Zoo Review for The Paper Players

Happy Sunday, peeps! After nearly a week home sick from work, I am feeling much better--not 100%--but getting there.  I was glad to have the excuse of my Sunday card for The Paper Players to push my brain to start working again.  It felt good to create!  This week, Jaydee is our hostess-with-the-mostest with a theme that Sandy picked out:

Love it!  There are all different ways to go with this challenge--think of all the different kinds of wildlife--and you'll see the rest of the Design Team has tons of inspiring ideas.  I couldn't get my mind off of using my as-yet-uninked Zoo Review set for today's card:

I love giraffes.  Twiga--Swahili for giraffe--are one of my top 5 favorite animals.  On recent trips to South Africa and Tanzania we were treated to many sightings of these graceful creatures and I never tired of watching them.  They always seem so gentle but in Tanzania we watched two young males literally smacking heads together.  Quite a sight to see them whack those nubby horns into each other.  Anywhooooo, on to the card!  I had help from a few other challenges with the details of this card.  The color combination of Old Olive, Crushed Curry, Cajun Craze, Very Vanilla and Early Espresso over at Fab Friday (FabFri30) is perfect and I adored The Friday Mashup challenge (FM134) to use their sketch and chevrons--what a cool sketch!

I knew I wanted to heat emboss the Zoo Review giraffe in Early Espresso so I started with that and built the rest of the elements around it!  I colored her spots with a Crushed Curry stampin' write marker and stamped some companions in Sahara Sand.  (I hope the Fab Friday team doesn't mind an extra neutral!)  It's so easy to color an embossed image.  The raised edges of the embossing really help you stay inside the lines. 

The left side of the focal piece needed a little something so I inked just the grass with an Early Espresso stampin' write marker and stamped it a couple more times across the bottom.  I used EE because the first image was embossed in EE and I wanted it to look continuous.  Lastly, I used a Blender Pen and Old Olive ink pad to shade the grassy savannah for the giraffes to stand on.  I love the sanded look of Core'dinations cardstock and the Woodgrain embossing folder.  Combined with the Linen Thread, it adds the perfect a rustic touch to my trio of Twiga!  For the chevron shaped border of my cardstock and DSP, I found the center point along the bottom, drew a dot about 1/2" up, and drew lines with a ruler from the dot to the bottom corner of the paper.  Then just cut along the lines with my paper snips to achieve the chevron shaped edge.  Easy-peasy!

The Paper Players Design Team

Ann Schach

Anne Marie Hile

Jaydee

LeAnne Pugliese

Nance Leedy

Sandy Mathis

Head on over to The Paper Players to check out all the inspiration from the rest of the Design Team.  Then come on back to join us before the challenge closes on Friday, November 8th at Noon (PDT).  Here are the challenges I used for today's card:

Lastly, I can't leave without sharing one of my favorite photos from South Africa with you....have a great day, friends!

 
Supplies
Stamps: Zoo Review, Wetlands
Ink: Versamark, Old Olive, Early Espresso, Sahara Sand
Paper: Very Vanilla, Early Espresso, Early Espresso Core'dinations CS; Sweater Weather DSP; retired DSP from my stash (old olive & cajun craze)
Extras: Early Espresso embossing powder; Linen Thread; Regals Candy Dots; Woodgrain embossing folder; Sanding block; Blender Pen; Crushed Curry & Early Espresso stampin' write markers

Happy Halloween, Peeps!

The title says it all--Happy Halloween!  I hope you've got a day of Halloween fun planned today.  I've been home sick from work all week so it was only yesterday when I had enough energy to act on the inspiration from my friend and fellow Paper Pal, Sandy's adorable Halloween S'mores kit. I loved them the moment I saw her post and knew I would make them for DD to take to school...little did I know that it would be 5pm on Halloween eve when I would be making them...

But I finished them--all 44, ha!   Enough for classmates, teachers and favorite people at school.  Coz once you get on a roll what's a few more turns of the Big Shot, right? LOL. 

