PDCC59 - inspired by...

One of my favourite things about teaching workshops is seeing what other colour combinations people come up with for the same project.  We all have our favourite colours, our 'comfortable colours to work with', and colours we want to try together and have decided that workshop day is the time to try them.  This makes for a great range of colour combos, and makes me think of other colour choices to try.

Whilst planning this week's play date cafe challenge  I was doing a bit of blog hopping and a piece of work on BonnieRose's blog just jumped out at me.  I'd been looking for an 'easier' colour combo as I feel like I've given you a fair challenge my last two choices!  Julie did chuckle when she heard this; I guess 'easy' or 'hard' depends on what our natural colour choices would be!!!

BonnieRose kindly said we could use an image of her artwork for our challenge this week - so thankyou  BonnieRose!  If you'd like to see more of her work, head over to her blog 'A Life UnRehearsed'.  I just AdOrE the colours in her blog banner :)

I got out my trusty Inkadinkadoo snowman from a couple of year back, and mounted him against a distress ink background.  The main background of the card is stamped with an impression obsession 'cover a card' stamp.  

As usual our design team have come up some stunning cards to inspire you...

Andrea Ewen
Savannah O'Gwynn
Ruby 2 Shoes

Julie Ranae - senior designer

And don't forget to head on over to the Play Date Cafe to see what's happening there this week :) 

PDCC#42 - calm camels in a queue

I chose this photograph for inspiration as it is such fun!  If you're concerned about my colour matching skills, I picked out the green from the uprights on the seats on the camels' backs ;)  That line of camels looks like it just goes on forever!

I've been using bits of lace in my work recently, and on my recent workshop at Paddy's Stamping Place, Paddy brought out some green lace which she called a 'horrific' colour, and suggested we try colouring it with the walnut ink crystals we were using at the time.  The results were very yummy :)

I added more green with snippets of paper, and some little gems.  I used espresso Adirondack colourwash, and the stamped image is by Basic Grey and available from The Stamp Attic.

Have fun with these colours :)  I did, and will definitely be using them again.  And don't forget to see what yumminess the rest of the Play Date Cafe team came up with :)

Julie Ranae
Suzanne Czosek
Stephanie Kraft
Savannah O'Gwynn
Lisa Somerville
Ruby 2 Shoes

Elise-Guest Designer

challenging myself with 'peach' for pdcc#32

How stunning is this wedding cake?!!  It was made for a friend of mine, by another friend, and the girl who made it hadn't really done anything like this before.  It was just STuNNiNG!

I spend a lot of time thinking about colour, looking out for great colour combos, and taking notice of the colours other people use in their artwork.  Peach is NoT one of my colours!  I think it looks pretty on this cake, but I would never in a million years use it in on a card etc.  But being the kind of girl I am, and being on a colour challenge design team, I decided to really challenge myself this week:

I have to say, it wasn't easy tracking down these colours!  3 exactly matched buttons and a packet of paper flowers later though, I actually ended up using my lemonade dabber paint and dried marigold distress ink to make a book cover.

The background paper and the images are all scrapbook papers from The Cubby Hole, distressed with dried marigold.

I LoVe the squares - they're a Twiddleybitz piece.

"the future comes one day at a time"

pdcc#31 on my poor neglected blog!

This last week has just been soooooooooooooo mad busy so Thursday has come round rather quickly for me.  I've got loads to share, just haven't had a minute to sit down and sort out photos etc. 

 I had a fabulous weekend teaching down at the Stamp Attic where Ruby and I decided to challenge ourselves for this week's play date cafe challenge and use the same papers and embellishment.  Whilst discussing the play date cafe over coffee, Ruby asked me how long the challenge had been going.  I said I thought it was about September when it started when Joanna piped up "I know how long it's been going...30 weeks!"  Well, Ruby and I could hardly stay on our seats we were laughing so hard - two members of the design team who hadn't clocked the numbers in the weekly titles lol

Julie chose this week's colours, and Ruby and I did have fun amongst the paper stacks in Wendy's shop (Wendy has lOAds of papers :) )

The papers were called 'So Sophie' which is very appropriate for me as that's my daughter's name. 

I also added in an element of punching, courtesy of Martha Stewart, some die cut butterflies from a cupcake case, and some Ippity stamps from the set 'Where you should be'.

