Celebrating Balloon Birthdays PP329

Hiya friends!  As you read this, we are in Daytona Beach for the start of volleyball tournament season.  It's a crazy season of practice and travel but we love to watch our girl and her teammates develop as athletes and take on the competition and oh boy, the competition is tough in Florida!  Anyway...today at The Paper Players my lovely friend, Joanne, has an awesome sketch for us:

So, there's lots of room for interpretation here as you will see from the Design Team's creations.  While thinking about and looking at the sketch, I looked at it sideways...

 

...and knew right away what I was going to do... 

See it?  Right?  Once I had it in my head, how could I not run with it?!  I covered the side of the card base with some [retired] Cherry on Top designer paper and pulled my other colors from there.  Although, I have to admit...the balloon (from Celebrate Today) is inked with [retired] Poppy Parade because I could not get a clear stamped image with my super wet Watermelon Wonder ink pad...grrrr.  Sometimes, the old style felt ones really are better!  

And, yes, I really did fussy-cut the triangle shaped balloon "string".  Stamped in Crushed Curry on Thick Whisper White (for stability) and then precariously Cut. Out. By. Hand.  It acually wasn't that difficult because it's all straight lines!

I've noticed quite a trend lately of background sentiment stamping--especially with the same color ink.  I really like the look--a lot of dimension without extra bulk.  So, this sentiment is from a retired hostess set called Happy Birthday, Everyone and was just the phrase I needed to accompany the birthday balloon.

Of course, the inside needed a little dressing up too with some simple stamping of images in the Celebrate Today set in Pool Party, Crushed Curry and Poppy Parade.   

I hope you like my take on Joanne's fun sketch...wait til you see what the rest of The Paper Players Design Team has created with it!  Maybe you'll be inspired to play along before our challenge closes on Friday, February 3rd at Noon (PST).  Thanks for stopping by, friends!

My friend, Joanne, told me about the fun balloon challenge at Less is More so I'm playing along with them too.  It's my first time there and I hope to be back!

The Paper Players Design Team 
Claire Broadwater 
 Jaydee 
Joanne James
Laurie Schmidt 
LeAnne Pugliese 
Nance Leedy
Sandy Mathis  
Crystal Komara
Valentyna Komisarenko
Deanne 

 

Clean-and-Simple, You've Got This PP328

 Hi friends!  This week at The Paper Players, wonderfully talented Jaydee has a Clean-and-Simple (CAS) challenge for us--flowers! 

All we have to do is keep our projects CAS and feature a flower.  Oh boy, the only trouble here was deciding which flower set to use! There are so many wonderful ones. Each time a new one comes out I tell myself that I don't need another flower set.....yeah well, you can guess how long that logic lasts.

Since the You've Got This stamp set hadn't seen ink in awhile, my decision was made!  My colors came from an older challenge at Color Throwdown.  To stamp the two-color background, I laid the background stamp on my craft table rubber side up.  The top third of the image was inked with Perfect Plum ink by tapping repeatedly on the stamp.  The bottom two thirds were inked in the same manner with Pear Pizzazz.  I didn't worry too much about the inks blending, just made sure that there wasn't any open space on the stamp with no ink.

The flower was stamped directly over the background image with Night of Navy ink.  I inked up the background image again with Perfect Plum and stamped it on a scrap piece of white cardstock.  Then I stamped just the top of the flower so I could fussy-cut some of the petals out and pop them up for dimension.  Oh yeah, and I washed the popped up piece liberally with Wink of Stella of course!

I thought the leaves and stems needed a little more dimension but in keeping with the CAS look, I didn't want more layers or fussy-cutting.  I colored in the stem and one side of the leaves with my Pear Pizzazz Stampin' Write marker.  It provided just the right amount of shading and variation from the background.  A single navy flower was stamped off the inside corner and that completed my CAS Flower card! 

