Water-Color-Blocking for Color My Heart #93

 Hello, crafty friends!

I'm Guest Designer this week, over at Color My Heart.

They are playing with a four-color palette:

CRANBERRY

HONEY

JUNIPER &

TWILIGHT

I've been "attending" Online Card Classes' latest offering, Watercolor for Card-Makers. It runs this week and next and is full of tips and techniques to add water-coloring to your bag of crafting tricks. 

I think the thing that's impressed me the most so far, is that you have little-to-no-control with watercolouring! Water just goes where it wants to, as in nature. You have to learn to "embrace the splotch..."

For my Color My Heart project, I tried a technique using my CTMH dye-based inks, a 1" square stamping block and a mister.

I applied the block directly to the ink-pad, misted it (the inked-up block) until the ink started to pool, and stamped onto a piece of watercolor paper, creating a color-block matrix of the four colours.

 The above image is one I tried using Distress Markers instead of ink pads.  Much more flowing and blending of the colours (see what I mean about no control?).

And here is the final card:

If the original squares aren't watery enough, you can go back and stamp over them again, after they've dried. For a final smudgy touch, I flicked some drops of water over the card.

The sentiment was stamped in Archival Black ink; the heart was stamped again on a scrap of paper, given the same watercolor treatment and popped up with foam tape.

Grab your ink-pads and head on over to Color My Heart to see some great creations by the rest of the team. We hope you'll get inky with us this week! Challenge rules are posted on the CMH blog.

Happy crafting,

Caroline

Supplies:

watercolor paper, Michaels

Colonial White cardstock card-base, CTMH

Dye-based ink pads in: Cranberry, Honey, Juniper and Twilight, Archival Black, CTMH

Acrylic stamping block

Mini-mister, Ranger Industries

Stamp set, CTMH

foam tape

...Around my heart

Another quick post tonight to link up a quilt-inspired card for

The challenge at the Curtain Call is sponsored by Lil' Inker Designs.

Here's my faux-stitched raggedy quilt:

I used the LID stitched square mats to cut out some cute prints, and one solid-colour square to show off the circular element, also from Lil' Inker Designs. The ribbon was coloured with a matching Distress marker. Sentiment is an old quilting themed set from Papertrey Ink.

Good night, all!

Color My Heart #72--Barn Red

We have a single colour challenge for you at Color My Heart this week:

Barn Red is an interesting colour--more of a warm brown than a red. It made me think of warm quilts, and inspired by this photo:

And using this die:

I came up with this card:

While I used a chevron pattern die, you could easily use one of the many overlays from the CTMH ArtBooking Cartridge to recreate this card.

I wanted to include some patterned paper on that section on the right side, like on the quilt. I cut up some of the coordinating papers from the Huntingdon pack (bamboo and slate), but couldn't decide which looked best. While re-arranging them, some fell out, leaving the white recessed space. The "missing pieces" led to the sentiment!
The big bow may be over kill, but it needed a little something-something.

How will you interpret this one-clour challenge?
Head over to the Color My Heart blog for more inspiration, and rules to link up.
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See that shiny twine on the sentiment tag? There is a metallic Divine Twine giveaway going on, over at Whisker Graphics. Use this LINK to check it out.

Supplies:

Cardstock in Colonial White, Barn Red, Huntingdon paper pack

Ink in Barn Red and Cashmere

The Twinery silver metallic twine

Sizzix tag die

Lil'Inker Chevron Cover-up die

Sheer brown ribbon, Michael's

Sentiment stamp (retired) Close to My Heart.    

Jewel Tones--Color My Heart Dare #52

Color My Heart Dare #52...this must mean the first anniversary of the Color My Heart challenge blog! I'll have to check on that with creator, Sarah Stone.



The design team is now taking turns, posting every other week, and I'm really happy with this week's challenge palette:  a trio of jewel tones,

TWILIGHT
OLIVE and
RUBY

Prompted by this image from an on-line catalogue, Keepsake Quilting (a GREAT place to go browse for design ideas, BTW),

I decided to stick with an Amish theme and showcase those colours against a backdrop of basic black.

