March 10, 2017

It’s Your Party!

Amy Jasper As You See It Challenge, simple and cute 2017, As You See It, birthday, card, challenge, framelits, letters, photopolymer, quick and cute, sketch, Stampin' Up 0 Comments

It’s time for another challenge! For this happy card, I used the Large Letters Framelits and the Festive Birthday Designer Series Paper from Stampin’ Up!

Here’s the As You See It Challenge sketch that is responsible for my creative mojo:

So fun and simple, don’t you think!? At first glance, I liked how the dots on the sketch went light to dark across the page and tried to think of how I could use that in my own design. But my final result rarely goes as planned and I found myself inspired by a deep desire for bright colours to pull me out of the winter blues.

Here’s what I came up with:

I used the Large Letters Framelits from Stampin’ Up! to cut the letters ‘P’, ‘R’, and ‘Y’ from a piece of Whisper White cardstock and stamped the sentiment from the Endless Birthday Wishes stamp set above the ‘Y’ with Melon Mambo ink. I then adhered a piece of the Festive Birthday Designer Series Paper (DSP) to my Thick Whisper White cardstock base before adhering the stamped and die cut Whisper White layer over the DSP with Stampin’ Up Dimensionals.

I added the inside of the letter ‘P’ and ‘R’ using Dimensionals cut in half because those pieces are so narrow. The letter ‘A’ is die cut from Emerald Envy cardstock, while the letter ‘T’ is cut from Tempting Turquoise cardstock. These letters were added to the front of the card using Stampin’ Up! Dimensionals.

For a festive confetti-like flare, I added some Brights Candy Dots. Sadly, these are no longer available, but the current Brights Enamel Dots would be perfect for this card. In fact, if I had them, I would have used the star shapes to make this card even more fun!

I like how this card is appropriate for anyone, male or female and of any age. This one will be for my son, who’s turning 13 this month!

I’m going to have a TEENAGER!!! ACK!!

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February 28, 2017

Faux Coloured Chalk 40th Birthday

Amy Jasper As You See It Challenge, Techniques 2017, As You See It, card, challenge, faux coloured chalk, Gorgeous Grunge, photopolymer, Stampin' Up, technique, tutorial 0 Comments

This faux coloured chalk 40th birthday card was created using Whisper White Craft ink from Stampin’ Up along with their regular Classic ink colours. It’s so easy to create this effect with the see through photopolymer stamps!

The layout of the card is inspired directly from the As You See It Challenge blog. This one is challenge #144.

I finally purchased the Number of Years photopolymer stamp set from Stampin’ Up and was so excited to be able to use it to create this card for my friend’s 40th birthday celebration. I felt inspired to try a technique that I’ve never really seen done before, though I’m sure it has been done by someone, somewhere!

I created a faux coloured chalk by first stamping the numbers and the flower images with Craft Whisper White ink on my Basic Black cardstock. This ink is thick and takes a while to dry, so after stamping, I heat set it with my Stampin’ Up Heat Tool. Once dry, I thoroughly cleaned my stamps and chose bright coloured inks: Tempting Turquoise for the numbers, Cucumber Crush for the leaves, and Flirty Flamingo for the flowers. Since you can see through the photopolymer stamps, I could stamp my coloured ink right over the dry craft ink on top of the previously stamped images. This added a soft shade of colour to the white ink. I found that I could even stamp with the coloured ink a second time to get a bit more colour added to the look.

If you choose to use the Stamp-a-majig positioning tool, you could be even more precise with placement, but I think it turned out quite well with my crazy-eye-balling-it skills.

After everything was stamped, I added some strategically placed smudges of the Whisper White Craft ink over the Basic Black cardstock using a Sponge Dauber and a very light touch. The Gorgeous Grunge stamp set from Stampin’ Up also added some detail to my faux chalkboard.

