Category Archives: Thank you

October 2015 Paper Pumpkin Alternative 2

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Yesterday I said that I was challenging myself to make three alternative cards with the October 2015 Paper Pumpkin Blissful Bouquet stamp set. Here’s the second – if you’ve been following my blog (and I hope you have!), you’ll have seen a similar card made a few days ago for the CAS Colours & Sketches current challenge. I decided to do another sponged panel and looked through the colour coach for inspiration but I kept coming back to the colours that Stef selected for this week’s challenge.

October 2015 Paper Pumpkin Alternative 2

This is a smaller sponged panel than the earlier card, but it is again in pumpkin pie, tangerine tango and real red on very vanilla. I then stamped the flowers from the October 2015 Paper Pumpkin Blissful Bouquet set in the archival basic black. I wanted three flowers and I decided to have them falling off the sponged colour. Probably mostly because the card from earlier in the week had the image entirely contained within the colour. I liked Martin’s comment which was that the card has a Japanese vibe – a good thing since he loves Japanese cards. The sentiment is also from the Paper Pumpkin set – rather a fun typeface and a stamp which will be rather useful. I tried using all three of the sponged colours as mats, I also tried them as card bases but in the end, it was basic black which really worked.

Stop back to see the third alternative card sometime in the next couple of days.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

 

Lighthearted Leaves

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I can’t believe that I hesitated for a minute over buying this set – I think it’s the one that I’ve used the most from this year’s annual catalogue so far. I was inspired by this week’s challenge at CAS Colours and Sketches where there’s an interesting trio of colours – and some amazing inspirational cards from the Design Team. I was also inspired by the challenge at the Paper Players where they are doing Clean and Simple with leaves. Stampin' Up! Lighthearted Leaves and Painted Petals

Here are the banners which inspired my card:

I removed some of my photopolymer stamp from their backings and stuck them to the insides of the stamp set box using the printed window sheet for positioning. This left me with a number of sheets of the plastic spare and I made a few templates with them. I punched out some squares to make a rectangle template which I used for this sponging. I started with the pumpkin pie, then tangerine tango finishing off with the real red. I then used the archival black to stamp the image from the Lighthearted Leaves set but I didn’t get a great stamp. So I inked it up again – and remembered to use my pierce mat this time – and stamped again. I wasn’t spot on but I continued with the card so that I could get it completely designed. It took quite a while to find the right sentiment for the feeling of the card and the space available – it’s from Painted Petals, a much loved set from the now retired Occasions catalogue. I interrupted the cooking going on and showed the idea to my father and brother; they liked it and looked at me as if I had 47 heads when I said I needed to redo it because the stamping wasn’t perfect. I looked again and decided that they were right and the imperfections were actually a good thing. I then mounted the piece of whisper white onto a base of the thick whisper white. I’d considered a coloured mat but it detracted from the clean lines. I added an envelope liner in a retired real red backgrounds DSP.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

 

Best Thoughts for the Global Design Project

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Sometimes I know the general direction that a card is going in, sometimes I have no idea. This is one of the latter occasions. I saw that the Global Design Project had a colour challenge this week and decided to have a go.

Stampin' Up! Best Thoughts and Cottage Greetings

Here’s the colour banner which inspired the card:

I decided that the pear pizzazz and the soft sky could be sky and grass and that I’d do some watercolouring. I had pieces of card of each of the colours out on my desk whilst I was thinking about what to do and the soft sky happened to have a circle cut out of it. So I used it as my template. I wet the piece of watercolor paper with water before adding colour – I messed up at one point and the aquapainter pushed under the card template and my circle wasn’t perfect. I was about to redo it, when I thought that the whole point of watercoloring is that is ISN’T perfect and added more colour around the circle to soften all the edges of the circle. Then I went on a search for an appropriate image to add. After discarding various flowers, I settled on the butterfly from the hostess set Best Thoughts which I stamped in archival basic black. I added full strength daffodil delight to the spots on the butterfly and a paler strength for the rest of the butterfly.  After framing the watercolor paper with a little pear pizzazz I added it to a soft sky card base. I had thoughts to pull out my greetings dies (again) but it was too heavy; Cottage Greetings was out (I’d been looking at the flowers) and I realised that the thanks would work well. It’s also stamped in my favourite archival basic black. There was a bit of a risk taken with this card – for some reason, I stamped the thanks last. It would have been much safer to have done that before adhering the pear pizzazz to the card base – there’s no way it will ever come off, it’s stuck on there with the mighty fast fuse! Apparently I’m taking risks today.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Lighthearted Leaves for a challenge

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I seem to be entering a lot of challenges this week and today it’s TGIF Challenges where it’s a colour challenge.

Stampin' Up! Lighthearted Leaves and Greetings Thinlits

Here’s the banner which inspired my card:

Definitely fall colours. I used a leaf stamp from Lighthearted Leaves which I seem to be using a lot at the moment – I’m working my way around the set! I stamped it in the three colours onto a very vanilla background. I wasn’t sure which colour to use for the sentiment and so cut out a thanks with the Greetings Thinlits dies in all three colours and tried them all! In the end, I decided to go 3-D and layers the old olive on top of the rich razzleberry – I’m really happy that I have the fine tip glue pen to help me with adhering the thinlits. I then mimicked the shadowing effect of the rich razzleberry by having a very thin mat of rich razzleberry behind the very vanilla and putting this onto an old olive card base.

I had visitors over the weekend and they looked at all my stuff, especially the ribbon and they commented that surely I have more ribbon. I don’t. Because I hardly ever use it, I much prefer the clean and simple style card. But maybe I should use some ribbon soon. I’ll take it as a challenge.

Last, but definitely not least, a welcome to my new blog follower. I’m glad to have you join the fun!

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Garden in Bloom challenge card

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I made this card for a challenge at TGIF Challenges last month but missed the deadline. For some reason it took me a bit of effort to combine pool party, crushed curry and calypso coral, but here’s what my entry would have been.

Stampin' Up! Garden in Bloom and Greetings Thinlits dies

This is the first card that I’ve made with the set Garden in Bloom but not quite the first using the greetings framelits dies – I seem to have overused the thanks rather. Not that it’s a bad thing to want to thank people, but perhaps I should let the die cool off a bit! The Garden in Bloom contains two step stamps; here I stamped the outline in calypso coral and, although it looks as if I did something clever with the crushed curry, the second stamp is designed not to give total coverage but more of a watercolour look.

The thanks is of course cut out in pool party and I used the same colour to create a skinny mat around the piece of very vanilla. This was then mounted on a very vanilla card base. The envelope is lined using the now retired backgrounds DSP in the subtles collection but of course the Designer Series Paper stacks in subtles would be an excellent replacement – I have those too but I had an already cut out liner in pool party.

See you tomorrow,

Liz