The Challenge #88

Hello Everyone!  It's time for a new challenge at The Challenge on the Always Playing With Paper Blog and we have a fun one this week. Lesley created several keywords words for us to choose from and we can use one or a combination of several.  I used a few for my card.

I recently got a couple of stamp sets with the dies from The Ton. I have to say, Effie sure knows how to do a gorgeous bouquet of flowers. I love Anemones and how many colors they come in.  The particular stamp set I used for this card is Anemone Bouquet.  The flowers are all arranged for you and the vase is a separate stamp. This was perfect for what I had in mind because I wanted to stamp my vase onto Vellum and color on the backside to make it seem as if there is water in the vase. This worked out perfectly.  I stamped the bouquet and the vase in in Versamark and heat set it with Simon Says Stamp Antique Gold Embossing Powder. This is my most used Embossing Powder and I keep a large amount of it in a container next to my heat tool.

I colored everything using a water brush and Distress Markers in Picked Raspberry, Seedless Preserves and Mowed Lawn.  For the back of the vase, I applied color directly from my Hawaiian Shores Ink Cube.  I actually liked this bouquet better before I put Wink of Stella on the flowers but that will just be a lesson for next time.  Don't get me wrong, I love the shimmer but I guess I like it better diluted a little bit.  I have one Wink of Stella Clear Glitter Brush Pen that I added water to when there was not much left in there and I keep adding a little bit of shimmer from another pen's barrel with a lot of water.  Otherwise, it is sooooo shimmery that you can't see the detail of the watercolor because the light is bouncing off of it.  I hadn't realized before just how much shimmer they put in that glitter brush pen until today.  I normally use a shimmer spritz over the whole thing but today I didn't.

When the watercolor was dry,  I die cut the bouquet and the vase with the coordinating dies and mounted it to a panel of Aqua Mist Cardstock cut with a Simon Says Stamp Stitched Rectangle which was then mounted to a top folding card base made from Stamper's Select White using Kokuyo Adhesive.  This was my favorite adhesive for many years when I was scrapbooking but I had been unable to find it for several years.  I was sparingly using my last refill of it when Jennifer McGuire found it again and Simon Says Stamp started carrying it as well as Amazon.  The cool thing is that they now have an extra long roll.  In fact, they have an extra long dispenser, a regular and a mini.  I hope I never have to go back to using my Pink ATG Gun.  It's here if I want it, but only as a last resort.  *Ü*

Thank you so much for stopping by today!  Be sure to stop over to all the stops and see the Design Team's Projects for inspiration and then be sure to add your project to the link up.  For products from The Ton, they are only available at The Ton Online Store in the US.  If you live in another country, contact them to find your nearest retailer.

Anita Madden

Claire Broadwater

Kim Heggins

Lee Ann Barret

Lori Tecler

Nance Salkeld

Nina Forsyth

Rachel Bergfeld
Vicki Finger  (You are here)

The Ton - June 2017 Challenge & The Flower Challenge

There's a company that is fairly new to the paper crafting industry and was launched in January of 2015.  The owner, Effie, is an attorney by education and profession, but loves card making and crafting. When she realized that some of the designs that she was searching for simply weren't out there, she decided to design her own and The Ton was born. Effie designs some of the most gorgeous layering stamps on the market and many beautiful florals. Some of the ladies whose work I most admire are on their Design Team. I only have a few stamp sets from The Ton, but I couldn't resist the layering Anemones from their Summer 2017 release and that is what I am using today. One of the things I like most about their stamps is that many of them are larger floral images and can be "the show" on your cards.

Anytime I get a new layering stamp set I cut several of the die cuts so that I can stamp multiples as it definitely takes a bit of practice to learn how to line each set up. I have no magical formula for that; it simply requires practice. I print Layering Guides for all of my sets when I receive them, but I always find I still need the practical application to stamp them successfully.  If you don't want to use good cardstock for the learning process, you can practice on some scraps of cardstock or on cardstock of a lesser quality than what you normally use for cards and you can even practice on scraps of cardstock you have laying around. I know I always have a pile of scraps despite my best efforts to use them.

After practicing with this set a bit yesterday, I wanted to create a card for The Ton Challenge Blog today.  For the base layer of my blooms, I used one of my favorite techniques which is to stamp the lightest layer in a Pearlescent Pigment Ink. By doing this, no matter what type of ink I put on top of it, it picks up that shimmer of the pearlescent ink. I used Brilliance Pearlescent Coral for these blooms. I stamped the next layer in Altenew Coral Berry and the darkest center layer in Altenew Ruby Red. For the flower centers I stamped the circle shape in Papertrey Ink's Smokey Shadow and the stamen were stamped in Papertrey Ink's True Black.  For the leaves I stamped the first layer in Forest Glades (Altenew), the middle layer in New Leaf (Papertrey) and finally in Evergreen (Altenew).

