Canopy Crafts: November 2017

Sunday, November 26, 2017

Icy Wonderland Sketch PP372

Hi friends....happy Sunday! I'm excited to be back with you and my gal pals over at The Paper Players where the fabulous Joanne has a sketch challenge for us:

I have a really hard time parting with my favorite retired SU stamp sets especially holiday ones. Today, I pulled out a retired favorite, Wonderland, to create another version of a frosty winter wonderland....

You know when you shop at a place like Target and they have the different styles of Christmas decorations? Usually there's the traditional red/green look and there's always some frosty elements of silver/gold and pastel colors....yep, that's where you'll find me! Love these icy colors together: Pool Party, Powder Pink and Sahara Sand. I stamped the Wonderland Tree across the front of a piece of cardstock, cut out the center with an Oval framelit and popped it up with dimensionals. You can see the right side sketch element in my [retired] piece of vellum DSP--it has a subtle silver polka dot that looks like falling snow.

To camouflage the edge of the trees around the oval die cut, I added another oval cut from plain vellum cardstock. It coordinates with the vellum panel on the right and hides the rough edges. Because I can't get enough of the trees in the Carols of Christmas card builder thinlits, I added a Dazzling Diamonds tree. The iridescent colors of the Dazzling Diamonds, pick up those in my stamped trees nicely. The silver foil deer is too cute to resist and the silver foil is repeated in my silver thread.

The vellum panel was adhered directly to the card base and I needed a way to wrap ribbon or thread around it. I used a bitty hole punch to pop out a tiny hole in the top cold of the card--you can see the hole in the top right corner of in the picture above. Then I just wound the thread through the hole and tied my bow. A few more trees in my icy color trio and a few snowflakes from the Wonderland set, stamped in [retried] Silver Encore ink--love that stuff!

I hope you like today's card and feel inspired to play along with us at The Paper Players before our challenge ends on Friday, December 1st at Noon (PST). Do check out the rest of the fabulous inspiration from my teammates at The Paper Players! Thanks for stopping by...

The Paper Players Design Team

Jaydee

Nance Leedy

Sunday, November 12, 2017

Frosty Night Forest PP370

Hi friends and happy Sunday! It's another week with The Paper Players where I have the pleasure of hosting a color challenge:

Oh how I love the simple elegance of white-on-white cards, especially for winter and holiday cards. The most difficult part of using a monochromatic color scheme is to achieve dimension without an additional color. The die cuts in the Carols of Christmas bundle make this a snap!

I knew the tree die in this set would be perfect for this color challenge and you know how I love to play with negative space! Here, I backed the tree and night sky cut outs with some Dazzling Diamonds glimmer paper. While still white, the glimmer paper really stands out against the plain white. Adding texture with the Softly Falling embossing folder adds another distinguishing element. Lastly I cut some snowy hills from cardstock Vellum for one more interpretation of "white". It didn't show up in my photo but the edges of the hills are brushed with a Wink of Stella. You may wonder why the sentiment appears to have a drop shadow effect. That's because I stamped it first in Archival Basic Gray and when I didn't like the look of it, I sprinkled on some white embossing powder and heat set. The result is a bit of a shadow which helps make the white sentiment stand out--I like happy accidents!

I used the tree die to cut out a stencil from some plain copy paper. I adhered the trees to the inside with removable adhesive and lightly sponged around the trees with Smoky Slate ink. The sentiment and deer were stamped with Smoky Slate.

I hope you like today's card and feel inspired to play along with us at The Paper Players. Do check out the rest of the fabulous inspiration from my teammates at The Paper Players! Thanks for stopping by...

The Paper Players Design Team

Jaydee

Nance Leedy

Sunday, November 5, 2017

Pretty Pines in Plaid PP369

Hi friends and happy Sunday to you! There's no denying we're headed into the holiday season now that Halloween is past. With lovely LeAnne's theme challenge this week at The Paper Players, I couldn't resist the holiday card making any longer!

Pines and pine cones are among my favorite holiday decorations. Before the tree lots figured out that they could use the scraps for wreaths, I used to pick up the trimmed pieces for free! I used them everywhere possible in the house and it always smelled wonderful. This challenge kick started my holiday decorating with my favorite Pretty Pines thinlits and a little something different.....

I thought it would be fun to use the negative space of the pine dies and let the pretty plaid paper peek through. I won't lie...I went through two pieces of cardstock to get the "random" arrangement of pine boughs just right. "Random" and I don't get along well.... :-) Anyway....with three sizes of pine boughs in the die set, it didn't take as many passes through the big shot as you might imagine. Once I liked the arrangement, I popped it up with ALOT of dimensionals on top of a Old Olive base that was covered with this pretty plaid from the Merry Little Christmas DSP. What didn't photograph well, is the liberal brushing of Wink of Stella all over the white panel. It really makes the pine boughs sparkle!

The sun was really bright when I snapped these shots but I think you can see the sparkle from the black Glimmer paper I used to die cut the pine cone. I tried a few black glimmer pine boughs but in the end, simple silver thread bow was just enough.

I mimicked the pattern of the front on the inside of the card with some pine bough stamped in Old Olive from the Christmas Pines set. The lovely pine cone and sentiment are from the same set and stamped in black Memento ink.

Thanks for stopping by today, friends! Be sure to check out the rest of the awesome holiday pine creations my teammates created over at The Paper Players. I hope you'll join us before our challenge closes on Friday November 10th at Noon (PST).

The Paper Players Design Team

Jaydee

Nance Leedy