Power Poppy - The Blog: Copic

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Monday

The Blossom Challenge: Sponge Bath!

Hi Power Poppy fans! It’s Christine bringing you another fun "The Blossom Challenge” for the month. I’m feeling especially Springy this month, and ready for all the fun colour that’s soon to come. So, this month’s Challenge has the theme “Sponge Bath”, and its all about using your sponging tools to bring smooth inky colour to your designs.

I’ve got two cards to show you today that showcase different ways to sponge ink.

First off is this beauty from Power Poppy called Spring Border One. I adore this image and its sweet border style of blooms. All the flowers are coloured with Copics, and I stamped the large tulip twice so I could add it to the left of the arrangement to balance out my how the flowers appear in front of the arched die cut windows.

For my sponging technique I used a simple background technique, using Tumbled Glass Distress Oxide Ink on the card base, splattering it with water, and then splattering again with white ink. Such an easy way to add a background to a scene. It’s one of my favourite properties of Oxide ink, when you see how great it reacts to water.

Perfect for a little note for a friend.

Next I’ve used another gorgeous Spring image from Power Poppy called Daffodil Bouquet.

For this design I utilized a stencil to create a backdrop for this amazing bouquet of daffodils and muscari (grape hyacinth). Once my bouquet was coloured with Copics, I used some pale pink cardstock and a diamond stencil with soft shades of peachy pink (Tattered Rose, Victorian Velvet, Picked Raspberry and Seedless Preserves). Using coloured cardstock and stencilling over top gives you a base colour that you don’t have to add with ink.

I also lightly sponged the embossing of the die cut frame which allows it to tie in to the colour and accents the embossing slightly. The sentiment is from Power Poppy’s Peony Muse polymer set.

Those bright pops of colour really shine!

Want more inspiration? Come and see what Barbara has to show you today!

Now WHO was our winner last month? Random.org picked Camille (Short on Ideas)with her beautiful Black-Eyed Susans reimagined by the sea! Camille, contact Marcy at bloom@powerpoppy.com

Now we’re extending the Challenge to you! It’s Sponge Bath time! Use your sponges or blending tools to add inky colour to any part of your design. You could simply distress the edges of your paper with ink, blend multi-colour or ombre backgrounds, or use stencils to create a background or layer to your design. All you need to do is use at least one Power Poppy image to be included in the challenge.

Link your entries below, you can play as many times as you like! Challenge closes April 15 at 11 pm MTN.

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!

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!

The Blossom Challenge: Eat Your Fruit and Veggies

Hello Power Poppy friends! It’s Christine with you here today and we’re headed into harvest season this month with The Blossom Challenge and our theme “Eat Your Fruit and Veggies”. Today I am showing off our “vegan” concept with two cards celebrating both gratitude and yummy fruit and veggies.

My first design showcases Power Poppy’s Cabbage Patch set. Each of these cabbages or kale are coloured with Copic Markers and trimmed out. I have more photos of this design on my blog, as well as a short tutorial on how I created the coordinating cabbage and kale background. The mini-slimline size is perfect size for this design to make it feel long and lean, and with lots of room for the images, sentiment banner and background.

The sentiment is from the polymer version of this set, which is embossed in white and inked in black below. I love all the rich green colour! It’s the colour I love best!

Next up is a card with one of my favourite fall sets from Power Poppy called: Pumpkins and Pears.

Marcy always does little vignettes so charmingly and they are such a delight to colour. I started with Copics for this design and then finished off the colouring with Prismacolor Pencils to add in the fine details.

The background is a Kraft panel that was masked off with tape and then Distress Oxide Ink was added (Crackling Campfire, Abandoned Coral, Fossilized Amber and Seedless Preserves). After splattering with water and some white ink and it was dry, I ran the panel through with a pierced die. I love the look it gives. It’s finished off with some patterned paper, inked die cut leaves and enamel dots.

Have you been eating your Fruits and Veggies? How about creating a card with them?!

