Tonight I made a sympathy card inspired by this week's Play Date Cafe Challenge, which was a Color Splash of Yellow.
Once again, Pink Paislee's Queen Bee papers come through for me. I combined the greys and a splash of yellow with a sketch from Just Add Ink.
I used the EK Success Fleur de Lis border punch along the edge and two of the punched out Fleur de Lis (topped with tiny A Muse twinkle gems) to frame my sentiment.
I loved this week's Play Date Cafe inspiration art work by Bonnie Rose of A Life Unrehearsed, so I wanted to play along ... such fabulous colors.
First I started by coming spray inks in those colors to try to mimic her background, but it was a bit to heavy on color to work with several images I tried, so I moved on to another plan.
I stamped Hero Arts Stunning Snowflakes in Ocean ink on a piece of purple and blue Memory Box DP and clear embossed. The Inkadinkado snowman was stamped in Ocean on another piece of Memory Box DP together with a sentiment from A Muse.
As I thought about what to use to finish the design of this week's CPS Sketch, I came back to my sprayed page, which turned out to be the perfect source for my flourish of punched snowflakes.
This card is also for the Snow Much Fun Challenge at Daring Cardmakers.
And right now I have lots of real snowflakes falling in big wet clumps outside my window ... welcome winter.
I used the colors from this week's Play Date Cafe together with this week's Unscripted Sketch for a delicious cupcake birthday card.
The Hero Arts You Deserve Card stamp was paper pieced with scraps of the background papers, and I added some glitter pen for the candle flame.
The tiny sentiment is from Inkadinkado's Let's Celebrate, and that yummy ribbon is from Artistic Outpost's Attic Finds.
Enjoy that extra hour of sleep!
The Play Date Cafe is celebrating their 1 year anniversary with another great color combination ~ yellow, orange & pink.
I used this week's Sketch for You To Try and Artistic Outpost's Bloom & Grow stamps for my card. This is the first mounted set I've purchased from Artistic Outpost. The images are mounted on EZMount and trimmed close (no extra rubber to punch out or throw away) and it comes with a clear printed index card for perfect storage.
I inked the Marigold Seed Packet with Yellow, Orange and Pink Chalk inks and spritzed the stamp with Ink Potion No. 9 before stamping to help blend the colors.
I stamped it a second time using the same technique and punched out a 2" circle to spotlight the design.
I masked the Bloom & Grow sentiment from the set for my card sentiment. I finished with some Memory Box Yellow Pearls, Orange adhesive gems, and EKSuccess Flower Border punch. Papers are K&Company.
There's a whopper of a prize up for grabs at the Play Date Cafe, so I wanted to make sure I played along this week. Also, I love this week's color combination of white-melon-green.
I thought the Hero Arts Dogwood would look lovely in Melon, however I had a heck of a time getting the green i wanted on the leaves.
I bought some cheaper colored pencils thinking a pencil is a pencil ... but I've learned that is not always true. Sometimes the pencil quality doesn't matter ... but sometimes, like with this, I really needed the thicker coverage and richer hue of a Prismacolor or higher quality pencil, and I didn't have the right color. The cheaper pencils just wouldn't give me the depth of color I needed.
I finally painted on some chalk ink, which ended up a bit muddier than I hoped, but the color is closer to what I needed.
The sketch is this week's Unscripted Sketch.
The sentiment is very vintage Basic Grey (made when they were still part of K&Company).
Last month, I was tearing apart a Kleenex box to throw it into the recycle bin and noticed that the inside of the entire box was metallic silver instead of the usually chipboard kraft. So I decided to save the box, thinking that surely I could figure out something to make with metallic silver chipboard.
Well, quite a few weeks have passed, and that disassembled Kleenex box was still leaning against my work table (narrowly escaping disposal several times), when finally inspiration came with this week's Play Date Cafe Challenge. I love this fabulous silver kitchen with the wonderful pops of color.
I used this week's Unscripted Sketch for a no-frills mailable masculine birthday card design.
I embossed the silver chipboard with Sizzix Gears embossing folder and punched a circle from the chipboard to frame my main image. The green paper for the card base & paper-pieced chair is from Pink Paislee's Bayberry Cottage Collection.
I finished with one of my go-to masculine birthday card sentiments from A Muse.
