Billowing Peonies with Altenew

This May I was chosen as a winner of the Inspiration Challenge at Altenew, and was delighted to be able to pick up this stunning Billowing Peonies combination set.  I’ve been eyeing it for a long time!  The set itself is the largest set I’ve ever owned at 8 1/2 x 11 inches.  Filled with gorgeous peonies and lovely sentiments.  It’s so large that I could create two full A2 cards with it, and I’m playing along with the July Inspiration Challenge.  

This time I chose to use the coordinating stencil and ink blend with Distress Oxide inks.  Here’s what the image looked like after stencilling and die cutting: 

I chose to go with yellows, oranges and corals for the July Inspiration Challenge.  Ink blending especially with Distress Oxide inks really gives it a powdery soft finish.  

Firs up a partial cut of some of the blooms on this design, layered over top of a diecut background of soft green plaid.  

The encouraging sentiment is embossed from the set and a few enamel dots accent.  

For this second design, I layered the die cut flowers over top of a scalloped edge buttery yellow background to mimic the flouncy edged petals.  

See what I mean about gorgeous flowers??  I’ve accented it similarly to the first card with and embossed sentiment and enamel dots.  

Later this week I’ll show off other ways I’ve used this set with different colouring methods.  Thanks for dropping by today!  

Share:facebook - twitter - pinterest

Billowing Peonies with Altenew

Hollyhocks on the Fenceline with The Greetery

 

Hollyhocks are such a welcome sight in late summer.  The other day it was raining and my hollyhocks on the back fence were just glowing against the wet cedar wood.  It made such a pretty sight, I thought I’d try and recreate it in card form.  I pulled out The Greetery’s Botanicuts Hollyhocks and my Concord and 9th inks and blended the stems and blooms.  

Here are my hollyhocks on a sunny day with the fence in the background so that gives you a bit of the idea of where my inspiration was coming from.  

I ran the background layer through a woodgrain plate and sponged some green ink overtop, and paired that with The Greetery’s Wood Slice Hearts dies to capture that warm wood feeling of the fence.   

The sentiment uses The Greetery’s Thankful Heart stamp set, with just a bit of colour added using Copics.  Hope you in enjoyed my inspiration journey!  

Share:facebook - twitter - pinterest

Hollyhocks on the Fenceline with The Greetery

Fabric Inspired

Have I mentioned that growing up my mom was a seamstress?  She sewed for other people out of our home, and made a lot of our clothes growing up.  So, as a little girl, I spent countless hours in fabric stores.  One of the favourite activities for my brother and I would be to tuck in and hide amoung the bolts of fabric, or to go to the thread display and push all the spools of thread in and watch them bounce back.   I have a long history with fabric!  This month’s Power & Spark Challenge from Ally is all about being Inspired by Fabric!  What a fun challenge!

I still think it’s a delightful past-time to wander a fabric store and marvel at the patterns and colours.  Recently, I went to a quilting store to pick up some fabric for a project I was making for my office.  I’m often drawn to batiks because of their beautiful vivid patterns.  So, I picked up a pretty one that mixed shades of green, blue-green, coral and yellow-orange in a funky pattern. And that was my inspiration today! 

Starting with the very lovely set Simply Camelias, I coloured the image in shades that match the batik.  It feels like a sunny taste of spring!  

Next, to mimic the circle design on the batik, I used a circle die cut to cut out the image, and placed it on some pretty paper to match.  I often feel like patterned paper is like choosing fabric, it’s all about colour, pattern, texture that bring something to life.  

I added a scalloped awning over the image and then finished it with some baker’s twine.  

The sentiment is also from this set, I love the pretty script.  I thought about adding other embellishments and then decided against it, so it’s very clean and simple, but all the pretty colours sing.  

So here’s the deets on Ally’s Challenge:  We find inspiration all around us!  I always am gawking at the amazing fabrics we wear, fabrics we use to upholster our furniture and the fabrics we lay over us at night. So this month, take a look at some fabric swatches that inspire you and use them as a stepping stone to create a fun card.  Play along and you could win a $50 shopping spree at Power Poppy!  

Here’s my Bloom Brigade sisters playing along today.  

Allison Cope
Christine Okken
Cindy Lawrence
Julie Koerber
Stacy Morgan
and Marcy at the Power Poppy Blog

Share:facebook - twitter - pinterest

Fabric Inspired

Colouring on Anything Other Than White!

Happy Monday people!

Today I’m over at the Power Poppy Blog with some inspiration for colouring on different types of paper  - just not white!  Hope you can drop by and check it out,  in the meantime here’s a couple of sneak peeks of two of the four designs.

