{capture the moment}

Design Team Tips With Stephanie Gold

Today, Stephanie is sharing on her blog some great ways to stretch your floral stamps in your collection... or give you a reason to purchase a new floral set that you have had your eye on:

"Do you collect crazy amounts of floral stamps like I do?? Well if you do (or if you’d simply love to learn a few new ways to stretch your stamp usage)… Join me over at my blog where I will be showing you unique ways to use those florals; create some beautiful projects; and maybe even justify buying that new floral set you’re dying to have. ;) See you there!"

• STAMPS: Especially You, Ruby Rose, Made With Love, Pen & Ink, Garden Party
• INK: True Black, Pale Peony, Sweet Blush, Spring Moss, Lemon Tart, Simply Chartreuse, Limeade Ice, Hawaiian Shores, Raspberry Fizz
• PAPER: Vellum, Stampers Select White
• DIES: Deco Cover Plate
• OTHER: Pink Envelope, Kraft Envelope, Don’t Forget To Write Kit, Washi Tape, Pink and White Bakers Twine, Natural Twine

Make sure to stop by Stephanie's blog to see more!

Throwback Thursday: Irresistibly Ikat Stamp Set

Welcome to Throwback Thursday at Papertrey Ink! Today we have a few of our design team members revisiting the Irresistibly Ikat stamp set.

First up is a great masculine card design from Lizzie:

“I adore the richness of textiles, so pulling out Irresistibly Ikat for today was such a joy. These images come together to create patterns ranging from bright and feminine to subdued and even masculine. I decided to try the latter; creating a simple print with a pop of metallic to add a touch of luxury. I hope you’ll stop by my blog to see more of today’s project!”

• STAMPS: Irresistibly Ikat, Wet Paint
• INK: Dark Indigo, VersaMark
• PAPER: Dark Indigo, Stamper’s Select Vellum, Stamper's Select White
• DIES: Wet Paint Cuts
• OTHER: Scotch Foam Tape, Filigree Gold Embossing Powder, Gansai Tambi Watercolor Paint

Click here to visit Lizzie's blog to see more!

And Heather has a card with a great background design using her favorite technique:

“I see ikat patterns everywhere when I am shopping for clothing and home decor items. It certainly is a trend that has been sticking around for a while. The Irresistibly Ikat set gives you the perfect elements to create your own patterns and designs on your projects and I did just that with the project that I have to share with you today - and I incorporated one of my very favorite techniques too!”

• STAMPS: Irresistibly Ikat
• INK: True Black, Dark Indigo, Olive Twist, Cocoa Bean, Versamark
• PAPER: Classic Kraft, watercolor
• OTHER: clear embossing powder, eyelets

Click here to visit Heather's blog to see more!

Make It Monday #289: Building Wreaths With Small Images

This week, join Lizzie and see how easy it is to create a stamped wreath using small flowers, leaves, and accents!

If you are joining along this week, here are the details concerning the Make It Monday Challenge.

--A new Make It Monday Challenge will go up every Monday morning at 9am EST.

--Create a project utilizing your take on the challenge. Your project must use at least one Papertrey product and a wreath built with small images.

--Please enter new projects only.

--Post your project on your blog, in your gallery or on any other photo-hosting site (such as photobucket or flickr).

--Add your project to our InLinkz list below.  ONLY ONE ENTRY PER PERSON PLEASE.  

--You will have until 6am, Monday, July 3, to add your link to the list to be eligible to win. 

--One randomly selected winner will be chosen from ALL the entries on Monday, July 3, after 6am. The winner will be posted here on this blog post, on Twitter and Facebook. The randomly selected winner will get a $25 PTI gift certificate to spend however they like!

Good luck to everyone and we look forward to seeing your projects!

• STAMPS: Mini Blooms
• INK: Lemon Tart, Summer Sunrise, Pale Peony, Berry Sorbet, Winter Wisteria, Aqua Mist, Spring Moss, Prairie Grass, Ripe Avocado, Smokey Shadow
• PAPER: Aqua Mist, White
• OTHER: Coasters, Market Street Kit (Stripe Stencil), Martha Stewart Crystal Glitter, Glue Pen, Scor-tape
• FINISHED SIZE: 4-1/4" x 5-1/2"

An InLinkz Link-up

 

EDITED TO ADD RANDOMLY SELECTED WINNER:

 

 

Congratulations, Sarah T.! Please send an email to customer service and provide them with your full name and the email address you would like your gift certificate sent to. Thanks so much to everyone for playing along!

June 2017 Blog Hop

Today we are excited to present the BIG monthly Blog Hop that Papertrey Ink hosts for all of its talented customers to show off their skills! The Blog Hop is an ALL DAY EVENT!  An Inlinkz list is posted below and you can add your link anytime up until 11:30pm ET.  And don't worry if you didn't get a chance to make a project and play along, there is a contest for non-participants as well over in our forum in the designated thread. I look forward to seeing all of your creativity!

A day dedicated to seeking inspiration through projects utilizing Papertrey Ink products. This event allows all of our customers who enjoy sharing inspiration & artwork with their peers do so through their personal blogs.

Today, 10am ET until 11:30pm ET.

  

photo source Anthropologie

Have you ever seen ombré look so dreamy? Not only are these colors gorgeous, but the gradient ombré is perfectly executed. Recreate the look by blending your favorite ink in a similar fashion. Embellish as desired with a favorite die-cut sentiment, floral elements or anything else you dream up. Maybe recreate some of the glossiness of the glass with clear embossing powder or glossy accents in a few key spots.

