Card of the day!

I am excited for the new catalog release for Stampin' Up 2013-14 but in the meantime, I am using up some of the supplies I already have on hand. Not much to say about this card. The colors used are Baja Breeze (retiring color that was one of my faves), Calypso Coral, and Summer Starfruit, with a touch of Basic Black. Enjoy!

Birthday Banners Card

A very quick post this afternoon. I was playing around with some new stamps and this is the card I came up with. 

Banners are so popular in paper-crafting designs these days and I managed to incorporate 3 different types of banners here. I used the new photopolymer (clear) stamp set from Stampin' Up called Designer Typeset. I always need a birthday card for someone so this will come in handy. 

Enjoy!

Embellished Notebook - Anne

I have a very quick post for today. For those paper-crafters out there, Stampin' Up has a new monthly club of sorts called Paper Pumpkin. If you subscribe, you get a kit in the mail each month with a new project and all the materials and instructions to complete it. Actually, if you are a crafter of any type you might enjoy it. I have gotten 2 kits now and it is a great little crafting break and all I have to do is sit down, open the box and create. Wonderful!

Anyways, one of the projects that I made today was a little embellished notebook. So fun, cute and easy to complete. The notebook that came in the kit happens to be graph paper - perfect for quilt-designing. And the size is small enough that I can take it on the go, ready for whenever inspiration hits.

The project went together very quickly so I decided to make two: one for me and one for a gift. 

Since she is away this weekend at a quilting retreat (see the previous post for details) let's see if she sees this little gift I made for her. :-) I added an inscription, and a sweet little crafty gift is complete!

Paper-crafting and Color Selection

I get questions on a regular basis about how to choose colors that go together. If you're an art major, I know you study this in great detail. I am not an art major and so it helps me to have a few tricks up my sleeve. I have some tricks that I use when I am quilting but today I want to focus on color choices for paper-crafting. I have a few cards that I made this morning as examples of this.

The base of this card was part of a "Simply Sent" kit from Stampin' Up. The kit made very cute cards but I wanted to get a little bit more of a punch of color on it. The Calypso Coral isn't my favorite by itself but it does really make this card pop in combination with the Baja Breeze and Daffodil Delight. How did I come up with this color combo? I cheated! I have a handy tool called the Stampin' Up Color Coach. It is sort of like a deck of color cards.




Side note: If you aren't familiar with Stampin' Up, they do colors well, in my opinion. And they make it easy for non-art majors like myself to be able to put colors together. The Color Coach is one way. Another way is that they have different types of materials (ink, card stock, ribbon, brads to name a few) that you can purchase that are available in the different colors they offer. And you can be sure that the Baja Breeze ink is going to be the same color as the Baja Breeze ribbon, etc. Okay, back to the rest of my post...

The Color Coach has a large swatch of each color they offer on one side of the card with two suggested color-combinations for each color on the other side. I chose what they call the "Creative Combination" in this example.

Other companies have similar color-helper books. Pantone is another one that I have. This is what their book looks like:

For the other card I made today, I used the second color combo in the book. (Maybe it would be a fun challenge to try them all. Hmm. Something to think about.)

A very different look from my first card today - a bit more masculine. I didn't have any card stock in the lighter gray color. I think that would have made the card even better but I am still pleased with the results.  If you are someone who gets nervous about putting colors together, I hope this gave you a little more courage. When I get stuck, these can be a good way to get some inspiration.