Serene Garden for The Paper Players

Serene Garden makes the most beautiful designs for elegant cards. When you pair the stamp set with the Garden Scene Framelits and the Stitched Label Framelits, you bump up the elegance factor by at least ten! It's a perfect combination for an Anniversary Card and if you take a look at the bird, I want to tell you about how I did some extra special paper piecing and creating with the Silver Embossing Paste to make the wings look the way they are!

I'm entering this card in The Paper Player's 402nd Challenge:

The challenge is to make use of negative space on your card, and that's precisely what one of the dies in the Garden Scene Framelits is designed to do! Take a closer look:

• I used the Stamparatus to stamp the main images on the Mint Macaron panel. The reason for using the Stamparatus was to get clear, clean images and to be able to reink and restamp if needed. I stamped the same large image on a smaller piece of Shaded Spruce to fit in behind the Mint Macaron once the pieces in it had been die cut away. There is one framelit in the Garden Scene Framelits that does cut away certain of the leaves. I mounted the Mint Macaron panel on Stampin' Dimensionals over the Shaded Spruce panel, matching the stamped leaves with the die cut holes in the Mint Macaron sheet.
• The flowers were stamped in Memento Tuxedo Black ink and coloured in with the Flirty Flamingo and Calypso Coral Stampin' Blends Combos. Then they were die cut with dies from the same Garden Scene Framelit set and matched to the flowers in the stamped scene. They were mounted with Mini Stampin' Dimensionals.

• I embossed the bird with Black Stampin' Emboss Powder on Silver Foil. The wings were from the same image that I stamped in Memento ink on Whisper White. I experimented a bit with our Silver Embossing Paste. Mine is a little on the runny side, which is normally not a plus. I have to mix it with my regular paste or my shimmery paste to use it with masks. But in this case, having it a bit runny was a bonus because I painted it on my bird image with a paint brush. After drying it quickly with my Heat Tool, I got out some Nuvo Embellishment Mousse colours I have - Peony Pink and Coral Calypso and brushed and blended that on just the wings over top of the Silver Embossing Paste. It created quite an ethereal look that I just love. I'm going to have to try it on some other projects.
• I fussy cut the wings from this bird and paper pieced them onto the Silver Foil bird and added it to my card with Mini Dimensionals.
• The sentiment is from the Beautiful Bouquet stamp set and it's die cut with a die from the Stitched Labels Framelits, as is the backing in Silver Foil.

I just returned from a lovely holiday, camping with our little fifth wheel in Banff National Park. Even though the town is very touristy and crowded this time of year, we still had a great time and I can't say enough good things about the well-run camp grounds. I've never stayed in a camp ground that was so quiet and had so little in the way of night time interruptions of sleep! It was almost too quiet. Everyone seemed to either stay in their RVs or they were gone for the day. It was hard to meet anyone. Here are a few photos of our time away:

Some of the gorgeous Rocky Mountain scenery around Banff and the Bow Valley! Aren't those mountains majestic?

These formations are known as Hoodoos, eroded by ice, wind and water over thousands of years.

We spent a day with our nephew at the Calgary zoo as well:

The zoo has a new Giant Panda exhibit for awhile!

Ken and I at Lake Louise!

Click on the links below to take you to my On-Line Store, where you can read about, look at, and purchase if you wish, the products used to make this card today.

Product List

Serene Garden Photopolymer Stamp Set [146501] $22.00	Serene Garden Photopolymer Bundle [148395] $56.50	Beautiful Bouquet Photopolymer Stamp Set [143666] $34.00	Silver Foil Sheets [132178] $5.50	Whisper White 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [100730] $13.25
Mint Macaron 8-1/2" X 11" Cardstock [138337] $11.50	Shaded Spruce 8-1/2" X 11" Cardstock [146981] $11.50	Versamark Pad [102283] $11.25	Tuxedo Black Memento Ink Pad [132708] $8.25	Black Stampin' Emboss Powder [146956] $6.75
Mint Macaron Classic Stampin' Pad [147106] $10.25	Shaded Spruce Classic Stampin' Pad [147088] $10.25	Flirty Flamingo Stampin' Blends Markers Combo Pack [147278] $12.00	Calypso Coral Stampin' Blends Markers Combo Pack [144045] $12.00	Silver Embossing Paste [145646] $12.25
Embossing Buddy [103083] $8.00	Heat Tool [129053] $40.00	Garden Scene Framelits Dies [146355] $41.00	Stitched Labels Framelits Dies [146828] $45.00	Paper Snips Scissors [103579] $13.50
Big Shot [143263] $150.00	SNAIL Permanent Adhesive [104332] $9.00	Glue Dots [103683] $7.00	Stampin' Dimensionals [104430] $5.25	Mini Stampin' Dimensionals [144108] $5.50