I cut a stitched rectangle panel from a scrap piece of pink cardstock and another from Hawaiian Shores Cardstock. I arranged the flowers how I wanted them and then adhered them with Ranger Multi Medium Matte.  The sentiment is one from Altenew's Beautiful Day that I often stamp extras of and I need to do this again as it's a favorite and I only have one left in black cardstock.

I think these Anemones would make a gorgeous wedding card and I plan to test that theory with some lilac, lavender and grey inks.  I haven't quite figured out which ones are right so a bit more experimentation will definitely be required but I really enjoyed the process.


Thank you so much for coming by my blog today. You can check out The Ton Challenge Blog here and see all of the projects from their design team as well. They had a truly spectacular June release, so be sure to check that out while you're there.  I always appreciate your encouraging comments if you'd like to leave one for me.

The Flower Challenge has an Anything Goes Challenge this time around so I am also entering this card there.











This card won Honorable Mention at The Ton Challenge and was spotlighted on Trending With The Ton.

Watercolored Peonies

For many years I have claimed that Pink is my favorite of all the colors.  And that is still true but I have many colors that I love; Teal, Purple, Turquoise and many others but lately I have been on a Coral kick.

I had been hoping to receive a stamp set I had ordered last week in time for a challenge I was participating in but it never arrived until Monday afternoon. Turns out, I love it even more than I thought I would.  My regular one-stop shop for card making supplies doesn't carry this particular manufacturer.  In fact, so far, it's only available for purchase through their own company called "The Ton" which is a historical reference to "Couture Style" in the British Aristocracy.  It's Effie's desire to bring couture style to the stamps she designs.  I think it is interesting to note that Effie also happens to be a lawyer.

One of the things I most like about The Ton Stamps is their size.  My primary complaint with most of the stamp sets I have is that the images in them are so small.  I love these big bold and beautiful images in The Ton's Peony Series that I can watercolor. This particular one is called Large Peony 2.

I colored this last night using Abandoned Carol Distress Marker with Forest Moss and Mowed Lawn for the leaves.  I know y'all might get tired of seeing Watercolor, but I never get tired of doing it. Even when I do two of the same image in the same colors, they are never the same.

My favorite medium for watercolor is Ranger/Tim Holtz Distress Markers which come in a whole slew of colors - 60 in all I think.  But I recently worked on a project where I was trying to stay with one brand of coloring medium and couldn't because I didn't have an orange color in a Distress Marker. I actually have more yellows than oranges and if you you know me very well at all, that is somewhat amusing, *wink*. Anyhow, I added a new color to my Distress Markers in what appeared to be a nice shade of orange called Ripe Persimmon. I'm not really a "pumpkin orange" kind of girl although now I need one that color. Thank goodness for Simon Says Stamp who sells the colors individually so I can add one or two at a time and not have to buy a whole set in one shot. This also allows me to buy only the colors that I personally will use.

So, I got this Ripe Persimmon Distress Marker a few weeks ago but I like to take time to know how each color reacts with water before actually starting a project with it. Distress Markers are ideal for watercoloring as the formulation is designed to react with water each and every time. But I learned early on that they aren't that predictable for watercolor if you haven't used a particular shade before.  I have to know what it does and how it behaves with the water.  And with any watercolor medium, you have to let it dry before you can see the end result. I always talk about how Seedless Preserves is a favorite Distress Ink color and I like to call it "My Little Extrovert" because what goes down as purple becomes pinky purple or a color I would call Thistle.  Well, as I was finishing up some work last night in my studio, I grabbed the Ripe Persimmon really quick with a strip of watercolor paper that had been cut off of a big sheet. I made a mark on the scrap of watercolor paper and then added water to it with a brush.  Oh my goodness - this wasn't the color I was expecting AT ALL!   I'm adding a little swatch here for you to see. There's that orange, then that hint of peachy pink and the golden edges all dependent on how much water you use with the color.  This color needs it's own little nickname too although I can't think of one at this moment.  

When I was a little girl, I used to go and spend the night with my great-grandmother sometimes and there was a persimmon tree in her yard.  That was the sole basis for my color selection of this particular "orange". It was a happy memory and I thought it would remind me of her every time I use it.  And so it will.  *Ü*

The finishing touch on each of these cards is the sentiment from the Papertrey Ink Stamp Set called "Scripted".  The first card also used a technique I learned in a previous class and is one that Laurie Willison taught for this week's Make it Monday at Papertrey Ink.

 The Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge is Anything Goes featuring Ranger Products.  I'll be entering the top card for the Papertrey Ink Challenge and the second card for the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge as well as the Challenge over at Inspired By All the Little Things #8. I was also invited to participate in a Challenge that is new to me called Word Art Wednesday. Thanks for the invite!

Thank you so much for stopping by today and I appreciate all of the kind comments you leave.