Inspire Me Monday: Some Tips to Create in a Jiffy!

Hello everyone and happy Monday! It's time for another Inspire Me Monday and today, I have some fun, easy and relatively quick cards that I made to slip into the mail to send to my daughter at college. But, these little numbers are really all occasion cards that you could have on standby to send in a jiffy!

I started by going through some of my favorite digital stamps from Power Poppy and narrowing them down to images that would be "pick me ups" and happy illustrations. I decided on Wish You Luck, Asters Abuzz and Cuppa Buttercups! 

So how are these creations quick? I'll share some of the tips & tricks I used to keep it simple! 

First, I started by opening all of them up in my Photoshop Elements and putting them on a printable page just for ease and then, second, while they were all on the same page, I used different dies to cut out each image. 

Once I had my images die cut, I decided to make my card in reverse for ease. I call it backward but maybe this is how you create all the time? Let me know if you do because, honestly, it cut down on the time I normally take picking up and putting down so many different decorative card stocks until I settle on "just the right one!" For some reason, when the image isn't colored, it's easier to choose? Hhhhmmm.... maybe!

Oops! I almost forgot! With the Wish You Luck image, you'll notice the original has the stems included in the image and I wanted to create just a circle of clover -- so I opened up the image and then used the magic eraser to erase the tied stems! 

Here's a peek at the original illustration! 

Okay, back to my tips and tricks! I went about creating my card bases before I even put marker to paper....

I created these three layouts in less than a half hour (and honestly, probably less time than that). I simply picked papers that looked appealing to me instead of trying to perfectly match them to the vibe or the color of the Copic markers that I used. 

Now, the reason why I wanted to do it this way was because my daughter plays college softball and since we can't always make the away games, we sit in front of our TV and watch her for doubleheaders on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. That's perfect coloring time in between innings! ;-) 

WISH YOU LUCK - Card #1

With midterms and finals always looming, I decided to use this image to pop in the mail when she needs a little encouragement. As a nursing major, it seems like every test is "do or die" and so a little love from mom can't hurt, can it?

While this card might seem a little "loud"-- I think it's happy and the patterns are fresh and fun! Color up the image with Copic markers, add a sentiment strip and some bling and.... done! 

Here's a closeup for you! 

ASTERS ABUZZ - Card #2

This creation is just a little reminder to stay positive and when life gets you down, re-write the script and make your own happy. It's an important lesson, right? 

And, here's a little closeup! You can see that I did add a little sparkle to the bee's wings! 

CUPPA BUTTERCUPS - Card #3

I love this last card because you can pop a card like this in the mail any time for any reason! 

And so, after some coloring while watching softball, here's all three together! It was funny, after coloring an image, I'd run to my craft room and assemble and take a photo then run back to the couch to do it again! I have to say it was a fun way to create -- no stress or fussing at all like I normally do! :-)

I hope you had fun sharing a little time with me today and maybe you'll give these little tricks a try -- picking a handful of digital images and putting them on a page, die-cutting them in one fell swoop and then creating each card's layout before you color! It sure helped me! 

Thanks for stopping by! Have a fabulous and creative week! 

The Blossom Challenge: Inspired by the Sea

Welcome Power Poppy friends!  Today it’s Christine back with you, kicking off a brand new theme for The Blossom Challenge at Power Poppy!  

This month we have an Inspiration Challenge based on a photo from my recent trip to Northern California for work.  At a local friend’s recommendation we took a day off to head to the coast, driving through the Sonoma Valley wine country to a spot called Bodega Beach.  Its a sweet little coastal town with miles of beaches along the coastline.  It was such a stunning surprise with high cliffs, bluffs and pounding surf; you could believe you’re in Cornwall, England rather than the Cali coast.  The spot I took this picture was at Bodega Head where you are high on the bluffs looking down at the rugged coast above.  In the foreground you can see the vegetation with the pop of pink.  These plants are succulents called Sea Fig, and the flowers bloom a number of different colours.  Its an invasive plant in California, so they’re trying to control it, but it made for a beautiful picture!  

I’ve created two cards with this inspiration:  First up, a design inspired by the colours and plants in the photo.  

It’s a mini-slimline design using Power Poppy’s Gerbera Daisies Stamp set to mimic the flowers of the Sea Fig, colouring them in vivid pinks with my Copic Markers.  They are fussy cut and placed on a layered background with a die cut that I think imitates the sea fig vegetation.  A very FUN new find for me is the Lindy’s Magical Powders that I picked up which bring all the colour to that die cut!  These powders are dye based and activated in water, and result in gorgeous vibrant saturated colour and shimmer.  I think they really give the feel of the succulent vegetation and the colours of the sea.  

