June 2, 2017

Cabin in the Roses

Amy Jasper As You See It Challenge card, copper trim, fresh fig, fresh floral dsp, sketch, Stampin' Up, wink of stells, Wood textures, wood words 2 Comments

I showed my 13 year old son the card that I made for this As You See It Challenge and asked him what title I should give to my blog post. He said “Cabin in the Roses”.

Just imagine a wood cabin surrounded by rose bushes and evergreen trees! I would put a hammock between two of those trees where there’s an inviting amount of shade. I would read a book in the hammock on a summer afternoon, listening to the bees busily buzzing in the rose bushes, and breathing in the wonderful scents of roses around me. There would be a tall, cool glass of iced tea in my hand, and I would be lounging, with one summer-kissed leg spilled out over the side of the hammock, moving it absentmindedly back and forth to rock myself in the dappled shade of the evergreens. Ahh. Sounds lovely.

The card design today is inspired by this sketch from the As You See It Challenge Blog.

I decided to use a circle instead of a square to create this “Cabin in the Roses” card.

The cardstock used for the base is the new In Color, Fresh Fig. It’s such a pretty purple. If you’re wondering how it compares with the other purple in our collection, here’s a wee chart to help you.The Wood Textures Designer Series paper is my new favorite!! Be warned, you might get a little tired of seeing it because I am going to be using it a LOT!

I also used the pretty Fresh Florals Designer Series paper that comes in a great big stack and shows off all the new In Colors that just came out!

To flag the end of the fresh fig piece of designer series paper, I used the Triple Banner Punch which allows you to fit three different widths of paper to cut the perfect banner end. It’s brilliant!

The circle on the front of this card has two layers: The mat is cut from Fresh Fig cardstock, using the Layering Circle framelit dies by Stampin’ Up!. The inner circle is cut from Sahara Sand cardstock using the Stitched Shapes Framelit dies by Stampin’ Up!. With the floral image from the Wood Words stamp set (which I received for free at Onstage Local in Calgary, BC!) and some Fresh Fig ink, I stamped the image on the Sahara Sand circle, then used a Blender Pen on some of the flower images to gently blend some of the colour into the open petals. I then decided that some Wink of Stella would add a nice shimmery touch, so I coloured over the same flowers using my Wink of Stella brush. So pretty!

The matted circle was adhered using Stampin’ Up! Dimensionals with a 3-loop embellishment of Copper Metallic trim attached under the right side of the circles.

The sentiment is also from the Wood Words stamp set from Stampin’ Up!, but I only used the “For You” part of the sentiment that says “A note for you”. It was stamped with Early Espresso ink on a scrap strip of Whisper White cardstock which I flagged the ends of with my Paper Snips. This was placed over the Sweet Sugarplum strip with Dimensionals. The beautiful 1/4″ Copper Trim is also new from Stampin’ Up! I tied it in a double bow using the fingertip bow tying technique (if you don’t know how to do this, look it up!).

And that, is that, my stampin’ friends!

Be sure to try the As You See It Challenge for yourself. It’s a great way to get your creative mojo flowing!

Ok.

Now, I’m just going to spend a few minutes closing my eyes and imagining that cabin in the roses again. Ah, yes. Iced tea in hand. Leg lazily draped. Roses. Shade. Hmmmm. I’m set for the day.

Lovely.

May 19, 2017

Watercolour Floral Anniversary

Amy Jasper As You See It Challenge, Techniques 2017, anniversary, As You See It, card, challenge, photopolymer, Stampin' Up, technique, thinlits, tutorial, watercolour 2 Comments

I admit. There are many times when I find a great card online and I shamelessly copy it. In the stamping world, of course, we call it CASEing: Copy And Share Everything! My design for you today is a CASE of a card I saw and loved; simple and elegant, with a touch of whimsy. If you want to see the inspiration, click here.

And who doesn’t love the look of some watercolouring, anyway!?

The As You See It Challenge Blog has a theme challenge this week.

My card design uses the lovely Flirty Flamingo for the card. I used the Flirty Flamingo cardstock for the base and I used the Flirty Flamingo ink for the sentiment from the Number of Years photopolymer stamp set from Stampin’ Up!

To create the watercolour background, I first used an Aqua Painter to wet the entire surface of the Watercolor Paper from Stampin’ Up! It needs to be wet enough that the water sits on the surface without pooling, but not so wet that your colour just slides to the edges of the paper.

Then I picked up Flirty Flamingo Ink with my Aqua Painter and spread out a few brushstrokes of colour here and there on the Watercolor Paper. I wiped off the Aqua Painter before picking up some Tempting Turquoise ink and added some random swashes of it to the Watercolor Paper. Again I wiped off the colour before moving on to add some Daffodil Delight to the page until the page was full. With each colour that I added, I also took the time to carefully pull a little bit of one colour into the other on the page so they would blend together a little bit rather than having a sharp line between colours. This gave me some soft green, hazy purple and quiet peach tones in my palette.While I waited for my watercolouring to dry, I used my Detailed Floral Thinlit dies, my Big Shot (you definitely want the Precision Plate with these dies!) to cut the floral detail out of the Whisper White cardstock. I stamped the sentiment from the Number of Years stamp set by Stampin’ Up on the card with Flirty Flamingo ink.

When the watercolour was completely dry, I adhered the die cut Whisper White piece of cardstock to the Watercolor Paper with some Multipurpose Liquid Glue (not too much!). The Crushed Curry Baker’s Twine was then tied around these adhered layers before attaching them to the card base using Stampin’ Dimensionals. Basic Pearls were added to a few of the flower centers as a finishing touch.I also used the same technique for the inside of the card, but only used the smallest of the two floral dies from the Detailed Floral Thinlits.

Seriously folks, if you haven’t done any watercolouring by now, you MUST. Go right now and order some Watercolor Paper and some Aqua Pens. You won’t regret having these tools in your supplies!

Be sure to also play along with the As You See It Challenge using this anniversary theme. You never fail to inspire me with your creativity. So bring it!

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May 5, 2017

Stormy Weather

Amy Jasper As You See It Challenge, Techniques 2017, As You See It, card, challenge, framelits, photopolymer, sketch, Stampin' Up, technique, umbrella weather, weather together 4 Comments

Hi all. It was pretty hot here today. It almost felt like summer! We have an amazing thunder and lightening storm this evening. Crazy!

It’s that time again for a card designed for the As You See It Challenge blog. Here’s the sketch:

My card has an umbrella and two clouds in place of the balloon images in the sketch. I used the Weather Together Stamp set and the Umbrella Weather framelits from Stampin’ Up!

I’m actually not going to go into detail about this card, but will just share a couple elements with you. I started with a piece of the not yet available Wood Texture Designer Series Paper stack. It is a very light, almost white wood pattern that I sponged with Soft Sky ink using the Sponge Brayer, just to make it a little less stark.

The rounded corners framing the wood texture patterned paper was created by using my Layering Circles and Layering Squares framelits with my Big Shot. I simply chose one circle framelit and one square framelit that were close to the same size. Then I cut out first, the square from a piece of Crumb Cake cardstock. Then I lay the circle framelit over the newly cut square piece of cardstock, dead center. Then I ran it through the Big Shot again, so that the circle cut off the corners of the square, giving me four corners to adhere in the corners of the woodgrain patterned paper.

The card base is Pumpkin Pie cardstock. I used a thin matte layer of Soft Sky cardstock and another layer of Crumb Cake cardstock.

I am IN LOVE with the Wood Texture Designer Series Paper stack! I can’t wait until all my customers can buy it when the new catalogue comes out in June!!

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