Inspire Me Monday: The Best of FALL!

Well folks, we are now a few days into one of the most colorful seasons of the year -- my personal favorite -- Autumn! And, what better time to pull out the orange, crimson and amber shades of decorative paper, ribbon and buttons than now! We thought since we are fresh into fall, it would be fun to comb through the Inspire Me Monday archives to find some of the best tutorials that truly capture this beautiful time of year.

ARE YOU READY FOR OUR TOP 5?

5. Sunflower Spinner! 

Click on over to Ally Cope's tutorial where she puts the spin on one of our favorite harvest time blossoms (Sunflower Power) with a truly unique and fall-themed spinner card! 

4. Dimensional Wonder 

Have you ever used embossing paste? Well, Christine brings out the feel of fall with this beautiful background and then puts a gorgeously colored autumn scene on display! (So Grateful) Psst. if you like this image in clear, I have a little hint for you... you might want to check back for tomorrow's digital stamp set release. Yep, that was a hint! ;-) 

3. Ink Smash! 
Sometimes, we just gotta get messy and let that vibrant color take over. That's exactly what Dina Kowal did with this fun technique called Ink Smash. Click the link and you'll even find a video showing you a step-by-step video giving you all the deets you need to pull off this look with Power Poppy's Sunny Harvest set. 

2.  Coloring Up Fall
Colorista Mindy Baxter shows us exactly how to color up these fall fruits in rich hues using Copic Markers. Cue up this tutorial, grab your markers, your Fall Haul digi stamp if you have it and a cuppa your favorite beverage and that's what I call a great way to spend an afternoon!

1. Chalkboard Sunflowers
Use the trendy look of chalkboard behind your digital stamps in this ab fab video by Ally Cope. She used a chalkboard design behind Power Poppy's Sunflower Power image, but honestly, if you follow the tutorial, you can add all kinds of patterns behind any one of Power Poppy's digital stamps. This, my friends, is one of those "can't miss" tutorials! We happen to love it now because of it's fall flair!

We hope you've enjoyed this "Best Of Inspire Me Monday," and we hope you found some inspiration! Sometimes, you just need to scroll through past tutorials to realize how many there are in the Power Poppy archives that maybe you didn't try yet or really need to try again!

Have a wonderful week everyone! Be sure to tune back in tomorrow for another Instant Garden release. I can't wait to see what new image "sprouts" in the Power Poppy Shop! 

Until next time!
~Julie 

Inspire Me Monday: Light It Up!

Welcome to Inspire Me Monday!  I'm your hostess Allison Cope and today we're going to have some fun with some cool stamped and embossed images and some even more cool LED light kit.

In order for you to better follow along with the steps of this card, I have a video tutorial made up for you today.  This video is a little bit longer than my typical videos but I think in order to see and understand the steps, it was necessary.

Grab a cuppa your favorite beverage and join me at my desk...

View in HD.

I hope you'll take a moment and click the thumbs up on the video to let me know you'd like to see more card making videos just like this one.  Take a moment and leave a comment either here on the blog or over on YouTube.

Here's a final peek at the final card.  I used the amazingly gorgeous Sunny Harvest clear stamp set for my card today.

Copics: BV31, E70, E71, R14, Y11, Y15, Y17, YG01, YG03, YG13, YG17, YG93, YR15

 And here is my card all lit up...

Thanks for joining me here today.  I sure hope you enjoyed the card making process using the fun Chibitronics LED light kit.  If you get a chance to try it, I'd love a link to your project!

Have a great weekend everyone and happy card making!

~ Allison Cope ~


Stamps: Power Poppy (Sunny Harvest)
Cardstock: Strathmore (Bristol Smooth White Watercolor Paper), Recollections (110# White), My Favorite Things (Vellum), DCWV (Foiled – Copper)
Dies: SugarPea Designs (Stitched Flags), Lawn Fawn (Stitched Rectangles), Spellbinders (A2 Scalloped Borders 1)
Tools: Chibitronics (LED Lights, Copper Tape, Battery)
Embossing Powder: Stampendous! (Copper Detail)
Patterned Papers: Authentique (Gathering 6x6)
Inks: Versamark, Copic Markers

Inspire Me Monday: Color Theory

Happy Monday everyone!  Welcome to Inspire Me Monday!  I'm your hostess Allison Cope and we're going to talk a little bit about COLOR THEORY!

Come and find out a little bit more about the fabulous color wheel...

Here's a quick look at the cards I used as my examples today...

Featuring Folk Heart and Short Stacks

Featuring Folk Heart

Featuring Peony Love and Potted Primroses 

Featuring Small But Mighty Affirmations

Featuring Folk Heart

Featuring Planning for Magnolias

Featuring Orchids Rock

Thanks for joining me today!  So the next time you begin to color your latest and greatest Power Poppy image, think about how you're going to use color to the fullest!

