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.

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

I appear to be overachieving on my goal to use the stamp set from the October 2015 Paper Pumpkin on three cards – here’s the fourth. When I decided to make a card for the Fab Friday challenge, this set was to hand.

Here’s the banner which inspired the card:

The colours were definitely hinting at Hallowe’en but I decided to be different. And besides, how can you do Hallowe’en with the Blissful Bouquet stamp set? I’m sure there’s a way, but I don’t see it at the moment. I used the archival basic black to stamp the first image on the watercolour paper and then cut out a couple of flower masks so that I could have the three flowers clustered together. I used the aquapainter and the tangelo twist to colour in the flowers. I started to do the same with Bermuda bay for the flower centres when I realized that it would be far easier to use a Stampin’ Write marker instead. After that I went back to the aquapainter and outlined the images in Bermuda bay. It helps the flowers pop. I had known all along that I was planning a sentiment in the lower right hand corner and I ought to have stamped that earlier – so it was with some slight trepidation that I went to stamp the thanks (also from the Paper Pumpkin set) since a slight wobble would ruin the card. Happily, it was fine. The watercolour paper was mounted on a piece of basic black only an 1/8 inch bigger and then onto a Bermuda bay card base.

I lined the envelope using the now retired backgrounds DSP and the envelope liners framelits. I have quite a stash of liners already cut – I sometimes cut them out when I’m thinking about the next card.

Although I was thinking that it is time to use a different stamp set, I have a couple more cards already begun on my desk…

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Firstly, a big thank you to Jaydee for selecting my card as A Cut Above at the Paper Players this week. I greatly appreciate it.

Here’s the third card that I challenged myself to make using the stamp set from Blissful Bouquet, the October 2015 Paper Pumpkin.

I got the colour choices from the colour coach – although I didn’t use the third of the suggested trio – so what we have here is melon mambo and old olive. I started with stamping the flowers in white craft ink on the melon mambo card – be careful with this ink, it takes quite a while to dry. I speeded it up a bit by using the heat tool on the lower setting but it’s easiest to just set it to one side – safer too since there’s less chance of fingers smudging the image. I stamped the sentiment – also from the Blissful Bouquet Paper Pumpkin set, in old olive on whisper white. Then I played around with the length and width of the banner before cutting the flag end using the banner triple punch. After that it was simple to create a slightly larger banner in old olive to mat it. When the melon mambo piece was dry, I matted it with a piece of whisper white and mounted it on an old olive card base. The banner is popped up with stampin’ dimensionals.

My brother thinks this card is “too arty” which he explained by saying he didn’t like the pink and the green together. I think it’s a really happy card. Let me know what you think.

See you tomorrow,

Liz