My designer paper scrap box is overflowing & seriously in need of a purge, so I've decided to see how many cards I can make this week only using my scraps. The first one is for the Play Date Cafe Challenge using this week's CPS Sketch.
My process was to go through my scraps and pull out any paper that was primarily one of the three colors of the challenge. Then I put them together in various combinations until I got a color & pattern balance I liked (some repeating circles help tie the seemingly unrelated designs together).
After piecing my strips together on my card base, I went looking for an image that worked for the sketch. Even though these aren't necessarily traditional holiday colors, I think they work well with this Inkadinkado Holiday Cardinal, which also has the repeating circle theme. To help tie the colors together a bit more, I used a leaf green glitter pen in the center of the circles and a scrap of the leaf green designer paper to frame the image.
For this week's Play Date Cafe Challenge I pulled out some new stamps from one of my favorite companies ~ CatsLife Press.
I wanted to incorporate some woodgrain to go with the wonderful texture of the wine barrels, so I started with a Tim Hotz Texture Fades Woodgrain embossing folder on my favorite Hobby Lobby kraft cardstock (I love the little flecks of different colors you see in their kraft). I tried inking the texture with several different colors, but in the end just decided to leave it naked.
I decided to use Kazan's Sketch from 2 Sketches 4 You since it really allowed lots of space for the texture of the woodgrain to stand front and center on my design.
When I first saw that adorable dancing chick, I had no idea what I was going to do it, but I knew I needed to add it to my collection. I think it works so perfectly with this sentiment, because how can a dancing chick in a jaunty hat not make you giggle.
I stamped the dancing chick in dark brown, clear embossed, and then colored with colored pencils. I cut my card base narrow, so the vertical elements could extend beyond the base & still fit into a standard sized envelope. I finished with a few tiny adhesive gem stones.
This week's Play Date Cafe Color Story is inspired by this row of resting camels. I love the contrast of the camels against the rich brown of the earth. It was a perfect color combination for a masculine birthday card I needed to make.
The card is a group birthday card for a co-worker that needs to be mailed, so I borrowed Bree's HB2U sentiment idea from this weeks Get Sketchy! Sketch for my design.
The papers are from DCWV's Safari Chic Matstack (I'm always on the lookout for great masculine papers, and this is full of them). I used Moss Green foam thickers for my sentiment square & an SRM Sticker along the side.
The Thickers seemed a bit dull after I attached them, so I light bulb went on wondering if I could emboss them. I just ran the entire panel with the stickers attached through the Cuttlebug and got this fabulous textured effect (not to mention flattening the Thickers enough that I will likely not need extra postage).
Here's a close-up of the texture from the Oriental Weave embossing folder:
I finished my design with a few wraps of twine. When I'm planning to wrap horizontally around a card, I usually try to make my fold at the top. However, since this is a larger card base, I used a pre-folded card that folded on the side, so I used my craft knife to cut a slit in the spine of the fold, so I could wrap the twine around.
I was thrilled to see that my Season to be Jolly card made the Cream in my Coffee (honorable mention) at the Play Date Cafe last week.
This week Julie Ranae (who is also our Guest-Designer at the Etsy Inspired Challenge for August) is taking us on a tour of Positano, Italy for our inspiration. When I saw Sarah Anderson's card featuring the Graphic 45 Communique Line, I remembered that I still had some of those papers stashed away somewhere.
While I was searching for those papers, I also found some neglected Jenni Bowlin Core'dinations Cardstock (which matched perfectly) and my Tim Holtz Nostalgic paper tape, which had yet to be opened (shame on me) ... and a card was born.
I used this week's Unscripted Sketch for my design.
I started by sanding the Core'dinations cardstock to bring out the embossed text. Next I cut out Lady Liberty, the phone paper squares and the sentiment and mounted them all on black cardstock.
The final step was incorporating the Paper Tape (which also works for this week's Res-Q Tape It Up Challenge). A single layer of the tape was too translucent, so I added a second layer of gold Washi Paper Masking Tape, and then a third layer of Tim Holtz tape (leaving all of the torn edges messy) to finish my design.
I realized when I finished that my card is more France (with the Statue of Liberty them & the French text and postal markings on the paper tape) than Italy-inspired, but I still think I captured the overall feeling of the inspiration design. Thanks ladies for another fun challenge.
