Taylored Expressions Share Joy Challenge 37

Happy Saturday! The day started drizzly and overcast – a perfect day for lighting a fire and having friends around for brunch. We had spinach, bacon, smoked trout, sunny side ups and hollandaise sauce goodness on Vienna toast, after which we all lazed by the fire chatting.

After a nanna nap (yes, good food and fine conversation needs to be followed up by a nap), I decided to do some crafting. I saw the Share Joy Challenge 37 on Insta yesterday and decided to break out my new Taylored Expressions stamps and give them a whirl. 
I decided to push myself and go with both the sketch and colours – sketch as I don’t usually pair circles with layered squares, and colours as I never use that combination. That being said, I tried to keep it simple – circles and squares and 4 main colours seemed busy enough for me.

  

I started with the squirrel grumpling, stamping it in Tsukineko Brilliance Black ink and die cutting it out with a circle die.  The card base was made from scored blue cardstock, cut to a 9cm square then layered with yellow in 7.75 cm and brown in 7.5 cm. 

I coloured my grumpling picture with copics – mainly from the E series for the brown grumpling and table, various singles for for the tiny bits and W series for the grey around the bottom to give a bit of depth. It still looked stark so I went over the white space with Zig Wink of Stella before sticking it to the card base. 

  

I took more of the same yellow card and cut out a banner, stamped on the sentiment and stuck on the green button. Lastly, I popped the banner on the card base using 3d foam. I was pretty skeptical of that colour scheme but I think I managed to make it work.

I adore my crafty grumpling stamps. I don’t know that I’d use them much, but they sure make me smile. Do you have stamps like that – the ones you just have to get despite knowing they’d hardly get used?

PTI MIM #250: Masked Backgrounds

For this challenge, I wanted to do a masked background that was a little different from using masking tape.

I took the Make It Market Guilded Garden plate and cut it using cardstock as a masking sheet. I originally tried normal cardstock but the inks “stuck” to it too much and didn’t blend easily in to the nooks and crannies of all the flower and leaf details on the paper underneath. So I tried again using glossy cardstock and my blending sponge slipped right off and in to the spaces I wanted. 

The inks used were Distress Squeezed Lemon, Spiced Marmalade, Twisted Citron, Tumbled Glass and Salty Ocean. I think it gave the card a nice tropical feel. The card screams Hawaii to me!

Being short an Aloha stamp, I took a sentiment from the same PTI stamp set and used Brilliance Graphite Black. I then mounted it on PTI Sweet Blush cardstock and put some pale pink, clear and green sequins on. I am totally loving the vibrant green of those sequins. A friend getting married in Bali soon… I wonder if the card would suit?

  

PTI May 2016 Blog Hop

Have you ever had a card that was so awesome in theory but would not translate to real life? I saw the PTI May 2016 Blog Hop challenge and had immediate pictures of ice cream cones and sweet sentiments. But those thoughts never came to fruition as my watercolouring on stamp skills is… non-existant.

So this morning, in some kind of frenzy, as it was 7.50 am, due to work by 8.30, and I decided that I wouldn’t let that whole watercolour thing defeat me. 

I spritzed down some watercolour paper with water, took a wide brush and painted some distress ink all over it. Colours ranged from Spiced Marmalade, Picked Raspberry, Wilted Violet, Salty Ocean, Twisted Citron to Scattered Straw. I dried the background using the iron while I was pressing my work clothes and then stamped the big thank you from one of my think big sentiment sets using Tsukineko Brilliance Graphite Black.

I used Tuskineko Momento London Fog ink and the Flytterby stamp set for the background images, then put some sequins to mimic the paint spatters of the inspiration  photo. I wish I had more time but it was late and I had to stick down the paper on a card, take a photo and out the door.

So here is my card, not a bad 25 minute effort. Can you tell I work close to home?
 

PTI MIM #248: INK BLENDING THROUGH DIE CUT MASKS

Two nights ago I had a lovely introduction to butter chicken via a colleague who graciously made me some from scratch. She’s a cardmaker too and I wanted to make a beautiful card to say thank you. 

I really wasn’t sure about this week’s MIM challenge. In my head, stencilling seemed like such a 1D result. But seeing the gorgeous pieces being produced, I had to give it a shot. 

I took some bright colours of distress ink to blend with the Beautiful Butterflies dies. The mini corner blue/green was Salty Ocean with Peacock Feather, purples were Wilted Violet with Shaded Liliac, the pink/orange was Picked Rapberry with Scattered Straw, the teals was Cracked Pistachio with Shabby Shutters and the blue/yellow was Tumbled Glass with Squeezed Lemonade.

I then partially inked the Thank You from another PTI set using Tsukineko Brillance Ink in Graphite Black and stamped it 3 times… when one thank you for the yumminess is not enough! The name of the PTI set escapes me and after sifting through my stamps twice (yup, I have a lot) and not refinding it, I give up. 

To finish off the card, I popped it all on to Smokey Shadow cardstock to give it a bit more depth. I likey!