Meeting the Challenge 2

Everyone has their favourite colours and colour combinations and I'm no different.  Yes, I do own a lot of colours of cardstock.  Do I use them all?  Let's just say that out of the current colours, I usually wind up replacing only about eight of them during the year.  And those eight usually get replaced several times.  Since there are 40 active colours, that shows you how much I lean on certain colours.  Yes, I do use the rest of the colours but usually only as accents.  I have to force myself to use a different approach to colour combinations and that's where the colour challenges come in.

A colour challenge is where a person posts a challenge with, usually, three colours that should be the primary focus of the card.  Yes, you can use Whisper White and Very Vanilla (or a tiny bit of another accent) but in moderation, ensuring that the colour challenge is met.  I've joined a colour challenge in one of my groups to force myself out of my comfort zone.

I've already posted the results of one colour challenge a few weeks back and am going to post two more today.  Once challenge was to use the following colours:

Those are not colours that I normally work with together, although I do like all three colours.  They're definitely among my preferred colours.  I sat on the challenge for a few days, leaving the three colours lying on top of each other, thinking that seeing them on my work table constantly would somehow give me inspiration.  Actually it must have begun to work subconsciously because I woke up one morning knowing what I was going to do.

This is a simple sunburst using the three colours.   I made the sunburst by gluing the strips to a base.  Then I stamped words from the Fabulous Phrases stamp set on each strip using my White Craft ink pad.  I helped it to dry with my heat tool because the craft ink takes a while drying, but it's worth it for the wonderful "pop" of white.  Then I ran the piece through my Big Shot using the Chevron embossing folder.

My base cardstock was Gumball Green.  The next layer is Naturals White cardstock and the next is Midnight Muse.  I adhered the embossed piece to the top area of the Midnight Muse and adhered a strip of Gumball Green ribbon to hide the "seam" before adhering the Midnight Muse to the Naturals White.  Finally I stamped the bottom area of Midnight Muse with Celebrate from the Seasonal Sayings stamp set using the White Craft ink pad again.  As a final touch I tied a bow through a Simply Pressed clay button using the White Baker's Twine and adhered it to the centre of the sunburst using a glue dot.

Challenge met!

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The next challenge I want to share  is the one using the following colours:

I really enjoy all these colours and the moment I saw them I knew what I wanted to do.  I had just received my order from Stampin' Up! which included the new Circle Card Thinlits die.  What better way to use it than to meet my new colour challenge?

I decided to use the Island Indigo as my base cardstock with the Strawberry Slush as my next primary colour and the Soft Suede as my accent.  Of course I wasn't going to use the new thinlits die the way it was meant to be used.  I envisioned a longer card and so used the full 8 1/2 " width of the cardstock and cut the other measurement to 5 7/16" which precisely fits inside the thinlit, avoiding the "blades" top and bottom.  The trick is to have everything fit into the thinlit, avoiding the blades top and bottom and at the right side.

You can see just how I avoided the cutting edge of the thinlit by putting the paper over the edge on the right side.  This way you still wind up with the right sized card, the circle flip flop portion and an extra piece to folder over.  

This is the card I wound up with.  

You can see how I put a layer of Designer Specialty Paper on the front fold and another pattern of it on the back fold.  I also used Strawberry Slush for the scalloped circle on the flip portion of the card.  That scallop was made using a die that comes with the Circle Card Thinlits die set.  The die for the Island Indigo cut-out on the back fold also came with the set.  Actually there are nine dies in addition to the large card thinlit so the set is very affordable.

The reason I avoided the right side cutting edge is that I wound up with the card looking like this:

That section with the sentiment and candles wouldn't have been there if I had used the thinlit the way it was designed.  

Another challenge met!