Monthly Archives: September 2015

Keep Smiling: Simon Says Stamp Flickr Challenge #27

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Simon Says Stamp’s Flickr Challenge #27 requires the use of complementary colors. You can choose any 2 complements on the color wheel. I chose purple and yellow for my colors on this project and used different intensities of the two colors.

Using Distress Inks in Squeezed Lemonade and Shaded Lilac, I used the smooshing technique as demonstrated by one of my favorite card makers Laura Bassen. The two distress inks are soft colors and I wanted to keep them that way on the front of the card since they were going to be my background colors. After I smooshed the colors around to my liking, I let them dry with a little extra help from my heat tool.

I then added the sentiment stamped in a darker shade of purple so it would stand out and then stamped little circle images and triangles in purple (same shade as the sentiment) and a deeper yellow so they would stand out slightly against the colors used in the background.

I added yellow and purple sequins for a little more sparkle to balance out the design of the card front.

There you have it. I hope you like the card. The overall effect is a softer look, but I like the subtlety.

Supplies used in making this card

Stamps: Simon Says Stamp: Hand Lettered Encouragment (for the sentiment); Simon Says Stamp: Birthday Bits (for small triangles and circles).

Inks: Distress Inks: Squeezed Lemonade, Shaded Lilac; Memento Inks: Grape Jelly, Dandelion.

Cardstock: Tim Holtz: A2 watercolor sheets (card front); Stampin Up: Elegant Eggplant (layer underneath card front); Neenah Solar White 100# (card base)

Other:  Avery Elle Sequins: Lemonade, Royal Purple.

Have a Beautiful Day: Ellen Hutson Mix-It-Up-Challenge

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The September, 2015 Ellen Hutson Mix It Up Challenge requires combining any Essentials by Ellen and Impression Obsession products.  Impression Obsession makes some great red rubber cling background stamps and I have collected a few. The line of Essentials by Ellen clear stamps has a number of beautiful floral images. All the images are quite versatile and can be used in a number of ways.

For this challenge I decide to use florals in my card composition. So, I combined Impression Obsession’s Doodle Flowers 6”x6” background stamp with floral images from Ellen’s Bohemian Garden. I think the images from both brands really coordinate well and I am quite pleased with the results. I hope you like the final creation as well.

I first stamped the cling background piece onto an A2-sized piece white cardstock using a pinky-coral ink. I cut the stamped A2 piece in half along the diagonal. I then took a piece of A2-sized blush-pink cardstock and randomly stamped several of the Bohemian Garden images on it using the same pinky-coral ink used on the white cardstock piece. Note: I drew a diagonal pencil mark from corner to corner on the blush-pink cardstock as a guide to mark off the area I was going to create my background. I didn’t stamp the entire area of the blush-pink cardstock, only the area that would show.

I then adhered the white piece of stamped cardstock onto the bottom half of the stamped blush-pink cardstock. This served as the front of my card. I die-cut a narrow frame from gold metallic cardstock from my stash.  I used two dies from Papertrey Ink’s Mat Stack #1 dies to make the frame. Then using the larger of the two dies, I cut a vellum piece, and heat embossed the sentiment (also from Bohemian Garden) using gold embossing powder onto it. The sentiment piece was adhered to the back of the gold frame and gold sequins were added to finish the look. I adhered the entire frame to the front of the card and the card front was mounted onto a top-folding landscape-oriented card base.

Have a great day!

Supplies used in making this card:

Stamps:  Essentials by Ellen: Bohemian Garden stamp set; Impression Obsession: Cover-a-Card Doodle Flowers,

Inks: Papertrey Ink: Melon Berry; Versamark.

Cardstock: Neenah Solar White 80lb for card front; Papertrey Ink: Sweet Blush for card front; gold metallic paper from my stash; Bazzill 40# Vellum; Neenah Solar White 110# for card base.

Other:  WOW embossing powder in Gold Rich Pale; Pretty Pink Post gold metallic sequins (4mm and 6mm sizes).