Cards for Challenges

Typically, I do a separate post for each challenge, although I notice many submit to several challenges at once. I finally had time to sit down and play for awhile yesterday. I started out playing with a new-to-me set from Simon Says called “Cups and Succulents.” I used the opportunity to also play with my Copic markers and start a Copic Combo chart. Thanks to Cathy Zielske, I have a decent-looking chart. There is, however, some bleeding of the colors. I used Neenah Solar White cardstock to print the chart which is supposed to be Copic-friendly, but I also had some trouble with bleeding when coloring my images. If anyone has some suggestions to prevent bleeding, I’d appreciate them. Sorry for the shadow on the chart, I snapped this in a hurry with my phone and didn’t even notice it until I uploaded it.

I pulled the succulent set out before we left when I saw the challenge on Fusion, called Cactus Door.

Most often when I’m playing along with this challenge, I use just the photograph, but this time I used both the sketch and the photo.

It’s an Ripe Avocado card base with Bitty Big paper in Simply Chartreuse. I never realized how well those two green work together. 

I played around with several Copic combinations, but I’m happy with the pot and the succulent. I attended a certification in Copics years ago, but never put the practice time in to be particularly good at it. Now I’m determined to improve!

The next card uses the same set and is for the Time Out Challenge which has a quote for the inspiration.

This time I started with a Soft Stone card base and Bitty Big paper of the same shade die cut with a Stitched Rectangle from Simon Says. I put a very thin green mat of Pinefeather behind it.

The sentiment is from a Simon Says set that came with a card kit two years ago called “Happy and Smile.” I’m not sure why I haven’t used it much as it has some really useful sentiments. 

The inside sentiment reads “It’s Your Day!” 

Last, but not least, I wanted to play around with Papertrey Ink’s Make It Monday, with Laurie Schmidlin, creating shadow backgrounds. I’ve used this technique before so I didn’t think it would be particularly stressful. Just when you get cocky, you find out that’s it’s not so easy after all. I chose an oldie but goodie, “Friends Til The End.” The focal flower in the set comes in two sizes. I used the smaller one for the background, and the large one for the colored focal point.

The problems started when I realized I needed to mask the background stamp. As it turned out, I needed two separate mask. Not that it’s hard, but cutting these flowers is a bit time-consuming. I had already gold embossed the large flower on hot press watercolor paper and colored it with my Zig and SAI watercolor pens, so I wasn’t willing to change directions then.

Fussy cutting the large flower was also more of a problem than I expected since watercolor paper is pretty heavy and cutting into the small areas is risky when the image is embossed. In the end I was pretty happy with it. I love the “Penned Elegance” sentiment as well. It’s the first time I’ve used this particular sentiment, and I realize it works for a thank you note or a birthday card so there’s no inside sentiment for now.

All three of these challenges expire in the next two days, so I’m off to link up, and look for more inspiration.