Because you know kids are going to rip right into them, I used up some retired Halloween paper from my stash and kept the embellishments to a minimum.  And to make it even easier, I printed out a full page of the images from Spooky Bingo Bits using My Digital Studio and then punched them out with a 1.25" circle punch.  MDS makes it real easy to line up a full sheet of images.

I open a full 8.5x11 page in MDS and color the background a light color, then add a series of 1.25" circle "punches" to the page, lining them up in rows.  This allows me to space and size the Spooky Bingo Bits images to the exact size I need.  You can see the first row here shows the punch.  Before I print, I remove the punch images and change the background to white and the images are sized and ready for my paper punch!

The toppers were made with two nested sizes of the Labels Collection Framelits, scored and folded on the long side.  The 1.75" scallop circle backed the Spooky Bingo Bits images and a few tickets made with That's the Ticket stamp set and coordinating Ticket Punch finished it off!  Big shout-out to Sandy for the inspiration--her project is adorable!

Today is the final Thank You Thursday special of the month--check out the details over on the Get Inspired Stampin' Up blog.  And the Weekly Deals continue in my online store--this week's sale continues through 11/4/13:

Have some spooky fun today...Happy Halloween, peeps!

Wishing You a Season of Style

Happy Sunday, peeps!  I hope you're having a grand weekend.  I've had a four-day weekend and we have enjoyed every minute!  It's finally turned cooler here in North Florida and we can all breathe a sigh of relief.  Cooler weather has me thinking ahead to Christmas (ouch, can you believe it's almost November!) and Anne Marie's fabulous sketch for The Paper Players this week was just the ticket:

There's still a few stamp sets I ordered from the holiday catalog that haven't seen ink yet (please, tell me I'm not the only one!) and this is one of them:

  The clean lines of the Wishing You stamp set pair well with the bright and happy colors of the Season of Style DSP stack. With 48 sheets of 4.5" x 6.5" this little stack is a powerhouse for holiday cards!  I kept all the elements of the sketch clean-lined too.  No sponging, no distressing--just straight up paper, punches and stamping.

The little stack of presents gets an extra bit of holiday shine when embossed in white on Old Olive paper.  Something a little different than stamping in color on Whisper White.  The top of the stack was crying out for a little ribbon and some Cherry Cobbler Baker's Twine was just perfect!

Anne Marie always adds a little bit of DSP to the inside so, of course, I had to also!  The sentiments with this stamp set were too big for the sketch elements on the front so I combined them both on the inside.  

Be sure to check out the rest of The Paper Players Design Team with their fabulous creations.  We hope you will join in all the sketch-y fun before our challenge closes on Friday, November 1st at Noon (PDT).

The Paper Players Design Team

Ann Schach

Anne Marie Hile

Jaydee

LeAnne Pugliese

Nance Leedy

Sandy Mathis

Supplies
Stamps: Wishing You, Teeny Tiny Wishes
Paper: Crumb Cake, Cherry Cobbler, Old Olive, Whisper White CS; Season of Style DSP stack
Ink: Early Espresso, Crumb Cake, Versamark
Extras: Regals Candy Dots; Cherry Cobbler Baker's Twine; Chevron Border Bunch; Ovals Framelits; White embossing powder

Catch 'Em by the Tide {PP168}

Hi, everyone!  LeAnne is our hostess this week at The Paper Players for our Clean-and-Simple Challenge and wowzers...has she got a challenge for us!

Clean-and-simple plus masculine!  Many people think that these two are the most difficult types of cards to make but actually I find that CAS goes quite well with masculine.  I generally think that guys don't like a lot of embellishments and layers so keeping it clean usually works out well.  So let's see how I did:

What do you think?  I rather like it!  I'm not sure if it qualifies as "simple" which the fussy-cutting and some grungy stamping but...there is a lot of "white space"!  I was inspired by sketch #263 at Clean and Simple Stamping.  I knew I wanted to make a porthole with the Circle Framelits and the rest of it developed from there.  Off the Grid and Gorgeous Grunge were stamped in Sahara Sand and Soft Sky ink around the Naturals Ivory porthole.  I drew my color inspiration from the swatch of Sweater Weather DSP.

