The Hand Stamped Sentiments challenge blog has an interesting colour challenge this week and I decided to try to use the colours without adding anything other than very vanilla.

Here’s the banner which inspired this card

Now I adore blackberry bliss, it’s such a deep, lush colour, but I haven’t tried pairing it with the other two before. But the Stampin’ Up! Sheltering Tree was calling, heck, I haven’t used it in a few days. So the tree itself was stamped in blackberry bliss. I then tried an idea that I saw on a recording of a presentation from Leadership. I inked up the stamp with the leaves backwards! Yes – I mounted the stamp on the block backwards, inked it up with wild wasabi and after stamping it off once, stamped it over my tree. After cleaning the stamp and mounting it the normal way, I inked it in wild wasabi and stamped it over my tree image. What a brilliant idea!

I then left the card (whilst I prepped dinner) to dry before rubbing the embossing buddy over the card and stamping the little flowerhead stamp in versamark. I then used the blushing bride embossing powder and heated it up for a spring like effect. Because I truly hope that spring isn’t too far away!! Here in New Jersey, at 1200 feet, we still have more than a foot of snow on the lawn – and that’s in the parts where it hasn’t been piled up clearing the driveway. So spring seems a long way away. But, I digress!

I made a little hillock out of wild wasabi using the appropriate stamp and then also stamped the flower stems. I stamped the flowers themselves in blackberry bliss after stamping off once to give some variation from the tree itself. The sentiment, also from Sheltering Tree, is stamped in blackberry bliss as well. I mounted the very vanilla onto a base of wild wasabi and lined the envelope with the wild wasabi shade from the backgrounds DSP.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Well I intended this card to be for a challenge calling for hello honey, tangelo twist and pacific point and I added a neutral – sahara sand – but when I went to upload the card to the site, I see that the only neutrals you can use are white, vanilla or black. Oops. Oh well. I find that the benefit of challenges is that it pushes you to try colour combinations that you wouldn’t normally try. As in this case – I’m not fond of blue and yellow together so it was fun to come up with a card that I liked with this combination.

It’s snowing outside as I type this so it’s rather nice to be looking at an autumnal scene! I stamped the tree from the Stampin’ Up! Sheltering Tree set in sahara sand on sahara sand card stock. I then used hello honey to stamp the large foliage stamp. I then took the little stamp meant to be the flower heads and stamped it all over the tree using tangelo twist. The bike frame is stamped in my favourite black, memento black ink. I love that the regular stampin’ mist will clean the stamp rather than having to use the special cleaner. The sentiment is also from the Sheltering Tree set and is stamped in tangelo twist. The layer is mounted on a tangelo twist base. I debated whether to use a crumb cake or very vanilla envelope and in the end went for very vanilla. Of course it would’ve been easy to have made my own in sahara sand using the envelope punch board. I’ve lined the envelope using the Backgrounds DSP from the in colours family in tangelo twist.

Inspired by yesterday’s eight inches or so of snow, I pulled out the Stampin’ Up! Sheltering Tree set and proceeded to do a wintery scene. Although a white background would have given the impression of lots of snow and cold, I wanted to have white snowflakes and a white snowbank so that wasn’t going to work. Hence I have used soft sky. I think it looks chilly enough with all the white and the stark tree which is stamped in early espresso.

Once I’d stamped the tree, and after re-inking my versamark inkpad, I stamped the bank from the set a few times and sprinkled on the white embossing powder. I then carefully stamped the little snowflake images in versamark as well before using more of the white embossing powder. As I was heating the powder, I realised that due to re-inking my inkpad, I’d got out of the heat embossing routine and forgotten to use the embossing buddy. Normally if such a thing happened, I’d redo the card but since I’m stamping snow, I decided that little spots of extra white made sense. Next time I’ll re-ink the inkpad after doing my heat embossing rather than before.

The sentiment – also stamped in early espresso – comes from the same set and then I mounted the soft sky on a base of more early espresso.