A Creative Touch: 08/30/15

Sunday, August 30, 2015

SAF 2015: Patterns Challenge, Less is More Challenge-Sprays/Mists and CAS on Sunday-Splash! Challenge

It is Sunday here in blog land. It was a long week, with the start of school and me going back to work. I also got some bad news but I am hoping that there will be a better outcome this week.

Today I had time to play with Papertrey Ink's "Project Stamp-a-faire" at Nichole Heady's blog. It was a day long affair of fun challenges that were played off of the show Project Runway. I did not participate all that much but had fun glancing at the blog and browsing the forum as everyone was playing along.

I did manage to create a card for the "Patterns Challenge," though. It was to choose one of the designers "patterns" (sketches) and create a card. I chose to use Dawn McVey's pattern for my card below.

Here is Dawn's pattern:

The first thing I did was die cut and stamp the three flowers and the leaves from Papertrey's "Friendly Flowers" set. I used Hawaiian Shores to stamp the flowers and a mixture of New Leaf, Hawaiian Shores and some water for the leaves.

While the flowers and leaves were drying, I created the background. First I stamped dots with the bottom of a pencil with New Leaf and Hawaiian Shores ink. I then used a tiny stamp from the "Friendly Flowers" set to stamp some tiny dots in Tropical Teal ink. The background still looked blah so I decided to use "Picket Fence" Distress Spray and "Teal" Color Shine Mist onto the background as well.

When that was dry, I die cut the bottom of the edge with Papertrey's "Edgers #3" die. I trimmed the top as well and adhered it to a Tropical Teal A2 top folding card. I then stamped the sentiment in Smokey Shadow ink.

Next I adhered the leaves and then the flowers. Two of the flowers I used foam adhesive to give them a little bit of dimension. I decided the flowers needed something more. I adhered teal sequins, as well as Pretty Pink Posh "Sparkling Clear"sequins over the teal and topped them off with some Diamond Stickles to create the flower centers.

My finishing touch was to add three tiny Pretty Pink Posh clear sequins around the flowers.

Things I learned making this card:

I enjoy using sketches or patterns for my cards. It lets me use the colors I want, as well as stamp sets of my choosing.
I had a difficult time using this stamp set, even with my MISTI. For some reason, I could not stamp these darn flowers straight!! I cannot tell you how many I wound up throwing out.
I think that next time I use these stamps I might use watercolor paper. I think that it will have a better effect when I mix the ink with water.

I thought I would share a few photos from Charlotte's first day of Sophomore year. She fought me on these. Notice the socks? She refused to put on shoes until right before we left!!