Challenge: No Ordinary Paper

The Monday challenge this week on Simon Says Stamp is to use some type of paper other than regular cardstock. There are several wonderful examples of work to provide some inspiration.

I've been experimenting lately with Bristol. I bought a pad on sale and have tried some stamping techniques on it. It is very smooth, has a nice weight, and takes ink quite well (much better than some of the cheaper cardstock I've tried). Here is one of the cards I did:

I started with a piece of Bristol, cut to 4.25" x 5.5". I blended Antique Linen Distress ink over the surface with a blending tool. Next, I stamped the tree (Xmas Constellation by Penny Black) with Doll Pink ink from Simon Says Stamp. The sentiment is from Winter Wonderland from Winnie & Walter; it is stamped with Potting Soil Archival ink and heat embossed with clear embossing powder.

The splotches on the card front are made by mixing Broken China Distress ink, water, and a little Perfect Pearls pigment powder. This mixture is picked up with a small brush and flicked over the card front. I also did a little mixture of water and Perfect Pearls with no additional color and flicked that over the surface as well. Hopefully it gives the suggestion of snow, but maybe it just looks messy!!

I trimmed the Bristol panel down slightly and mounted it to a dark brown card base. The two thin colored strips on the right were made by rubbing ink directly from the ink pad onto the surface of some scrap Bristol - I used Broken China & Doll Pink. Once the ink had dried, I cut the strips and glued them down. Since the blue strip was slightly raised due to being layered over the Bristol, I cut two tiny pieces of cardstock to glue underneath the ends to keep everything even.

I hope your week is off to a good start!

Immi

Christmas Tag Card

Although I usually don't make my own Christmas cards, it's easy to find inspiration this time of year. I have some new stamps that I won in a drawing (Winter Wonderland by Winnie & Walter) and wanted to try them out:

I started with a plain manila tag, colored with Broken China distress ink and a blending tool. I inked the tree stamp with Peeled Paint Distress Ink and spritzed it lightly with water before stamping over my blue background. After heat setting, I mixed up a little white acrylic paint with water and flicked it over the tag with a paintbrush to create a snowy effect. 

The stag was stamped with Ranger's Potting Soil Archival Ink and coated with clear embossing powder while wet. After heat setting, I poured on additional embossing powder and heat set it again for a nice, smooth look.

I wanted to layer some papers behind the tag, so I chose a red plaid and cut it into a tag shape. The white paper with green dots is a Project Life journal tag which came printed with grid lines. I stamped the dots using Penny Black's Dots in Space stamp and Peeled Paint ink, then cut it into a tag shape. After punching holes in my homemade tags, I tied them behind my stamped tag using some dark red sheer ribbon.

The white panel behind the tags started as plain white cardstock. I used Ranger's Texture Paste through a Prima chevron stencil, then sprinkled some iridescent embossing powder over that. I let it sit for a few minutes and then heat set it.

The sentiment is inked with Potting Soil and embossed with clear powder. I colored the white cardstock with Aged Mahogany Distress Ink and a blending tool, and cut the banner shape by hand.

Everything was adhered to a dark brown cardstock base, cut to be a top folding card.

I'm linking this card up to two challenges: Winnie & Walter Playdate #4 and Muse Challenge #95. I pulled inspiration from both of these challenges to make my card. My colors I chose from the Winnie & Walter image:

Winnie & Walter Playdate #4

The idea of layered tags came from the Muse image:

Muse Challenge #95

I hope you have a great time this week, enjoying Thanksgiving with family and friends!

Immi

Winnie & Walter Playdate #3

I stumbled across this challenge this evening and decided to do my best to get a card ready to participate. Winnie & Walter is a fairly new stamp company. I've been seeing their stamps used on a variety of blogs I follow. I don't own any of their stamps yet, but they also offer digital files. I downloaded a file to cut on my Silhouette, and used the sketch provided to create my card.



I chose to use the sketch along with some of the suggested colors. Here's my card:

I started with a kraft cardstock base. On top of that is a layer of an orange sunburst paper that I edged with Worn Lipstick Distress Ink. The purple layer is a scrap of cardstock I had that I coated with clear embossing paste, using a stencil from Jenni Bowlin. After that dried, I punched out the half circles, and used the Worn Lipstick again around the edges. The "hello" is the digital file I downloaded from Winnie & Walter. I opened the file on my Silhouette and discovered that I didn't know how to cut a png. I had to get on the web to do a little research, but found it was quite easy after all (sigh of relief). I cut it from a pink patterned paper from a Colorbok paper pack - Light Bright. That's also where I got the orange starburst paper. I wrapped some thin gold cord from my stash around the card, creating some loose loops. I glued the loops down with Glossy Accents, also using that to attach the flower and button. For the "hello", I used teeny tiny drops of Glossy Accents to be sure it would stick to the embossed paper beneath. Finally, I used some Scotch 3M Mounting tape to attach the purple panel to the cardfront. This gives it a little extra height which is kind of cool.

I don't know why I create these situations for myself, but I was bound and determined to submit this - the deadline is later tonight. I'm happy with my result and I guess that's what counts the most!

Till next time,

Immi