Win It Wednesday 02-20-19

Win It Wednesday is PTI's fun new feature, where 3 different challenges are offered each Wednesday. One of the challenges this week is to make something with a favorite color of PTI cardstock. What? They are ALL my faves! I looked back through photos of cards I've made in the past year, and see that although I am an equal opportunity color user, I may use Kraft or Enchanted Evening a bit more than others.

Having said that, one of my favorite PTI colors that I don't see anywhere else is Ocean Tides. I really enjoyed Kelly Lunceford's Offset Gatefold Card post, and used Ruby Rose to die cut flowers and leaves from scraps of patterned paper, and Little Labels for the sentiment.

While I was in gatefold mode and had all the materials out, I made two more, using Enchanted Evening and Pale Peony cardstock, and Your Beautiful Birthday and Sentiment Staples: Welcome for the sentiments.

It was great to be inspired to get out some old products, and also to use up a few patterned paper scraps.

Papertrey Ink January Blog Hop Challenge

The inspiration for this month's Papertrey Ink Blog Hop Challenge was this image:

I fiddled around and came up with this:

I liked the black and white textures, and used shades of gray to piece together multiple backgrounds, including the Modern Backgrounds stencil. White cake layers from Your Beautiful Birthday didn't show up very well on the gray Square 1, although heat embossed dots in pink and yellow helped a bit. "Celebrate" is from Hooray, and the blue flower from Friendship Jar Flowers.  Colored cake layers or black dots on them probably would have worked better. I think this card is a good candidate to revamp on a future Transformation Tuesday.

As I was pulling out materials to make this, I was thinking just how versatile PTI products are and how much I enjoy finding a suitable stamp or die for what I have in mind!

Papertrey Ink December Blog Hop Challenge

I took a little time from the busy-ness of the holidays to deviate from Christmas colors and styles and create a card for the PTI December blog hop. With Valentine's Day not far ahead, the inspiration piece was this pretty embroidered heart:

I've been wanting to try the floating die cut technique that Jennifer McGuire featured recently, and this seemed like a good place to give it a whirl. I cut out a lot of die cuts from the Stitching Garden set, arranged them more or less to cover a heart shape, covered them with Press 'n' Seal, and die cut the heart. Then it was a matter of adding foam tape to the backsides and adhering it all in one piece to a card before peeling off the Press 'n' Seal. The result wasn't obviously a heart to me, so I penned a white line around it using the outside of the heart die. This might not have been the best test of this technique, but I definitely plan to try it again on a border.

My favorite part, however, was not this cool technique but using the teensy weensy rosebud stamps included in the set to create a background. I haven't added a sentiment yet because it could be a Valentine, a baby card, a wedding card or even a birthday. I'll add one as needed.

Thanks for a very fun inspiration!

Papertrey Ink November Blog Hop Challenge

I had a busy week and pretty much forgot about participating in the Papertrey Blog Hop, but realized I still had a few more hours to enter. The inspiration was this:

The red and white stripes caught my eye, and I remembered that I had a Bold Borders: Diagonal die. The project started out pretty well, with white stripes on Poppy cardstock.

It went downhill from there. I cut the Say It Simply: You & Yours sentiment from sticky-back paper, and applied gold Perfect Pearls. That turned out uneven and lighter than I had in mind, so I decided to heat emboss over it in gold. One product over the other gave it a rather odd texture. Charging ahead, I glued that down before I remembered I'd used sticky-back paper and should have peeled it off and stuck it down. Now I'm hoping it doesn't separate by itself.

Is that all? Oh, no. I added die cuts from Sending Joy and thought the holly leaves needed a few berries with Nuvo drops. I managed to smear one a little before it was dry, so decided to touch up the pink spots with white pen, and add a gold thread bow. The strands wouldn't loop, so I cut one side apart for a poof -- which poofed right over the ampersand in the sentiment.

Some days there's just no fixing all the mistakes and I doubt that I'll send this to anyone, but at first glance it came out OK and I'm submitting it.

Make It Monday, Masking and Sponging

There is a fun project this week at Papertrey Ink, layering die cuts and sponging a design layer by layer. The best tip was to mask with scraps of material such as Cricut vinyl which has an adhesive backing. I actually have some Cricut stencil vinyl, which was perfect. Best of all, I saved the shapes as I peeled them off and stored them with the stamp/die set for future use. Bonus!

My first attempt used the Palm Prints set, Wet Paint sentiment, and the very fun new Skinny Mini Banners which I can see I'm going to be using a lot.

I had so much fun, I ended up making another card. The finished product was kind of dark, so I used the Pinked A2 Vertical die to cut it down and also create a card base. Sentiment is Say It Simply: Lovely Birthday.

Card Transformation

One of the fun posts on the Papertrey Ink blog is the weekly Transformation Tuesday feature, where one of the design team showcases a previously-made card that they revised. I participated this week with a card using the Warm Regards stamp and die sets. My original card turned out nice, but the embossed sentiment didn't stand out unless the light hit it just right:

I updated the card with a vellum circle embossed with the same sentiment, and a strip of lighter cardstock behind it. Now it's worthy of sending!

Papertrey Ink September Blog Hop Challenge

This month's  PTI September blog hop challenge features this warm and cozy fall table setting:

My take on the inspiration piece used the Simply Gourd-eous stamps and dies for the pumpkin and gourds (love this set!). Palm Prints offered some leaves, and Mix & Mat: Plaid created the background. Sentiment was cut in burgundy from Words to Live By: Kindness. 

I love Fall!