WWC102 - Libby's Clean and Simple Challenge

With Valentine's Day just around the corner, it was only natural for this week's Challenge Host, Libby,  to pick Love in Red on White for her theme.

In the Language of Flowers, a red rose means love and respect. For my card I reached for my Rose Garden Thinlits and the lovely huge rose bloom with the leaves attached. I placed it on a piece of the Red Foil so I didn't get all of the biggest leaf. After die-cutting, a few quick snips with the paper snips took care of the foliage, leaving just the big rose bloom.

For the card base, I used Thick Whisper White (the Real Red is piece of cardstock I laid the finished card onto for photographing). Before glueing down the rose, I took the Real Red Watercolour Pencil and did a quick sweep of colour on the cardstock, and blended with an aqua-painter.

The Love sentiment is from the Love Sparkles stamp set - what could be more fitting? - stamped in Real Red.

And that's it! A quick, simple card that says Love!

Now it's your turn. Check out what the other Watercooler Artists have done, then link up your interpretation of Love in Red on White. Visit Watercooler Wednesday to do that.

WWC101 - Jean's Colour Challenge

Colour challenges are a great way to stretch your creativity. I like them because they make me use colours in combinations I might not have thought of myself. If you are like me, you probably find yourself reaching for the same colours all the time.

This week, Jean has given us a very cheerful, spring-y colour combo to work with:

I used Whisper White as my neutral.

This card is really very simple, even though I used 3 stamp sets and a set of framelits to make it. The dotted background was done with a stamp from Dragonfly Dreams, the So Saffron square is stamped with a design from Window Shopping, and the sentiment is from So In Love. The cardstock squares in the 3 Challenge colours are cut with the Stitched Shapes Framelits.

Thanks, Jean, for this fun colour combo! I have a few more ideas for it.

Check out Watercooler Wednesday to see how the other Watercooler Artists have used these colours. Then show us your inspiration!

WWC100 - Celebration Time!

Welcome back to a new year of Watercooler Wednesday! I hope everyone had a great holiday season - whichever holiday you celebrate.

This week we are celebrating our 100th Challenge and the Watercooler Artists have gone all out, as the theme is "Anything Goes".

My card features a beautiful stamp set from the 2017 Occasions Catalogue - Dragonfly Dreams -  and the timing is perfect as, starting today, you can order it. It is available as part of a bundle with coordinating thinlits for even more creative options.

I love purple but don't seem to use it a lot when it comes to cardmaking. So I decided to use a little bit over-looked colour  for the card base - Elegant Eggplant.

For the background of my focal image, I used three different techniques: watercolour splashes, salted watercolour, and doodled flower shapes.

To start, I taped a piece of Stampin' Up watercolour paper onto my craft sheet, then spritzed liberally with water. Using ink refills, and going from light to dark, I dropped random drops of Wisteria Wonder, Perfect Plum and Elegant Eggplant. It's so much fun to watch the ink spread!

Then I sprinkled salt onto the wet surface, using regular table salt and a coarser sea salt. It's important to let this dry thoroughly before doing anything else.

After it was totally dry, I used an ultra-fine tip black Sharpie and just outlined random petal-like shapes I could see in the way the ink had spread, trying to center them around the darker spots. I love doing  this technique!

The dragonfly image and sentiment are stamped with Whisper White Craft ink. As a final touch, although it doesn't show up well in the photo - I used Clear Wink of Stella on the body and wings of the dragonfly.

I then matted the image onto  a piece of Shimmery White cardstock. Here is a closer look:

Now go check out the fabulous samples from the rest of the Watercooler Artists at Watercooler Wednesday. You are sure to be inspired, and we want to see what you create! So link up to this 100th Watercooler Challenge.

WWC99 - Marshas Clean & Simple Make it With Hearts Challenge

Welcome to our last challenge for 2016. Due to the Christmas holidays, this challenge will run for two  weeks,  ending January 2, 2017 at 5:00 p.m. Mountain Time.

Our host this week is Marsha, and she has chosen Clean & Simple Make it With Hearts. Clean & Simple means to use minimal layers and embellishments and to leave lots of open space.

Since I received my pre-order from the 2017 Occasions and Sale-A-Brations catalogues, I just had to play with new stuff and combined a set from the Occasions with a set from SAB.

The Occasions set is called Tie Dyed and the crazy-looking chicken is from an SAB set called Hey Chick. Both sets are going to be a lot of fun and I thought they looked well together.

I used Emerald Envy cardstock for the base and the images are stamped on Whisper White. The Tie Dyed set is a 3-part stamping set, meaning each image has three parts to it that are stamped separately and layered to form a multi-coloured image or an image with three shades of one colour ink.

