I hope that your weekend is going well. Here’s my Paper Pumpkin October 2016 Alternate 4. This time I wanted to at least make the shaker card that is in the kit, but I couldn’t resist making a couple of tweaks. I felt that the card needed more of the old olive than just the twine and a hint in the sequins, so I added some old olive cardstock.
I followed the instructions in the kit apart from the added piece of old olive and once I’d added my sequins and put the shaker card piece on top, I added the thanks from the Greetings thinlits set which I’ve just realised is actually retired. However, if you don’t have this one, we have so many other words that would work – grateful from the Seasonal Frame thinlits dies which is currently at 50% off on the clearance rack would be perfect.
Here’s another shot with the card leaned over a little so that more of the sequins are obvious:
This really is a fun set – I hope that you got it because only the refill is available now.
I hope you enjoyed today’s project. Please use the hostess code to get free product; the current one is GWTDK7RM (if your order is over $150, don’t use the code, you get the rewards, but you still get the free gift from me). Click here to go to my online shop or here to join my team. To sign up for Paper Pumpkin, click here. The “buy 3 get one free” offer for DSP is good for just one more day.
Vertical Greetings is one of my favourites in the new catalog. It’s so neat and tidy, so clean. I guess I’m showing my penchant for Clean and Simple cards again. I started this card by stamping five of the trees in old olive. I actually started at the left and stamped the tree and then used my stamp-a-ma-jig to guide me by putting the edge of the plastic onto the edge of the tree to help with the spacing. I also used a horizontal pencil line to help ensure that my trees were lined up. Note – if you use a pencil line, please ensure that you allow time for the ink to dry before erasing the pencil line. You are bound to smudge something if you don’t allow some drying time.
After I’d stamped the trees, I stamped the pots in various colours and fussy cut them out. The ones that survived are in crushed curry and pumpkin pie. The cherry cobbler pot just didn’t make the cut. I glued the pots over the already stamped old olive ones. Next I cut out the sentiment, also from old olive. It’s from a retired set (Greetings thinlits) actually, and I’d forgotten that. It’s a really useful set, so that’s a little sad, however we have many new sets with words to diecut. And I suspect that I overused these so it’s time to move on!
To finish off my Vertical Greetings card, I added some of the new enamel shapes in crushed curry. They look a little like Christmas baubles although I’m trying to pretend that Christmas isn’t looming. At least from a card making perspective. The way I see it, it’s time to start making some Christmas cards or it will be a mad dash come December…
By the way, there’s a promotion currently going on that’s quite exciting. For every $50 you spend this month, you get a $5 to spend next month
and next month is when you can buy the limited edition set, Thoughtful Branches. If you buy the stamp set and the dies, it earns you a coupon.
I’m definitely guilty of hoarding DSP; I think this is only the second time that I’ve used this pattern from the Botanical Gardens DSP and it retires in only 11 days. I think I’ll be making some multiples soon.
When I made this card at the weekend, the Greetings thinlits were still available but having just checked the retiring list, they are gone – sorry about that. Hopefully you have something else that could work. The Botanical Gardens DSP is still available though.
I wanted to have a wide border around the DSP to really have your eye drawn to the gorgeous paper and then I added a very skinny black border (just 1/8 inch bigger in both dimensions) to make the DSP really pop. The base is in old olive. I cut out the cheers with the Greeting thinlits and cajun craze card stock and used my 2 way glue pen (retiring but still available – I grabbed an extra one because it’s so great for adhering skinny words) to add that to an appropriate gap between the beautiful birds of paradise flowers.
I decided to continue to feature the cajun craze colour in the DSP and lined the envelope with one of my last remaining pieces of the cajun craze backgrounds DSP. I think I mentioned that I hoard DSP? The backgrounds stack retired LAST year!
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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!
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.
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!
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!
