Autumn Birthday Butterflies PP368

Hey there!  It's been a couple weeks but I'm back today with a Tic-Tac-Toe challenge from the awesome Jaydee over at The Paper Players:

Tic-Tac-Toe challenges are great because there are so many options!  Just choose three elements and get to work.  Since it's just recently cooled off here in north Florida, I want to enjoy fall a little while longer.  I needed a couple birthday cards for November friends and decided to try to incorporate a butterfly--usually reserved for spring--into an autumn card.  Here's the result:

I have to say, the butterfly works equally well with a fall color palette and I was happy to honor our fabulous hostess, Jaydee, in this way.  She always features amazing photos of her backyard flora and fauna on her blog.  I can picture this copper beauty swirling around her little corner of nature!

I cut a Copper Foil butterfly with the Butterfly Thinlits then cut the same shape out of a piece of retired DSP.  I popped up the DSP with dimensionals on a Cajun Craze base and set the copper butterfly inside the negative space.  I tucked in some wrapped Linen Thread and a [retired] Mossy Meadow banner stamped with some dots from the Watercolor Wings stamp set. 

I cut another butterfly to use as a stencil and sponged the inside with Crushed Curry ink.  This sentiment from the Colorful Seasons stamp set is perfect for so many occasions, including birthdays! It's stamped in Cajun Craze to match the base and a few [retired] Gorgeous Grunge speckles were added in Sahara Sand ink.

I liked the result well enough to make a second card using some other retired DSP as my inspiration.  The colors here are Island Indigo, Raspberry Ripple [retired], Crumb Cake, Soft Suede and Copper Foil.  I think I like butterflies as much in the deep, rich colors of fall as the light, breezy colors of spring.  I hope you do too!

Please pop over to my teammies at The Paper Players and check out all their Tic-Tac-Toe inspiration.  We hope you'll play along with us before our challenge ends on Friday, November 3rd at Noon (PST).

Thanks for stopping by!

The Paper Players Design Team 

Claire Broadwater

 Jaydee

Joanne James

Laurie Schmidt

LeAnne Pugliese

Nance Leedy 

Sandy Mathis 

Deanne 

Annie Abrahamson 

Jan Clothier 

Boo! Spooky Cat PP366

Hiya friends!  Just a quick card today for our challenge this week at The Paper Players.  Lovely Laurie is our hostess for a fun Clean-and-Simple challenge....

 I am really glad this is a Clean-and-Simple week because time during this week sure got away from me!  Despite that, I love making Halloween cards and I love the "spooky" element even more.

Black cats, a spooky yellow moon, "crows", and a deep, dark forest all say "Spooky Halloween" to me!  I had this piece of Basic Gray cardstock in my stash--it was embossed with the Woodland folder and rubbed with white craft ink.  I thought it was just the right smoky, foggy look my spook forest needed.  Although I didn't really stick to it, this week's sketch at Freshly Made Sketches inspired my cut out window.  Through the window peeks a Crushed Curry moon made with a circle die and sponged ink.  The stark white sky needed some spooky clouds, so I used the classic scalloped circle technique to sponge on some Smoky Slate ink.  We can't have Halloween without a black cat and this one is embossed in Silver with the Spooky Cat stamp set and popped out with the Cat punch.  Easy peasey!  I needed a little something in the top right corner for balance and these birds from the HIgh Tide set, in context, look a lot like a flock of crows!

So there you have it...my Clean-and-Simple Spooky card.  Hope you like it!  Check out the rest of my teammates for some spooky inspiration over at The Paper Players!  Thanks for stopping by, friends!

The Paper Players Design Team 

Claire Broadwater

 Jaydee

Joanne James

Laurie Schmidt

LeAnne Pugliese

Nance Leedy 

Sandy Mathis 

Deanne 

Annie Abrahamson 

Jan Clothier 

Colorful Seasons of Watercolor PP365

Hi everyone!  Our sweet and talented friend, Joanne, is our hostess this week at The Paper Players for a lovely color challenge:

I must admit I haven't used Peekaboo Peach much at all and now that I have, I'm not sure what took me so long.  It's a really lovely shade of orange and a refreshing take on the traditional orange of autumn.  I needed a masculine birthday day for a work colleague so I was inspired to make a relatively clean and simple card:

I am quite fond of this trend or watercolored backgrounds.  It's such a simple way to combine colors and it's really difficult to mess up watercolor! There's no mistakes in watercolor as it's all supposed to look rather artistic anyway!  I layered on washes of Crushed Curry and Peekaboo Peach to the hot press watercolor paper.  After each layer, I dried it with the low setting of my heat gun coz I'm impatient like that and can't wait for it to dry naturally, ha!

