Stamping 411 and Pals Paper Arts

The Stamping 411 team and the Pals Paper Arts team both have a terrific challenge happening this week!  First I looked at the 411 sketch and thought, wow!  I need to try this.  So I went to work, sketching it out and trying to create a card to fit the cool design.  I inked up my new Four Frames stamp set again and also used some of my new Designer Paper called Paisley Petals.  I actually took my colour combo from the new designer paper.

The colours I chose are Cajun Craze, Marina Mist and Pear Pizzazz.  Not a usual colour choice for me but one that I am really happy with! This sketch really pushed me out of my comfort zone and I am not sure if I am sold on what I created, but that is probably because it is something different that my usual style.

Over at Pals Paper Arts, they are challenging us to use Punches!  Punches are my favourite tools, and I used a few on this card.

I used:

The Decorative Label Punch

The Itty Bitty Punch Pack

The Bird Punch

The Scallop Edge Border Punch

Thank you for stopping by!  I appreciate your comments so much!  I hope you enjoyed my creation and get the chance to get crafty yourself today!!!

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Picture Perfect Creations and Hand Stamped Sentiments

This week has been fabulous for me!  On Spring Break, creating furiously, trying so hard to play with all the challenges I love to visit and sometimes just do not get the chance to play!!  I noticed as I was setting up this post, that this is post 500 for me!  WOW!  I cannot believe that in 2 years I have posted 500 times...does that seem incredible?  Maybe it is just me! :D

Tonight...or should I say- this morning, I made a card for the current colour challenge at the Picture Perfect Creations.  I suspect a goodly portion of my 500 posts have been given over to colour challenges...I do LOVE them!!

The colours for the PPC Challenge this week are:

I wanted to create something springy and was also inspired by the Handstamped Sentiments Challenge...they are all about Easter and Spring this week with their Inspiration Challenge.  My pal Anne-Marie is one of their designers, so I just had to play along!!!

Inspired by the photos on the HSS site, I created a card with a window sill and flower box...in the flower box are some spring flowers, punched out with my Itty Bitty Punch Pack...they are really blooming! LOL!  Oh, and I added some major bling to each blossom...each flower has a little gemstone in it...I used the For All You Do set for the Artichoke Stems.

I hope you enjoyed my creation and get some time to play along with both of these great challenges!  Okay...I am off to bed now!!! LOL!

Thanks for stopping by!

Colour Q and the "AH HA" Moment

My New Year promise to myself, beside losing weight, was to play the Colour Q more often. No weight lost yet, so here I am making a card!  My inky fingers got a good workout today!  Does that count?

I am a fairly simple stamper and tend to use the same colours...blues, browns, neutrals...I often look at the Colour Q Colours and run in the opposite direction because I often don't know where to start!!  Then it hit me one day!  Why start from scratch?  Why not take a "Cue" from her inspiration photo?  There you have it.  The big "AH HA" moment!  I finally CLUED into what Colour Q meant!!  LOL!!!  I should take a CUE from those gorgeous photos used with the Q Challenges and go from there!!!  Just because I am a teacher doesn't mean I am the sharpest knife in the drawer!!!  Hehehe!

So I did it!  I took the CUE from the beautiful photo Arielle has given us to use this week:

I looked at the photo and thought:

1. Eastern Blooms Stamp Set-It has similar flowers in it and I haven't used it in such a long time!  I needed to dust it off. (literally)
2. Look at the circles...thin white circles layers with Cherry Cobbler Circles...I can do that with my Circle Scissors Plus.
3. The Flower Stems...I can use my Little Leaves Die in the Big Shot in the Always Artichoke Colour.
4. The So Saffron is in the middle of the flower, I can use my Itty Bitty Punches and punch out a couple flower centres and cover them with my Pearls.

And this is what I created with the Inspiration Photo as my guide...

I am happy with how it turned out.  I wish I had tried to get the flowers closer together but I liked the way they looked around the sentiment.  I also used my Sanded background stamp in Cherry Cobbler Ink on my Poppy Parade background.  I thought the circles needed some scallops and so used my Large Scallop Circle Die in the Big Shot too.

Thanks for stopping by and for reading through my long post.  It really was an "AH HA" moment for me today! LOL!  I would love to hear what you think of my card and I hope you get the chance to head over to Arielle's Colour Q Challenge Blog to try out this challenge for yourself!

Smiles,
Lesley

Stamping 411 and Colour Dare

Wow!!  I was amazed to see that I reached 100 readers today! What a wonderful thing, to see that 100 today! I did a happy dance!  Thank you to everyone who comes to visit my blog.  I never knew about the reader program until a gal emailed me and asked if I had it hooked up to my blog!!  So thank you for challenging me to learn new stuff like that and for stopping by in your busy day to visit me!

As you know, one of my most favourite challenges is Stamping 411.  I love their sketches and this week they have a great one!  I changed one element of the sketch! Instead of the Modern Label Punch at the bottom left hand corner of the card, I used the Little Leaves die and made that my accent.  I also used the colours from the current Colour Dare.  I'll admit, it was tough but I am happy with how they turned out!!  Tempting Turquoise, Pear Pizzazz and Tangerine Tango.

I used the leaves as the main focal point of my card and added some little flowers with the Itty Bitty Shapes Punch Pack!  The sentiment is from Fabulous Phrases once again and I made my own tag!!!  Do you know how I did that?  I got this terrific idea from Brenda over at her blog QBee's Quest.  Click HERE to see her post!!  Such a clever idea!!!  She is calling it her 'Decorative Label Punch Mini Label".

I added some pearls to each little flower I punched out and I used some retired paper from the Sweet Pea DSP pack from last year.  I used the "de"-bossed side of the finial press embossed paper...I like how it looks!  I thought this would be a different kind of Valentine's card!!  We do Christmas cards in non-traditional colours, why not a Valentine Card?

Thanks for stopping by!!

Smiles,

Lesley