Butterflies and flowers feature in many of our designers contributions this week so don't forget to check them out.  And a big thankyou to everyone who plays along with our challenge this week - they were certainly popular colours!!

Here's Ruby's card with mine so you can see them together :

another metal box...this one's for PDCC#30

I so enjoyed making my metal covered box the other day I decided to have a go at using a different colour acrylic paint for the base, choosing 'pink' from this week's play date colours mainly as I could find a green and a yellow stazon ink to colour the metal but the pink is rather bright in stazon, to say the least!

Mona chose this week's beautiful Spring inspired colours and it's amazing how every play date cafe designer's piece is so different this week.  The balance of colour in a project really changes the effects.  Mine is very definitely PINK!!!

The base metal is gold coloured and I painted it with pink True Colours [Baby Girl] by Stewart Gill before spraying it with pink Sticky Fingers spray [to add texture] then adding extra colour using Sunflower Yellow and Cactus Green Stazon Ink.

I cut the dragonfly from felt and organza using the new die from Paper Artsy.  I'm so in love with that die!!  Don't forget to visit the cafe for some more inspiration for these colours!  I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with :)

PDCC29 i NeeD to art journal

It's been a very busy week for me, with lots of issues to sort through, so I really needed my art journal yesterday so I could relax and shut my mind from too many thoughts.  I decided to use my colour choice for this week's play date cafe colour challenge, despite having gone through a number of ideas of what to do for my piece this week, none of which was a journal page lol!!

I love, love, love this photo!  It's from a website where you can freely use the photos for art purposes :)  How cool does that peeled paint look :)

I love how the blue is just a hint above white!  

The saying is from a set of stamps that I won from Savannah [by accident lol, I didn't realise I'd entered for a giveaway!!] - I copied the writing so it would be large enough on my journal page [except for the word 'should' which I stamped and cut out!]  And if you look really closely you can see my new favourite background stamp in the world - the artistic stamper's sequin waste stamp :)

flowers on film for PDCC28

Julie has chosen such pretty colours for this week's play date cafe colour challenge, although I have to say that the air was pretty blue the first time I used my 'fanciful flight' die by hrh (his royal holtz!!).  I've cracked it now (ie worked it out, not broken it lol) so used it happily for this week's challenge.

I'm loving how the new distress ink colours fit in with these challenges!  Purely coincidental; or more likely, excellent palette of colours provided in distress now!  Spun Sugar was the pretty pink I chose to work with this week.

And I'm LoViNG this new film strip die!  Watch out for some design team pieces for The Stamp Attic using this.  

This week I challenged myself (in a comment on Joanne's blog) to finally make an easel card, and I'm really pleased with the result.  I'll definitely be making more!

Don't forget to check out all the other colour designs this week, they are all stunning, and we have a guest designer.  So head on over to the Play Date Cafe :)

pdcc25 - another colour splash week

...and my turn to choose the splash of colour :)

I'm loving the colour 'orange' at the moment,  and I love how the rest of the play date designers have interpreted these colours :)  Between my art journaling classes, and writing this week's play date blog post [poor Julie's really under the weather with a nasty flu bug], I've not had time to do my entry.  But I will!  Here's a hint as to what I'll be using...

 

I did, however, manage a digital contribution!

I adore young children's drawings so when my four year old nephew produced this on my patio, I took a photograph!   For the challenge, I changed it to a black and white image (rendering the weeds almost invisible!), and added a little orange heart.  

Don't forget to check out the Play Date Cafe Blog, we have another guest designer and sponsor this week so some more fab goodies are up for grabs!

time for some more fresh spring colours in the play date cafe

I can't wait for the cherry blossom to be out.  They are my favourite-est spring flowers :)  I just LoVeD working with Mona's colour choice this week.  In fact, when I was writing up my last post, I realised I'd used this colour combo in Sue's journal when we did our round robin, working in each other's journals.  That was me being cheeky as Sue isn't really a pink person ;)

I have adirondack paint dabbers in these colours and I just LoVe using these as they make applying paint to paper, stamps, through stencils etc, just so easy.  So I made a layered background which I then cut into a butterfly shape and stitched to my card.

I stencilled through the lace on the butterfly piece,  then painted it up completely before mounting it on the card.  The yellow flowers are drawn with my sewing machine , I do so love doing that!!

