Sprinkle August With Life

Welcome to our Sprinkle August With Life Blog Hop! Love that title chosen by our very own Heidi who does such a wonderful job every month of keeping us on track. Thanks Heidi for all your efforts putting this together for us!

If you are following the Hop order, you've just come from Marie's blog. Didn't she capture the essence of our blog title perfectly?

This month we are highlighting the Sprinkles of Life stamp set and co-ordinating Tree Builder punch. Sprinkles of Life is the Ronald McDonald stamp set for the 2015-2016 catalogue. Each year Stampin' Up! designs a special stamp set for this designation and donates a portion of the sale of each set to the Ronald McDonald House program.

My first card is an idea that I've had rolling around in my brain for a while. I combined the Sprinkles of Life stamp set with the Hot Diggity Dog stamp set to create a dog sitting in a dog bed.

Ink colour for this card are Cucumber Crush, Mint Macaron, Watermelon Wonder, Soft Sky, Tip Top Taupe and Memento Tuxedo Black.

Cardstock is Tip Top Taupe and Thick Whisper White. The strip of Designer Series Paper at the bottom is from the Farmer's Market collection.

Now, my project featuring the Tree Builder Punch did not come together all that easily - even though, in my head, it wasn't all that difficult. Buuuut - it's not always easy to get the idea from the brain into an actual project.

My idea was a combination of a sort of snow globe in a clear glass ornament. Sounds pretty simple, right? Well, take a look first:

I've actually had this ornament - and about 11 others that I bought two years ago when they were marked down to under $1 each after Christmas. Figured it was about time I did something with them!

These particular ornaments are meant to have a photo put into them. I used the template that's in the ornament to cut a piece of Windowsheet onto which I used mini-glue dots to adhere the tree trunk and branches onto. I cut two of the tree trunks out of Whisper White card stock and glued one on either side off the window sheet to hide the glue dots.

Then I punched four of the little flower shaped from the WW cardstock. I needed something very fine to use as a loop for them to hang from the branches, and took the gold thread from a piece of gold metallic Baker's Twine. A tiny spot of Tombow holds the gold thread between two punched flowers.

In the bottom of the ornament, is a combination of the snowflake shapes from the Frosted Sequins. I also punched several more of the flower shapes from gold and silver glitter paper to mix with the snowflakes.

This project presented several problems I did not forsee until I actually started putting it together. Because the window sheet with the tree trunks on it essentially divides the ornament in half, it was a bit tricky trying to get the snowflakes/glitter flower bits divided equally. Then, when I closed the two halves of the ornament, some of the snowflakes got stuck in the branches of the tree. After almost half an hour of fiddling around trying to get them unstuck - I gave up.

The next challenge came when it was time to take photos of my projects - particularly this one. 'Cause the main problem is it reflects the light from the flash. I tried several locations in my house and nothing really worked. Of course by the time I tried all the places I could think of, it was starting to get dark outside.

Finally, I set it on the windowsill of  the window in my living room, and finally got this silhouette effect that kind of works. Except the glimmer paper bits don't show at all!

Now for the third part of our assignment, I cased a sample from the 2015 - 2016 catalogue. On page 14, a card done with the photopolymer set Another Thank You caught my eye. I think I might have made this project more complicated than what the concept artist who designed it did.

After I had this all done, it suddenly occured to me that the background would probably be a lot simpler to do by using an acrylic block, putting ink on it with markers then spritz with water and stamp on the watercolour paper.

What I did instead was to tape the piece of watercolour paper down with some Washi Tape, spritz with water, then brush colour onto it using an Aqua Painter. That meant I had to dry it with my heat tool. Then, a closer look at the catalogue sample convinced me that the creator of the sample had done the Bokeh technique. So, I had to hunt for my template I had previously made with all the different sized circles punched out. Couldn't find it. Still haven't found it. Will probably  stumble across it next week.

So I used a scrap piece of cardstock and punched a 1 1/4" circle, sponged with Whisper White Craft ink. That meant drying again with the heat tool.

All the different Thank Yous were arranged on an acrylic block and inked with Staz On Black.
The card base is Thick Whisper White on which I stamped the little heart from the Another Thank You set in Tangerine Tango and Staz On. I did the Tangerine Tango spatters with the Aqua Painter.

On the catalogue sample, it looks like Very Vanilla Thick Baker's Twine was used. I didn't have that so I cut a couple of threads from the White Jute ribbon to tie the bow. And a sequin finishes it off.

Now you're off to visit Jean who has some wonderful projects for you! Just click on the 'Next' button to continue your journey.