Category Archives: Hello

Bokeh for CC&S challenge

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Today is an exciting day. It’s the first challenge of the year over at CAS Colours & Sketches. That would always be a good thing, but this year, my sister and I have joined the Design Team! This is both exciting and a little intimidating – now I have to produce a card for every challenge and although I’ve been improving, I sometimes find sketch challenges tricky. But pushing myself out of my comfort zone is going to be good for me. I’m sure. So I eagerly waited for the colour palette for the first challenge only to find that it has grey in it. As I think I’ve mentioned before, after 7 years at school having to wear grey, I can’t stand the colour. Admittedly that’s over 30 years ago now, but I haven’t got over it. So I’m rather surprised with the card that I ended up with – in fact, I had to call my sister to tell her to sit down when looking at the photo I’d just sent her. She was stunned. So much grey!

Stampin' Up! Greetings Thinlits dies

Here’s the banner which inspired the card:

I was playing with watercolouring and produced a card with these colours, but it was just okay and didn’t wow me. And then, when I left the card on my kitchen table overnight, the skylight leaked and splashed some water onto the card. Definitely not fated to be the card for the design team. So since my pack of watercolour paper was out, I grabbed the reinkers and dotted a clear block with the three colours. After spraying the block with water, I pressed it onto the watercolour paper. And then left it overnight to dry.

I have a piece of clear plastic already cut with different sizes of circles that I use when I want to do the bokeh technique. It’s as simple as using a sponge dauber and the white craft ink and putting circles wherever you want. But then comes the tricky part. The colours have been altered a little by the interaction with the others and so matting this on pool party doesn’t work. Marina mist doesn’t look quite right either. So I contemplated black which worked but seemed a trifle overpowering. This of course led me to the smoky slate and with a black mat I think it worked well.

As I was thinking about placement, I realised that I just didn’t want to plop it in the middle. Too boring. And I was scared to stamp on the watercolour paper because I finished this card yesterday and I didn’t have time to redo it and have the watercolour paper dry in the middle. This led me to the Greetings Thinlits dies and the idea of having the word falling off the edge of the pattern. In order to stop the tail of the hello waving in the wind – or being bent to the cardbase, I cut the end of hello twice more, once out of watercolour paper and once out of basic black so that I could glue them underneath the tail.

I finished off the envelope using the neutrals designer series paper stack and the envelope liners framelits.

I really had to struggle with this card and I love how it came out. I also have another piece of bokeh-ed watercolour paper in the same colours but looking totally different. I’m looking forward to playing with that.

I hope that you’ll stop by the challenge blog and see what the rest of the team has produced and that you’ll have a go at entering a card yourself.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Love Blossoms DSP stack

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I was looking at the rather vast amount of patterned paper that I possess, secure in the knowledge that I’m about to order more in a couple of days and thought that perhaps I need to use more of it. There are some gorgeous patterns and there’s a reluctance to use it but it’s much better to create cards with it and have other people see it – as long as you’re not keeping your cards in shoe boxes of course! So out came a new stack – the Love Blossoms DSP stack which you’ll be able to order on Tuesday. Or today if you sign up as a demonstrator.

Stampin' Up! Love Blossoms DSP and Hello

I really like this pattern but it’s a touch busy for me so I needed a lot of white space to calm it down. I also wanted to play with a new set called Hello, which is one of the sets that you can earn for free during Sale-a-bration (starts January 5th). Every time you spend a multiple of $50 on product, you select a free item. That’s a pretty great deal.

So I stamped the big hello in rose red on whisper white card and decided on garden green as the contrasting colour. The real reason for the garden green is that it’s one of the colours in the stack, although not on this particular paper. I’ve got far more layers than usual but everything seemed to need a little border. I’d definitely say it makes it easier if you decide exactly where the banner is going before you take the paper off the dimensionals. It almost ended up in a skewed and odd position!

See you tomorrow,

Liz

 

Dropping in to say hi

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I was away at the weekend at a crop – i.e. a weekend filled with crafting, classes, music and chat with like minded people. My sister and friend joined me and we had a blast. We even made a bunch of cards, this being one of them – the inspiration for which was this week’s challenge at CAS Colours and Sketches.

Stampin' Up! Acorny Thank You

The challenge banner is

The stamp set is Acorny Thank You which I’m having a lot of fun with. I stamped the striped nut in delightful Dijon on very vanilla and then cut them out with the new punch. Then I punched out a few nut hats in chocolate chip and blackberry bliss although I stamped off once with the blackberry bliss or it looked almost black. I cut the top off the nut hat from the very vanilla version because otherwise it was peeking out from under the stamped one. The top two acorns are glued to the very vanilla piece whereas the bottom one is popped up with dimensionals. I really like the sentiment and the typeface of the hi – I stamped this in chocolate chip. I matted this in delightful Dijon and then put it on a blackberry bliss card base. The very vanilla envelope is lined using the envelope framelits  and the retired backgrounds DSP – I need to get the new version of this DSP, it’s so useful, especially for lining envelopes.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

 

Hello You

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It’s a hard choice, but I think that the English Garden DSP is my favourite paper in the new Stampin’ Up! catalogue. Some of the patterns can stand on their own as a card (I’ll post an example in the upcoming days).

Stampin' Up! English Garden , Hello You

The bee paper is in whisper white, soft suede and hello honey so I mounted it on a piece of soft suede. I then cut out a banner in whisper white and made the banner part using the new triple banner punch – it’s very easy. Simpler than using scissors and a ruler. I matted that with a banner of soft suede and popped the banner up on stampin’ dimensionals. The hello is cut out of hello honey using the Hello You dies – I really like the diecut words that Stampin’ Up! has and I was happy that these were carried over to the new catalogue and thrilled that there are more in the catalogue also. I forced myself to allow the hello to fall off the edges of the whisper white to the edge of the soft suede banner and I like the effect. I used the two way glue pen to adhere the word and it’s now my method of choice – the angled tip makes it very easy to get the glue just where you want it. The soft suede piece is mounted on ordinary whisper white card stock – I have yet to try the extra heavy whisper white – I think I’ll add it to my next order. As you can see, I lined the envelope with another piece of the DSP.

Here’s the photo in the catalogue of the English Garden DSP – as you can see, there are lots of really pretty patterns. I usually find DSP hard to use but this one is so lovely, it’s just screaming to be put onto cards.

Stampin' Up! English Garden

See you tomorrow,

Liz