Art with Heart Colour Creations Showcase - #38 Pumpkin Pie

Pumpkin Pie with Love of Leaves 

Hello. Welcome to Valley Inspirations with Andrea and the 38th 2020/2021 Colour Creations Showcase by members of the Art with Heart Team.

This week we are focussing on a vibrant strong orange called Pumpkin Pie. Pumpkin Pie can be found in the Stampin' Up! Regal's collection. While its a great orange, it is not a colour I reach for often, but when you need an orange orange, its great. Pumpkin Pie is produced in Stampin' Up!s card-stock, both A4 & 12"x12"; Classic Stampin' inks (ink pads, re-inkers); Stampin' Write Markers; Stampin' Blends, Water colour pencils, Designer Series Papers, including the Fine Art Floral Designer Series Paper; Holiday Rhinestone Basic Jewels and Sequins For Everything.

I have only been able to complete one project this week in time for the Colour Creations Showcase going live. My second card, a fancy fold, is still "under construction" and not ready for public consumption. I will try to complete if after finishing preparations for Friday's class. As Pumpkin Pie is a strong regal orange, I wanted to steer away from a heavily orange card so needed to focus on balance and coordination.

My first concept for using Pumpkin Pie was its brilliance in Autumn leaves. The Love of Leaves stamp set is gorgeous and coordinates so well with the Stitched Leaves dies. I was delighted that this set is carrying over from the July-December 2020 Mini Catalogue into the coming Annual Catalogue for 2021-2022. It will be available to demonstrators soon. So exciting.

I am finding that water-colouring is a brilliant way of understanding a colour; so I started by painting stripes using Pumpkin Pie Classic Stampin' ink with the broad bristle Water Painter on Fluid 100 Water-colour paper. 

The Love of Leaves stamp set is amazing, as the photopolymer stamp set gives the effect of water-colour by varying the strength to the ink when stamped. The trick is not to have a really juicy inkpad as this will clog the stamp and you will loose this beautiful effect. Reminiscent of Autumn leaves, I wanted to have multi-colour leaves, so decided to use the sponge dauber to stamp technique. Each of the 5 leaf shapes were different colour combinations, ie 

• So Saffron, Mango Melody & Pumpkin Pie; 
• So Saffron, Pear Pizzaz & Pumpkin Pie; 
• Pumpkin Pie & Melon Mambo (a big thank you to Emma Goddard for using this combination at her Facebook Live on Monday - I never would have thought to put the 2 colours together, but I now love the combination); 
• Pear Pizazz, Mango Melody & Crumb Cake; and lastly, 
• Melon Mambo, So Saffron with a touch of Mango Melody.

Each of the leaves were die cut with the respective Stitched Leaves dies - which gave a wow stitched effect on the leaves.

The Basic White card-stock card front was embossed with the stitched lines die from the die set. Such a gorgeous effect. (As you can see I do love the dies and the stamp set.) The card front had a section of the LHS cut away using the simpler curvy die from the Curvy Dies.

As the painted stripes were fairly dominant, a layer of Vellum was laid over the stripes. The white card front was popped up on Dimensionals, showing the stripes on the left. The larger stamped leaves were positioned at different angles using a mix of Multipurpose Liquid glue and Dimensionals, allowing the leaves to float down along the curvy edge of the white panel. The smaller leaves were added on the other side.

A scrap of Fluid 100 Water-colour paper was painted with Pumpkin Pie Classic Stampin' ink. Once dry, a sentiment from the same stamp set was stamped in Versamark ink and heat embossed using White Stampin' Emboss powder. The sentiment was trimmed so it would span the width of the card. To give this strip a little more definition, the edges were lightly coloured with Crumb Cake ink and a Sponge Dauber. The sentiment strip was popped up on Dimensionals across the card. A few Gilded Gems were added as the finishing touch.

I had stamped extra leaves, as initially, I hadn't fully decided how they would be used. As they were scattered on my desk, I used the larger leaf with a sentiment inside the card and two other leaves on the envelope. Stamping the leaves would also have worked, but my Mum used to say "Waste not, want not".

I really enjoyed creating with Pumpkin Pie.  I was tentative that the card would be overpowered with this strong orange, but have tried to balance Pumpkin Pie with white space, soften it a tad with vellum and include other coordinating colours.

Thank you so much for spending time with me. 😘

Catherine Proctor is the brilliant host of the Art with Heart Colour Creations Showcase. If you haven't finished visiting all of the team's colour creations, you can visit/revisit Catherine's page at What Cathy Made, where she hosts all the links to the participating blogs so you can find everyone's Pumpkin Pie creations. Checking out everyone's creations and their interpretation of the amazing Stampin' Up! colours is always inspiring. 

I hope to see you again next week when members of the team share projects that hero Purple Posy, a pretty light purple. 

Stay well, stay safe and be kind to yourself and others as these strange times continue. Hopefully, life with settle to a better normality before too long.

Andrea 💕🐾

#colourcreationsshowcase