Here’s a view that helps you see how shimmery and shiny they are, and what awesome colour you are left with.  I’m going to be using them a lot in my future!  I’m using watercolour paper because it holds the moisture you need to activate the powders.  

The pretty little sentiment is from Power Poppy’s sentiment set, Nice Things to Say (in stock in polymer).  

Now I have a card that is very ocean forward.  

For this design I really took inspiration from the layout and colours in the picture.  I started with the background and used the same Lindy’s Magical Powders on watercolour paper to create sky, sea and ground with different powder colours, activited them with water and let them dry fully.  then I ran the background through an embossing folder I have that has the feel of the vegetation.  Next I brayered watered down white acrylic paint over the embossing to give the feeling of foamy waves and bring some highlight to the dimension of the embossing.  

For this beautiful sentiment I used one of my favourite Power Poppy sentiments M-Powering Words , embossed it with a metallic embossing powder in teal, trimmed it out and placed it on teal glitter paper and a layer of vellum.  Then, I accented the card with pretty dies from The Greetery Curio Summer Findings. 

Now I’ll leave you with the photo without graphics, and I hope this inspiration has taken you on a lovely journey to the sea!  

Join us in The Blossom Challenge this month to create something based on any part of this photo that inspires you.  Be as creative as you’d like!  You could win a $20 Gift Code for the Power Poppy store!  

I’ve added the picture without the graphics so you can visualize all of it for your inspiration.   Link up your creation below!

The only requirements are that you need to use one Power Poppy image or sentiment, and can enter as often as you like.  This Challenge runs until March 18th!  

Want to know who won our Clean Slate Challenge last month? We had some really fun entries!  This month,  Almeslee with her gorgeous Birthday rose was our winner!  Almeslee please contact Marcy at bloom@powerpoppy.com to claim your winners code! 

             You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Inspire Me Monday: Fun Little Folds

Hey everybody! Welcome to another Inspire Me Monday! Today I have a fun little project for you that is a little non-standard but fits in a standard size envelope. Recently, I was surfing and someone created a card somewhat like this and it stuck in my head. Go figure, when I tried to get back to where that idea was, I couldn't find it, so these dimensions and how I created my card are probably a wee bit of my own making! ;-) When I find things like this, I love sharing with a Power Poppy spin on them! 

Here's a peek at the card we'll be making.... 

 You will start with a strip of paper that measures 5-1/2" by 12". This will be your card base, so be sure to use a kind of paper with enough bulk. You'll want to score this piece along the shortest width at the 6" line. 

From here, fold your piece, setting the fold along the 0" edge of your scoring device and score 4-1/4" to the right side of the fold. 

Now, flip your card 180 degrees so that the piece you just scored is now on your left-hand side. Now, again, to the right side of the fold, score at the 3-1/2" line. Once you've folded these pieces toward the middle of your card front, you'll have something that looks like this below. The inner fold is a valley fold and the outer fold is a mountain fold. 

I didn't want these flaps to protrude so much into my card, so I trimmed both flaps so that they were an inch in width. Now they lay nicely and don't take up too much of my card front. You'll see why this is important in a minute! 

From here, I cut two pieces of coordinating card stock to measure 1" by 5-1/2". 

I then adhered these two pieces to each of my two flaps. 

Before I finished the front, I wanted to make two pieces to serve as the inside of my card. I opened the digital stamp set Forget-Me-Not Heart in my Photoshop Elements and then changed the color of it to match my green paper. These pieces measure 3-3/4" by 5" and then 3" by 5". I wanted to have a nice amount of border around these pieces. The sentiment is from the polymer set called Chrysanthemum XL, which is retired. 

Now, with any folds like this, you know it's hard to close your card, so, that's why we create those fun belly bands on cards -- to keep everything in its place! :-)

And... that's what I did. I took a piece of paper that was 12" by 1-1/2" and folded it around my card, trimming off the excess and securing it in the back with double-sided tape. Some people choose to score this piece but I have never had any luck doing this with the proper measurements. My band is either too big or too small forcing bad words to come out of my mouth. So, instead, I lightly fold the strip around my card and follow up with a bone folder to make that edge crisp! 

From there, I printed off another Forget-Me-Not Heart, making it a wee bit smaller than the ones I used on the inside. Since I was using the blank heart portion of this set, I wanted a different sentiment and chose the one from the Camellias digital set "Life is Better with Friends." I colored it up with Copic markers and chose shades that would match my cardstock. My blue is a little bolder than the colors on my paper but I love how "cheery" it is! 

And, here's a little close-up for you! I did add a wee bit of glitter to the insides of my flowers. I can't resist. I just can't resist glitter! 

And that, my friends, is it! A fun little fold that keeps the person you give your card to guessing a wee bit! Not to mention, it's super fun and extra easy to make! If you end up making a version of this, please include a link in the comments! I'd love to see how yours turned out! 

