August 22, 2014

Bloom with Hope

Amy Jasper As You See It Challenge, Techniques As You See It, blendabilities, Bloom wtih Hope, card, challenge, Stampin' Up, technique 4 Comments

Welcome to my blog where I share my love of designing with Stampin’ Up! ink, paper, stamps and tools!

Are you up for something a little different from my usual style? My design today is clean, simple and pretty (at least I think so). The As You See It Challenge blog has a sketch challenge for you this week. I knew right away how I wanted to play with those little rectangles to the left of the design and it would involve flowers!

I wanted my card to be simple and elegant. I had intended on keeping it neutral in colour, but ended up giving it a splash of Crisp Cantaloupe – still soft, still elegant, but adds a touch of feminine grace, too.

I love the Rhinestones!! I coloured them with the medium Calypso Coral Blendability marker. Before I added them, the card was too heavy on the left side. They add balance.

The stamp set I used is the Bloom with Hope hostess set. It is a beautiful set, but you can only purchase it with your hostess dollars when you host a workshop. I’d love to do this card with you and your guests so you can get this gorgeous collection of stamps for free!

I used Very Vanilla for my base card. I honestly am not drawn to vanilla (well, unless it’s ice cream!), but it is much softer than Whisper White and definitely works for a sympathy card. I stamped the large flower on the card base with Crisp Cantaloupe, stamping it off once on a scrap piece of paper so it would be a softer image. Then I used my Stampin’ Write Markers to colour my rubber stamps directly before stamping the images that are on the rectangles. I used Crisp Cantaloupe and Wild Wasabi first, then randomly added daubs of Rich Razzleberry to the blooms and Mellow Moss to the stems. Don’t forget, that whenever you colour your rubber with the markers, you should ‘huff’ on the rubber before stamping your image on your cardstock. This will ensure that the ink is re-moistened and will give you the image quality that you intend.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, ‘huffing’ involves a heavy exhale of your breath onto the rubber while it’s close to your open mouth. While we take the time to colour directly on the rubber stamp, the areas that you coloured first start to dry. The slight moisture from your breath that would normally fog a mirror is enough to re-activate the ink’s moisture on the rubber. It sounds weird, but is a necessary step with this technique.

I layered my rectangles with the thinnest mat of Crisp Cantaloupe cardstock as possible, then matted it again with a wider Very Vanilla. You can see I used Stampin’ Dimensionals to pop up each of the Crisp Cantaloupe layers.

Finally, I used the corner rounder punch on my Envelope Punch Board to round the corners of my card and I stamped my sentiments with Jet Black Stazon ink.

Don’t forget to try this layout for yourself, whether it’s for a card, a scrapbook page, or artwork for your wall. You can take a photo of it, load it to a public site (Pinterest works well), then link it to Challenge #50 on the As You See It Challenge blog!

I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that we are inspired by every card that you share with us. Everyone has their own tricks and style to share, whether they know it or not: the way your tear your cardstock, a colour combination that I’ve never thought of before, little added touches, how you tie your ribbon – I am always learning from other people’s creativity. I hope you will share yours with us on the challenge blog!

As a side note: for the first time, I’m having trouble with taking photos with my iphone. I hope it’s just the light-coloured card design, but I had to fuss with my lighting and angles more than usual to avoid weird lines and halos. You can see one of those halos in the center of my last photo. Taking a good photo of your card is about good lighting, the right shadows, a crisp image, and quality product (avoiding ink smudges or halos, cutting ribbon and cardstock with sharp blades, and making sure that things intended to be straight on your product are actually straight!) – things to keep in mind when you upload to Pinterest.

Sign up this week to be a Stampin’ Up! demonstrator, like me, and join my team!! Stampin’ Up! is offering the kit for the usual $125, tax and shipping free, but you can choose $190 in product for your kit instead of the usual $155 of product. The kit is already a great deal, but now it’s even better!! Check out the SHORT AND SWEET sign up offer by clicking on the link and learn more about it and other promotions currently available.

Happy Stamping!

Amy.

August 15, 2014

Thankful in Berry Tones

Amy Jasper Uncategorized 2014, As You See It, card, challenge, emboss resist, embossing, I Like You, Stampin' Up, technique 4 Comments

Welcome to my blog where I share my love of designing using products by Stampin’ Up!

If you are a regular follower of my blog, you may have noticed a bit of a pattern on Fridays, lol! Here we are on Friday again and it’s time for another As You See It Challenge design!

I love Blackberry Bliss. It’s such a rich tone. I normally don’t like to work with purple, but I’m getting better at it. Blackberry Bliss is definitely easier for me than other purples, though (just don’t expect me to pair it with yellow very often!)

I decided to play with the hostess set “I Like You”. When I got this set, I was excited to colour those flowers with my new Blendabilities, but it looks lovely as a line image too, don’t you think?

I had some fun embossing with clear embossing powder for this card. I used my Embossing Buddy on two pieces of cardstock: the Blackberry Bliss card base and a rectangular piece of Very Vanilla, then I stamped with my Versamark ink (the cleanest ink pad of THREE that I have as I inevitably muck them up with ink transfer from supposedly ‘clean’ stamps). I embossed with my heat tool and clear embossing powder.

