An Open Heart for Paper Players # 200

Hi Everyone.  Happy Saturday.

I cannot believe that this is the 200th Paper Players challenge!  To celebrate this momentous occasion for the Paper Players, we are doing something just a little bit different this week.

Each of the Players went back through all of our challenges and chose one that we wanted to feature.   This means that, those of you playing along with us this week, will have 5 different challenges to choose from.  You can combine them, or you can just do one.  We do hope that you play along with us this week to help us celebrate.

I went back to an early challenge and chose a technique that wasn't too popular back then, but is certainly popular right now 🙂  Of course, you knew that I would have picked a Clean and Simple Challenge!   You can click on this link and it will take you back to that original challenge #91 and you can check out all the fabulous design team cards for April 2012.

I'm still not very adept at watercoloring, but I think it has improved since my card for PP91!

We have a surprise for one of our participants this week; as a way of saying thank you to all of you who play along with our challenges, we will be randomly picking a Player to receive all of the design team cards rom this challenge.  At the close of the challenge on Friday, a winner will be chosen and each of the design team members will send that winner our cards from our challenge this week!  And, there are some gorgeous cards coming the way of our winner!

I knew that I wanted to use of of my sets from the new catalog.  It's a perfect set to use for watercoloring and it's a set called "An Open Heart".  I used two of the stamps from the set for today's card.   It took me a long time to water color the background and each of the images, but it was immensely relaxing.  I tuned into KDFC.com and listened to some classical music and just let me mind focus on the paintbrush and some inks!

Here's my card for today:

I started with a plain piece of watercolor paper cut to 5 1/2 x 3 3/4.  I stamped the branch image with StazOn and then water colored the berries with Blackberry Bliss and the leaves and stems with Mossy Meadow and Pear Pizzazz.  Once the branch was well and truly dry, I took Marina Mist and Soft Sky and colored the entire background from the top to the bottom, with these two inks.  I focused a darker shading on the bottom of the image and then used more water to soften out the blue as it made its way to the top of the card.

Whilst I was waiting for the base to dry, I stamped the bird image onto watercolor paper and colored it with Hello Honey and Baked Brown Sugar, making sure to use different intensity of the Brown Sugar to create depth and shading.  I fussy cut around the bird and then mounted it onto the branch with clear double sided tape.   A little Wink of Stella glitter pen was added to the eye, the beak and the feet of the bird, as well as the berries on the branch.

All that was left to do was to mount the watercolored image to my Soft Sky card base and add a sentiment.  I reached for my retired Banner Greetings and stamped the sentiment in Blackberry Bliss onto Soft Sky card stock and adhered half of it to the water color layer.

Of course, I had to finish the inside of the card…..

here's the inside

Of course, I had to make the envelope match the inside:

Finally, I used my Envelope Liner dies to cut a piece of the new Gold Soiree specialty DSP.

I really love this stamp set and think that it will get a lot of use as it's especially suited to water coloring 🙂

Before I share with you the links to the design team cards, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank our challenge creator Lesley!  I still remember how thrilled I was back in 2010 when Lesley sent me an email asking me if I would like to join her as a founding member of the design team in what was to become of the first of her fabulous challenge sites.   Lesley is so talented, and I was so honored to be invited. I still get a tremendous kick out of playing with the Players – just as I did that first time.  

A huge thank you to Lesley for inviting me along to be a part of this wonderful journey.  A big thank you to my design team members who, because of their amazing talent,  push me to be a better crafter every week.

Let's see what they have created for your inspiration this week and, don't forget, one lucky player will be winning all of our cards this week.

• Ann
• Anne Marie
• LeAnne
• Nance
• Sandy

On a personal note:

Well, this week has been totally and utterly chaotic.  What with spending two days having trees installed and then, on Wednesday night, having to run around painting the posts and concrete floor of the under deck, it was pretty exhausting.  Added to that, I had calls 4 out of 5 days this week all starting at 6AM.  On Thursday, my last call finished at 8pm!  On Wednesday night, Lou and I didn't get to have dinner until nearly 10pm because we needed to get the painting finished so that the guy working on starting to install our screening under the deck could begin work on Thursday morning.  We got to bed after midnight on Thursday morning and I was up again at 5.30.  

The good news in all of this… the trees are in and they look fabulous.  I'll share some photos with you tomorrow.  Not only did we manage to get the 5 trees installed that we had ordered, but we managed to save two trees from being cut down in the final lot in our cul de sac.  The final lot is one that I nicknamed the Fairy Glen.  It is… I mean was…. pristine upland woodland, with very mature trees, fabulous grasses and wildflowers and lots of exotic sounding woodland birds!   

There was one little glen of 30 year old Ironwood trees mixed with Linden and Basswood.  Because of the placement of the house, all of these trees were being cut down.  If they had moved the house 8 feet toward the east, they could have kept this amazing crop of trees, but they didn't, so all the trees were marked for removal.  I immediately called the builder and asked if we could try to save a couple – he immediately said yes.  Luckily, Jim, our tree moving guy, is passionate about trees, too, so was more than happy to help me.  I was lucky enough to meet up with the guy who was doing the removal of the trees, and he was happy to work around a couple of them and leave them for us.

Sadly, we weren't able to save more than two of the Ironwoods, but at least we were able to save 2.  Right now, they are nestled in the woodland, under the canopy of our Oak and the new Autumn Blaze maples we installed.   Hopefully they will survive in their new home.   Getting the trees up and down the very steep slope of the back yard was very scary and, in fact, Jim did get stuck once and took an hour to extricate himself from the area he had bogged down in.  Jim is fearless and didn't bat an eyelid about getting down the hill to put in the trees.  Others had said they wouldn't even attempt it.  Jim is awesome and so are our neighbors.  Jim couldn't get his tree spade down our side of the house and the neighbors said YES to having him come down their side as it is a little less steep.  We are so grateful to them 🙂

Want to see how steep that slope is?

That is a steep slope and that is a heavy truck!  Added to that, it comes with a tree weighing well over 700#.  Each of the trees that Jim delivered are well over 25 feet tall, a couple closing on 30 feet!  It's amazing that you can have a huge gap in the foliage and then, voila, instant shade and instant privacy!

I'll be back tomorrow with another card and some great wildlife shots for you.   In the meantime, I hope that you will join us and help us celebrate our 200th challenge.   

Warm hugs and prayers for those of you who need a little lift tonight

Hugs

Jaydee

Card recipe – all ingredients Stampin' Up! unless otherwise noted:

• Stamp set:  An Open Heart.  Banner Greetings
• Card stock:  Soft Sky.  Whisper White.   Water color paper (strathmore 120#)
• Inks:  StazOn.  Soft Sky.  Marina Mist.  Mossy Meadow.  Pear Pizzazz.  Hello Honey.  Baked Brown Sugar.  Blackberry Bliss
• Inside sentiment:  Inside Out Birthday Greetings (PTI)
• DSP:  Gold Soiree