Join us this month with a design using some form of Fruit or Vegetable in the card and at least one Power Poppy stamp. The Challenge is open for a month and you could win a $20 gift card to the Power Poppy Store!

To top it off, Marcy has a SALE on some of my favourite Fruit and Veggie themed digi stamps in the store if you’d like to add to your collection and play along!

You have until October 16th to submit your link below.

Want to know the WINNER from our Sentimental Challenge last month? Congratulations goes out to..... Maggie S ! Maggie, contact Marcy at bloom@powerpoppy.com to get your prize code! We look forward to see what you create!

Enjoy and be inspired with more Fruit and Veggie goodness from the Bloom Brigade playing along today.

Gloria

Essie

The Blossom Challenge Goes Sentimental

Hello Friends and Welcome to the August edition of the The Blossom Challenge. I’m Christine bringing you this month’s The Blossom Challenge, and we’re Going Sentimental, focussing on Power Poppy’s beautiful selection of sentiments.

Today I’m bringing you two inspiration cards with Sentiments as the focus.

First up is a design I made for a recent wedding.

For a lot of years my husband and I were youth pastors and it’s been fun to see our former students get married over the years. This wedding was a delightful one with the bride from Indian-Canadian descent and the groom from British-Canadian descent, the mix of cultures and colours at the wedding was gorgeous. This palette reflects the colours in the wedding of orange, pink, coral and red. I’ve utilized two beautiful Power Poppy sets, Hummingbird Paradise as the beautiful floral frame, and then one of my ALL TIME favourite polymer sets from Power Poppy Big Scripts. Did you know that this set features hand drawn sentiments by Marcy? I just love her scripty writing.

To highlight the sentiment I embossed it on white cardstock, then sponged warm shades of Distress Oxide Ink, Seedless Preserves and Abandoned Coral around it, wiping the ink off the sentiment once it was done. The floral frame is fussy cut out in a windowed design.

Next up is a Clean and Simple design.

Dear friends of ours move away today to another city in the province. We are going to miss them terribly. Over the years we’ve watched them grow from a newly married couple to a family of four. We’ve shared a love of creativity and the mountains, so this design is a bit of a nod to our friendship, and the fact that they are moving closer to the Rockies. Similar to the first card, I created a background of a sunset sky using Distres Oxide Inks: Tumbled Glass, Wilted Violet, Abandoned Coral and Seedless Preserves, spashed some water on the background, then embossed this awsome encouraging sentiment from Power Poppy M-Powering Words (currently sold out in polymer) onto the beautiful colour of the background. I used a framed arch die to accent the sentiment, and then hand drew in a silhouette of our favourite mountain range in Canmore, Alberta, the Three Sisters, filling it in with a black Sharpie, and added a punch-cut sparkly paper moon.

Now how about some phenomenal Sentimental inspiration from The Bloom Brigade?

Barbara

Essie

Gloria

Lisa

and Me, Christine!

Now it’s your turn Power Poppy friends! Your challenge this month is to create something “Sentimental” where the focus is on the sentiment. We’re inviting you to think about creative backgrounds, stencilling, framing the sentiment with other sets, or creative uses of patterned paper and dies. You can use any Power Poppy set as part of your design to be in the running for our monthly prize!

To sweeten the deal Marcy has discounted a number of her Fall themed Sentiment sets (and a few extras) for you HERE. Did you know there are also two sets in the sentimental family that are FREE?! I Can Do All Things and Let It Be. We’re making it easy for you to play along!

Add your link at the bottom of the post for your chance to win a $20 Gift Code to the Power Poppy Store!

Would you like to know who last month’s The Blossom Challenge: Christmas In July winner is? Random.org picked Amanda! Congratulations Amanda! Please email Marcy at bloom@powerpoppy.com to collect your gift code!

Looking forward to seeeing all of your Sentimental Creations!

