Whale Watching

I love color palettes and color challenges, yet I often don't know what to do with the colors unless someone organizes my brain for me with a sketch challenge. So this combines a color and a sketch challenge, to keep my muddled brain organized! Isn't the paint in the color challenge pretty? I'd love to be able to paint!

I wanted to use this whale stamp set because I think the whale is so cute and I had a scrap from a watercolor experiment that fit the stamp perfectly. Then I wondered, how to create a good undersea background? I had another scrap of teal paper and I wondered what it would look like using a broad brush and the bleach technique. I haven't tried bleaching in years. It almost achieves what I had in my thoughts, the swirls and eddies of undersea currents!

I think I will send this to my daughter in California in memory of the whale watching trip we took. We did see four whales in a pod, quite exciting! Thanks for looking and have a great day!

I want to thank the hard-working gals at Paper Playful for listing daily challenges, so nice to have them all in one spot!

Challenges: Freshly Made Sketches 284
                    The House that Stamps Built Repeat Impressions Inspiration Palette Challenge - A1917RR

Stamps: Papertrey Ink Keep Swimming, What the Doodle: Waves Mini; Ink: black, PTI Enchanted Evening, Ranger Distress Vintage Photo, variety of blues/purples, white; Paper PTI kraft, teal, patterned paper, scrap of blue, vintage cream; Other: stickles glitter glue, Ranger distress markers; Technique -- bleaching

Mustard Seed Faith Challenges #3...Traveling Mercies

Good morning! The new challenge is posted at Mustard Seed Faith and for the next two weeks our challenge is to make a card, layout or altered art/mixed media piece or bible journaling that have to do with travel. Depict travel somehow in your creation. 

You can find the contributions and thought starters from the design team here along with a devotional about traveling mercies. In the meantime, here is my card for the challenge. Thank you for looking and have a wonderful day!

Stamps: Market Street (camper), Papertrey Ink sentiment from Big Hugs; Paper: Kraft, white, green, assorted patterned papers; Ink: Papertrey Ink Pinefeather, black, Ranger distress ink tumbled glass; Dies: Papertrey Ink heart border, scalloped border (medium), Trendy Trees, Tag Sale: Quilted; My Favorite Things rectangle stitched die; Other: Papertrey Ink button, jute twine

Easter celebration at Mustard Seed Faith Challenges

Good morning! The new challenge is posted at Mustard Seed Faith and for the next two weeks our challenge is to make an Easter card, layout or altered art/mixed media piece or bible journaling...anything to celebrate Easter.

You can find the creations by the design team and some thoughts about Easter on the blog, here. In the meantime, here is my card for the challenge. Thank you for looking and have a wonderful day!

Papertrey Ink Splits: With Love mini stamp set, Inspired: Savior die and stamp set, pink ribbon, Ranger distress inks for watercoloring, neenah solar white, PTI soft stone, My Favorite Things pierced rectangle die. 

PTI March blog hop

Good morning! Time for the blog hop at Papertrey Ink, where customers are invited to create projects using PTI products, usually based on an inspiration photo. This time one of the photos looked like this

and I took my inspiration from the colors and from the floral images. I didn't stamp a group of flowers, but a single flower. I really liked how the inspiration photo used gray for the leaves in its design, so I made gray leaves, first time ever I believe.

If you notice, this card has no sentiment and when I look at it I see it as sort of 3/4 finished. I had to go out of town and had a million and one things I had to get finished before I traveled and of course this card was the millionth and one, final thing on the list. I was literally fussing with it before leaving for the airport and it just didn't get quite finished. But I like playing along, so I tossed it in my bag to take a photo of it on the road. Actually I was dreaming by some miracle I would find a craft store and buy a sticker or die or something to finish it off...but that didn't happen. So here is my take on the inspiration photo, or the beginning of where my thoughts were going. Thanks for looking and Happy hopping!

Stamps: Papertrey Ink Anniversary set Pretty Peonies; Ink: Ranger Distress inks to watercolor flower and background, Versamark; Paper: watercolor, Neenah solar white, PTI Hawaiian Shores; Other: PTI button, white embossing powder, sequins. 

Mustard Seed Faith Challenge Blog Launch

Good morning! We are thrilled to announce the launch of a new faith-based challenge blog, Mustard Seed Faith Challenges. A wonderful group of ladies has joined me to spread the good news of the gospel through our creative talents, primarily through papercrafting. You can see a list of the design team members on the side bar. This first Sunday the challenge is to use the color yellow or a golden yellow somewhere in the project, to go along with the image of a mustard seed or mustard plant and flower.

We would like to invite you to play along, and you can find more details about the challenge blog and our goals and purpose if you click the link on my sidebar. Our main purpose is to "make Jesus famous," to steal a line from one of my favorite local churches. Our challenges will run for two weeks, so plenty of time to join in!

I made a watercolor wash background using Ranger distress reinkers, also using them to paint my floral image. I made at least five backgrounds before I had one that I was satisfied with, so just a word of encouragement to keep on experimenting when you're stamping. This was my first time using embossing paste with a stencil too! So cool that when you have that white paste you also can use reinkers to make it any tint you like! Thanks for looking and we hope you can play along.

Stamps: Tim Holtz, Ink: black and a variety of Ranger Distress reinkers; Paper: Neenah solar white, watercolor paper and Papertrey Ink Smoky Shadow; Die: Papertrey Ink (Hello), My Favorite Things stitched rectangles; Other: Embossing paste, Tim Holtz stencil, glossy accents. 

PTI Tenth Anniversary ... flowers

Hello again! As Papertrey Ink celebrates its tenth anniversary, customers are invited to join in a few stamping challenges. One of them is to use a favorite floral set. I have to admit, this isn't necessarily a favorite, but I'm longing for Spring and for tulips to pop out of the ground...probably because in the past day we've gotten 8-9 inches of snow so far...and still falling! This is an old set, but full of tulips! I was inspired by one of Betsy's cards today to pull out my blue inks. Thanks for looking!

Stamps: Papertrey Ink "Wishing You," Illustrated Faith "Bloom." Paper: PTI soft stone, white linen, white cardstock, Aqua. Ink: Amethyst Allure, Spring Rain, Simply Chartreuse, Limeade Ice, Summer Sunrise, Bright Buttercup, black. My Favorite Things Square stitched frame dies, silver gel pen, clear gel pen, sequins, Ranger distress markers (to highlight the tulips)

PTI Tenth Anniversary ... patterns

Hello! Been a while since I've had a chance to stamp! Papertrey is celebrating its tenth anniversary and has a few challenges for its customers. One of them involves using elemental shapes to create a pattern or row on your card. I mainly have circles and squares. I tried arranging the butterflies in rows first, but it just looked like a science project gone wrong, something in the dusty corner of the natural history museum. Thanks for looking! Happy stamping! (Also for some reason my camera doesn't like the upper right corner blue squares...they are not as far off from the other colors as it seems.)

Stamps: Papertrey "Wishing You," (sentiment) and cannot remember company for grasses on the side. Ink: white and black. Cardstock: aqua mist, two other blue scraps, soft stone, Neenah solar white.  Other: embossing powder, glitter, 3/4 cirle punch.