PTI February 2015 Blog Hop

If it wasn't for Papertrey Ink and their design team, I'm not sure I'd squeeze time in my stamp room. This month's Blog Hop challenges us with a beautiful inspiration piece to get creativity flowing. Well, that's just what it did for me. Here is our inspiration:

photo credit: Micklyn via society6

Now I've never had an artistic bone in my body, but it's fun to try sometimes. The only cover plate I own is Hexagons so that made an easy decision for starting my design. Using sponge daubers and ink pads, I very carefully sponged on white card stock with the white die-cut of the Hexagon Cover Plate carefully taped down so nothing would move. I used six different ink pads (listed below) in random order and before removing the die-cut, I spritzed it with water and let it dry. Added some layers for texture and dimension with a little bling, and this is my end result. Have lots of March birthdays coming up so I hope the recipient likes it. 

Had I been able to create this and photograph it in daylight, the colors would be more accurate. Believe it or not, the "happy" die cut is really SU Elegant Eggplant, but it looks more black or dark brown. 

Supplies: (all PTI unless noted)

Cardstock: Stamper's Select White, Tropical Teal, SU Pixie Pink, SU Elegant Eggplant and Vellum

Ink: Sweet Blush, Hibiscus Burst, Royal Velvet, Aqua Mist, Hawaiian Shores and Tropical Teal

Stamps: Wet Paint

Dies: Hexagon Cover Plate, Half & Half, Wet Paint Cuts and Sizzix Embosslits Beautiful Wings

Other: Rhinestones (Studio G), Glue Dots and SU Dimensionals

Papertrey Ink's 8th Anniversary Blue Ombre (Day 8)

Thursday's challenge for PTI's 8th Anniversary on Nichole's blog was to create a new project that features a blue ombre effect using all our favorite shades of this beautiful color. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Well, unfortunately I sold off all my SU ink pads and the bulk of my card stock preparing to replace them with my PTI Anniversary order so this was a bit of a struggle for me. Spring Rain ink and card stock wouldn't quite meet the criteria for ombre. Dug out three Pentel Color Pens, scribbled them on an old CD case, spritzed with water and "smooshed" a piece of watercolor paper in it to get various shades of blue. Hopefully, this qualifies.

I covered my white card base with a piece of SU Designer Paper before adhering my watercolored design. 

Supplies: (all PTI unless noted)

Cardstock: Stamper's Select White and SU Designer Paper (stash)

Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black

Stamps: Boutique Borders: Congrats and Keep It Simple: Get Well

Dies: None

Other: Watercolor Paper, Pentel Color Pens, Sequins (stash) and SU Dimensionals

Papertrey Ink's 8th Anniversary Heavy Metal (Day 7)

PTI's Heavy Metal Challenge on February 11 here on Nichole's blog was to create a project featuring nothing but metallics and neutrals. Because I tend to lean more toward gold than silver, I found a way to incorporate that into a card.

Because my black ink didn't stamp really well (even stamping twice using my MISTI), I ended up masking each stripe and stamping VersaMark before heat embossing the black stripes. It was several more steps than I anticipated but worth it. Opted to add a vellum die cut beneath my gold "Celebrate" to add dimension to the focal point. That's it for this challenge.

Supplies: (all PTI unless noted)

Cardstock: Classic Kraft and Vellum

Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black and VersaMark 

Stamps: Background Basics: Super Stripes

Dies: Boutique Borders: Congrats and Uncorked Words

Other: Black Embossing Powder, Quickie Glue Pen and (Gold) Metallic Paper Stack (DCWV)

Papertrey Ink's 8th Anniversary Spring Into Action (Day 5)

Since we're all looking forward to Spring, PTI wants us to "spring" into action and use a stamp set from our collection that hasn't seen ink…or hasn't been used enough. Don't even ask how many sets I "had to have" but yet I've only used one stamp from each set. Today's card uses stamps from two different seldom-used sets. Looks like the number of entries each day is increasing so I won't keep you. Hope you're having a great Monday ~ here's my card.

The vellum was die cut using Take Three, which is just a tad bigger than the opening of Framed Out #12. Embossed the sentiment in white and stamped the frame using Sweet Blush ink. The Berry Sorbet panels stamped using VersaMark and Fancy Flourishes were attached with SU dimentionals to the Bitty Dot paper for added dimension. Added some sequins for a little bling.