I only used two of the heart images and stamped them in Emerald Envy and Peek-a-Boo Peach. The chicken is stamped with Archival Basic Black and coloured with a combination of markers and the brand new Stampin' Up Watercolour Pencils. I stamped him on a separate piece of Whisper White and fussy cut after colouring.

As you will see by what the other Watercooler Artists have done - visit Watercooler Wednesday - hearts can be used for occasions other than Valentine's Day. So pull out your favourite heart stamp and join the fun!

WWC98 Kath's Colour Challenge

It's time for another Colour Challenge! And I have to say, I did find this challenging. Here's the colours chosen by Kath:

It is a gorgeous combo, isn't it? It did have me thinking Christmas, just because, well it's almost Christmas. But for some reason I wasn't picturing a card.

Then I thought about a treat holder I'm planning on making for each member of my family who will be getting together for Christmas dinner. And this is how it looks with these colours:

I followed a video made by Brenda Quintana, a fellow Stampin' Up demonstrator, who is a genius at coming up with the most inventive 3D items. These are really very easy and so quick to make!

The cardstock for the tree is Thick Whisper White, the star is cut from Gold Glimmer Paper, using the Star Framelits. For the trunk, I found a piece of Early Espresso in my scrap pile, that had been embossed. The silver foil wrapping on the Hershey Kisses fills the silver part of the colour challenge. And that's it!

Check out how the other Watercooler Artists handled this challenge, and then show us your stuff! Just visit the Watercooler Wednesday blog  to link up your project.
 

WWC97 - Penny's Sketch Challenge

Welcome to Watercooler Wednesday and Penny's Sketch Challenge. Sketch  Challenges are always so  much fun because they can be any colour-scheme, any occasion - or no occasion - or just because. This is the sketch Penny has for us this week:

I thought this sketch would be perfect for featuring some Designer Series Paper. In every catalogue, there is one package of DSP that really catches my eye. For the 2016-2017 Annual Catalogue, there were so many awesome collections - but one really stood out for me: This Christmas.

For one thing, you get 24 12 X 12 double-sided sheets in this collection! It is a little lighter weight than normal, but that doesn't matter when using it on cards. But, the best thing about this collection is that there are 4 - yes, 4 of each pattern!

I've been steadily using this DSP, but had not yet cut into the black & white snowflake design. This was the perfect project to use it on.

 
It's not a Christmas card - more of a Winter card. And the creation of this card happened just a couple of days before we had a major snowfall! Well, it was major for this area, anyway. I live on the west coast of Canada, in the province of British Columbia. And snow is not a regular occurrence here.

I decided to keep this card to black & white. Well, the DSP is Basic Black and Very Vanilla, but Stampin' Up doesn't have Very Vanilla ink.

The word "glow" is from a stamp set I was so lucky to get when I attended OnStage Local in Vancouver, BC last month. It's called Love Sparkles and is in the 2017 Occasions Catalogue. Don't you just love the script-y look of it? I stamped it onto the Basic Black cardstock using Whisper White Craft Ink.

The sketchy-looking star and the little stars around the circle are from the same stamp set, also in Whisper White Craft Ink. It's cut with a circle die from the Stitched Shapes Framelits set.

For the glow-factor, I used Clear Wink of Stella around the edges of the die-cut circle and in the centres of some of the snowflakes on  the DSP.

Check out what the other Watercooler Artists have come up with and then show us your interpretation. Just visit the Watercooler Wednesday Blog to link up.

WWC96 - Gail's Special Fold Challenge

It's my turn to host this week's challenge. I decided to really challenge myself and pick something I don't do a lot of - Special Folds.

A special fold that is popular right now is one called Pop Up Panel. I have watched several videos showing how it is done, and the one I found the most easily followed was done by Dawn Griffith, also a Stampin' Up demonstrator.

Recently, one of my sisters was visiting, and it just happened to be her birthday while she was here. So I took the opportunity to make her a Special Fold birthday card.

Here is the front:

I also dug into my hoard - uh - stash of favourite retired cardstock to use for the cardbase and ink. Lost Lagoon is just the best shade of blue! And it goes really well with the silver foil dotted pattern from the Halloween Night Specialty Designer Series Paper.

The image is stamped on Whisper White cardstock, using Lost Lagoon and Archival Basic Black inks. The images are from Touches of Texture and the sentiment is from Rose Wonder. I used markers in Daffodil Delight and Old Olive to colour the flowers and leaves.

Are you ready to see the inside?

My sister loves cats, so it was a purr-fect chance to use the Pretty Kitty stamp set. It took a variety of markers to colour each panel as I wanted each kitty to be a different colour. The grass image is from Sitting Here.

Here is a close-up of the kitties:

This really was a fun card to make and I hope you will give it a try. Or, any one of the other fantastic fold projects done by the other Watercooler Artists you can see at the Watercooler Wednsday Blog.