Always Playing with Paper

Friday, May 8, 2015

The Challenge Reminder

There is still time to join us at The Challenge!

To play along, please CLICK HERE.

Thursday, May 7, 2015

Verve Inspiration Challenge {Such a Joy}

Verve Stamps has a wonderful challenge on this month all about Flowers! Yeah! I love using flower images and Verve has the best sentiments. I used some distress inks and created an inky background. Then I dried the ink with my heat gun and stamped this floral image in black on top. The sentiment is from the Verve set called Kind Words. Which is one of my favorite Verve sets!

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Freshly Made Sketches #185 {Watercoloured Blooms}

Watercolouring! I am enjoying it! I wanted to create some watercoloured flowers for my card at Freshly Made Sketches this week and I wanted to play along with the fun challenge at Verve Stamps which is all about flowers and the Simon Says Stamp challenge to use Coral. I used the Abandoned Coral distress ink to make my watercolour flowers.

I stamped the flowers from a stamp set called Contemporary Roses by MFT Stamps (designed by the lovely Mona Pendleton). That stamp set is retired now but I think Verve's Poppy Birthday set would work. I stamped the flowers on watercolour paper in distress inks and then I used a water brush to "paint" and soften the lines of the flowers.

Once I had the flowers all painted, I stamped the small leaf from a retired stamping up set and soften the stamped leaf image with water as well. Using my heat gun, I dried the paper and then added some blue highlighting around the flowers. I got the paper really wet with water and then dropped some of the colour onto the wet spots. The colour spread and that it how it dried. Then I stamped the sentiment from Verve's stamp set called Kind Words.

Here is some more watercolouring I did. I want to try making some one layer cards this way.

Monday, May 4, 2015

The Challenge #33 {A Sketch}

Welcome to The Challenge! This week we have another sketch for you to try! We are so excited because we have so many fabulous guests joining us this week! Let's get to this week's challenge!

This month we are thrilled to have designer Sandie Munro as our Featured Designer! I met Sandie through the Time Out Challenge and I think she is talented and so organized!! I asked her to share some information about herself.

Sandie Munro

"Hi there! I'm Sandie and I am passionate about making cards. I started crafting a few years ago and once I started I couldn't stop! My style is Clean and Simple. I am happiest when I have created a card with just stamps and inks and lots of white space! When I am not crafting, I like to walk, grow my own vegetable, and watch movies. I live in London and I love to explore all that it has to offer!. I am thrilled to be asked to design for 'The Challenge' and hope I can inspire you to join in.

Welcome, Sandie!

We are also excited to welcome a new designer to the team! Claire Broadwater is joining us and I am so happy she is! I love her work and she is such a positive and upbeat person! Welcome to the team, Claire. I asked Claire to tell us a bit about herself.

Claire Broadwater

Hi Everyone! I'm Claire Broadwater. I live in Greensboro, Georgia. I am a wife, Mom, Grammy, retired Elementary teacher (27 years), tennis player, reader, and avid card maker. I have always loved paper, crayons and coloring. I started scrapbooking years ago and became a card maker about 3 years ago. I love entering challenges and being on Design Teams. I have met so many amazing people through blogging/crafting. I am very thankful and honored to join “The Challenge” Design Team!

Welcome to the team, Claire!

For my card this week, I wanted to use the pretty WPlus9 stamp set called "Botanical Blooms". I love it! I coloured it with my Copic markers and added some designer paper. I wanted to keep my design simple and clean. I am playing along with the current Mama Elephant Challenge-"Make Me Say OOh that's Pretty!".

The design team have created some inspiration to get you in the crafting mood! Come and join us! Our weekly winner will be our next Guest Designer! So come and join the fun! We also have THREE Guests with us this week! Welcome to Jen, Jinny and Sarah!

Sandie Munro

(May's Featured Designer)

Jinny Newlin - Guest Designer

Jen Wills - Guest Designer

Sarah Platt - Guest Designer

Anita Madden

Claire Broadwater

Kim Heggins

Kimberly Wiener

Lee Ann Barrett

Lori Tecler

Michele Ferguson

Nance Salkeld

(on a break)

The Challenge Winners

Thank you for joining us last week at The Challenge! The team and I have have chosen the winners!

Every week it is so difficult for me to choose a winner! So many gorgeous entries. This week I decided to choose an adorable card that used polka dots in a creative and fun way! I love that she created her own background with the candle stamps and the sentiment is perfect!

Congratulations, Colleen!

I hope you will join us as a Guest Designer for The Challenge! Please email our Guest Designer Coordinator, Kimberly Wiener at oloughlin.ka @ gmail.com (no spaces) for more information!

Please join us in one hour, we will be back with a brand new challenge for you!

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Winnie & Walter, Butterfly Reflections Ink & Simon Says Stamp {Hello}

Another post from me! I am enjoying my tidy craft space and some fun National Scrapbooking Day challenges in blog land. I am a newbie to the Butterfly Reflections Ink Challenge, I am linking up to the Simon Says Stamp Challenge and I am also playing with the Winnie & Walter Sketch Challenge.

I pulled out an old retired floral set from Stampin' Up and matched it with some pretty washi tape. Heat embossing the flowers in white and then watercolouring them with distress inks on watercolour paper was fun! I wanted to reflect the mood board challenge. I love the trend of these bright colours matched with gold and I wanted to give it a whirl!

National Scrapbooking Day Cards

Happy weekend! I am feeling accomplished as I managed to get crafty AND I cleaned up my craft room. It was a disaster. Here are two cards I made. One for the Viva la Verve Sketch Challenge and one for the Winnie & Walter mood board challenge. Both photos were taken with my phone and posted on Instagram. I wanted to try them on my blog to see how they looked!

The Mood Board Challenge at Winnie & Walter is so pretty and fun! I was immediately inspired to play with my distress inks and watercolour some embossed images from Verve. I am also entering this into the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge-Anything Goes.

My second card also uses Verve stamps and it is for their first sketch of the month. I love clean lines and I decided to ink the flowers with a SU! marker and "huff" it. I like the effect and I hope you do too!