I hope you enjoyed today's card.  I know you will enjoy all the eye candy that the rest of the design team has for you at The Paper Players, so check 'em out!  Maybe you will be inspired to play along with us before the challenge ends on Friday, January 27th at Noon (CST).  Thanks for stopping by, friends!

The Paper Players Design Team 
Claire Broadwater

 Jaydee

Joanne James

Laurie Schmidt

LeAnne Pugliese

Nance Leedy
Sandy Mathis 

Crystal Komara
Valentyna Komisarenko
Deanne 

  

Black + White with a splash of color PP327

This week at The Paper Players, my kind and talented friend Sandy is our hostess for a color challenge!

Don't you just love black and white together?  Always so crisp and fresh looking whether it's a spring outfit or a card!  I was inspired to feature some of the beautiful work in SU's line image stamps.  One of my all-time favorite is the Birthday Blooms set.  So, here's what I did with it:

I started with stamping in the upper right corner and then created a mask so I could stamp again without the images overlapping:

I chose Calypso Coral as my accent color and colored the flower stamens with a Stampin' Write marker.  The Calypso Coral background panel was dry embossed with the Petal Burst folder.  I had so much fun making this one, that I tried it again using Pool Party as my accent color and with a slightly different layout:

The flowers on both cards were colored with a combination of Stampin' Write markers, Blender Pens, ink pads and Blendabilities alcohol markers [retired].  My coloring skills need some work but I sure do find it relaxing.  Kinda like my own adult coloring book!

And here's a look at them together...which one is your favorite?  Speaking of favorites, be sure to check out the rest of my favorite Design Team over at The Paper Players for all their fabulous inspiration.  We hope you will join us before our challenge ends on Friday, January 20th at Noon (PST).  Thanks for stopping by, friends!

The Paper Players Design Team

Claire Broadwater

 Jaydee

Joanne James

Laurie Schmidt

LeAnne Pugliese

Nance Leedy

Sandy Mathis 

Crystal Komara
Valentyna Komisarenko
Deanne 

  

Tissue Box Thank You PP326

I'm back with The Paper Players after a nice, long, relaxing break.  I hope you all enjoyed the holiday season with friends and family.  The new year is all about resolutions and making changes, right?  For me, that usually means cleaning out and paring down!  Our sweet hostess, LeAnne, has the perfect theme challenge to match my cleaning frenzy..."Going Green" where she asks us to use a recycled item on our projects.  How cool is that?

I'm often inspired by packaging items--boxes, shopping bags, envelopes from mailers.  It's just amazing the design that is put into these items.  I'm always saving (too many) of these things because they're just too pretty to throw away.  Today, I used one of them in my project:

Do you recognize it?  It the packaging from a box of Kleenex tissues. The designs are so pretty and the images almost look like they could be SU stamps don't they?  I love the mix of colors and way able to play off them with SU cardstock.  The one on the left is a card base of Basic Gray with a little scrap of some retired cardstock.  I'm not even sure what color it is--maybe Brilliant Blue--but thought it was a good match to the colors in the design.  The card on the right is a base of Certainly Celery with a Basic Gray scrap. 

Here's what my "designer paper" looked like when I took apart the tissue box.  Now I ask you, how could I just toss that in the recycle bin?!  It was begging to be turned into a craft project!  Now, we challenge you to look around and see what you can recycle into a crafty project.  You will want to check out the rest of the Paper Players  Design Team where we are welcoming our new Guest Designers: Crystal, Valentyna and Deanne! So excited to see what they bring to our challenges each week.  And, I am delighted to be back in the swing of things with my friends at The Paper Players--love these gals!  So check 'em out and join us before the challenge closes on Friday, January 13th at Noon (CST).

The Paper Players Design Team

Claire Broadwater

 Jaydee

Joanne James

Laurie Schmidt

LeAnne Pugliese

Nance Leedy

Sandy Mathis 

Crystal Komara
Valentyna Komisarenko
Deanne