PTI’s “Create Along With Us” Challenge, September 2018, & MFT Sketch Challenge #402

This month’s Papertrey Ink release was heavily Christmas-themed, but since I’m not yet in the mode of making Christmas cards, I looked for inspiration that I could use for a more generally autumn- or winter-themed card for the Create Along With Us challenge.

What first drew me to Michelle’s card was the color scheme, but the reason I ended up choosing it as my inspiration piece was the background, since I could emulate that with the large pine branch stamp from PTI’s “Winter Woods” set. I love the Ocean Tides ink color, but I haven’t anything like it (I’m going to have to get the cube during PTI’s anniversary sale next spring). The closest I could come to the color was Hero Arts Forever Green, and that’s definitely green, not greyish blue-green. Still, it works well for pine needles. In hindsight, I think perhaps the card would have been more cohesive if I had stamped the wood of the branches in grey rather than brown and if I had chosen lighter colors for the background, but at least the color of the branches is realistic.

Although I have a fox stamp from a Stampin’ Up set, it’s horizontal, so I chose the chickadee from “Winter Woods” since it fit the vertical layout I was following from both Michelle’s card and this week’s MFT sketch challenge. Since the chickadee faces right, I flipped the sketch to accommodate it. The solid pine trees behind the chickadee are from the aforementioned SU set; I fussy-cut them and colored them with an alcohol marker to make the focal point bolder than the background.

For the banner, I smooshed a strip of cardstock against the Field Greens ink pad and let it dry overnight. It was still a bit splotchy when I went to stamp the sentiment, but at least it coordinates! The finished card is busier than I prefer; if I ever have time in the future, I’d like to tackle the design again with much lighter ink in the background. It might be fun to use the other birds from the same set—perhaps softer green pine branches for a background for the cardinal or pale grey snowflakes behind the bluejay.

Supplies
Stamps:  Papertrey Ink “Winter Woods”, “Vintage Picnic Sentiments”;  Stampin’ Up “Life in the Forest”
Dies:  Papertrey Ink “Winter Woods”;  My Favorite Things “A2 Stitched Rectangle STAX Set 2” (3 9/16” x 4 13/16”; 1 7/8” x 3 1/8”)
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Grey Flannel, Toffee Crunch, Northern Pine;  Hero Arts Field Greens;  Simon Says Stamp Fog
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White, cheap lightweight grey cardstock from my stash
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape, Bic Marking Forever Green

Dimensions
4.25” x 5.5”

MFT Summer School: Visual Triangle

For the visual triangle challenge of MFT Summer School, I balanced different colors and shapes in multiple triangles throughout a floral arrangement. There’s a triangle of purple, of coral four-petal flowers, and of one shape of stamped leaves. In a much looser sense, the Fab Foliage die-cuts behind the rectangle form a triangle as well, since they are concentrated in the top left corner, bottom edge, and right side.

This was my first chance to use the Fab Foliage dies, and I loved it. Even with only one use, I can tell that they’re well on their way to becoming a staple for me.

I’m also entering this card in MFT’s Birthday Project.

Supplies
Stamps:  WPlus9 “Fresh Cut Florals”;  Papertrey Ink “Keep It Simple: Birthday II” (sentiment)
Dies:  My Favorite Things “A2 Stitched Rectangle STAX Set 2” (1 ⅞” x 3 ⅛”), “Fab Foliage”;  WPlus9 “Fresh Cut Florals”
Ink:  Simon Says Stamp Dusty Sage;  Hero Arts Field Greens, Soft Cantaloupe, Pale Tomato;  Memento Lulu Lavender, Sweet Plum, Elderberry
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape, liquid glue

Dimensions
4.25” x 5.5”

Sweet Birthday Florals

A friend of mine has a birthday this week, and this card is already on its way to her.

I took inspiration for the color scheme from her Tumblr and her artwork, and I chose these clustered blooms since they were the closest thing I had to hydrangeas, which are some of her favorite flowers. Since I don’t have the dies for this set (yet!), I had to mask the flowers. I’m not very good at arranging florals yet, and it’s particularly difficult without die-cuts, so I kept things simple. The masking left a white halo around some of the images, so I used a cotton swab cut down to a point and smushed on my ink pad to dab color into the gaps.

The pitcher is from an entirely different floral set by Clearly Besotted. I stamped it once in Simon Says Stamp Fog ink, which isn’t Copic-friendly, so the outline blurred a little when I colored in the pitcher with the lightest warm gray Copic. Once I finished coloring, I stamped over the outline twice with the Fog ink to give the pitcher a crisp edge again. (Huzzah for the invention of the stamp platform, which makes such things possible!)

I used a quilting ruler, a mechanical pencil, and a paper trimmer to measure and cut the panels on the front of the card so the floral arrangement would be perfectly centered without being too cramped and without having too much white space and so the matte would have a quarter-inch border. For a focal panel that large, a smaller matte would have looked a bit odd unless I had used two mattes, both large and small, and there just wasn’t enough room on the card base for that.

Of course, I had to make a matching envelope. I’m not entirely pleased with how the arrangement of the leaves turned out, but you can only fuss for so long before you have to commit.

Serendipitously, this week’s Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge is “Anything Goes” featuring WPlus9. I had planned out this card back in May, but I only had the time to make it this past weekend — which makes it eligible to enter in the challenge.


Supplies
Stamps:  WPlus9 “Fresh Cut Florals” (all florals);  Clearly Besotted “Simple Silhouettes” (pitcher);  Papertrey Ink “Just Desserts Sentiments” (sentiment)
Ink:  VersaColor Smoke Blue, Atlantic, Celadon;  Hero Arts Cotton Candy, Pale Tomato;  Memento Toffee Crunch;  Simon Says Stamp Fog
Copics:  W00
Paper:  Papertrey Ink Stamper’s Select White
Miscellanea:  Scotch Permanent Double-Sided Tape, Post-It Labeling Tape (for masking), cotton swab


Dimensions
base:  4 ¹/₄”  x  5 ¹/₂”
focal panel:  2 ⁹/₁₆”  x  4”
matte:  3 ¹/₈”  x  4 ¹/₂”