The Blossom Challenge: Christmas in July

Welcome to another round of The Blossom Challenge friends! It’s Christine here today and we’re excited to jump into another theme that’s become quite popular in the summer, it’s Christmas in July! Marcy’s images for the Christmas and Holiday season are always show stoppers, and it seems a shame to only pull them out in the winter, so this month we can create to get a jump start on our Christmas cards and packaging.

Today I pulled out a couple of Christmas sets from Marcy to create a mini-slimline card and coordinating tag. The mini-slimline uses Garden of Gratitude: Trellis Digial Stamp to showcase this pretty trellis Christmas tree made of oranges. It’s so charming!

The colouring is done with Copics, with patterned paper really helping to achieve that citrus feel I was going for. A bit of paper ric rack accents the top.

These sweet sentiment stamps are something we could use a little more of don’t you think? I’ve added some enamel stars to highlight the sentiments and to tie back to the star on the tree.

The gift tag is created with Power Poppy’s Handmade with Love Tags placed on some Kraft paper that has a slit in it for tucking in. After I took the first picture in this series, I realized the tag looked a bit bare where the slit is, so I added a little circle punch to the tag which will also help with stability.

So now it’s your turn! Your Challenge this month is to create anything Christmas or Holiday using at least one stamp from Power Poppy. You can make a card, tag, gift packaging, or frameable art. Show us what you’ve got! You could win a $20 Gift Code to the Power Poppy Store, just for playing along. Entries close on August 15. Be sure to add your link below!

BUT before you go....there’s a SALE! Marcy has kindly discounted ALL of our Christmas Digi’s in the Happiest Holiday Category for you if you want to pick up something new to create with. If you know Marcy, you know they’re all beauties!

Now for last month’s randomly selected winner....congratulations goes to: Carol Dee with her lovely forced hyacinth design.

Carol Dee please contact Marcy at bloom@powerpoppy.com for your prize code!

For more inspiration here’s two other gorgeous beauties from The Bloom Brigade:

Lisa

Gloria

Stunning isn’t it? We look forward to seeing your creations this month friends!

The Blossom Challenge: Glassy-Eyed!

Welcome to our second The Blossom Challenge from Power Poppy! We had such a great time perusing your beautiful challenge entries from last month’s The Blossom Challenge of April Showers Bring May Flowers. Last month’s winner will be at the end of the post!

I’m your host Christine and this month we’ve got a fun theme called Glassy-Eyed! We invite you to use an image that is in glass or under glass on your design. So dig into your Copics, Pencils or watercolour, and any Power Poppy image with glass. You could even be totally artsy and use a Power Poppy image and draw your own glass vase, snowglobe or cloche!

Today I’m using the NEW image from Power Poppy called Accentuate the Positive. What a gorgeous array of flowers and fruit around this pretty mason jar! I printed the image quite lightly for colouring and then used Copics and Prismacolour Pencils to brighten up the blooms. One of my favourite varieties of Zinnia is Queen Red Lime, they have such a nice fade between lime and rosy red, so I tried to give the flower on the lower right that treatment in my colouring.

I have a short tutorial on my blog on what I think are important features of colouring glass HERE.

Things I like to consider when colouring something in or under glass.

Where the light is reflecting on the glass
The width of the glass for colouring, and the bottom edges (if in a vase)
Will the glass be coloured or clear
Will there be a water level be and will you define it
How stems refract and colour fades in water

Marcy has graciously given a special 25% OFF price on some of her best glassy images again during this challenge, all of these beauties on sale are linked here:

Accentuate the Positive
Cuppa Cupcake
Cuppa Buttercups
Hellebores
Hyacinth Bulb in Glass
Nest is Best
Seaside Sweetness
Single Orchid
Snowglobe Greetings
Sweet & Sugary Snowglobe
Tabletop Tree
Tiny Treasures
Volumes of Beauty
Well Hello Dahlia
Wildflower Mini

Zinnia Parade

Challenge Details: We hope you can join us for the challenge this month and create something in or under glass with Power Poppy images! You could win a $20 Gift Code to the Power Poppy store! Link up your creation BELOW!

