Stencil Color Wash Technique {PP247}

Happy Sunday everyone....sorry I am a little late with my card for The Paper Players.  Sometimes life just gets in the way of stampin', right?  We're wrapping up the school year here and there are TONS of activities and events going on!  Anyway, lovely Laurie is hosting a fun Tic-Tac-Toe challenge this week...check it out:

Oh the possibilities!  I used the far right column: sequins, flower, any shade of yellow.  When I thought about making this card I knew two things I wanted to do--try a stencil technique--Color Wash--(don't know the name of it so I made one up!) and use lots of white space. Laurie is the master of making colors pop by using lots of white space and I wanted to try to emulate her style with today's card:

I've been seeing this stencil technique all over blogland--even my Paper Player friend, Sandy used it too! I'm not sure how others do it--sprtizing or sponging--but I found sponging the color gave me the soft look I was going for.  I used the pretty fancy fan stencil from one of the retiring SU kits, Hooray It's Your Day.  I laid it over the Whisper White cardstock and taped the edges to my work surface with painter's tape (easily removable).  The idea with this technique is to provide a soft wash of color that fades at the edges so I swiped across the stencil with my Crushed Curry ink and then went back over the center a few times to darken the middle. Here's a closer look:

With all the white space, I really wanted to use pops of color so each of the other elements--flower, stems and sentiment--is a separate color.  Keeping it to three follows the design principle of three elements to maintain balance.  I used Calypso Coral for the flower, Cucumber Crush (new!) for the leaves and Soft Sky for the sentiment banner.  Oh, and another sneak peek is the Triple Banner Punch I used to quickly flag the end of the sentiment banner!  Yep, with the new catalog we will have a quick and easy way to snips those banners--and it makes three sizes!  

 Lastly, I want to show you a close-up of the stitching.  Stitching the edge adds just a little bit of detail and texture which really makes the center panel stand out from the base layer--even though they are the same color.  If sewing isn't your thing, you could achieve the same look with paper piercing , a border punch or doodling some faux stitches!
 
That's it for me today....since this is late I want to get it posted asap!  Please be sure to check out the rest of the lovely creations from my Paper Players teammates.  We hope you will join in the Tic-Tac-Toe fun before Laurie's challenge ends on Friday, June 5th at Noon (PST).  Thanks for stopping by!

The Paper Players Design Team

Ann Schach

Anne Marie Hile
Claire Broadwater
 Jaydee
Joanne James
Laurie Schmidt 
LeAnne Pugliese

Nance Leedy
Sandy Mathis 
Debbie Mageed
Karren Johnson
Shannon Jaramillo

 

Happy Hooray for PP204

Hi there, friends!  Things have been crazy around here as I finish swaps and other details before traveling to Salt Lake City on Wednesday for SU Convention!  I've been a demo for five years but this will be my first convention and I am so excited to be sharing it with some of my best stamping buddies!  But before that fun can begin, the lovely LeAnne has a beautiful color challenge for us this week at The Paper Players:

Not really being a purple girl, I wasn't sure how to combine two shades of purple onto one card so I got the idea to make my own DSP incorporating two of the four colors:

This card was one of those where I started with one idea and ended with something else entirely!  I used the feather image from A Happy Hooray to stamp a pattern in Blackberry Bliss ink onto Wisteria Wonder cardstock.  The fun hexagon sentiment is also from this set and is actually bigger than I thought.  It does not fit into the Hexagon punch--it's bigger than that--but the straight sides are easy enough to hand cut.  The fringe scissors--have I mentioned how I love those?--made a sort of grassy border for a big beautiful bloom from Flower Patch.

By now you probably know that these flowers have coordinating Framelits--how great is that?!--even the leaves have a framelit!  The stamps are photopolymer which is great to work with and perfectly clear.  The leaves were stamped off once with Mossy Meadow ink and then stamped with the vines full strength.  Normally, with red rubber stamps, I stamp off onto scrap paper and then my cardstock.  When I tried that with the photopolymer stamp, I either got an uneven look or it tok off too much ink.  I found that stamping off on a Kleenex took off the right amount of ink and did so evenly.  A little trick for you!

There's no tricks about the Design Team's eye candy this week--it's all just beautiful creations.  Be sure to check out the rest of the team and then pop over to The Paper Players and join us before the challenge ends on Friday, July 18th at Noon (PST).

The Paper Players Design Team

Ann Schach

Anne Marie Hile

Jaydee

LeAnne Pugliese

Nance Leedy

Sandy Mathis

Andrea Whisman

Claire Broadwater

Joanne James

Laurie Schmidt

Mike Funke

Yapha Mason

Table built using Product Table Builder by The Crafty Owl - Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator.

A Milestone Celebration! {PP200}

What an amazing milestone!  This week at The Paper Players we are celebrating our 200th challenge--wow!  I was invited on board as a Guest Designer in September, 2010 and never left, LOL.  We laugh, cry and cheer each other on through more than just stamping and I am honored to be part of this great group of artists.  I count each and every one of them among my very treasured online friends.  To celebrate our milestone, we each selected a favorite past challenge and created a new project for you.  I loved Anne Marie's sketch for Challenge #65:

I couldn't wait to ink up the new Flower Patch stamp set and use the coordinating Flower Fair Framelits to cut all those flowers!

My color palette was inspired by this week's ColourQ challenge--so bright and cheery!  I layered a subtle Sahara Sand pattern from the Moonlight DSP stack in the background and used the sunburst image from Kinda Eclectic as a ray of sunshine for the flowers.  I [happily] received Kinda Eclectic as part of my Display Stamper goodies and even after making 8 projects with it, I still love it!  Each image is so versatile!

I substituted Crushed Curry for [retired] Summer Starfruit mostly so I could use my brand-new Crushed Curry embossing powder!  I love how it looks when embossed on colored cardstock as I did for the centers of all three flowers.  I wouldn't be able to achieve that same look with stamping alone.  Crushed Curry ink alone would never show up on Pacific Point cardstock!  But when embossed it sure does!  The great thing about the Flower Patch set is all the layers you can achieve with the matching Framelits.  The layering possibilities for the flowers are endless!

...and it comes with great sentiments too making it an all around beautiful and practical set!  Gotta love that!  And, I hope you'll love our look-back challenge this week at The Paper Players.  Be sure to check out all the inspiration from the rest of the Design Team and see which challenges they have selected.  Hopefully, you'll be inspired to play along before the challenge ends on Friday, June 20th at Noon (PST).    I hope to see you there!

The Paper Players Design Team
Ann Schach
Anne Marie Hile
Jaydee
LeAnne Pugliese
Nance Leedy
Sandy Mathis

Table built using Product Table Builder by The Crafty Owl - Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator.