It is time for the Papertrey Ink’s Blog Hop. The inspiration piece was, indeed, very inspiring! Here is a snippet of the photo:

I love the colors, and the mix of florals and geometrics. Those are what I took to make my card:

The card base is Soft Stone. I embossed the moroccan tile background onto the edge of the card base. The tile image isn’t long enough to just do one impression. Knowing I would never link the two impressions perfectly, I made sure to stamp one end under where I wanted the large flower to overhang. It isn’t visible in the photo since the card is turned away, but I did pretty good; there is a little goof, but even in real life you have to really be looking for it.

Thanks for taking a peek!

The next PTI challenge I worked on was Watercoloring with Kay.

I chose my colors based on how they stamp…but apparently Ocean Tides watercolors green 🙂 Still, I’m happy with this. My card is much more subdued than Kay’s sample card, but the technique is fun.

Thanks for taking a peek!

Heather brought us a Pointillism Technique!

I really love Heather’s sample card – the dots are obvious, but it works. I think I may have over done my dots and blended too much.

I embossed both the front and back of the card base because the cream panel wraps around to the back and allows the twine to be tied at the spine. Just something different for me.

Thanks for taking a peek!

Got messy (but had fun!) while making my card for Lizzie’s Drips & Splatters challenge

This was fun and frustrating all at once! I loved Lizzie’s video – I learned how to do a bunch of different splatters – in the past I just winged it. Unfortunately I didn’t have any yarn (well, I know it is somewhere, but I could NOT find it!). I used some string and it didn’t want to hold the color. I was using watered down reinker and I’m thinking the color medium wasn’t thick enough like watered down paint might have been.

I wish the medium splatters in dark blue showed up better in the photo – they are done with Twinkling H2Os and they sparkle so prettily!

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with this background other than an ocean theme. When I started looking through my stamps I decided the life preserver would be a great way to add a pop of contrast color…from there choosing the sentiment was easy!

Thanks for taking a peek!

I am running out of steam; this is my fifth card today! The PTI team has brought us an inspiration challenge. There were so many wonderful artworks to chose from, but I settled on a ballet by Degas.

I love the colors from the artwork. I chose a wreath as it calls back to the ballet tutus.

Thanks for taking a peek!

Melissa brought us a video on how to do Floral Impressionism

I used watercolor paper and did one layer of white embossing, then watercoloring, then another layer of embossing, and a bit of darker details with a marker.

In keeping with the impressionism theme, I created a watercolor frame. I die cut the frame from Rustic Cream and then added layers of color with water and finally embossed it with the woodgrain impression plate.

Thanks for taking a peek!

Danielle brought us a gold leafing challenge! She showed us lots of ways to use it. I chose to do some stenciling:

My idea started with a hexagon stencil I had in my stash (cut with a Cover Plate from acetate). I thought I would do something with bees.

After I did the painting – and realized that it bled gold under the stencil, and also bled a pink color around the gold – I decided to add die-cut flower to what was becoming a collage. I used Autumn Rose as it went well with the pink color that bled out from the leafing. I added some stamped stems and small flowers.

When it came to adding a sentiment, I liked the One-Liner “happy” die. I was going to add a sub-sentiment, but found I liked the card without.

As my post title infers – my original thought was to have one or more bees on the card, but it just didn’t work.

You may notice that I mentioned the gold leafing bled pink around the gold. Well that pink was also very much on the inside of the card. I will have to figure something out to cover it up..but I will worry about that later. Definitely a learning opportunity!

Thanks for taking a peek!

The next challenge during PTI Stamp-a-Faire is creating a starry night.

When I started, I had my doubts – it was not pretty! But I dried the panel and added more ink and more water and eventually I loved what happened!

The video that Amy did for the challenge showed how to create a silhouette scene with black paint, but I thought I could do the same thing with dies. The deer is done in smokey shadow just to give it a bit of contrast from the landscape.

The sentiment is silver embossed.

To finish off the sky, I added some Soft Stone teeny tiny stars (from the Notched Star Banner die) and some sequins (in silver and iridescent), and a little white moon.

Oh my gosh this card makes me happy!!

Thanks for taking a peek!

Today is Papertrey Ink’s Stamp-A-Faire 2016! It started 7am eastern time – so I’m a bit behind already, but we have until Tuesday to post projects. This year’s theme is The Masters – each challenge will be inspired by a famous artist.

The first challenge was a color challenge, and I, of course, picked the one based off Van Gogh:

Here is what I made:

I love Van Gogh’s landscape paintings because they have so many layers and the colors are so beautiful. I wanted to imitate the layers. The background is sponged with Aqua Mist. The abstract half-circle images are from the Ahoy set.

Though my inspiration came from the Van Gogh painting, this sure does make me think about Monet’s lily pads.

Thanks for taking a peek!