The Blossom Challenge: Clean Slate

Welcome to a new year Power Poppy friends!  It’s Christine welcoming you today to start new year right with a new theme for The Blossom Challenge!  January brings a lot of new starts, maybe even new creative goodies and fresh creative juices, so we’re all about a Clean Slate this month!  So put away all the layers and extra do-dads and instead show us your best clean and simple designs that celebrate that simple, clean and yet graphic style that packs a punch! 

Today I pulled out a now retired polymer set from Power Poppy which showcases all sorts of fun mushrooms!  Parts of that set are also available in digi form as Mushroom Trio, Miraculous Mushrooms and Morel Standards.  I stamped this image on Kraft cardstock and then pulled out my Prismacolor Pencils because I always love how pencils look on Kraft.  

You can achieve a look that almost glows!  I always lay down a layer of white prismacolor for the rest of the colours to lay on and blend.   A simple snail die seemed like the perfect accent, and then a bit of ribbon adds another pop of colour but keeps it clean, and the layers very simple.  

 

Now you’re invited to come and join us for this month’s Clean Slate!  All you need to do is create a Clean and Simple design showcasing any Power Poppy image and link it up below to be in the running!  

BUT THERE’S MORE!  Did you know Marcy’s got a gorgeous freebie you can use too?!  Just in time for Valentine’s The Rose Digi is FREE!  It would be a beautiful clean design image to use!  But we’d love to see any of your creations.  

You have until February 17th to enter!  Winner will be chosen at random and will receive a $20 Gift Code to the Power Poppy store!  

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! 

The Blossom Challenge Winners and Jingle Bell Inspiration

Greetings Power Poppy friends!  It’s Christine welcoming you again today!  Is it warm and toasty where you are today?  From what I can tell from weather reports, a lot of the map of both Canada and the US have had some significant cold and snow!  

To warm it up, today I’m bringing you a design with this sweet image from Power Poppy called Blankets and Bells, AND I’m also here to announce November’s The Blossom Challenge winners!  I travelled quite a bit last month for work, and it’s taken me a while to catch up at home. Thanks for appreciate your patience!  

Isn’t this a delightful little stack that looks cozy-cabin ready for snuggling?  Colouring is done with Copics and I’ve paired the design with some fabulous patterned paper I had in my stash with a fun colour palette.   Behind the patterned paper I sponged Distress Ink through a basketweave stencil to mirror the patterns in the blankets, added a few enamel dots, and then I tied a pair of little golden jingle bells to Baker’s twine to mirror the image.  Always sweet to hear the sound of jingle bells on a card!  

NOW For our WINNERS!  Our Designers had a chance to enjoy all of your beautiful entries into November’s Gold, Silver and Shimmer challenge and they have picked 2 winners as their favourites!  

Maggie https://maggiescathouse.blogspot.com/2022/11/mitten-power-poppy.html

and 

Nicola https://amethystlilydesigns.blogspot.com/2022/11/sparkling-treats.html

Congratulations ladies!  Please contact Marcy at bloom@powerpoppy.com to claim your prize!  

We’ll be back January 16th with a new The Blossom Challenge, so enjoy your Christmas and Holiday season and we’ll look forward to connecting in 2023!  

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: Holiday Coasters!

 

Hi all and welcome to another edition of Inspire Me Monday! As I was putting all my Halloween decorations away, I was starting to realize just how close the holiday season is from ... RIGHT NOW! Can you believe we are already being inundated with Black Friday commercials and it's not even Thanksgiving yet? Even still, this is the perfect time to create for the holidays, before the hustle and bustle get us into full-blown shopping and baking mode! :-)

When I thought about something that might be fun and yet not too difficult to make, I decided to hit up the craft supply aisle at my local Walmart. And.... I found these!

Plaid has this package of four wooden coasters that I decided might be fun to paint up in a metallic color and decoupage on some holiday imagery. 

I grabbed some Krylon Looking Glass Silver spray paint and took the coasters outside hitting them with the spray paint every other minute. The bottle claimed you can use five thin coats with an ultimate dry time of about 10 minutes. Perfect! The paint did soak into the wood quite a bit but I still love the shimmer it provided. What was even better was that I had this paint in the house. 