The card base, I set aside, while the Very Vanilla piece was sponged heavily with Blackberry Bliss ink and Strawberry Slush ink. If you’re familiar with this technique, then you know that the water-based ink will not stay on the embossed areas. Just wipe off the traces of ink with a paper towel to reveal the Very Vanilla colour that has been protected by the embossing powder for this Emboss Resist technique.

The sentiment was done using precise stamping with varied amounts of ink. You can use the Stamp-a-ma-jig to help with your placement. I was trying to get an ombre-like gradient of colour each time I stamped the sentiment. I used Strawberry Slush and Blackberry Bliss, stamping off for the lighter images and using full strength ink for the darker images.

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Give this colour combination a try and link up your photo to Challenge #49.

I hope you’ll leave me a comment (this blog refers to them as a “reply”) and let me know your thoughts. I have been missing your encouraging words 🙂

Amy.

August 8, 2014

Prepare or BEWARE!!

Amy Jasper Uncategorized 2 Comments

Welcome to my blog where I share my love of designing using paper, ink and stamps from Stampin’ Up! I’m always looking for friends to share papercrafting with – let me know if you’d like to sign up with Stampin’ Up! and join my team or if you’d like to host a workshop in my area and earn FREE stamping supplies!!

It’s time once again for another As You See It Challenge! I decided to play with the Holiday Invitation photopolymer stamp set that Stampin’ Up! gave away to everyone who attended Stampin’ Up! Convention #InspireCreateShare

These assortment challenges are a lot of fun because there are so many possibilities!! I can’t wait to see what people will do with this one. As long as you have all of the elements listed, your project is good to go! It could be a card, a scrapbook page, a journal cover, a garden gnome, WHATEVER! That’s the beauty of an assortment challenge. I hope you’ll play along this week!

I decided to try making a place card for a table setting. I really love your typical Halloween colours. They are so fun and eery. I would never put these colours together for any other occasion and would think them very odd, in fact. But for creepy, ghoulish, scary fun, these colours are perfect!

I don’t do a lot of Halloween decor, but we love dressing up when we can. For the last few years, I keep on telling myself that I’ll do more for Halloween. More decor, more food fun for the kids, etc, but life always gets in the way and time runs out on me and we barely manage to have candy for the Trick or Treaters and somehow manage to get our kids dressed up at the last minute. Maybe this year, I’ll use my little place cards and host a Halloween party – after all, Halloween does fall on a Friday night … I guess we’ll see. Maybe my place card idea will spur on further preparations.

Prepare or BEWARE!! lol!

My table place card was made with the Label Card thinlit die, but instead of folding it twice, so that it flips as it was designed to do, I folded it only in half. Now, I used a longer piece of cardstock to extend the card as is often done with this thinlit, so that I could have a base to give it extra support. (sorry, no pictures to explain this better, but you can google “label card thinlit extended” if you’re unfamiliar with this)

You can see a torn edge at the bottom of the place card where I folded the edge up and tore the excess off. I did not adhere this together as I wanted to be able to store my place cards flat. That folded edge acts like a stopper to help my card stand up without the extra adhesive.

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I cut out my Tangelo Twist framelit from the Label thinlit, then used my 1-3/8″ circle punch to make a hole in the center (I actually found that this worked better to punch the hole first, then cut it out with the framelit so that I could center that circle more precisely). This was sponged with Tangelo Twist ink around all the edges then added to the card front with Dimensionals. I stamped my bats and moon after inking up with my Stampin’ Write Hello Honey marker and with my Stazon Black ink pad. This was punched out with my 1-1/4″ circle punch and adhered to the center of my frame. A bit of Dazzling Details was added to my moon for effect.

The strip of patterned paper that you see is a piece of Back to Black Designer Series Paper that I coloured with the darkest shade of the Rich Razzleberry Blendability marker. I used the same marker to colour my Rhinestones!

What do you think of my Tangelo Twist arrow? I really like how cool it looks with the lettering stamped over it. All I did was cut out the arrow, then stamped the image on it (you can be very precise with stamp placement using the photopolymer stamps!), then I adhered it carefully to my card so it would line up with the image that I already stamped! Yes … yes … I can be clever sometimes, lol!

I was going to write the name for my place card directly in the black void in the top right of my project, but was too scared I would ruin everything with my bad printing (does anybody actually like their own printing!!?), so. I made a little tag and punched the edges using my Banner Punch in a clever sort of way, then wrote the name with my Chalk Marker and adhered it to the front of my card with … yes, that’s right … Stampin’ Up! Dimensionals!!

I’m a little long winded today. Sorry about that. If you made it this far, maybe I should give you a prize!! lol! No, no prize for you except the satisfaction of getting through my drivel! YOU DID IT!!

Now go make a project for this assortment challenge and do me proud!! Link it up to the As You See It Challenge #048.

So glad you stopped by,

Amy.