Butterfly Flight for CAS Colours & Sketches 595

I'm always keen for a sketch challenge. To be honest, I'm also always looking for a reason not to be doing chores. Happy marriage = wet day + craft room time + sketch at CAS Colours & Sketches. 😀

So, I saw the circle shapes as butterflies. I used my Butterfly Flight Hot Foil dies and Gold Hot Foil to create a set of butterflies. Then I used the matching Butterfly Flight decorative masks to colour them with a blending brush and a mix of Daffodil Delight, Timid Tiger and Calpyso Coral before die cutting them out. Special tip: these decorative masks make beautiful butterflies even without the Hot Foil dies.

To give the butterflies something to ground them, I added in some stencilled lines using the dotted lines from the Water and Dotted Lines duo.  I used Granny Apple Green ink and a blending brush.

The sentiment used the Sweetly Sentimental Hot Foil dies, again with Gold Hot Foil. To finish off, I added a trio of Granny Apple Green shimmering dots.

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.

Classic Greetings for Colour INKspiration 218

Welcome to the 218th challenge at Colour INKspiration! Today's colours offer up a rustic charm or a masculine vibe, depending how you see it. You might see something else! The colours were chosen by team member, Vicki Boucher. 

This challenge runs for nearly three weeks and will finish on Monday 12 October, 5pm AEST.

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 Sonja Zierer as our Guest Designer this time around. 

If you don't have an exact challenge colour, feel free to replace it with whatever you have that's closest, for example Cherry Cobbler for Real Red. Black, White, Very Vanilla, Crumb Cake, Basic Beige and metallics are free colours, as are flesh-toned Stampin' Blends.

I originally thought I'd do something along the lines of a rustic Christmas with the colours but once I sat at my desk, other things happened!

I cut some hexagons using the smallest hexagon die from Nested Essentials and arranged them on a panel of Basic Beige. I mounted that on a panel of Basic Beige and then attached it to a Basic Black card base.

I used the Hot Foil system to create the sentiment. I used the Classic Greetings hot foil dies and Red foil on Basic Beige cardstock. Once it was die cut out, I popped it up on dimensionals then added some Neutral Matte Dots in Basic Black, Pecan Pie and Basic Beige.

So, this masculine card came together pretty quickly and would work well in lots of colour combinations. I toyed with either stamping tone on tone or embossing the hexagons but went for a cleaner look in this instance. Worth an experiment in the future though. 😀

You can see what the rest of the Design Team have done with the 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.

Lustrous Leaves for Atlantic Hearts Challenge 700

Today's gloriously warm and sunny spring morning has now turned into a wet and cold spring (autumn?)  afternoon. Go figure. 

I retreated to my craft room and, instead of prepping upcoming classes, decided to play with the Lustrous Leaves Hot Foil dies. Luckily, the Atlantic Hearts Sketch Challenge was on hand to provide much needed inspiration. 😀

I started by using the Hot Foil System with copper foil to make a set of the Lustrous Leaves. This die set can be bundled with a set of stencils perfect for colouring the outline images. I used a mix of Old Olive, Crushed Curry, Calypso Coral and Cajun Craze, applied with blending brushes, before die cutting the foiled images. I also used the leaf dies to cut a set of small leaves from scraps of Cajun Craze.

With the foliage under control, it was time to work on the rest of the design. I cut a piece of Basic White and added some splatter stamping in Old Olive using an image from Gears & Textures. After that, I matted the piece to a rectangle of Old Olive. The card front was embossed with the Softly Woven 3D folder. This I attached to a Cajun Craze card base. You can tell from these colours that I was recreating the crazy weather day with a mix of spring and autumn!

The centre panel was attached to the card base and then the fun part began: playing with the grouping of foliage. Some were adhered flat and some were popped up on dimensionals. 

The sentiment is also hot foiled in copper using the Sweetly Sentimental hot foil dies. I used the die that cuts the sentiments up to create an Old Olive shadow to emphasise the chosen sentiment. 

Then, to finish, I added a trio of autumn toned Sunset Sparkle sequins. 

Sadly, the day outside my window continues to resemble autumn rather than spring... but tomorrow is another day! 

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.

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.

 

Lily of the Valley for Colour INKspiration 216

 

Welcome to the 216th challenge at Colour INKspiration! Today's colour challenge palette was chosen by me, so I hope you enjoy playing along with us!

This challenge runs for nearly two weeks and will finish on Monday 7 September, 5pm AEST.

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 Mariel Altamirano 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 Highland Heather for Fresh Freesia. Black, White, Very Vanilla, Crumb Cake, Basic Beige and metallics are free colours, as are flesh-toned Stampin' Blends.

I felt that these colours lent themselves to something floral and delicate so that had me reaching for the Lily of the Valley bundle.

My card base is Blackberry Bliss. I embossed the card front with the Floral Spray 3D folder.