I love that cozy feeling that winter provides so, in my head, I kept seeing the digital stamp, Cuddle in the Cabin. I opened up the image in my Photoshop Elements and moved the deer closer in on the image and then printed!

I also used the Spellbinders Nestabilities Hemstitch Square die to cut my image out and chose the die set that was just a wee bit smaller than my painted coaster. See? 

From there, it's coloring time! I decided to color just two of the images and chose to color the house just a little differently between the two images. After I was done, I used Modge Podge to attach my images to my wooden coasters...

Here's a peek at how the first coaster turned out....

And here's the second one!

When I was done, I decided that I might want a holder for my coasters. Who knows, I might decide these are a fun little gift for someone along with some cold-weather goodies! So, I created this holder below. 

I just love this little die-cut poinsettia thanks to a Spellbinders die (Shapeabilities Layered Poinsettia). After layering two of the die cuts, I did add some razzle dazzle in the center. 

Want to know how I created this little holder? I actually cued up an old tutorial I did over on my blog and you can find it HERE!

So, there you have it! Two coasters ready to hold my cocoa or spiced coffee when the winter chill moves on in!

Thanks for stopping by and spending a little time with me! I hope you had a little fun and have those creative holiday juices starting to flow! 

Have a fun and crafty week everyone!

Inspire Me Monday: A Winter's Night

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

I wanted to share a project that stretches me out of my comfort zone...coloring a dark background with Copic markers! So worrisome to me! I think it probably scares a lot of folks, especially Copic beginners. I can never color the background first for some reason, which means once I have colored the main image it scares me to try a dark background and potentially ruin all my hard work! 

I decided to pull on my big girl mittens and give a night background a try! I used the "to be released soon" digital Feeding Blitzen image that was originally part of the Under Glass: Christmas Traditions clear stamp set. 

The original stamped image is fairly small, so having it in a digital version which can be resized...priceless! I printed the image at approximately 3" x 5" onto white Copic friendly cardstock. 

This project has a lot of dark Copic markers! Don't be afraid of them. Just grab and go! It is only paper after all. If you make a mistake, you can always start over! 

Tip: If your Copic markers are old like mine, make sure your super brush nibs are fresh and flexible. When the nibs get old they get very "smooshy" which makes it hard to get into the fine details or to hold a sharp edge. The nibs are not expensive and are easily replaced.

I colored Santa and Blitzen first, including the apples and the snow. Using cool gray for Santa's beard and fur trim, then using blues for the snow shadows seemed very dark to me, until I added the background! 

Using the dark blue for the background was a bit intimidating, and I had to go over it and darken it to get rid of the streaks, but once it was finished....wow does the white and red pop! 

Here are my colors:

Santa's suit and apples: R24, R29, R59

Mittens and leaves: YG25, YG17, YG67, with a bit of E51 and E23 to tone down the mittens!

Boots, belt, hoofs, beard: C1, C3, C5, C7, C9

Blitzen: E53, E55, E57, E29

Santa's face: E50, E51, R21, E23

Belt buckle: Y17, Y15, Y11

Snow: B0000, B000, B00

Sky: B91, B93, B95, B97

Some of that pesky blue got onto Blitzen's antlers, but let's pretend it is shadows, shall we?!

After the Copic ink had dried I went back over the image with a white Posca paint pen to add the falling snow. Thankfully the snow did not turn pink or blue! The paint is thick enough that the Copic color did not bleed through! Or, maybe because I allowed the ink to fully dry?? 

I chose the sentiment from the Garden of Gratitude clear set which I stamped onto a scrap of cardstock and cut out with a skinny sentiment die. 

Here is more "winter's  night" inspiration from the past to help you take the plunge!

I used the Cuddle in the Cabin clear stamp set, but this image also is part of the digital set HERE .  See the original post HERE.

I used the digital version of the Enchanted Branches: Nativity Angel set and the ornaments from the Enchanted Branches: Woodland set. See the original post HERE.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Power Poppy Products Used:
Feeding Blitzen digital set (coming soon)
Garden of Gratitude clear set (sentiment)

Other Products Used: 

Copic alcohol markers

Posca white paint pen

White cardstock

Red cardstock

Simple Stories Vintage Rustic Christmas paper pad

Enamel dot