Canopy Crafts: February 2017

Nance Leedy

Sandy Mathis

Sunday, February 19, 2017

So Very Much Watercolor PP332

Happy Sunday, peeps! This week at The Paper Players, sweet Laurie is our hostess for a Clean-and-Simple challenge:

Clean-and-Simple with a sentiment as a focal point......hmmmm. I'll admit I was a little stumped until I remembered this awesome Sale-a-Bration stamp set, So Very Much, that I got for free:

I knew that a watercolor background would be the perfect way to make this large sentiment the focal point. SU's Watercolor Pencils just arrived in my mailbox and the Fab Friday challenge had some colors that were just perfect to create a watercolor wash background: (from the left) Calypso Coral, Peekaboo Peach, Rich Razzleberry, and Bermuda Bay. I did use an ink pad for the Peekaboo Peach since it doesn't come in a pencil. These colors are so pretty together and blend very well.

The watercolor pencils are so easy to use--just scribble some color onto your choice of paper (I used watercolor paper here) and blend the pigment with either a Blender Pen, Aqua Painter or a paintbrush. I like the effect of the Aqua Painter best as I wanted a very watery look. A few passes with the heat gun made sure the design was good and dry. A dry surface was especially important here because I heat embossed the sentiment and I didn't want any stray bits of embossing powder sticking to the watercolor!

So Very Much, also from the same set, was stamped with Black Archival ink onto a strip of Watercolor paper and the ends were snipped. I used watercolor paper instead of Whisper White for the sentiment because I wanted the sentiment banner to match the color of the focal piece--watercolor paper is slightly more vanilla than white. Since this is a CAS challenge, I resisted the urge to add more details and just added a little bit of washi tape to dress it up.

I hope you like my So Very Much Watercolor card today. I had fun playing with the watercolor pencils and these gorgeous colors. Be sure to stop by the rest of The Paper Players design team to see how they used sentiments as a focal point. Maybe you'll even join our challenge before it closes on Friday, February 24th at Noon (PST). Thanks for stopping by!

The Paper Players Design Team
Claire Broadwater

Jaydee

Nance Leedy

Sandy Mathis

Sunday, February 12, 2017

Twinsets & Flannel for Any Special Reason PP331

This week at The Paper Players, I have the pleasure of hosting our Color Challenge. I love color challenges both to create with them but also to see what others do with the colors I put together. This week, I was inspired by a gorgeous scene I found on Pinterest:

Fresh and modern but classically elegant too--think pink cashmere twinsets and gray flannel skirts--these colors are gorgeous together. At least I think so. ;-) I took these classic colors and used them with a decidedly modern trend--negative space, that is using the space left behind from a die-cut. Take a look:

Oooh, I love this technique and bought this SU stamp set and coordinating dies--Special Reason--just so I could use it in this way. The card base is covered with a full piece of retired Smoky Slate DSP. The focal piece of Smoky Slate cardstock measures 3.5 x 4" and I tucked a small piece of Copper Foil cardstock under the left side.

I used both the flower dies from the Special Reason bundle to cut out the shapes on the Smoky Slate base. I tucked a slight smaller piece of Blushing Bride cardstock underneath and popped up the Smoky Slate panel with dimensionals. The small flower was stamped in Blushing Bride ink onto the same color cardstock over which I layered a outline of the flower cut with the dies. You can't tell in this photo but all three flowers were outlined with Wink of Stella and boy, do they sparkle! The tiny Copper Foil leaves--both solid and outline--were cut with dies in this set and I wrapped a little bit of Copper Thread behind the small flower.

The inside has a lot more stamping than the outside--just showing off how pretty the flower stamps in this set are too. Only because I couldn't resist another use of the negative space, I die-cut a small flower in the lower corner so the Smoky Slate card base could show through.

There you have it, my Twinsets & Flannel for Any Special Reason card! I hope you like it. Be sure to pop over to my peeps on The Paper Players Design Team to see all the beauties they are sharing this week. Thanks for stopping by, friends!

The Paper Players Design Team
Claire Broadwater

Jaydee

Nance Leedy Sandy Mathis

Sunday, February 5, 2017

You Light up my Life, Valentine PP330

Hi friends! This week at The Paper Players my sweet friend, Claire has a theme challenge perfect for the first week of February!

Valentine's Day...hearts, flowers, candies and....light bulbs? LOL. When I design a card, I try to resist my first impulse because...well....I want to push myself to come up with something else. My first thoughts were hearts or cute critters but then I saw the hostess set, Pun Intended, sitting [very dusty] on my shelf and an idea was born...lightbulbs!

Honestly, the single light bulb was the first thing I did for this card. It was heat embossed in black on shimmer cardstock, fussy cut and colored with Daffodil Delight and Melon Mambo [retired] Blendabilities. From there I cut a piece of Smoky Slate cardstock with my Stitched Shape Framelits--using the largest square to cut a rectangle. Check out this tutorial for those directions! Continuing my love for tone-on-tone background stamping, I stamped some more lightbulbs in a somewhat random pattern in Smoky Slate.

Then I needed a card base to put this on and liked the way it all popped on Basic Black. But Basic Black by itself was too plain. I didn't want a lot of background pattern to detract from the focal piece....hmmm....what to do? I got the idea to use my sunburst Thinlit as a ray of shining light and keeping with the punny sentiment. Some [retired] DSP with a subtle black pattern was just the variation I needed to add some interest.

A little more on the inside and this Valentine is perfect to give to our teenage (yikes, how did that happen?!) daughter. Cute and sweet but heartfelt...just like her!

Be sure to pop over to the rest of the design team at The Paper Players and check out all the awesome Valentine ideas they are sharing. I hope you'll play along with our challenge before it closes on Friday, February 10th at Noon (PST). Thanks for stopping by!

The Paper Players Design Team
Claire Broadwater

Jaydee

Nance Leedy
Sandy Mathis