Making life brighter one card at a time
Another fun challenge over on the AAA Colourful Challenge blog – I managed to quickly throw this card together while in the throes of packing up my craft supplies, so I kept it super simple!
I found a printed paper pad that had a page with similar colours as the challenge image. I quickly heat embossed a floral image in white over the background paper, cut out the stitched rectangle and added to an A2 card base, then added a simple gold die-cut thanks.
Another fun challenge over on the AAA Colourful Challenge blog with a beautiful colour palette to work with. The colours open up so many possibilities – I hope it sparks some inspiration and that you’ll join us for the challenge.
For my card I decided to push myself a wee bit and I pulled out the magenta-based bright colours and the dark tones of the blues and purples of the image for my card. Normally I’d automatically go straight for the blue/lilac tones because that’s my ‘happy place’, but I decided to challenge myself. The original flowers turned out to be a bit pinker that I wanted (the joys of working late at night, then getting a surprise when it’s put under a daylight bulb!) – so I attacked the lighter pink petals first with some burgundy dye ink, then an OLO marker when it still wasn’t dark enough. I’m pretty happy with the overall result, though, and so glad I didn’t give up on it. The products I used are listed below.
I knew straightaway that I wanted to create a bit of a ‘night sky’ look for the background on my card, and originally had the idea of bright cosmos flowers in the foreground before realising they were a bit too pink compared to the challenge image. Then I spotted the tulips dies in my stash and I found some different tones of magenta/pink cardstock to layer with. As there’s no green in the challenge image I kept the stems and the leaves quite bare, and just used a flax-coloured OLO marker on white cardstock for some subtle colour.
For the background I chose distress oxide inks, which isn’t my usual go-to, starting with Chipped Sapphire, then adding some Villainous Potion – I didn’t like that as it was too dark for me, so I went over the top of it with Wilted Violet instead (one of the great traits of oxide inks, you can just cover up what you don’t like in most cases). I then added a bit of Seedless Preserves at the bottom of the card, but once again I didn’t like it that much so I covered up a lot of it with the Wilted Violet. I applied a very light touch with the Wilted Violet towards the bottom so that the Seedless Preserves still showed a hint and gave some contrast.
I feel very honoured to have been selected as a member of the Design Team for the AAA Colourful Challenge blog that launches today! I’ve always enjoyed colour challenges, so I couldn’t resist putting my hand up for my first ever design team gig. I’m also super thrilled with the theme of this month’s challenge, which is to create something based on the blog logo colours – that’s right up my alley, as I adore rainbow coloured cards, they’re so very cheerful and uplifting! The rest of the Design Team have created some stunning cards, so please do pop over to join us in the fun and to be inspired by our team of creatives.
I have a number of friends who have been struggling mentally, so I’m making 2024 the year to send some cards as a reminder of how the rest of us see them, or to just bring a brightness to their day out of the blue. For that reason I’ll often be using uplifting or supportive sentiments on my cards this year. This one is actually staying with me, though, as a personal reminder and also as a momento of this new creative journey.
A few details about my card:
I started by heat embossing the stamped image with gold, and used Gina K inks in just one shade of each colour for use with the stencils. I continued using the same shades in layers, starting off with a slightly lighter touch and getting more heavy-handed as the layers went on.
To try to get consistent colours, I began with applying the red through the centre of each peony, followed by the blue and the yellow at each far edge of the flowers. I then filled in the gaps with the pink and orange, and overlapping a bit over the previous colours. I really love the purple tones that appeared where the pink overlapped the blue. I started off using the Powder Blue colour but I found it too washed out compared to the other brighter colours, so I stopped at stencil 3 and went back to brighten it up a bit with Blue Raspberry. I was much happier then, and continued to finish the stenciling.
I have to say the card looks a bit complicated with the different colours, but the stencils really do all the hard work, and it’s actually a very simple card to pull together. Altenew really do make some stunning layering stencils!