Supplies: (all PTI unless noted)

Cardstock: Stamper's Select White, Vellum, Berry Sorbet and Berry Sorbet Bitty Dot

Ink: Sweet Blush and VersaMark 

Stamps: Framed Out #12 and Fancy Flourishes

Dies: Framed Out #12 and Take Three

Other: White Embossing Powder, Sequins (stash) and SU Dimensionals

Papertrey Ink's 8th Anniversary Build A Bouquet (Day 4)

Using florals from different stamp sets, we were to build a bouquet for Sunday's challenge here. Since a good majority of my stamp sets include flowers, I just needed to narrow it down to the right size blooms. Therefore, I used stamps from three sets. Thought it would be fun to "smoosh" some inks together similar to what Betsy did. What I did was smear five different ink colors in an old CD case and "smoosh" them together with a paint brush as you can see in my background. The rest is self-explanatory.

Supplies: (all PTI unless noted)

Cardstock: Winter Wisteria and Stamper's Select White

Ink: Royal Velvet, Ripe Avocado, Harvest Gold, Berry Sorbet, Sweet Blush, Hawaiian Shores and Winter Wisteria

Stamps: Beautiful Blooms II, Ruby Reprise and Reasons to Smile

Dies: Lil Inkers Stitched Rectangles

Other: Twinery Twine, Black Fine Point Marker and SU Dimensionals

Papertrey Ink's 8th Anniversary Gift Tag (Day 3)

Today's challenge on Nichole's blog in honor of PTI's 8th Anniversary was to create a handmade tag for a matching gift bag. It's not very often I make tags because even if I use a gift bag, I usually include a homemade card. However, my Tag Sale #9 dies were staring me in the face wanting to be used. Here's my tag (both layers) as I was creating it.

Tag before I tied it together with twine.

Tag attached to gift bag.

Edited to Add: Entering this in Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge, H is for Heart

Supplies: (all PTI unless noted)

Cardstock: Stamper's Select White, Classic Kraft and Scarlet Jewel

Ink: Scarlet Jewel and Pure Poppy

Stamps: Grunge Me, Sketched Shapes and 2012 Birthday Tags

Dies: Tag Sale #9 and Bubble Talk

Other: Twinery Twine

Papertrey Ink's 8th Anniversary & Maile Belles Inspiration (Day 2)

Friday was the second day of PTI's Anniversary Festivities which challenged us to seek inspiration from Maile Belles' creations and find one to recreate. It was hard to choose because I just love her style, and she was instrumental in me "needing" to buy Watercolor Wonder. This first card was a fun one because it is very similar to card stock in her newly-created paper pad. Here's my card:

Supplies: (all PTI unless noted)

Cardstock: Stamper's Select White

Ink: Tropical Teal, Berry Sorbet, Sweet Blush, Harvest Gold, Aqua Mist and Memento Tuxedo Black

Stamps: Watercolor Wonder and Wet Paint

Dies: Tipped Tops

Other: Enamel Dots (Michaels) and SU Dimensionals

I was on a roll after perusing Maile's blog here so I recreated her third card from the same post last March. Here's mine:

Edited to Add: Both cards are also being entered in Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge, All Things Bright and Beautiful

Supplies: (all PTI unless noted)

Cardstock: Stamper's Select White

Ink: Berry Sorbet, Hawaiian Shores, Harvest Gold and Sweet Blush

Stamps: Wet Paint

Dies: None

Other: MS Butterfly Punch, Glue Dots (Joann's) and Black Gems (Michaels)

Papertrey Ink's 8th Anniversary Begins With Recipes (Day 1)

The first day of Papertrey Ink's 8th Anniversary has many of us off and running to create as many daily challenges as possible through February 15.

There are lots of awesome gift certificates up for grabs, and I sure hope I'm a lucky winner because I've got a long wish list. Nichole provided eight Color Recipes and eight Sketch Recipes as inspiration, and our challenge was to select one of each to create a project. First I'll show the "recipes" I chose and then my card.

Supplies: (all PTI unless noted)

Cardstock: Harvest Gold, Classic Kraft and Hawaiian Shores

Ink: New Leaf and Raspberry Fizz

Stamps: Harvest Berries

Dies: Wet Paint Cuts

Other: SU Dimensionals

PTI MIM #200: Layering Cover Plate Die Cuts

Dawn McVey shared her technique of layering cover plate dies using two different colors of card stock with one shadowing the other. Her video can be seen on Nichole's blog here. Since I only own one cover plate, I went with Hexagons for my Thinking of You card. With this being Papertrey Ink's 8th Anniversary, we all have lots of creating and blog hopping to do so I'll get right to my card.

It's pretty self-explanatory so I'll just go without details. Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies: (all PTI unless noted)

Cardstock: Vintage Cream, Aqua Mist, Hawaiian Shores, Raspberry Fizz, Harvest Gold and SU Groovy Guava

Ink: Raspberry Fizz, Tropical Teal & VersaMark

Stamps: Iconic Images and Happy Hexagons

Dies: Hexagon Cover Plate

Other: Yellow Patterned Paper and Aqua Mist Patterned Paper (stash), Pink Rhinestones (stash) and Foam Tape