Thanks for coming over!  I do appreciate all your comments :)  Don't forget to visit the play date cafe and see all the other yummy cards our designers came up with this week.  I love them all :)  And you can read about how Savannah, one of our new designers, got into stamping.

let's party at the play date cafe, but don't forget challenge #20!!

It's been busy, busy, busy behind the scenes at the cafe this week and we can now proudly announce our new design team.  They are:

Suzanne Czosek

Stephanie Kraft

Ruby2Shoes

Savannah O'Gwynn

Lisa Somerville

As a senior design team, Julie, Mona and I are saying goodbye to our much loved senior designer Julie Campbell.  Julie has some great opportunities opening up for her but she's promised to keep playing along with the challenge when she can.  We're holding you to that Julie :)

So, to celebrate Julie C's new opportunities, and the new design team, we have a BLOG HOP, with a prize at the end :)  And you get to increase your chances of winning by 3!!

The blog hop starts over at the cafe, and you'll get back to me via Savannah's stunning blog.

Here are the THREE ways to give you the best chance to win:

1. Make sure you stop at each designer's blog and leave a comment.
There are ONLY 9 total so it won't take too long, just limit your browsing time lol!

2. Become a follower of The Play Date Cafe...easy-peasy!

3. Play along with this week's colour challenge

The winner will be chosen by random.org

Julie C has shared with us this lovely bathroom photo for colour inspiration this week.  The colours are

lavender          green          white

There are a few greens in the photo so you can really find your own shade and go with it :)  

I've had a hankering to work small this week so chose to make an ATC using a sketch of some lavender that I did many years ago.  I reduced it on the scanner and darkened the pencil lines before adding dusty concord and crushed olive (yep, that's a new one!!) distress inks.  The butterfly is cut from a sheet of scrapbook paper.  I wanted to give the card a vintage feel as that is Julie's true love!

Now, if you're blog hopping, hop on over to Stephanie's blog to say hi :)  She does such truly stunning cards!

Good luck!!

pdcc time again? where did the week go?

I'm sure the weeks go faster in February!  Not that I mind the Play Date Challenges coming round, and especially not this week.  Julie's introduced the idea of a 'colour splash'... black and white with a splash of colour.  And this week's colour is one of my favourites - teal :)  I love the contrast of black and white against a colour (or vice versa) so this is right up my street. 

Julie did the challenge graphic all by herself this week..didn't she do a great job for her first time using Photoshop!  That program just seems like gobbeldygook to me, so I'm really proud of her.

I found this black and white fabric whilst at a Quilt Exhibition at the weekend and after seeing some owls similar to this one decided I had to design my own! 

He's a little tiny owl, but full of character.

And he seems to be happy in the trees in my garden ;)

roses are red, and daisies too in this week's Play Date Cafe Colour Challenge!

I have rather a lot of journals that need covers, so when it became apparent that these flowers weren't going to fit on a card,  I found a journal that was a perfect fit!   And being red, it fitted in great with this week's Play Date Cafe colours :)

Aren't they gorgeous?  So many options with this colour combo. 

I went for a bit of a grunge look.  The flower stamp is from the Autumn Leaves' Doodle Flowers set.  I stamped it onto text that I'd sprayed brown, mounted it on red card, and paper pieced the centre to include red dots and some grungy letters courtesy of Sir Tim.  I stitched around the flowers with my sewing machine, and added the leaves and stems.

I didn't intend this piece to come out as pretty as it did LOL but it needed something to the side of the main image and the bits n pieces I found brought about a rather prettier look.  Not that it matters!

And don't forget, the Play Date Cafe have a Design Team Call out 'til Feb 28th so still time to get your application in!  Click HERE for details,

Julie Ranae brings us challenge #16

from the Play Date Cafe!

And just look at those yummy red jelly beans :)  I wonder what flavour they are!

I must have had sweet treats on the brain whilst creating my project this week.  Whilst struggling to find 'lavender' as opposed to any of the violets I had in my heap of paper and card, I came across my 3d cupcake template by Hot of the Press which I bought last year from Wendy at The Stamp Attic.

I can see myself making more of these cupcakes :)  Especially now I can fold the top piece LOL.  I had to watch the video tute to work it out [http://www.paperwishes.com/webisodes/?page=high&id=186].

The flower is by prima and I added icicle Stickles around the edge of the paper shape before folding.  I raided my drawer of shinies to decorate the cupcake case, adding the splash of red I needed to complete the challenge.