Although the large Lily of the Valley stamp and die is a showstopper, I've always had a soft spot for the smaller stamped image. So I stamped two of them and coloured them with Stampin' Blends in Fresh Freesia, Blackberry Bliss and Soft Sea Foam. Then I die cut them out. I also cut out a piece of the trellis from Blackberry Bliss cardstock.

I used a piece of retired Beautiful Bokeh DSP to create a horizontal bar then arranged the trellis and the flowers over it. 

As it happened, I'd been experimenting with the new Hot Foil system and had a pile of sentiments from the Sweetly Sentimental Hot Foil dies and chose this one 'here's to another year'. I liked that it would work for both a birthday or an anniversary. 

To finish off this simple little card, I added a trio of Sunset Sparkle sequins.

You can see what the rest of the Design Team have done with the 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.

Lustrous Leaves for CAS Colours & Sketches 591

I fell down the rabbit hole of the new Stampin' Up! Hot Foil system. It's a lovely place to be! I have purchased, as part of the next pre-order of Hot Foil products, the Lustrous Leaves dies and some copper foil. Leaves are like catnip - I just can't have enough of them. And as to copper.... irresistible!

So, I needed to try them out and CAS Colours & Sketches came to the rescue with inspiration. I think I'll just sneak in under the wire for the end date. 😀

I started by hot foiling the leaf die using the copper foil and Willow White card. As part of the Lustrous Leaves bundle, there is a set of decorative masks (or stencils) perfect for colouring the images. I've used Timid Tiger, Cajun Craze and Pecan Pie inks, applied with Blending Brushes.

Because the die makes five leaves, I used the cutting dies to cut them apart and chose three for the front to represent the rectangle shape of the sketch. The others were very handy for the inside of the card.

I used the Sweetly Sentimental hot foil dies, again with copper, to make a number of sentiment labels. I chose 'Here's to Another Year' because it worked for both birthday and anniversary occasion. 

Given the lovely shine of the copper foil, I didn't add any embellishments but left it naked instead. 

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.

Hot Foiling for Paper Players 796

It's a new week at The Paper Players and our hostess is Stef. LeAnne's CAS Beach Challenge saw some gorgeous entries in the gallery, so thank you to all who entered. I'm sure Stef's lovely sketch will fire up your creativity just as much!

I recently indulged myself by purchasing Stampin' Up!'s new Hot Foil system and I'm still having a lot of fun experimenting with it. 

I started by stamping Botanical Glow in Peaceful Pine on a piece of White Willow, then gold foiling over it with the Botanical Glow Hot Foil die. I cut out three squares using Stylish Shapes and attached them to the card front, which I then attached to the Peaceful Pine base. 

The butterfly was made using the Butterfly Flight hot foil dies and Gold Foil. This set has the option of bundling with stencils that colour the butterflies - which, of course, I have too! I coloured it using Flirty Flamingo, Melon Mambo and Berry Burst. I used the matching cutting dies to cut out the butterfly, then added it up on dimensionals to the card. 

 For a little card, I managed to try out a lot of products because I used Gold Foil and the Sweetly Sentimental Hot Foil dies to create the sentiment!

To finish off, I added a trio of Peaceful Pine Dots.

I hope you find some time during the week to join us in this challenge. Visit The Paper Players page to see what the rest of the Design Team have done, to link up your entry or to get more details on the challenge. 

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.

Magical Hot Foil for Freshly Made Sketches 745

It's been a long time since something truly different, and truly exciting, has arrived in my craft room: something never before seen or used or played with. And that folks, is Stampin' Up!'s brand spanking new Hot Foil System.

Once I'd worked out the technicalities of how to operate it (actually, really simple) I tried out a few things like using different dies, using different coloured foils and trying out different papers to foil. Now it was time to actually make something with it all, so I turned to the sketch at Freshly Made Sketches to do just that. 

As part of my experimentation, I'd used the Garden Silhouette Hot Foil Die with gold foil on vellum.

Then I coloured the flowers from the back using Melon Mambo Stampin' Blends, with some  touches of Granny Apple Green and Daffodil Delight.

I cut this down to a long strip 9cm wide then folded it over a 9cm square of Bubble Bath card stock, attaching it with Stampin' Seal from behind. 

I can see that one possible negative of this lovely Hot Foiling is going to be the trouble in getting a good photo of it!

I used a Bubble Bath card base. The Basic White card front is embossed with the retired (but never to be parted with) Subtle embossing folder. I wanted some texture for interest but nothing that would compete with the busy gold foiled square, so it was the perfect choice. 

I ran a narrow strip of Bubble Bath through the same folder as a base for the sentiment.  For the sentiment, I hot foiled the Sweetly Sentimental Hot Foil dies, then cut them out with the matching cutting dies. There were a bunch of sentiments, which are great to have on hand ready to use - but I liked this one for a wedding. It's popped up on dimensionals.

While looking for embellishments, I wanted something elegant but not too flashy. I chose the sparkling white Shimmering Dots to finish things off. 

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.