I’ve been participating in a lot of challenges this week; it really is a lot of fun to take a specific set of colours and see what you can make with them. Today I’m using the colour challenge from the Paper Players. This week there are four colours which can make things a little more tricky, but with my current, let’s call it, attachment to the Stampin’ Up! Sheltering Tree set, I knew what I wanted to do.

And here’s the challenge banner

I started by stamping the tree in crumb cake on a crumb cake piece of card stock and then added the leaves in so saffron. I then used the little flower head stamp and crisp cantaloupe to add more of an autumnal look. I stamped the grass bank in wild wasabi and stayed with the muted look for the sentiment by stamping it in crumb cake. Since the inks look a bit different on crumb cake than on white, the only mat that worked was the so saffron; the others seemed to be totally different colours! So there’s a skinny mat of 1/16 inch of so saffron. I mounted this on a crumb cake card base. For a change, rather than lining the envelope I decided to dry emboss the flap. It was really easy with my newly acquired texture boutique. It’s less bulky than the big shot and you don’t have to change plates. I don’t know about you, but every time I want to use my big shot, I seem to have to change between cutting and embossing! I used the retired pretty print embossing folder.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Well the challenge was set yesterday although today is Tuesday. Susan Itell often sets a “Monday Make it Mine” challenge on Mondays and I decided, for the first time today, to try it out. Her challenge sounded simple – create a one layer card using only one stamp set. I’ll point out now that the seeming simplicity of the challenge was completely misleading. And then some.

I started by creating a card with Painted Petals and then had two attempts with Endless Birthday Wishes. I had three goes with Because You Care. I didn’t like any of them. I contemplated a number of other sets and, fearing that I had a pattern going and I was going to make four attempts, pulled out the Stampin’ Up! Sheltering Tree set. Bingo! Which is more than can be said for the photography – and I tried a number of times.

This simple one layer card has whisper white as the base and the grassy bank is stamped in pear pizzazz – my current favourite spring green. The tree is stamped in sahara sand. After using the embossing buddy, I stamped the leaves in versamark and used the blushing bride embossing powder. I pulled the combination of sahara sand and blushing bride from the colour coach. Only then did I decide to add the swing – also stamped in sahara sand – and so I had to carefully blot the ink off the embossed leaves where the swing was stamped over the blushing bride. I decided to add some clumps of flowers, using the pear pizzazz and blushing bride inks. I liked that the sentiment was just the right length to fit in the gentle curve of the bank – that’s stamped in sahara sand. Since this was a Susan challenge, I had to go with the classic envelope lining since it was from reading her blog that I became addicted to this practice!