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Hello, my crafting friends! I hope your weekend is going well. Today I'm doing a little blog hopping with Stamping Inkspirations, organized by my friend Angie, MacKenzie.If you have arrived here from the blog hop, I'm Chris Smith from St. Paul, MN.
Today Angie has us doing a color challenge with some beautiful colors.
Blushing Bride, Polished Pink, Fresh Freesia Bumblebee and Garden Green. Are you thinking spring and flowers? I might have been too. Except, we've been traveling for much of the past few weeks and even though I was just barely organized to sign up for the hop, I apparently wasn't when it was time for me to pack to head up north to check in on the big lake. Even though I keep a second stash of ink pads up there - I don't have the in-colors and this combo has three of them. I do have a stash of ink refills so I set about trying to recreate the colors by mixing them with others as needed and adding white craft to lighten if necessary. I used some sponge daubers to blend the colors onto Basic White cardstock and ended up with these:
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- I used Rich Razzleberry and a little Highland Heather mixed with a healthy amount of white craft refill to approximate Fresh Freesia.
- For Bumblebee I used Crushed Curry and a little less white than I normally would.
- My Polished Pink stand-in was Flirty Flamingo with Melon Mambo mixed with the white.
- The green sheet is mostly Garden Green with a bit of Bumblebee blended in.
I've always love the "oil painting look" but haven't done this technique since Stampin' Up! started carrying the Blending Brushes which are a little quicker to use. My older technique requires sponge daubers and I'm starting to think that they work better if they are old. When I ordered new daubers a few years ago, the sponge would expand when I put craft ink on them, becoming very wobbly and hard to control. Now I am wondering if the sponge gets stiffer as they age because they worked beautifully now. So if you try this, use some daubers that have been in your stash for a while... I'll add a how-to video towards the end of the post.
Second problem ... I only brought two stamp sets with me thinking I just had to work on a color challenge for Monday which I intended to be masculine. All I had to work with were On the Horizon Bundle and Wildlife Wonder stamp set. What to do, what to do? I thought my chances were better with the bundle and it's dies...
- Other than my limited supplies the scene is a bit inspired by our trip to Green Valley AZ earlier this month when we went to visit my parents for mom's birthday. They have a lovely view of the Santa Rita mountains with a bit of Green Valley's dessert flora in between them and the mountains. I decided to take a chance cutting up the die cut with the string of little trees to see if I could create some quasi Prickly Pears.
- I applied my desert flora over the bottom edge of the card, trimming off the excess in an attempt to add to the depth. I say you should try anything once.
- I also tried a trick I've done with blended backgrounds in the past. Trim off one edge and turn it upside down as a border. You can do this on one or both sides.
Here are some other pictures from our recent travels, noting the difference in climate and scenery...
- The first is looking towards the Santa Rita Mountains from my parents' patio.
- The second shows Cowboy Whiskers Prickly Pear as seen during a trip to the Sonora Desert Museum last Saturday. You don't want to brush up against one of these but I really thought the name was appropriate.
- One of the cards I made with Mom, a birthday card for a quilt loving friend. We used the quilt dies from a holiday catalog a few years back along with the Flowering Cactus Medley from last year plus her new Cactus Cutie Bundle. Sorry for the poor pix - it's the only one I took.
- Finally a shot of Lake Superior, near Tofte, MN before we left to return to St. Paul earlier this morning. It was 15 below!
Here is an older video of the sponge dauber blending technique - with even more cacti (Flowering Desert) from the archives:
Gosh, I'm chatty for a Saturday... all because I thought I needed to explain how I got to my card... Now for the rest of the blog hop, next stop is the amazing Tricia Butts:
Angie McKenzie ● Leonie Stuart ● Aurélie Fabre
Rachael Merrick ● Jan Musselman ● Jo Blackman
Karen Egan ● Mo Rootes ● Robbie Susan Chandler
Danielle Kassing ● Gez Carpenter ● Ann Krucek
Annette Ball ● Susan Webster ● Karen Henderson
Elaine de Montmorency ● Chris Smith ● Tricia Butts
Teri West ● Linda Moore ● Marieke Bart
Vickie Littlewood ● Jill Chapman ● Susan Simpson
Terry Hamilton ● Cheryl Hamilton ● Sharon Hashimoto Burkert
I so appreciate that you took the time as you visit my blog today. Let me know what you think and come back again soon! Feel free to ask questions if something isn't clear.
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