The quilt blocks were made using a couple of different dies. The background square is from my fave Lil'Inker's Stitched Mats series. The actual templates are from a die I purchased from Simon Says Stamp, Wplus9 Quilt Cuts 2. For a pattern like this, I recommend using a die or punch to get your shapes perfectly-sized. I can tell you, from years of experience quilting, that there is nothing more annoying than having to repeatedly trim a seam to get it to fit.

We attended the wake for a friend's father last weekend, and needed a sympathy card, so the sentiment from Papertrey Ink, Quilter's Sampler was perfect.

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Now it's your turn!

How do those beautiful saturated colours inspire you?

Go visit the Color My Heart blog to see some more lovely creations by the design team, then break out your scissors and ink and get crafty. We love seeing your work!

Remember, the challenge colours do NOT have to be Close to My Heart. Use what you have.

You have until next Thursday, July 25th, to link up your project.

Happy crafting,

Caroline

Supplies:

Cardstock in Colonial White, Black, Twilight, Olive and Ruby (CTMH)

Ink in Black

Lil'Inker Designs Stitched Mats-Squares

Wplus9 Quilt Cuts 2

Papertrey Ink Quilter's Sampler Sentiment stamp set

Color My Heart #33--Quilting with Paper

This was my week "off" at the Color My Heart challenge dare. No deadline, no homework. However, I was really impressed with the paper combinations of my fellow DT members. I also had to finish up a package of note-cards for a fund-raising auction at work. So I thought I'd join in the fun anyway!

This card design was created by my friend Kristin Yatso. It looks good in pretty much any colour and the more fabric-like the patterned paper, the better. 

I used the "For Always" paper-pack and the retired "Elemental,"both of which have smaller-scale patterns. The LAGOON base is a 3" square, matted on a black stitched-square mat from Lil' Inker Designs. With three different patterned papers, start by cutting 2 one-inch squares in the darkest paper; cut both in half diagonally, creating two right-angle triangles. Cut one 1"-square of the lightest colour into four smaller triangles, by cutting it in half along the diagonal, then cutting each of those pieces in half again. Use a single 1" square of a coordinating pattern (which picks up the colour of the 3" base) for the central square. Everything is just glued down. You could stitch the triangles for added texture, but it would be a little putzy, as the pieces are pretty small.

The cute sentiment is from an older Papertrey Ink set with all kinds of quilting references and sayings. The stitched-detail button (perfect!) is from the new black and grey button collection from

 Close to My Heart. 

Check out all the other great projects at Color My Heart:

And join in the fun! Link closes midnight on Thursday, March 14th.

Happy Crafting,

Caroline

I {heart} Dad

I am submitting this card to a couple of challenges this week:  Retro Sketches Challenge #13, with this sketch as inspiration

and the CAS-ual Friday Challenge CFC54, where the idea is to create a masculine card, using designer paper.

Closer to home, my inspiration for this Father's Day card came from the beautiful quilted wall-hanging my friends made when I left Milwaukee:

Isn't it gorgeous?  I was also impressed by a series of quilt-inspired items created recently by Miriam Prantner (see her blog HERE). "Quilting" using paper is so much quicker and easier than using fabric!


At CAS-ual Fridays this week, the DT was using a masculine paper pack from Gina K (check out the details and samples using THIS link). I used a mish-mash of paper scraps from Close to My Heart, Sizzix and Paper Wishes "Noted"(that fabulous herringbone pattern) which resembled men's shirts. I first crumpled them up to give more of a sense of texture, then machine-stitched them to a cardstock heart. This was trimmed with deckle scissors to give a frayed look to the edge, as in raw edges of the original quilt.
Now that its finished, it doesn't look quite so Clean and Simple as intended...oh well!

I replaced the scallop at the bottom of the sketch with the die-cut letters "Dad." I used hemp for a bow and kraft paper for the background.

Now that my sewing machine is sitting on the craft table, I ought to tackle one of my unfinished quilting projects...maybe in time for Father's Day?