Share:facebook - twitter - pinterest

Colouring on Anything Other Than White!

CardMaker's U Inspire Me

Hey gang!  I'm delighted to say I have my first official post on the CardMaker Blog today :)  Hope you'll go and take a look at my creation and what inspired me.  Here's a sneak peek.

Enjoy your Monday!  I hope to get some of my still non-existent Christmas preparations done today!

Share:facebook - twitter - pinterest

CardMaker's U Inspire Me

Floral Finesse

It seems hard to believe but it's almost another New Release with Flourishes.  This week Julie has issued us a great themed challenge that we'd like to invite you to join in on.  It's called Floral Finesse. 

This challenge is all about the colors we love our gardens. The thermometer might say winter, but this one is all about those feel good floral feelings.

The challenge: Use your favorite flower as the inspiration for your card/project's color scheme. Maybe you choose dusty pink and sage because it reminds you of the tea roses in your garden. Or, maybe you choose golden shades with hints of brown to remind you of the sunflowers you love in the field nearby! You choose! Just let us know what flower inspired your creation!

The Details: Keyword will be FLLCDEC on Splitcoast and contest runs up until December 11th at 5 PM Eastern in order to be in the running to win all three of our new releases for December!
 
So here is my flower inspiration.  One of the prettiest Daylilies from my garden.  You would not believe the color and size of these lilies when they open.  It's like a small plate!

And here is where I went with my inspiration: 

I thought it would be fun to be inspired by the flower - but create with fruit.  I really love this Cherries and Peaches set.  I gave it some life with Copic Markers, Sunflower and Tiger Lily, Fields and Evergreen Collections. 

Then I surrounded it with an Oval Nestie shape, the pretty Floral Accent , and this gorgeous silk ribbon.  I thought the Cosmo Cricket Early Bird paper provided a fun contrast.

   

Isn't that bow pretty??? I used my new Bow Easy! 

So, think about your favourite colors from your flower garden and join us on the challenge!

Stop by the design team's blogs to get some more fabulous inspiration too!  Cindy Lawrence, Julie Koerber, Latisha Yoast, Laura Fredrickson, Leslie Miller, Stacy Morgan

Share:facebook - twitter - pinterest

Floral Finesse

Around the World

How did you spend World Card Making Day this past weekend?  Well, as I was perusing through the net I came to Nichole Heady's PTI challenge for WCMD and thought it was really fun.  She "travelled" the world and challeged her readers to create based on inspiration from four wonderful world spots:  Japan, Mexico, India and Australia. 

I thought it was such a fun idea I wanted to join in, so I have four country inspired creations for you in this post. 

Japan

Known for it's crisp simplicity of design and bold colors I created a very clean and simple card. 

The stems and blossoms are stamped in Craft Ink and clear embossed.  I've used the Texturz plate that to me looks like a shoji screen.  Crisp clean piercing and ribbon. 

Mexico

Our family has such a deep love for Mexican culture.  They are such warm people, embrace others so readily and live life with great zest and gratitude.  Mexico is also known for it's silver jewelry and pieces so I tried to incorporate that warmth and the silver into the design, as well as a hint of a Mexican blanket color scheme as a border.

The flowers and the border are colored with copics. 

India

Rich colors, dazzling jewelry, beading and fabrics give lots of inspiration in India. 

I used the Damask set embossed in Irridescent Ice embossing powder to give that feel of shimmer, that changes color as you move.  I also added rows of sparkly beads along the bottom (microbeads and scattered sead and bugle beads adhered with sticky strip). The ribbon is one I picked up a long time ago for a Dirty Dozen project and thought it's intricate feel would work well here.  I also created the feeling of some of the Indian architecture with the Lattice border used to cut the color block strips into shape. 

And lastly .....down under to Australia 

Nichole had some great inspiration on the Australia post with artistic styles that are indigineous to the area, one being dotted outlines and the other being masking.  I thought I'd try to incorporate the feeling of both styles.

I clear embossed the silhouette image from Life and then sponged over it with Vanilla Craft, then used my Labels 8 Nestie as a template to sponge the edges with Dusty Durango.  After this dried I added dotted outlines in black, Dusty Durango and White, as well as adding a gorgeous double stitched ribbon to anchor it. 

Whew!  It was a fun trip for me.  Hopefully you enjoyed it too! 

Stamps:  PaperTrey Ink:  Life, Friends Til the End, Damask

Share:facebook - twitter - pinterest

Around the World