PTI’s “Create Along With Us” Challenge, May 2018

A bunch of cards in Papertrey Ink’s release blog posts this month caught my eye, and when the May Create Along With Us challenge started, I thought, “Why not?” I only managed to make translations of four of the seven cards that I’d saved as inspiration images: limited supplies and lack of time intervened. In the future, I’d like to attempt several iterations of Lizzie’s rainbow stripe star card; its clean, graphic look appealed to me the most out of the cards from this release, and I have several ideas for how to translate it into my own supplies.


I also loved the look of Lizzie’s red and yellow strawberry card, but I didn’t have any patterned paper or stamps that remotely resembled her supplies, so I condensed the elements of her card to their essence: red and white accented by yellow and green, several layers of frames, and a focal image framed in black. The framed image in PTI’s “Spring Hills” set perfectly fit the parameters, and I built the card around it. Since my Copic collection is limited, I didn’t have a suitable yellow-green, and the one lime marker available entirely washed out my yellow Copic, so I went with a more true green for contrast. Putting the focal image on a solid red base looked too flat, so I masked off a piece of cardstock in a plaid pattern and went over it with the same red Copic I had used for the roof of the house.

Stephanie’s simple, graphic strawberries card was my most direct translation, since I could very nearly match the colors and main font she used. I love the look of strawberries but don’t have any strawberry stamps yet, so I went with a flower silhouette and leaves and followed the layout of Stephanie’s card. Since I didn’t use the watercolor technique, the result isn’t as loose and organic as hers, but the graphic layout pleases me.

Stephanie’s fun mint and sprinkles card provided the perfect excuse for me to use my new sprinkle washi tape. This card was the quickest and easiest to make, though the result is much simpler than Stephanie’s since I don’t have coverplate dies or any large image that would coordinate with the theme. Instead, I focused on the color scheme and the theme.

Keeway’s cute little animal card I used primarily as a sketch, since I haven’t any elephant or cloud stamps, but I do have a bunch of adorable little animals. I cut a peach panel to A1 size and layered on a hillside border, the cutest and chubbiest critter I could find, and a sentiment from PTI. The result feels a tad too simple, and it’d look better with some clouds, but one must work with what one has. Cloud dies have jumped much higher on my wish list, though!

Supplies
Stamps:  Papertrey Ink “Keep It Simple: Thank You I” (bold script), “Spring Hills” (framed hillside), “Just Desserts Sentiments” (“everything’s better...”), “Winter Woods” (“hello”);  WPlus9 “Fresh Cut Florals” (flower and leaves);  Hero Arts “Stamp and Cut: Thanks” (“for your kindness”);  Mama Elephant “Lunar Animals” (cow)
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Espresso Truffle;  VersaFine Vintage Sepia;  Hero Arts Pale Tomato, Green Hills, Bubble Gum;  VersaColor Cyan
Copics:  R27, Y00, G14, BG000, W00, and E43 (framed hillside); E34, E30, E0000 (cow);  Stampin’ Up Stampin’ Blendabilities: Crumb Cake Light, Crumb Cake Medium (cow)
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White; cheap layering-weight yellow, mint, and peach from stash
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape, Pebbles Happy Hooray Birthday Wishes washi tape, Lawn Fawn “Stitched Hillside Borders” dies


Dimensions
All cards:  4.25” x 5.5”