Remember: You MUST use a Power Poppy image somewhere on your design to be included in the Glassy-Eyed challenge. Entries close on July 16th at NOON.

Last month’s The Blossom Challenge May Flowers RANDOMLY DRAWN WINNER IS.....Liz Williams with her beautiful Pure Prairie Bouquet! Congratulations Liz. Contact Marcy at bloom@powerpoppy.com for your prize code!

Here’s some gorgeous Glassy inspiration from The Bloom Brigade:

Essie

Gloria

Barbara

Lisa

Nancy

and Christine

The Blossom Challenge: Bring Those May Flowers

Hello Power Poppy Friends!

We’re so excited to welcome you here today and to invite you to our NEW Monthly Challenge! I’ll be your host (Christine), but each month I’ll be joined by some of our Power Poppy Bloomies bringing you inspiration with the challenge.

It’s called The Blossom Challenge! As I’ve been thinking about the challenge, my heart keeps coming back to this theme of “Blossom”. Yes, of course the flower allusion, that’s the beauty of Power Poppy, but also to Blossom in the sense of growing and thriving as creators, becoming more abudant in our abilities .......and sometimes that means we need a spark of inspiration, a push to try something new, a place that celebrates what we’ve done, and how we’ve grown. I want this to be a place to feel proud of our creative gift, in a Power Poppy Community that cheers one other on! So that’s what you’re going to find here each month at Power Poppy, and we hope you all join in!

This month our theme is “April Showers Bring May Flowers”. We want you to pull out all of those lovely Spring blooms that Marcy illustrates so beautifully and create anything with them. More on the theme, and prizes later in the post, but first I’ll start with the card I created.

Heart Abloom is one of my favourite illustrations from Power Poppy! I love the composition of the images, the combination of daffodils, narcissus, hellebore, tiny lilies and the fun blueberries and snail! Its sister set in polymer is called Always Here (still available!). I really enjoy picking unique palettes for my colouring and when I found a fun peachy-yellow hellebore that helped me decide on these fun colours together. That’s one of my #1 tips for colouring, do some research on your flowers first. Find some inspiration and build a cohesive colour palette from there.

The colouring is done with Copic Markers, with details added in with Prismacolor Pencils. Trimmed out carefully and placed on this pretty ombre patterned paper, with paper ric-rac and a scalloped frame helps keep the emphasis on the beauty of the flowers. I delight in how fresh and fun it is and how much I enjoyed colouring it!

So....here are the details about the Challenge!

1. You must use a Power Poppy image somewhere on your design. It could be a stamp, digi, sentiment, Power Poppy freebie, or a background, but we want to see you using your Power Poppy images. Those will be the cards entered for our monthly prize.

This month we want to see your Spring flowers, think tulip, daffodil, narcissus, hellebore, hyacinth, primrose, snow drop, crocus, and cherry blossoms for your creations. Let’s leave those summer blooms for a few months from now :)

Marcy has generously discounted some of our BEST Spring themed images by 25% OFF so you can play along!! You are not limited to these sets, but what an awesome sale!

Click here to see the discounted sets this month:

ALL NEW: Sketches of Spring Volume I
Daffodil Bouquet
Dancing with Daffodils

Bowl of Beauty

Auricula Theatre
Blossoming Cherry
Heart Abloom
Hellebores
Hyacinth Bulb in Glass
Love One Another
Magnolia Sunshine
Spring Border One and Spring Border Two
Spring Meadow Bouquet
Springtime Love Roundel
Tulips
Tulips in Hobnail Pitcher
Created to Create
Flowering Branches
Winter Pick Me Up

2. There will be a monthly PRIZE for playing along! Sometimes it will be a random draw, and other times it will be a Bloomie Favourite winning design. Winners will receive a $20 Gift Card to the Power Poppy store! This month’s Challenge will be open until NOON on June 17th.