Fern & Flora for Colour INKspiration 213

 

Welcome to the 213th challenge at Colour INKspiration! Today's colours are a strong and moody combination, chosen by Crew Member Sharon Dalton.  

This challenge runs for nearly two weeks and will finish on Monday 20 July, 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 Kerstin Stempelmessi 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 Night of Navy for Secret Sea. Black, White, Very Vanilla, Crumb Cake, Basic Beige and metallics are free colours, as are flesh-toned Stampin' Blends.

To begin with, these colours had me a bit stumped and there were a couple of false starts. But that is one of the joys of joining in challenges - you get pushed to try new things. 

Regular readers will know that I've been having quite a love affair with the Fern & Flora bundle. The fern die cuts are wonderful but the negatives are also pretty. So I decided to use them as a stencil. The largest fern I stencilled with Timid Tiger and the medium sized fern I stencilled with Strawberry Slush. I really like the way that there are tonal variations in the ferns from the way they were stencilled. Blending brushes make the ink blending very easy.

I trimmed the panel down and matted it onto a piece of Strawberry Slush then adhered it to a Secret Sea card base. 

I experimented a bit with the sentiment, originally having a narrow horizontal of Secret Sea and then trying some linen thread. In the end, I decided to leave it just like this: a sentiment from Rolling Waves cut with a die from Nested Essentials with a shadow of Secret Sea. 

The sentiment is popped up on dimensionals. The finishing touch is a trio of Flat Pearls in Timid Tiger. 

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.

Spotlight on Nature for As You See It 373

It's Speed Stamping Week at As You See It. This regular challenge is one people either love or hate - or maybe they love to hate it? Anyway, it is a bit of a thrill and if you ever wanted to combine adrenaline rush with stamping, this is your challenge!

If you've never taken up a Speed Stamping challenge before, this is how it goes. 

• You have ten minutes to complete your card.
• Thinking time is not included, so you can have planned it in your head.
• Supplies can be assembled but not used. So block up your stamps, get the embellishments out on the desk, put the dies beside the machine and so on.
• The  timer starts the moment you cut, ink up, stamp or emboss anything.
• Thankfully, clean up is not on the timer!
• Don't forget to tell us what your time to completion was. 

Spring bulbs threw me a bit because although I have lots of flowers, most of them were not bulbs. I actually used Google Image Search to identify the flower in Spotlight on Nature (retired) and it told me this was most likely a tulip, so I ran with that!

I stamped the image in Gorgeous Grape then used a blending brush and Fresh Freesia ink to add an explosion of colour around the flower heads. Then I used a water painter and some Fresh Freesia ink to add splatter.

I added the sentiment, from Rolling Waves, in Gorgeous Grape ink.

As I still have just under 8 minutes left on the clock I decided to go a bit further and cut the image out using Everyday Arches. I embossed a Basic White card front with the Beautiful Pattern embossing folder and adhered it to a Gorgeous Grape card base. (These things were in my 'if I have time' plan.)

To give it all a bit more oomph, I popped the arched panel up on dimensionals and finished off with a trio of Purple Fine Shimmer Gems. 

The inside was pretty simple - just a quick stamp of the top part of the floral image and a quick brushover with the blending brush.

Then I stopped the timer...

 

I quite surprised myself as I'd expected to be a bit closer to 8 minutes. But I was well planned in my head and had all my supplies on hand. 

What will you do in your ten minutes? You can see what the rest of the team have done and link up your entry at the As You See It Challenge page. 

An eclectic mix for Paper Players 760

Many thanks to those of you who entered last week's colour challenge. Who knew that  purple and green could lead in so many directions, from Christmas to Halloween?!

This week, Jaydee is our hostess and she has a double challenge for us: A foliage theme but in a Clean and Simple style.

So what the Clean and Simple mean? For us, it means to keep things uncluttered - lots of white open space, a single focal point, minimal layers and minimal use of embellishments. 