Happy coloring everyone!

~ Ally ~ 

A little art therapy with my coffee

Well, hello there!

Did anyone else see this news flash about how coloring has been found to help relieve stress in adults? I saw the article from the Guardian posted on Facebook the other day and thought, HECK YEAH IT DOES! This groundbreaking phenomenon could have been revealed years ago if the researchers had been following the papercrafting community. Coloring: It’s Cathartic. (Can I get that made into a bumper sticker?) This morning I took my coffee with a little cream, and a side of stamps and watercolors. I feel better already!

I have a bunch of big deadlines this week and just realized that my kids have the next two days off school for parent-teacher conferences. This gives me a fair bit of worry, just wanting to be sure I get everything to my clients on time, getting your orders filled (I made sure I was all caught up on that first thing, ahem!) along with getting to the soccer game tonight, the grocery store, the bank, swap out loads of laundry, etc, etc. We’re all juggling stuff like mad, and wanting to be present with our families — living in the moment! Girl, it can take it’s toll on the old psyche.

Well, I plan to check a number of items off my to-do list today, I promise. But I wanted to share my “art therapy” from earlier this morning, seizing an opportunity to just COLOR. The image I used is the Chinese Lanterns and Bittersweet stamp from my Sunny Harvest stamp set. The sentiment is from my Farmers Market set. While the leaves are changing outside and we plan to go punkin’ pickin’ this weekend, I thought it was only fitting to color up an image with some fall flair. It will be perfect to give to my mom and step-dad, whose garden is laced with Chinese Lantern (Latin name is Physalis alkekengi, also called Winter Cherry, you’ll see why in a second).

This is an old photo, but I love it so! My mom gathered up armfuls of these puffy pops of color and brought them over to help decorate for Lulu’s first birthday party (11 years ago — ACK!). She even put them in a pinky-red transferware pitcher. (Read here for more about my beloved mom and her transferware.) I had a theme of orange, hot pink, and white, and we had real orange and magenta paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling... bouquets all over the house. I must’ve had more energy back then, because even thinking back to decorating for the party I feel kind of tired. Where’s that coffee again... I might’ve accidentally used it for my water cup when I was painting....

This year my folks’ Chinese Lantern crop wasn’t quite as bountiful (it can be very invasive in a garden, and they had a horticulture/landscaping student come and clear out some overgrown areas), but I popped over recently and my mom and I found several surviving plants. It’s so fascinating to me how they can go through such a wonderful metamorphosis! On this visit, I found examples of some fresh green, papery “lanterns”...

And then another several stalks were that vivid deep orange color that is simply breathtaking! (Seriously, you might need to take a step back from your monitor because it is so awesome.) Look how the orange even bleeds into the bright green stem! I didn’t notice that earlier when I was coloring, and now I wish I’d done the stems that way. Ah well, it was supposed to be cathartic, not botanically correct. :) 

And lastly — and oh baby this is good — the papery “lanterns” dry to reveal the fruit inside! These will last for months and months after the summer, hence the nickname Winter Cherry.

I hope I’ve given you some jolts of color to inspire you today, and maybe just the nudge you needed to have an “art therapy” session of your own.

Have a good one!

Oh Starry Night!

Howdy Power Poppy fans!  Join me today as I show you how to create a simple and relatively easy NIGHT SKY using Copic Markers.

The supplies you'll need for this technique include:

• our glorious Power Poppy stamps; "Sunny Harvest" used here.
• sturdy, white cardstock
• vellum paper
• black dye ink; Memento used here
• Versamark ink
• gold embossing powder
• white acrylic paint or white pen
• Copic Markers
• Copic Air Brush system

First off, let me just show what we're going to work on today.  This is the card I featured on my blog during the latest (...and most fabulous!) Power Poppy Blog Hop.  If you missed that, come and check it out here.

Let begin making our night sky!

Step 1:
Stamp your Chinese Lantern plant image from the stamp set, "Sunny Harvest", using dye based ink onto sturdy white cardstock.  Here I chose to stamp my image right in my square die cut to mask off the edges.

Step 2:
Stamp the same image again onto the stick part of a Post-It-Note and fussy cut out all the Chinese Lanterns from the image.  Apply them to your tiny lanterns as seen above.  My Post-It-Notes are yellow so you can see them.

Step 3:
Beginning with Copic Marker B23, air brush the entire back ground of the image.  I was a little heavier with my colour application in the corners of my square.

This technique can also be duplicated using inks and sponging them in a circular motion to your scene.

Step 4:
Apply Copic B24 to the outer edges of your image using the air brush system.

Step 5:
Take the next darkest Copic, B28, and apply it to just the corners of the scene.

