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Colour Challenge #35 – Eastern Blooms

Dec 17, 2008 | Uncategorized | 10 comments

Hi everyone,

Well here I am with my entry for this week’s Kristina Werner challenge – isn’t this a great idea to keep me blogging regularly?! I’m enjoying it immensely. I have less time for some other things while I’m busy creating for the challenges, but it’s so nice to design something new and post it up for my loyal blog readers every week!
This week was a challenge with a difference in that first I had to figure out what colours to use – in NZ we don’t have Baja Breeze so a good internet surfing session was required in order to work out what colour is the closest substitute! Unfortunately I couldn’t find anyone who said “this is the closest colour to Baja Breeze” which would have been the easy way out! So I spent a bit of time squinting at the USA catalogue and trying to figure it out for myself! Baja Breeze looks to me to have almost slight grey tones, so at first I was thinking Bordering Blue or Brocade Blue since Bashful Blue and the other blues we have are too, well… blue! But then looking more closely I decided that it seemed to have the same sort of tones as Soft Sky and Blue Bayou (which are the in-colours that we have in NZ right now), only somewhere in between in terms of the shade. Anyway that’s my story and I’m sticking to it – never mind that I love Soft Sky so that’s what I finally settled on.
I think this entry is the favourite of the ones I’ve done so far (and given I’ve only done three, it’s not hard for me to choose!). The layout & design is very simple, and quite different to what I had set out to do (you wouldn’t believe how much “stuff” I wanted to put on here originally!). Since we don’t have Soft Sky markers, to ink up the focal image I first inked the whole thing with my Soft Sky ink pad, and then used a cotton bud (a Q-tip I think my US readers would call it?) to remove the ink from some of the flowers, which I then coloured with my So Saffron marker. I coloured the branches with a Close to Cocoa marker, then huffed on the stamp to bring back the ink and stamped it onto Very Vanilla cardstock.
The larger flowers were stamped onto Soft Sky and So Saffron cardstock using Close to Cocoa ink, then punched out with the Trio flower punch from the Three for You Punch Box (which by the way is 20% off right now in NZ if you live here and fancy getting this for yourself, so just e-mail me for details!). I love the way this punch adds a little curl to the flowers when you punch them out, so you don’t need to shape them to get a little extra dimension to your project. I could have shaped them a bit more, but I’ve decided to send this card to a friend and team-mate who is having a birthday this weekend, so it’s going in the post and would probably just get flattened if I shaped the flowers. Hopefully they keep the little curl they have to them now, here’s a close-up picture which shows it a little better I hope!

I used Chocolate Chip to mat the focal stamped piece and used Stampin’ Dimensionals to layer it over Close to Cocoa DSP on a Soft Sky base card. Add a simple sentiment punched out with the oval punches and some beautiful wide chocolate chip grosgrain and I was done!
Supplies:
Stamps: Eastern Blooms, Occasional Greetings
Cardstock: Soft Sky, Very Vanilla, Chocolate Chip, So Saffron
Ink: Soft Sky, Close to Cocoa, Chocolate Chip, So Saffron
Other: Prints Designer Series Papers – Close to Cocoa, 5/8″ Wide Chocolate Chip Grosgrain ribbon, Trio Flower punch, Large and Small oval punches, Stampin’ Dimensionals
I really love this colour combination together, I wouldn’t have thought to use Soft Sky and So Saffron together so I might have to use that combination again sometime. Thanks Kristina for another fabulous colour challenge!
Please do post a comment if you visit my blog – I’m thrilled to be able to share my creations with crafters from all over the world. I’d love to hear where you’re from!
If you have any questions, you can also e-mail me – click here.
Thanks for visiting, happy stamping!

Big on Spring

Dec 10, 2008 | Uncategorized | 6 comments

Hi everyone!

Here I am, back with another Kristina Werner colour challenge! I’ve decided that it’s a good idea for me to keep doing these – it’s a good creative stretch for me, gets me making cards FAST, gets me USING my new stamps instead of just admiring them, and also gets me posting at least weekly. All I need to do now is get around to posting the other stuff I’m busy making!

Welcome to all of my new readers, I was amazed at how many visitors I’ve had to my blog since I posted my first challenge entry! I hope you’ve enjoyed visiting my blog and maybe get a little inspiration from my creations.

This week we had to use Perfect Plum, Pale Plum, Certainly Celery, Sage Shadow, Bordering Blue and a neutral. At first I thought it’d be easy, being a “Soft Subtles” girl at heart, however, it’s rare for me to use five colours in a card and the Bordering Blue had me going there for a minute! Eventually though I settled on using Big On Spring, new to NZ in the Summer Mini catalogue. I chose the “Bride to Be” image so I could colour the bouquet with some of the colours.
My original plan was to colour the word in, and I used watercolour paper thinking I might watercolour it, then instead I just used my markers. But after colouring the bouquet, I decided that colouring all of the image might be a bit much, so I left the rest of the word uncoloured. Last night when I was tired I wasn’t sure that I liked my finished card, but it’s looking better to me this morning! Please feel free to leave a comment, I’d love to know what you think – should I go back and colour the word in?