For my card, I've used a mix of several die and stamp sets. That's one of the pleasures of having a stamp collection - mixing and matching as you feel like. 

I started with a die cut leaf from Thankful Garden. I still had some left over ink smooshed watercolour paper from this project in my bits box so used it now. 

It seemed a bit lonely by itself, so I cut a smaller leafy bough from Gallery Blooms in Early Espresso.

I needed a sentiment, so used one from Beautiful Motifs and cut it using a banner die from Stylish Shapes.

Once I had the bones of a design, I needed a background to put it on. So I punched a circle from a piece of masking paper and attached it to my card front to create a circular mask then I got to work on it. 

I started by adding some script using Early Espresso ink and a stamp from Elements of Text. Then I added some splatters in Timid Tiger, using another stamp from Elements of Text.

 

Then I added some colour with a blending brush using Crushed Curry and Timid Tiger inks. Once that was all done, I removed the mask to reveal the decorative circle.

After that, it was a simple matter to add the foliage and sentiment plus a trio of rhinestones.

We'd love to see your foliage themed creation - but remember to keep it clean and simple. 

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

You can stamp with me, and shop with me, from anywhere in New Zealand. Click here.

Gallery Blooms for Paper Players 759

Thanks to everyone who entered Claire's fun theme challenge last week. There were certainly some entertaining costumes in the gallery! 

This week, we have a colour challenge for you. I'm interested to see where these colours - purple and green- take you. 

The place they took me to was florals. I can't get enough of that gorgeous three flowered image in Gallery Blooms. So I inked it up in Tuxedo Black on the card front in the position I wanted it then coloured it with Stampin' Blends: Fresh Freesia, Highland Heather and Old Olive. I die cut it out, being careful to keep the little pieces from between the flowers.

After stamping the sentiment from Unbounded Love, I ran the bottom part of the card front through the Cut and Emboss machine using the cut glass folder from Glass and Gardens.

Before attaching the card front to the Thick Basic White base, I added a layer of Highland Heather card between the layers. Once the two layers were attached, I put the die cut bloom back in place on dimensionals so that a hint of the Highland Heather card can be glimpsed. The small die cut pieces from between the blooms were easily added with the aid of the Take Your Pick tool.

To draw the eye to the sentiment, I added three Fine Purple Shimmer gems for accent.

Where do these colours take you? 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

You can stamp with me, and shop with me, from anywhere in New Zealand. Click here.

Prairie Grass for As You See It 357

 Welcome to a new challenge at As You See It. As always, a sketch challenge is followed by a colour challenge. This week, we're delving into some of Stampin' Up!'s 2025 In Color range. So often with the In-Colors, I look at an individual colour and it doesn't grab me but when you put them together, they're a great team. I think that's very true of this year's colours. I've become especially fond of Secret Sea and the Secret Sea/Cloud Cover combo. Anyway, we'd love to see how you see these colours working together.

Regular readers will know that  I've been experimenting a lot lately with circle masks as backgrounds for other stamps. This card is an extension of that playaround.

I started by stamping the grass image using two of the stamps from Prairie Grass in Secret Sea. The I used some masks I'd cut from scraps of window sheet using various sizes of circles to lay down some background pops of colour in Cloud Cover, Pumpkin Pie and Timid Tiger.

Then, I wondered what to try next. So I embossed the lefthand side of the card front using one of the folders from Glass & Gardens.

After stamping the sentiment in Secret Sea,  I used one of the rounded rectangle dies from Nested Essentials to cut out the sentiment. I attached the card front to the Secret Sea card base but added in a panel of Timid Tiger underneath where I'd cut out the sentiment label. Then I popped the sentiment back into place on dimensionals, which allows for a pleasing flash of colour to peek out from behind. 

I added a trio of Flat Pearls, one in Timid Tiger and two Secret Sea to finish off. 

So how do YOU see these colours?  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.