Step 6:
Add a slight hint of purple to your sky using the air brush and Copic BV11.

Step 7:
With your masks still remaining on the little lanterns, apply some Copic FY1, a fluorescent yellow, just around the lanterns.  This will make it look like they are glowing with light.

 

Step 8:
Leaving the masks in place, take some slightly watered down white paint and an old tooth brush and splatter some paint across the entire scene.  You can now remove your die.

If you don't have any white acrylic paint, try using a white pen and adding a whole bunch of small and large dots to your scene to mimic the stars in the sky.

Step 9:
Using your Copic YR65 marker, create some globes within the lantern shapes.  If you look at a Chinese Lantern plant, they have these glossy, bold orange berries inside of them.

Next take your Copic YR68, the darker orange colour, and apply it right over top of the lighter orange orbs but leave a small area uncoloured as shown below so they appear shiny.

Step 10:
Stamp the same image again using Versamark ink onto vellum paper.  Add gold embossing powder and heat set it using a heat tool. Fussy cut out all of the lanterns out of the vellum paper.  The vellum's going to soften the brightness of the berries.

Step 11:
Add some Copic FY1 to all the lanterns to make them more of a yellow hue, around the berries.

Apply the vellum to your lanterns.  For this I took my Sakura Quickie Glue Pen and very carefully applied a tiny bit of glue to just the outer veins of each lantern and pressed the vellum pieces into the glue.  It worked like a dream and it didn't seap from the seams.

Quick tip:  NEVER use your Copics to colour an embossed image!!!  The embossing powder will stain and clog the tips of your markers and they won't work properly afterwards.  If you do this, you may have to replace all the nibs of your markers that you used - not fun!

And here's your end result....

I hope you have enjoyed my tutorial today.  I hope you give a nighttime sky a chance on one of your card creations soon!

Happy stamping and colouring!
Allison Cope.

On the sunny side of the street

OH, HI! 

So happy to welcome you all back to day two of our August “all clear stamp” release, which goes on sale this Friday. All week long we’ll be sharing tantalizing glimpses into these five sets — each one designed to help us share our sunshine with others!

Today I’m not going to beat around the bush. If you are a lover of sunflowers and the rustic, rich, cozy colors of autumn, then the cards created with the set de jour are going to wow you.

I designed the images for Sunny Harvest to celebrate some of the gorgeous glow that comes from the late summer garden. By the end of the season, sunflowers have gone wild, practically dripping over the tall fences of our neighborhoods, filling the flower buckets of many farmers markets, and if not grown by the locals, then gosh darnit, we might pick up a bunch of them at the grocery store on our way out, because they will look so festive and warm in a big pitcher on the kitchen table.

The bouquet shown here, jammed tight with zinnias, flowering basil and dill, hot pink celosia...and a bunch of other stuff, is one I nabbed from our local farmers market. /// See my post from yesterday if you want the full geeked-out tribute to the market, plus the introduction of the sweet stamp set that goes along with it. /// After I took this photo, a honeybee—!!!!!!—buzzed over to one of the giant yellow sunflowers, and that little dude hung out, collecting pollen and doing his thing, on the face of the sunflower the entire walk home. Several blocks he hung with us, and continued his stay until we got home and made his way into my garden to see what else he could pollinate. That's some stick-to-it-iveness. (How the heck do you spell that made-up word?) Anyway, I thought it was neat.

You’ll find more than sunflowers in the Sunny Harvest set. Oh yes. This set features one of my very favorite plants to admire, Chinese Lantern (Physalis alkekengi). It grows like mad over at my mom and stepdad’s garden (I will share some pix with you this month, you’ll drool) and goes through the coolest transformation from flower to seed pod. When Chinese Lantern is blooming in full orange splendor, you need to pick a whole bunch of stalks, as you will definitely want to have them around to decorate your house for fall. If you let them dry (which I find is quite easy to do if you forget to add water to the vase over a course of months), the lanterns hold a lovely subdued shade of orange, and will last for EVERRRRR. For this set, I’ve paired them with the particularly fun POP of red-orange-yellow bittersweet berries on the vine.

There are combinations of all three of these plants in this set, and lots of sunny possibilities. The sentiments I’ve included are sure to warm up anybody’s mood.

It’s not as fun to hear about all this good stuff as it is to SEE it — and it’s EXTRASUPER fun to see it when designed and illustrated by the Bloom Brigade. Let’s go see what they’ve made... RIGHT NOW:

Allison Cope
Christine Okken
Cindy Lawrence
Danielle Kennedy
Dawn Burnworth
Julie Koerber
Kathy Jones
Leslie Miller
Stacy Morgan
Tosha Leyendekker

See ya tomorrow..... (won’t you please stop back by?)