Once I was happy with the color intensity of the background, I stamped some random leaves from the Colorful Seasons stamp set in Early Espresso using my MISTI several times to achieve a [almost] solid stamped image.  The companion dies to this set are gorgeous and this maple leaf is amazing--especially in Copper Foil paper.  I backed it with a solid Early Espresso leaf to really make the copper pop.  Just a touch of linen thread was all this simple masculine card needed.

This pretty little leaf makes a great spray across the inside of the card.  Here we really get to appreciate the fresh look to the peach leaves.  I think I had a little leftover Early Espresso on my stamp when I inked up the leaves but, in truth, I like the little bit of speckle it adds to the leaves.  

I hope that you've enjoyed today's card and it inspires you to play along with us at The Paper Players.  For even more inspiration, pop over to my teammates' blogs and check out all their pretty creations.  Thanks for stopping by, friends!

The Paper Players Design Team 

Claire Broadwater

 Jaydee

Joanne James

Laurie Schmidt

LeAnne Pugliese

Nance Leedy 

Sandy Mathis 

Deanne 

Annie Abrahamson 

Jan Clothier 

Autumn Blooms PP364

Happy Sunday, everyone!  Sunday is fun day because it's the start of another challenge at The Paper Players.  My dear friend Sandy has some gorgeous inspiration to get our mojo going for her theme challenge of Autumn Floral:

This card took waaaay longer than it should have.  Not because of the theme of the inspiration photo, because I could not translate the image in my head to paper!  I tried numerous stamp sets but couldn't capture the blended hues I wanted with just a single color of ink.  In the end I went with an old standby image and found my happy place in watercolor! 

I also used the fantastic sketch at the Global Design Project as my starting point--sure do love a sketch challenge and this one is great!  The first thing I stamped was the leaf from the Colorful Seasons stamp set.  I inked it in Crushed Curry and lightly kissed the inked stamp with Cajun Craze.  When stamped it gave a two-toned color to the leaves and no two are exactly alike, just like real leaves!

I am really liking the Fresh Fig in color for fall projects.  The gorgeous flower from Birthday Blooms was stamped in Basic Gray archival ink onto cold press watercolor paper.  I colored the image in layers starting with Sweet Sugarplum, adding a few layers of color to rich the intensity I liked.  Fresh Fig was washed on to shade the flower and add dimension.  I washed the center of the flower with Crushed Curry with some drops of Cajun Craze.  I wanted to mimic the color of the leaves in the inspiration photo as well as my stamped ones, so I colored these with a blend of Old Olive, Crushed Curry and just a hint of Cajun Craze.  The whole image was actually stamped twice--once to provide the base with leaves and the second to cut out and pop up just the flower.  I added some looped copper thread and a bitty die-cut stem in copper foil paper from the Flourish thinlits.

By this time, I was running out of light to snap a pic of my card so the inside was a quick 1, 2, 3 stamp job using a sentiment from Thoughtful Branches in Fresh Fig, the Birthday Blooms flower in Crushed Curry and some [retired] Gorgeous Grunge splatters in Sahara Sand ink.  There were a TON of stamp set and dies on my desk by the time I finished this card, lol!  It took me awhile to get there but, in the end, I am pleased with the colors and final result.  I hope you are too!

Here's the awesome Global Design Project sketch--thanks for the inspiration GDP!

Please go check out the rest of the lovely autumnal inspiration from my teammies at The Paper Players.  Maybe you'll be inspired to play along with us before the challenge closes on Friday, October 6th at Noon (PST).  Thanks for stopping by!

The Paper Players Design Team 

Claire Broadwater

 Jaydee

Joanne James

Laurie Schmidt

LeAnne Pugliese

Nance Leedy 

Sandy Mathis 

Deanne 

Annie Abrahamson 

Jan Clothier