Supplies:

Stamps: Big On Spring (from Summer Mini catalogue)
Cardstock: Perfect Plum, Pale Plum, Watercolour paper, Certainly Celery Prints DSP
Ink pad: Basic Brown (this is a water resistant ink so that when watercolouring, the image won’t smudge)
Markers: Pale Plum, Bordering Blue, Perfect Plum (for flower centres), Sage Shadow
Other: Wide grosgrain ribbon (Certainly Celery), Scallop edge punch (loving this new toy!), Stampin’ Dimensionals, Mat Pack & Piercing tool

If you have any questions about this project or anything you see on my blog (or any questions about Stampin’ Up! in general), please don’t hesitate to contact me – click here.

Thanks for visiting!

My First Kristina Challenge!!

Dec 3, 2008 | Uncategorized | 9 comments

Good morning!

Well I can’t believe how long it’s taken me to get around to doing this, but I’ve finally entered a Kristina Werner colour challenge (or color challenge as they spell it in the USA!). I have been a fan of Kristina’s for quite a long time, and my daughter just loves to watch her MACM videos with me. Anyway I’ve never entered her challenges before, a combination of not enough time and also before now, not knowing how to link everything up (yep that technically challenged thing again!). This time I still didn’t really have enough time, but that’s the whole point of Kristina’s challenges – to work quickly, so I made myself do it anyway!

So the challenge was to use Chocolate Chip, Taken with Teal, Pumpkin Pie, Certainly Celery and Whisper White colours on a card. A year ago, Taken with Teal and Pumpkin Pie on their own (let alone together!) would have had me run screaming for the hills, but Pumpkin Pie has grown on me in the last little while. Taken with Teal is still not a hit for me, but it’s nice to know I can work with it if I have to!

This is my entry – using a brand new stamp set in NZ, called In The Stars. It’s in the Summer Mini catalogue released this week (see previous post or the link to the right) and a hit with me! This card was super quick and easy (a nice change for me, I have a tendency to go the more complicated route!), I didn’t even have to cut out the middle star as our large star punch makes that super quick! It’s 3-D mounted using Stampin’ Dimensionals. The card is a bit over-sized, I didn’t start out planning it that way, but that’s the way it ended up. I just love the striped ribbon, don’t you? I’m pretty happy with the end result, given the half hour or so I had to come up with the design and make it (and that included mounting the stamp set!). And yes, this was done very late at night…If you’re from NZ and keen to take a closer look at the card or purchase any of the items I used to make it, click here to e-mail me.Thanks Kristina for the challenge – that was a lot of fun!Happy stamping everyone!

The Summer Mini is here!

Dec 2, 2008 | Uncategorized | 2 comments

Hi everyone!

I’m so excited to finally be able to post up the Summer Mini catalogue, click here to view it online! Or you can see it on the right hand side of this blog too, click on the picture over there to view it.

So what are your favourites? I love just about everything in it, but I was DYING to get my hands on that scallop edge punch I tell you! I wanted to play with it right away when my pre-order arrived, but since I was busy doing other things my 4-year old had the first go! Lucky her!
Well since then, I’ve had the chance to play with my new stamps and other goodies and am loving it! I had good reason too – one of my team had her birthday this week (Happy Birthday Tee-Jay!) and what better reason than a special friend’s birthday to use some brand-spanking new stuff?!

So here’s what I made for her, a wee covered sticky-note pad. The new Bali Breeze designer series paper gave me the colour inspiration, and I used the paper of course. Along with the new Say It With Scallops stamp set, punching out the image with the new Scallop Square punch, attaching one of the beautiful Felt Fusion flowers (trust me this photo doesn’t do it justice!), then layering it on cardstock and that gorgeous DSP with some Old Olive wide grosgrain ribbon, and of couse some of the DSP was punched using the Scallop Edge punch… How much new stuff can I pack into one little project?!

Then, because I was in “bright” overload (not my usual colour tendency these days!) I made her a simple birthday card in soft subtle colours. I thought I might as well give Tee-Jay some quite different things to show to her customers! Again I used some new toys, I used the Eastern Blooms stamp set with my markers for the main image (the marker promo is extended until Dec 14 by the way!) and then stamped some of the larger images and cut them out.
This stamp set is seen in the mini catalogue on page 8, using the colours from the Bali Breeze papers (the stamp set and papers are designed to work together). It’s quite different with soft colours don’t you think? I love how versatile Stampin’ Up! products are, just change the colours and you get a completely different look!

Enjoy browsing the new Summer Mini catalogue and don’t hesitate to contact me if you simply have to have something (or everything!) from it! It’s a crazy time of year – you don’t need to attend one of my classes or workshops to order from this catalogue, and if you’re Christmas shopping don’t fight the crowds at the mall – just do it in your PJ’s and e-mail me!

Happy stamping!