorgeous, delicate set of colours? I hope you enjoy crafting with it as much as I did!

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 Michelle Pepper 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 Pool Party for Balmy Blue. Black, White, Very Vanilla, Crumb Cake, Basic Beige and metallics are free colours, as are flesh-toned Stampin' Blends.

These colours were so delicate that I knew I wanted to use something with lacy die cuts and probably some water colouring. The dies in Gallery Blooms were just perfect so I started by ink smooshing some Fluid 100 Watercolor Paper with some Balmy Blue and Highland Heather. Once it was dry, I cut several of the lacy agapanthus heads from it and also several maidenhair fern leaves from Cloud Cover. From these beginnings a card was born!

I had a wreath in mind, so cut a hoop using circles from Stylish Shapes to use as a base. I cut a square of Basic White, embossed it with the Damask Delsigns embossing folder, added the wreath and then wondered what was next?!

I toyed with the idea of a square card but instead used a Cloud Cover base and a piece of Cloud Cover DSP from the 2025-2027 In Color Stack. I chose this design because it has an ink smooshed look to it. The card needed something else to make it pop, so I added in a piece of Highland Heather, embossed with the Exposed Brick 3D folder behind the square which also helped to visually elongate the wreath panel.

The next dilemma was the sentiment. What colour to stamp it and what colour to stamp it on? Embossed white on Highland Heather? A Balmy Blue banner? Too many choices. While pondering that, my eye fell upon the narrow piece of the DSP that I'd trimmed off for the card front. Perfect - I used that, stamped with Highland Heather and turned into a banner. The sentiment is from Beautiful Motifs, the companion set to Gallery Blooms. 

To finish, I added a trio of Purple Fine Shimmer Gems to pick out the Highland Heather.

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.

Beautiful Motifs - and some recycling - for Paper Players 740

Welcome everyone to a new week at The Paper Players! We had some wonderful entries last week for LeAnne's sketch and I'm looking forward to seeing what you all come up with for this week. 

I'm delighted to be the hostess this week and I hope you'll be excited by the theme I've set which is to recycle something or re-purpose something in your creation.

I have a small stash of deleted library books, picked up for next to nothing at sales, chosen for the interesting text or illustrations. One that has repaid the pittance price many times over is a broken-spined, tired looking "Book of Illustrated Fashion".

I've cut down a reproduction of an advertisement from November 1899 showing off the latest fashions for ladies. As gorgeous as they look, I imagine they were not at all comfortable to wear! It was however, a lot of fun turning them into cards. 

I started by looking at the colours in the illustration and matched them to Early Espresso, Gray Granite and Cajun Craze.

Because I wanted these fabulous clothes to be the star of the show, I kept the treatment very simple. I matted each half of the advertisement onto a piece of Gray Granite, after trimming down to a card front size.  The card base is Early Espresso and then I used Cajun Craze (a colour I rarely use) for the card front. 

In keeping with the vintage feel of the images, I used the new Damask Designs embossing folder. I stamped the sentiments from Beautiful Motifs in Early Espresso onto Gray Granite and cut them using a small die from Perennial Postage.

To ground the sentiment, I added some Gray Granite twine from the Baker's Twine Essentials pack. To keep with the vintage feel, I added in a trio of Pressed Flower motifs as embellishment. 

I can't wait to see what creative ways everyone recycles something for this week's challenge!

You can see what the rest of the design 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

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. 

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 Colour INKspiration 184

Welcome to the 184th challenge at Colour INKspiration. This challenge runs for nearly two weeks and will finish on Monday April 7, 7pm AEST.

This bright and cheerful colour palette was chosen for us by crew member, Alisa Tilsner. I wish my plot plants looked this good!

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 Sandra Hebel 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 Real Red for Poppy Parade. Black, White, Very Vanilla, Crumb Cake, Basic Beige and metallics are free colours, as are flesh-toned Stampin' Blends.

To me, these colours spoke of florals. As I'd been fortunate enough to go to On Stage in Brisbane I'd had the chance to pre-order from the forthcoming 2025-2026 Annual Catalogue. Amongst my pre-order items was a bundle called Gallery Blooms. It's part of a gorgeous vintage style suite called Beautiful Gallery. It seemed a shame not give it a try out for this challenge! 😀

I started by stamping the beautiful trio of blossoms onto Basic White in Tuxedo Black ink. I coloured the leaves with a mix of Mossy Meadow Blends and Garden Green Watercolour Pencil. Then I blended over the area with Azure Afternoon ink before embossing it with the Damask Designs embossing folder, which is part of the Beautiful Gallery suite.

I stamped a second floral image and coloured the flowers with Poppy Parade and Daffodil Delight Stampin' Blends then fussy cut the flowers. I popped them up on dimensionals over the stamped image on the embossed card front.

From the die set, I cut out three agapanthus and three small leaves in Garden Green. I partially sponged the agapanthus with Mossy Meadow ink, cut down the small leave stem and tucked them around the three blooms.

The sentiment is from the second stamp set in the Beautiful Gallery suite, Beautiful Motifs. This set is mainly sentiments which will work well with any stamp set. It's stamped in Mossy Meadow, cut using a die from Something Fancy and with a Mossy Meadow shadow.

The embellishments are also part of the suite, Pressed Flower Motifs.

We'd love to see what you do with the challenge colours. You can join the group in the following link, if you aren't already a member. Don't forget to answer the questions when you ask to join. 

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.