Have a fun and creative week! 

Inspire Me Monday: Poinsettias Eight Ways

Hello, my Power Poppy Friends! It is my turn once again to share some inspiration with you. 

I am sorry to say that I did not have any time to create a new project for you today, so I decided to share eight past projects...showing how you can use the Power Poppy digital Poinsettia images in various ways! (See the list of stamp sets below.)

This is the Ultimate Poinsettia digital stamp set colored with Prismacolor colored pencils in fairly traditional and vintage-leaning colors. I love when poinsettias are mixed with other flowers, and this bouquet is one of my favorites! 

This is the Poinsettia and Pomegranates digital stamp set. I colored this one with a combination of Prismacolor colored pencils and Copic markers. This is a very different color scheme, but if you like non-traditional colors, this style may be for you!

Here is the same image, rotated and colored with traditional colors using Copic markers. Those reds make me swoon!

This is the Poinsettia XL digital stamp set. This sample is colored with Prismacolor colored pencils onto kraft cardstock for yet another look. It is much more fun to color white flowers onto the kraft paper! This project is a more vintage take on clean and simple, which works perfectly with that HUGE white bloom!

Here is another traditional color scheme using the Joy to the World Bouquet digital stamp set colored with Copic markers. This is a deeply saturated coloring project! I always love the traditional red and green combination the most! This project is a larger scale, suitable for an 8x10 picture frame.

This "Santa's boots" image is from the Garden of Gratitude: Boot Bouquet digital stamp set. I colored it with Copic markers in a traditional color scheme, but chose greens that are more trendy. This is another great example of  the poinsettia mixed with other Christmas flowers. 

For this scene I used Season's Greenings: Wheelbarrow and Season's Greenings: Planta Claus. Again, I used Copics to color the scene and stuck to traditional colors, but here the poinsettias are NOT the stars of the show! But, the punch of the reds is perfect for this snowy scene!

For this slimline card I used the Winter Flora digital stamp set, colored with Copics. I used some digital wizardry to create this slimline layout showcasing those poinsettias very well. The addition of the blue, silver, and gold Christmas ornaments really makes that red pop! This style is also more modern...no printed paper, just clean and simple!

Power Poppy Digital Stamp Sets with Poinsettias

Ultimate Poinsettia

Poinsettia and Pomegranates

Poinsettia XL

Joy to the World Bouquet

Health and Happiness (NEW)

Garden of Gratitude: Boot Bouquet

Season's Greenings: Wheelbarrow

Winter Flora

Thanks for stopping by today! I wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year!

Inspire Me Monday: Small Stamps, Big Impact

 

HEY FRIENDS! Nancy here with this week's edition of Inspire Me Monday for Power Poppy! This week I took a look at my collection of clear stamps from Power Poppy to see if I could come up with a way to use them differently. I noticed that often Marcella includes small images in addition to the main image and sentiments and I hardly ever use them. So I decided to pull out my stamps, take a closer look at that the small stamps and sentiments, and see what I could come up with. 

So today, I have three different cards that use the small stamp images in different ways. For the first card, I combined images from Merry Littles with sentiments from Cozy Cupfuls. I arranged the stamps in three rows of three, inserting the sentiments between the rows.

For added interest, I staggered the order of the images so that each row was a little different. Although there are three of each image, the coloring went relatively fast since the images were small. 

My second card is a variation of the first. I selected images from the Bough Wow Wow and Berry Sweet Holiday stamps sets and combined them with a sentiment form the Let it Glow stamp set. I repeated the pattern for each row instead of staggering the images.

For the last card, I selected a single image and two of the smaller sentiments from the Garden of Gratitude stamp set. I love the simplicity of this combination.

Now you could probably do this with digital images, but I found it easier to use physical stamps so I could mix and match stamps and rearrange them to find the best designs. 

So pull out your stamp sets and take another look at all of those little stamps. Most of all, have some fun!

Nancy

Inspire Me Monday: Halloween Bookmarks

Hello friends! Since today is Halloween I decided to scare up a quick and easy craft, Halloween bookmarks.

My oldest son and I are big fans of horror novels and Stephen King is one of our favorite authors. My son recently gave me a new Stephen King book for my birthday so I decided I needed a new Halloween bookmark to go with it.

I used the digital stamp set Boo Cat and Pumpkins and put the images I wanted to use in Word, then manipulated them until I had arrangements I was happy with. I then printed them out and cut them with bookmark dies I have.

Once I had the images cut out I colored them with copic markers.

When I finished I had 3 Halloween bookmarks! This took me less than an hour to get done so if you need some easy Halloween treats to give out these are definitely a treat, not a trick!

Thanks for stopping by for this quick and easy Inspire Me Monday, and I hope you have a BOO-tiful day!