Off the grid for Paper Players #191

Hi Everyone.  Happy Sunday.  

It's the fabulous Ann's turn to host the Paper Players challenge this week and it's a color challenge.

Now, Always Artichoke isn't my favorite SU green as it is a little muddy, but Calypso Coral and Coastal Cabana really lift it and on the opposite side of that… it grounds the two brighter colors.  So, I think Ann's color choices were pretty inspired.

As usual, I wanted to make a Clean and Simple card.  Surprised?  Nah… I know you aren't!  Actually, I wish I could be more like LeAnne, she effortlessly moves from CAS to vintage to bold and everything in between. 

I decided to play around with my markers on the Off the Grid stamp from SU.  I love this stamp as it can be used for masculine or feminine cards and it's also very on trend as it mimics the look of a masked off area.

As the colors are bold and bright, I decided to go with a softer element and used a feather die with some vellum and then stamped the feather image over the cut out vellum feather.

Here's a close-up of the feathering:

You can see the Coastal Cabana and Calypso Coral sneaking through behind the feather.   Let's take a look at the whole card:

I started with the Always Artichoke on the bottom of the stamp and then moved up through Coastal Cabana to Calypso Coral.  It was really easy to do that with my ink pads.  I decided to add just a little more of the color with a circle stamp and stamped it three times, once in each color.   The feather was mounted to the base layer with some clear double sided foam tape and I wrapped a little piece of the silver elastic cord around the bottom and tied it in a bow.

For the sentiment, I used the Perfect Pennants "hello" stamp and the matching die.  I then applied that using Stampin' Dimensionals.

However, I couldn't leave well alone….. I love the soft, subtle effect of the Coastal Cabana sentiment, but decided I wanted to try it using black.   Here's the version with the black sentiment:

This photo also shows you that each layer is elevated because of the cast of the shadows.  I love taking photos outside on a sunny day, but trying to get the timing right to avoid shadows can be tricky 🙂

I'd love to hear which you prefer…. black sentiment or Coastal Cabana sentiment?  I really can't quite decide, so would love some help from all of you 🙂

The design team have some AMAZING projects for you – don't forget to check out their blogs and then pop along to the Paper Players and play along with us.

• Ann
• Anne Marie
• LeAnne
• Nance
• Sandy

On a personal note:

I hope you are all enjoying the revised blog layout.  This layout is optimized for all display types, so should be much easier to view for those of you who, like so many of us, have tablets.    I also cleaned out the categories to remove all the SU stamp set names.  The reason I did that, was that I had reached the max number of names that could be used and I realized that you can search for any specific stamp set in the search option on the side panel of my blog anyway :-)  That's why the categories are now much easier to navigate and are true categories as opposed to stamp names :-)  I must admit, I like the clean look of it and it certainly displays much better on my iPad than it used to!

The temps dropped again for the next few days and there is possibility of snow in the forecast for Tuesday!  We did get a little rain yesterday – much needed I might add – and it was wonderful to lie in bed last night listening to all the frogs in the wetland.  It started a couple of nights ago with a handful of Spring Peepers, and has grown significantly since then – but isn't at full crescendo yet!

Colleen, Lou and I will be out in the garden today, cutting back all the dead growth from last year and helping the flowers and grasses to come back in abundance this year.  Our saplings will be ready for collectin in about a month, but we won't be able to get the spade in trees until the end of May.  It's going to be a little while until I can share some decent photos with you 🙂

Well, Lou is about to mount a rather large mirror, so I am off to help him lift it.  Then, we have other things to do around the house and I am still hoping to get some cards made!  I'll be back on Tuesday with a new card.

As always 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:

• Stamps:  Off the Grid (130736).  Perfect Pennants (133230).  Feather:  Feather Finery (PTI)
• Inks:  Always Artichoke.  Coastal Cabana.  Calypso Coral.  StazOn black (second version).  White pigment ink (for feather)
• Accessories:  Silver elastic cord
• Tools:  Feather die (PTI).  Clear double sided tape