The sea bass (if that's what they are!) were stamped in Chocolate Chip onto Sahara Sand.  i tried them first on Very Vanilla but it was too bright for the muted tones of the DSP and I think they really stand out on the Sahara Sand.  There is a faint stripe of Crushed Curry running through the DSP so the Itty Bitty Banners sentiment was stamped in Chocolate Chip onto Crushed Curry and cut out with the Bitty Banner Framelits and my fantastic Magnetic Platform!  The close-up also shows you how I tied the Linen Thread onto the banner.  Just pierced a hole and threaded it through.  A dimensional kept it in place while I secured the ends on the back.

The Naturals Ivory looked too plain on the inside so I used a piece of Soft Sky and dressed it up with more Off the Grid stamping and another fish!  This card is headed for a male co-worker who loves to get out on his boat and catch a few so I think he will appreciate this one!

I know you'll appreciate what the rest of The Paper Players Design Team has for your inspiration so be sure to check 'em out and leave them some comment love!  I hope you'll join us before our challenge closes on Friday, October 25th at Noon (PDT)--we would love to see you there!

The Paper Players Design Team

Ann Schach

Anne Marie Hile

Jaydee

LeAnne Pugliese

Nance Leedy

Sandy Mathis

Supplies
Stamps: By the Tide, Off the Grid, Gorgeous Grunge, Itty Bitty Banners
Ink: Sahara Sand, Chocolate Chip, Soft Sky
Paper: Naturals Ivory, Soft Sky, Crushed Curry CS; Sweater Weather DSP
Xtras: Circle Framelits; Bitty Banners Framelits; Linen Thread; Paper Snips

A Double Christmas Star {PP167}

Hi there, friends!  It's another week at The Paper Players where Jaydee is our hostess-with-the-mostess for a beautiful color challenge:

Two of my favorite shades of blue! I love blue for holiday cards and I couldn't wait to ink up Christmas Star--one of the fabulous single stamps available this season.  I am totally in awe of this stunning card by my friend Rita.  You really must go check it out and leave her some love--she's a fantastic artist!  I didn't think it was right to CASE her for my DT card so I tried to mix it up a bit and this was my first attempt:

 

Try as I might, I couldn't change the layout--it really is perfect! So, I embossed the star with white stampin' emboss powder on Whisper White cardstock and then sponged around with Pool Party and Midnight Muse ink.  Love the effect but I'm not sure I like other details I added.  So....still thinking I should come up with something else, I persevered and here's my second attempt:

A totally different look! This really is a simple card with just layers of Winter Frost Designer Series Stack , cardstock and Glimmer Paper.  The real stand-out is the star:

Embossed with Pool Party embossing powder on Midnight Muse cardstock, the Christmas Star really shines and highlights the pretty flourishes.  I used the Simply Scored Board to score across each line on the star.  Folding the points up creates a terrific dimensional look.  And speaking of dimensionals, one on each point is all it took to capture this star in place. 

The inside was just begging for another star across the center.  I love the companion sentiments from the Joyful Christmas set--perfect for the front and inside.  I hope you enjoyed my two-fer post today!  Be sure to check out the rest of the Paper Players Design Team with their fabulous projects.  We would love for you to join in the fun before our challenge closes on Friday, October 18th at Noon (PDT)

The Paper Players Design Team

Ann Schach

Anne Marie Hile

Jaydee

LeAnne Pugliese

Nance Leedy

Sandy Mathis

Supplies
Stamps: Christmas Star, Joyful Christmas, More Merry Messages
Ink: Pool Party, Midnight Muse, Versamark
Paper: Midnight Muse, Whisper White, Vellum CS; Silver Glimmer paper; Winter Frost DSP stack
Extras: Basic Rhinestones; Pool Party stampin' emboss powder; White stampin' emboss powder; Snow Burst embossing folder [retired]; sponges; Circle Framelits; Simply Scored board, Silver 1/8" ribbon