 -Participating bloggers can add their link to the appropriate list here anytime between 10am ET and 11:30pm ET on June 25th within the InLinkz list below. The title of your post should be "Papertrey June Blog Hop Challenge".

-Only one entry per person please.

-Customers & participants alike can peruse all of the links and absorb all of the amazing inspiration that will be shared!

-After you have made your way through the list, simply return to our forum and participate in all of the fun!

-You can chit chat with everyone in the Blog Hop forum! Take this time to praise your peers efforts, discuss anything new you might have learned and which projects really offered something unique!

-The three random blogger participant winners will be announced Monday morning on our forum and highlighted here on my blog!

-You can enter our Blog Hop Forum contest. There is a special thread posted in our forum specifically for this purpose asking a question. Please only post once, as the winner will be picked via the Random Number Generator. The forum contest will end at midnight ET and the winner announced Monday morning.

-Create a project while you are here, using the new inspiration you have gathered from the Blog Hop. You can post your projects in the gallery, even if you do not have a blog! We are looking forward to all the fun today!  Thank you for joining us!

EDITED TO ADD RANDOMLY SELECTED WINNERS:

Vicki Finger created a stunning ombre background that was inspired by the vases in the inspiration photo to set her gorgeous bouquet of flowers onto for the card that she created.

Kathryn A. created her own version of the vases from the inspiration photo using vellum to put her stamped bouquet of beautiful flowers into. The details are so impressive!

Tonya Jastad created a pretty ombre teacup to put a pretty bouquets of succulents into. It's such a fun and trendy twist on the inspiration photo!

Congratulations to the winners! Please email customer service and provide them with the email address you would like your gift certificate sent to. Thank you to everyone who played along! There were some truly amazing projects submitted!

An InLinkz Link-up

Guest Blogger: Yana Smakula

Hello, friends! This is Yana Smakula and I am excited to bring you my monthly video tutorial for Papertrey Ink from the “In The Studio with Yana” video series. I am sharing video tutorials on the 24th of each month, this is my third video, you can catch previous episodes here. 

I wanted to create a set of simple, yet striking thank you cards and incorporate a bit of heat embossing and watercolor. Usually when these two things are combined paper tends to warp a bit; because I was going for a very clean look I wanted to avoid having my background warp at all cost, so I decided to do heat embossing and watercolor on a separate layer. This let me to an idea of using a die, a coordinating die in fact, to die cut a shape for my project.

Whenever we think of simple shapes to cut for our cards our minds instantly go to the most basic shapes like circles or rectangles or squares, I decided to be a little bit more creative today and went with a monstera leaf die from the Palm Prints die set. The reason I picked this particular die is because of its size. I wanted to use a unique shape that was large enough to showcase the constellations I was planning to heat emboss on it. 

You can chose to use other shapes for this, think about all of those stamp and coordinating die shapes and try to find a shape that is solid enough and large enough to house a non coordinating image like this constellation. It can be a critter shape, a flower shape or a different kind of leaf shape; try to pick something that is clearly defined even without the coordinating stamp.

I started working on my cards by die-cutting monstera leaf out of some Distress Watercolor paper in my Platinum 6 die cutting machine. Next, I heat embossed one constellation onto each leaf using gold embossing powder. 

Not every constellation fit perfectly onto the die cut leaf, but that was okay, I did not mind having some lines go outside the leaf as long as the general constellation shape was clearly visible. 

I picked several constellations and as I was heat embossing them I also wrote the name of the constellation on the back of my die cut. I was never very good at Astronomy, so I can't tell one constellation from another and to save myself from making embarrassing mistakes I labeled each of my leaves on the back to later pair it with the correct sentiment. 

Next, I used PTI dye inks as watercolors and quickly colored a mini galaxy onto each of my die cuts. Painting watercolor galaxy can seem intimidating, but there’s nothing difficult to it. The trick is to layer color and add some black in the end.

One tip I will give you is to heat emboss the image first and do coloring later. And you'll want to do this for two reasons. First - you want the constellation area to be lightest with a few dark spots and if you don't have the image embossed first you can't really tell what color you need to add and where you need to add it. And reason number two - you'll have to wait for the paper to be completely dry to do heat embossing and make sure it is perfect and waiting for it to dry is another step that takes extra time.

Next, I stamped “A Note of Thanks” from the Bold & Beautiful Stamp Set and constellation sentiments from the Star Gazer Stamp Set in black ink and adhered my galaxy leaves on top using glue. I added glue only along the centerline of my leaves to make it appear as if they are floating on the panels. 

I also stamped several additional tiny stars in black ink - I scattered them on the background and finally foam mounted my panels onto 4 Bar and A2 white top folding card bases. 

I'd like to encourage you to pull out your stamps and inks and create identical or similar projects! 

Have fun stamping! 

• STAMPS: Star Gazer, Bold & Beautiful
• INK: Hawaiian Shores, Dark Indigo, Blueberry Sky, True Black, VersaMark
• PAPER: White cardstock (Neenah Solar White 110 & 80 LB), Distress Watercolor Cardstock
• DIES: Palm Prints dies
• OTHER: Water Brush, White Foam adhesive, Glue, MISTI stamping tool, Hero Arts Gold Embossing Powder, EK Success Powder Tool Applicator, Hero Arts Heat Gun, Spellbinders Platinum 6 Die Cutting Machine