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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March 24, 2017

April Showers

Amy Jasper As You See It Challenge, Techniques 2017, As You See It, card, challenge, framelits, love you lots, photopolymer, Stampin' Up, technique, watercolour, woodland folder 2 Comments

What do you get when you combine the Woodland Embossing folder, Watercolor Paper and the Watercolor Pencils from Stampin’ Up? Well, scroll on, crafty friends, and find out!!

The As You See It Challenge Blog has a new challenge every two weeks. Sometimes it’s a sketch or a colour combination. Sometimes it’s an assortment challenge or a theme challenge. This one is a fill in the blank challenge! Whoohoo!!

Though autumn is my favourite season, there is something about every season that I love and there is no season that I dislike. Although, of all the months of the year, I dislike February the most. By the time February comes around, I’m very “done” with winter. February is so dreary and dirty as the snow starts to disappear and the dirt and brown grass becomes exposed. Yuck!

But usually, part way through March and moving into April, we start to see more sunshine and the green leaves of spring bulbs show signs of life and renewal. Soon the colours of spring begin to appear. But it’s the spring rain, that I love the most. It’s the rain that helps wash the old winter dirt away and makes the plants grow and become green again. It’s the rain that makes the earth smell so vibrant, so fresh!

So, for this challenge, I focused on the rain and the colours of spring.

The beautiful background with the Woodland Embossing folder was inspired by my lovely friend and adopted team leader. She showed me how she used the de-bossed side of the paper (where the trees were indented rather than raised) and coloured the indented tree images with her Watercolor Pencils from Stampin’ Up. Once coloured, she used a Stampin’ Up Aqua Painter to blend the colour with water. It was so pretty, I had to try it! I love the look, don’t you!!?

I added a touch of the Clear Wink of Stella on the right side of each tree trunk to indicate the glimmer of rain in the spring sunshine. The Clear Wink of Stella spatter over the Watercolor Paper also makes me think of raindrops sparkling in the sun.

The rest of the card is all about layers and paper cutting, really.

The ladybug duo is from the Lots of Love Hostess set. I stamped them on Watermelon Wonder cardstock with Jet Black Stazon ink and used the Real Red Watercolor Pencil and a Blender Pen to the outer edges of each ladybug. Then I fussy-cut around their bodies (cutting off their arms, legs, and antlers … I mean antennae). I drew in their arms and legs with my Project Life Pen afterward.

The umbrella canopy image was stamped with Momento Tuxedo Black ink on Daffodil Delight cardstock and the handle image on Smoky Slate cardstock. Both were die cut with the coordinating Umbrella Weather Framelits.

The sentiment is from the Love You Lots Hostess stamp set and is stamped with Momento Tuxedo Black ink on the Bermuda Bay cardstock.

As for the rest: Basic Black cardstock for the card base. A layer of Basic Gray cardstock. A few Basic Rhinestones. And a flourish of looped Silver Metallic Thread.

Be sure to try the Watercolor Pencils with this Woodland Embossing folder. So pretty!!

Happy Spring!!

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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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