Peep of the Week: Sunflower Flair

This is my latest Peep of the Week entry, and this card was also a prototype for my entry in the Pop Goes the World challenge, as I was experimenting with repeating sunflower and circle designs. At the same time, I decided to try a neat technique for making DIY embellishments.

I had made a few “epoxy” blanks already (the secret is glossy accents and acetate!), so I stamped three sunflower sprays, colored them with copics and then die cut matching shapes. To finish my Sunny Harvest “flair,” I adhered the sunflowery circles to the blanks. I used three of these embellishments to create a card with raised elements. I coordinated the background of the flair with the pattered paper, enamel dots around the sentiment, and the polka-dotted card base.

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Pop Goes the World Challenge

My entry for the Power Poppy August Pop Goes the World challenge uses the sunflowers from the Sunny Harvest stamp set. This month’s challenge had a color requirement—to use at least three of the following colors: turquoise, buttery yellow, rusty red, and grassy green. I was inspired by a cool pack of paper I found at The Stamp Addict’s annual garage sale, which features sunflowers, daisies and butterflies on backgrounds of greens and blues.

I wanted to try a “sunken 3-D” effect, so I layered copic-colored sunflower sprays under a column of circles die cut from the patterned paper. While this paper had the requisite buttery yellows on a turquoise background, I repeated those two colors on my sunflowers and also added bright green berries.

I used a sentiment from the Sunny Harvest set, and added some enamel dots from the My Mind’s Eye Market Street collection. I decided to repeat the gold sparkle from the enamel dots on the sunflowers with a swipe from a Wink of Stella gold pen.

I thought a polka dot card base (Lawn Fawn) would add a whimsical touch, and then I went even further by die-cutting a ruffled edge on the bottom (also Lawn Fawn).

 

Peep of the Week: Farmer’s Market Matchbox

Author Note: my matchbox was a Peep of the Week for August 22, 2014!

My entry for Power Poppy’s Peep of the Week is a little paper matchbox that features the Power Poppy Farmer’s Market stamp set.  Look at those gorgeous veggies!

The matchbox opens up to reveal a tiny glassine envelope full of seeds. You could, of course, put other small/flat gifts in there.  Maybe a set of labels or stickers? Or perhaps a card-making friend would love a handy box full of Vintage Seed Packet stamps?

I used the new Matchbox Die from Tim Holtz to cut the wrapper from Recollections 110lb card stock (I’m really liking this heavier paper that I can just grab from Michaels with a coupon. Coloring on it with my Copics has been a pleasure). I cut the little drawer from green Bazzil card stock.  I assembled the bottom part right away, but I wanted to stamp and color the wrapper before assembling.

The swiss chard was a blast to color—I chose to make them look like Bright Lights variety, which can have veins of shocking pink or bright yellow. Shading the eggplant was new to me, and I’m still not sure I have the hang of it. The biggest challenge was coloring the  turnips! I tried tip-to-tip blending (V04 on V000) for the first time to get the effect I wanted:  purplish tops that shaded to creamy bottoms. My dad had brought us a few garden tomatoes when he visited, so I lined them up for some inspiration as well.

I think that the tiny sentiments in the Farmer’s Market set are so great.  While they are the perfect fit for the sign that tops the cauliflower stamp, they are also just the right size for tags and other small applications.  I used “EAT your veggies,” but I predict that “Just for you” will see a lot of use too.

To finish my little seed packet, I stamped just a sprig from the Springtime Love set onto the tiny tag and then colored and wrote out the label. Just a bit of twine around the package, and my little gift of cilantro seeds is tucked in and ready to go!

I’m popping one last picture down here, to show the scale of this matchbox.  My husband was surprised that it was much smaller than it looked in photos!

 

Peep of the Week: Like a Comic Strip!

Author Note: My tickets won Peep of the Week for August 8, 2014! 

For my Power Poppy Peep of the Week Challenge entry, I’d like to say that Comic-Con arriving in my town inspired me to create these fun floral tickets! I just love Marcella’s lively illustrations, and I wanted to give her peonies (from the first Dynamic Duos set) a bold “pop-art” treatment.

I cut the tickets out of some mixed-media paper, using the Tim Holtz Ticket Strip die. Then I masked and stamped the images in Memento Tuxedo Black. I love stamping just parts of a flower and leaving plenty of negative space. Suddenly these blooms looked dynamic and about to tumble into motion! I colored the peonies with copics (using the R, RV and V color families), and selected BG11 Moon White for the background.  It reminded me of the skies a superhero might fly through.

I was very tempted to add some sort of 3-D embellishment (altered tickets are often mini collages and adorned with charms), but I thought it would take away from the comic-strip look I was going for. However, I did succumb to temptation for these other two tickets. I gave them a little “sugar coating” with Rock Candy Distress Glitter.  Sparkly!

 

Let’s talk tags!

I die cut these tags after coloring the bouquet from Powerpoppy’s Springtime Love stamp set, and I just love how detailed and festive they look.