The lower portion of the card has two diagonally placed pieces of cardstock: Blushing Bride and a strip of the black patterned paper from the Neutrals Designer Series Paper Stack. The Blushing Bride strip of cardstock was stamped with the sentiment using Momento Tuxedo Black ink, then sponged around the edges with Blushing Bride ink. A couple of hand drawn dots were added with my Project Life pen for a bit of detail. The patterned paper was a bit too crisp for my liking, so I sponged all over it, with a heavier hand around the edges, using the Momento Tuxedo Black ink. I adhered these strips to the Basic Black “chalkboard”. I wanted to add a subtle detail using the Black Metallic Thread, so I punched notches into the edges of the layer with my hand held 1/8″ Circle Punch. This allowed me to easily wrap the thread and have it hook into the notches and hold it into place.

The Basic Black cardstock layer was then adhered directly to a layer of Whisper White cardstock. This was then adhered to the Blushing Bride Glimmer paper layer (which was adhered directly to the Thick Whisper White card base) with Stampin’ Dimensionals. I was quite liberal with my dimensionals and was sure to press them firmly to the glimmer paper as sometimes the glitter resists good adhesion.

And the result is this fun faux coloured chalk 40th birthday card!

If you haven’t already seen the other projects that the design team created using this fun layout, be sure to head on over to the As You See It Challenge blog and have a look. Give the challenge a go yourself and be sure to share it with us on the challenge blog using the link on the page. We love seeing what you do with the challenges!!

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February 10, 2017

Sunshine is on Its Way

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

It’s still winter. Yup, sure is. There are road closures and travel advisories and delayed UPS packages. There is snow where there normally isn’t snow, like the west coast of BC, where they’ve closed schools because the city isn’t equipped to handle so much snow and the average person doesn’t have proper tired to drive in those kind of conditions.

So. Much. Snow.

I like snow. I like how it covers everything with a quiet, peaceful, clean, white, cotton-batting of fluff. It’s beautiful and it’s cozy somehow.

But, I have about had enough. It’s only the beginning of February and I have been longing for spring for about a month already. Mostly, for the warmer air and the sunshine. But I’d settle for just the sun at this point.

The card I have to share with you today is a reflection of my desire for better days ahead. They will come and it won’t be long before I’ll be cursing the heat and complaining that it’s too hot to move! That’s our weather here. We get all seasons, which I really love. and hate. and love. (mostly love).

Here’s the colour challenge that inspired this week’s card. It is from the As You See It Challenge Blog for which I am a designer. The challenges stretch my creative mojo and keep me bloggin’.

I not only took inspiration from the colours, but also from the sunset image. I used a Sponge Brayer to apply the colours to the Whisper White cardstock, Dapper Denim on top, Sweet Sugarplum in the middle, and Flirty Flamingo on the bottom.

With the flourish from the Timeless Textures stamp set, I stamped a repeating pattern on the sponged cardstock using only water. If you haven’t tried this yet, it is very cool. Basically, the water picks up the ink that you laid down with the sponging and leaves a lighter tone image behind. I added a sponging of Crumb Cake ink with a regular Stampin’ Up sponge around the edges of the inked piece of Whisper White cardstock, then flicked my Gold Wink of Stella over the paper to add some pretty sparkly spatter.

The ombre word, sunshine, was created by first using the Sponge Brayer on Whisper White cardstock with Dapper Denim ink, then die cutting the word using the Sunshine Wishes Thinlits dies and my Big Shot. By sponging the cardstock first, I have more control of ink placement. The words “is on its way” is from the Sunshine Sayings stamp set. It was stamped with Dapper Denim ink on a strip of Crumb Cake cardstock. I hand cut the flagged end of the strip of cardstock, sponged around the edges with Crumb Cake ink, then used another image from the Timeless Textures Stamp Set to add the appearance of texture to the cardstock with Crumb Cake ink (I stamped it off first on a scrap piece of paper so it wouldn’t stamp too dark). I used the same texture stamp and more sponging around the edges of the Crumb Cake layer on the card base as well.

A layer of clean Crumb Cake cardstock was added behind the sponged and stamped Crumb Cake banner, hand cut for a close fit. Behind the brayered denim to flamingo piece of Whisper White cardstock is a narrow layer of plain Whisper White cardstock and this layer is toggled on the card front. There is a 3 loop nest of Gold Metallic Thread and a swag of the Ruched Sweet Sugarplum ribbon tucked in behind the sunshine die cut.

I quite enjoyed making this card. My creativity was satisfied with the finished result. All thanks to a colour challenge and the weather!

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