Aim for Alaska Blog Hop - Inspired by Alaska

Welcome to the Aim for Alaska blog hop! First let me tell you a little about Aim for Alaska, it is a training group set up by Kylie Bertucci. In this group there is a wealth of knowledge from Kylie and her guest speakers designed to help demonstrators reach their goals within Stampin' Up! For me the group has helped me get serious about blogging more and has given me the push to jump in and give online classes a go.

The theme for this hop is to just be inspired by Alaska, whether it is the animals, nature, or even the ship so many demonstrators are going to get to go on soon. Now I spent a while googling images of Alaska and staring at my Stampin' Up! collection thinking about this theme. For me I just kept coming back to the stunning images of the Northern Lights over Alaska and I decided to try and recreate them using the Stampin' Up! watercolour pencils.

           

     

     

I started out just playing with a background, laying down colour with the watercolour pencils and then blending it out with water. Once I was happy with the colours I added the tree's in black by dipping the tip of the black watercolour pencil into water as I went to get the best colour payoff. I was originally going to use this piece as just a background and layer things on top, however once it was done I decided against it.

To get the starts in the sky I squeezed out a small dot of Stampin' Up! white craft reinker onto my stamp-a-ma-jig clear sheet and used a dotting tool to pick the ink up and dot it around the sky (you could also use a toothpick). I decided to simply stamp a sentiment, and add some Wink of Stella and add a few pearls to the sky to emphasize some of the stars I had added using the reinker. Lastly I decided to place a strip of metallic ribbon from the Sale-a-Bration catalog to add a little extra bling and somewhat represent the snow covered ground in front of the tree's.

I will be doing a live video class sometime on how simple this watercolour background was to make, so please contact me if your interested in viewing the video and I can get the details to you and keep you updated.

I hope you had fun visiting my blog and I know you are going to love the other projects in this hop so don't forget to use the list below to find your way through all the blogs, you do not want to miss a project.

Click on the products below to purchase them and make your own masterpieces.

Watercolor Paper [122959] $8.75	Watercolor Pencils [141709] $27.75	Feather Together Photopolymer Stamp Set [141597] $30.00
3/8" Metallic Ribbon Combo Pack [143601] $0.00	Pearl Basic Jewels Embellishments [119247] $8.75	Clear Wink Of Stella Glitter Brush [141897] $11.50

Hope to see you back here again soon, have a wonderful day!

Challenge Mashup with Ribbon Roses

Good evening! I hope everyone has had an fun Saturday, I have had a busy one. Started out face painting at my baby second cousins 3rd birthday, then it was off to work at Bunnings for the evening. I got home to a roast dinner waiting for me courtesy of my amazing husband, so after a fun day and with a full belly I sat down to get some crafting done.

I decided to combine two challenges I came across into one for this card, a sketch challenge from CAS(E) this sketch and a colour challenge from Color Throwdown, you can click on the challenge photo's below to check out their pages and the other entries.

     

I got some advice today from the talented Gail Davidson that I should try using some of my other artistic pursuits in my cards so I wanted to give that a go with this card while still keeping it as clean as possible for this sketch challenge. So for this card I thought back to my wedding and all the ribbon roses I made, I thought it would be fun for those roses to make a comeback in this card.

     

     

I spend hours making ribbon roses of all different sizes for my Wedding and I thought they would be an amazing way to use the Stampin' Up! ribbon in a different way. It always looks amazing added to cards as an accent bow, strip or knot but I thought it would be fun to use the ribbon as the main star and back it up with the stamps for something a little different.

I am thinking about doing a live video over on facebook sometime in the future on how to make these roses, if that would be something you would be interested in please let me know. All you need for these little guys is some ribbon, a hot glue gun and some Stampin' Up! pearls to give their centers a little bit of bling, though they can totally be left without the pearls if you prefer.

If you would be interested in seeing these roses made live, as well as other techniques in the future please leave me a comment and/or send me an email at sarahraeburnett@gmail.com with your contact information, and if there is interest I will look into setting up a Sarahrious Crafts Techniques Group where I can share this and other techniques with you live.

Click on the products below to purchase them and make your own masterpieces.

Awesomely Artistic Clear-Mount Stamp Set [139950] $35.00	Love Sparkles Clear-Mount Stamp Set [143183] $36.50
Peekaboo Peach 3/8" (1 Cm) Ruched Ribbon [141427] $14.00	Pearl Basic Jewels Embellishments [119247] $8.75

For now though I am off to bed as I only have 5 hours before I will be dragged out of it to go back to work :) hope you all enjoy your Sunday, happy Stamping.