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

Art with Heart Colour Creations Showcase - #27 Mint Macaron

Mint Macaron with Stitched Leaves and Gilded Autumn

Hello. Welcome to Valley Inspirations with Andrea and the 27th 2020 Colour Creations Showcase by members of the Art with Heart Team.

This week we are focussing on a beautiful green called Mint Macaron. It is part of the Subtle colour family - a softer green, though not really pale. Mint Macaron was introduced as an In Colour many years ago and was really popular, then during a Stampin' Up! colour refresh, it returned as one of the Subtles. It can be found in Stampin' Up!s card-stock; Classic Stampin' inks (ink pads, re-inkers); Stampin' Write Markers; Stampin' Blends; numerous Designer Series Papers, packs and ribbon, incl Gilded Autumn Speciality Designer Series Paper which I have used in this card.

I saw a fancy fold again recently that I have been wanting to try for quite a while and then watched a Facebook Live by Emma Goddard, one of Stampin' Up!s current Artisans, where she created two Tri-Fold Shutter cards. Deciding to "strike while the iron was hot" this Colour Creation's project is a Tri-Fold Shutter card. Thanks Emma for the inspiration. The other early decision I made was to use one of the Mint Macaron designs in the oh so gorgeous Gilded Autumn Speciality DSP. They are delicious papers with metallic highlights.

Mint Macaron card-stock was used as the base. I used a half A4 sheet, cut to 15cm x 29.8cm. This base was scored on the short side at 5cm and 10cm, that is dividing it into three 5cm sections. Turning the rectangle of card-stock to the 29.8cm side, it was scored at 5cm, 10cm, 19.8cm and 24.8cm. Turning back to the short side the cutting blade was placed over the scored lines, but cutting started at the 5cm position, which is where the first scores on each side intersect, and finishing at the 24.8cm point. This cut was repeated on the other parallel score line. Burnishing with a bone folder was really important.

The Brass Metallic sheets and the metallic leaf SDSP were cut into pieces to decorate each panel, with the Brass pieces being used as the mount. The only exception was a Very Vanilla card-stock rectangle that was swapped for the central panel. The SDSP pieces and the Very Vanilla rectangle were adhered directly to the metallic card-stock; which in turn were adhered directly to the base panels. I had intended to dry emboss the Very Vanilla panel but had already glued it in place before remembering, so cut a piece of Vellum and dry embossed it with one of the Meadow Moments embossing folders.

Decorating the panels would have been such fun - but I couldn't make up my mind!?!? I started by punching and fussy cutting many leaves from other designs of the Gilded Autumn SDSP. You should see my crafting station - there are small metallic, DSP and coloured leaves everywhere!!! But then decided I wasn't keen on the concept I had in mind. Okay - what to do ... I remembered the Love of Leaves bundle that I had recently purchased. (I had really loved this bundle but already had leaf stamp sets - so resisted. Then I noticed that this bundle was carrying over to 2021 - my resistance evaporated. And I am so glad it did. I cut and embossed the leaves in both Brass Foil and Vellum card-stock. I also stamped and die cut numerous leaves. These leaves were amazing too!

Playing with the arrangement of leaves, I decided to just use the Brass Foil and Vellum leaves. Each leaf was shaped a little with my fingers and a Bone Folder to add some character and dimension. A mix of Multipurpose Liquid Glue and Mini Dimensionals was used to position the leaves in place. A sentiment from the Beautiful Autumn stamp set was stamped in Pretty Peacock Classic ink onto Very Vanilla card-stock. It was trimmed and popped up with Dimensionals.

I tried a range of ribbons, trims, embellishments etc and eventually decided to use the Gold Twine from the Forever Greenery Trim Combo pack and one of the delightful Acorn Trinkets. I haven't been well and my creative mojo seemed to have dissipated so I really appreciate being inspired by Emma and having such gorgeous Stampin' Up! products to work with. I hope you like the end result.

As the central panel was decorated including being covered with embossed Vellum, a few pieces of Very Vanilla card-stock were adhered to a few of the panels on the back of the card. Leaves that had been stamped in Soft Sea Foam were added. These stamped leaves are gorgeous as the stamp set is one of Stampin' Up!s distinctive stamps - I love the variegated painterly effect. A couple of the leaves were also stamped on the envelope (I had intended to use a C6 Very Vanilla envelope, but grabbed a Whisper White envelope instead. I didn't notice till I was photographing the project. Oops.)

Thank you for visiting my blog and sharing in some Mint Macaron creativity. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any queries, would like me to send you a Stampin' Up! catalogue or if I can help you with any products.

Catherine Proctor is our wonderful 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 other Showcase participants. I'm looking forward to checking out everyone's Mint Macaron creations. It is always inspiring to see the amazing projects created by my colleagues and their application of the colour.

I hope to see you again next week when members of the team will share projects that hero Misty Moonlight. This is another beautiful colour.

Do look after yourself and your loved ones. Stay well, stay safe and be kind to yourself and others in these strange times. 

Andrea 💕🐾

#colourcreationsshowcase