Monthly Archives: October 2015

October 2015 Paper Pumpkin Alternative 6

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This week it’s a double challenge at CAS Colours and Sketches – both a sketch and a colour palette. Sketches are definitely more of a stretch. My Paper Pumpkin set for October, Blissful Bouquet, was still out on my desk so I decided to try to use some of the stamps that haven’t been inked up yet.

Stampin' Up! Paper Pumpkin October 2015 - Blissful Bouquet

Here’s the banner of the challenge that was my inspiration

I started off by sponging the three colours onto a piece of cardstock, but I didn’t like how it looked and decided instead to drop ink onto a clear block, spray it with water and then press it onto card. My first attempt created a very dark – and wet – result and I then wondered how it would work on water colour paper. This was rather interesting too and the texture of the paper added interest. My next experiment was to wet the water colour paper rather than the block, this left the block still covered in ink and so I stamped the block onto ordinary card stock. And it’s this last experiment that made it onto this card. I really liked some of the earlier ones too, but they were very slow to dry and I wanted to get on with my card.

I decided to flip the sketch and, because the DSP that I’d created was going to dominate the card, I went with clear embossing on the tiny flowers so that they wouldn’t try to compete. The sentiment is from the Paper Pumpkin kit and it’s stamped in rose red.  As I was about to glue everything down, I decided that the DSP panel was a little too wide and trimmed it slightly on both sides. I loved the coloured thin strips that were left over and quickly realized that adding one of them to the base of the card really improved it. It wasn’t on the sketch but, as my sister who is visiting pointed out, my card was very much inspired by the sketch.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Circle of Spring

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Happy Friday! Here’s another card that I did at the July crop – I’m posting this just in time before I go to the next one in a week’s time!

Stampin' Up! Circle of Spring and Greetings thinlits

I used black stazon to stamp the image onto watercolour paper. After letting it dry for a while I coloured in the flowers with various strengths of rich razzleberry and then the leaves in my go to green, pear pizzazz. I then cut out the hello using the greetings thinlits in pear pizzazz – I wish I’d had the fine tip glue pen at the time, it makes it so much easier gluing these kinds of words. I mounted the piece of watercolour paper onto a rich razzleberry card base. I finished off the envelope using the retired backgrounds DSP and the envelope liners framelits.

My sister arrived for a visit today, and my brother is currently cooking her traditional welcome dinner of steak. I’d better go and make the salad. And then tomorrow, Caro and I will sit at the kitchen table and make cards. Can’t wait!

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Bravo and sponging

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I needed a card because one of my friends has been promoted. So out came the Bravo stamp set and I decided to include a sponged rectangle as I’ve done a couple of times lately.

Stampin' Up! Bravo

I used the square framelits to cut out the rectangle from a piece of card, moving the framelit to elongate the shape. I then used finger daubers to add the ink –  pacific point, melon mambo and pumpkin pie – only very vanilla card stock. I let it dry a little and then, after using the embossing buddy, stamped the image and sprinkled on the gold powder. I used a fine paintbrush to flick away some extra specks of gold and heated the image. After heating, I found that there were a lot of extra specks of gold – presumably the inked rectangle wasn’t completely dry. My sister called at that time and I told her that I was about to redo the card and she suggested emboss resist rather than waiting for longer to allow it to dry. Brilliant idea! So I started with the embossing and then moved onto the sponging – the advantage of this approach (apart from not getting extra gold specks) is that I could more easily place where I wanted the rectangle.

The very vanilla piece is mounted on a melon mambo card base and I made a liner in melon mambo using the retired backgrounds DSP (I realized yesterday that I don’t have the new one in brights yet) and the envelope liners framelits. I hope she likes the card.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Sleigh Ride Edgelits CAS

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I thought I’d change things up a bit today and not use the Blissful Bouquet stamp set! This is a clean and simple Christmas card using the awesome Sleigh Ride Edgelits.

Stampin' Up! Sleigh Ride Edgelits

I cut out the santa and his sleigh in regular whisper white card stock and trimmed it so that it fit on the night of navy cardbase leaving the size border that I liked. Before gluing it to the cardbase, I used real red ink and a sentiment from Jingle All the way which is curved to match the curve of the edgelits. I love the coordination! So after the stamping – just in case of errors – I glued the whisper white piece to the card base.

I then took the snowflake stamp from the Wonderland set and stamped it four or five times across the sky in a now retired silver ink, changing the orientation of the stamp each time. I lined the envelope using some retired backgrounds DSP and the envelope liner framelits.

I think it would also be fun to do this with silver embossing powder but I was creating a simple card for a card class. Actually one of my friends happened to see this card and has decided that she wants to make a stack to send as Christmas cards. That’s a pretty great compliment.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

October 2015 Paper Pumpkin Alternative 5

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Firstly I’d like to thank the team at CAS Colours and Sketches for selecting my card this week as one of the winners. It’s a thrill to go to the challenge site and see my card amongst the winners. I hope that you follow the link to check out the rest of the cards.

Here’s another card that I made using this month’s Paper Pumpkin stamp set, Blissful Bouquet. I was so pleased with the multi coloured leaves that I did a few days ago that I decided to make my own DSP in the same way.

Stampin' Up! October 2015 Paper Pumpkin Alternative Blissful Bouquet

I mounted the two leaf stamps onto a single block and started stamping them in columns in the archival basic black ink onto very vanilla paper. Then, I used four different greens at varying strengths to colour in the leaves – mossy meadow, old olive, pear pizzazz and always artichoke. I decided to echo the black of the stamped image with a skinny basic black mat around my DSP and then mounted it on a mossy meadow card base. After that I went looking for the right sentiment. I realized that lately I seem to mostly make thank you cards (not a bad thing) and I’m a bit short of birthday cards. This sentiment comes from Birthday Blossoms and is stamped in mossy meadow and cut out with an oval framelit. I cut out the next largest framelit in mossy meadow but that made a border that was too wide for this card. So I used a sponge to lightly add a little mossy meadow to the edge of the very vanilla oval to give it a little definition. I lined the outside of the envelope flap for a change – just cut a 6″ by 2 1/4″ piece, glue it down and trim the edges with your paper snips. Easy.

I’m rather enjoying myself reusing this stamp set – I think I’ll pick another set sometime and do another series of cards. When I’ve made a couple more with Blissful Bouquet since I have some ideas at the back of my mind.

See you tomorrow,

Liz