Serene Garden and Three Challenges

How often do I get to play in challenges during the week? Not as often as I would like to, and to get to enter three of my favourite challenges with one card hardly ever happens, but that's what I get to do today, so let me tell you how that happened. The Paper Players have a theme challenge going on right now and their theme is Birds.

Sounds like fun right? But then I need a layout and I can always count on Freshly Made Sketches to have a good one, and since both of these challenges are all about Clean & Simple, I figure they will work well together:

Then I think, why not look for a good colour palette to use as well? I'll take a look at Color Throwdown! They always have great combos on their blog! And here's what I found:

(Notice the birds!) This beautiful combination: Peach, Light Pink, Hot Pink and Green works really well with the stamp set I had in mind, Serene Garden.

Here's what the whole thing turned out like:

• I thought of Serene Garden immediately, because it had a bird image as part of it, and I love the graceful designs. In the photographs, it's hard to distinguish the peach from the light pink, but one (the back panel) is Powder Pink, and one, the flowers and the sentiment panel is Petal Pink which is definitely more peachy than pink. The other two are Melon Mambo and Granny Apple Green.

Petal Pink

Powder Pink

Melon Mambo

Granny Apple Green

• I embossed the Powder Pink back panel with the Petal Burst Embossing Folder and backed it with a slightly larger panel of Granny Apple Green.
• The card base and the bird are both Melon Mambo. The bird is stamped in Memento Tuxedo Black and die cut with the Garden Scene Framelits, which you can bundle for a 10% saving, with the Serene Garden stamp set.
• The stamped Whisper White panel is popped up on dimensionals and at the end where it overshoots the pink panel, I added an extra dimensional on top of the first to make up for the difference in height due to the embossing and two layers of cardstock of the pink and green panel.
• Two of the flowers are layered on dimensionals as is the bird. Where the bird goes over the edge of the panels, a stack of three dimensionals were necessary to compensate for the height difference. Two were necessary at the end of the sentiment panel. The sentiment, by the way, is one of the 32 you can choose from in the new Itty Bitty Greetings stamp set.
• The little embellishments are a new colour version of the Glitter Enamel Dots that we had last year. I used the Melon Mambo and Granny Apple Green colours.

I have completely revamped my Retired Products sites, cleaning them up and adding newly retired products from the 2017/18 Annual Catalogue and the 2018 Occasions Catalogue. I'll add the links below and you can always access them from the Retired Products for Sale tab in the top menu. Message me if you would like to purchase something. *Sorry, I can only sell my retired products in Canada.*

Retired Stamps for Sale

Retired Tools and Embellishments for Sale

Retired Paper for Sale

Click on the links below to take you to my On-Line Store, where you can read about, look at, and purchase if you wish, the products used to make this card today.

Product List

Serene Garden Photopolymer Stamp Set [146501] $22.00	Serene Garden Photopolymer Bundle [148395] $56.50	Itty Bitty Greetings Clear-Mount Stamp Set [146667] $49.00	Itty Bitty Greetings Wood-Mount Stamp Set [146664] $65.00	Melon Mambo 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [115320] $11.50
Whisper White 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [100730] $13.25	Granny Apple Green 8-1/2" X 11" Cardstock [146990] $11.50	Powder Pink 8-1/2" X 11" Cardstock [144244] $11.50	Petal Pink 8-1/2" X 11" Cardstock [146985] $11.50	Tuxedo Black Memento Ink Pad [132708] $8.25
Granny Apple Green Stampin' Pad [147095] $10.25	Glitter Enamel Dots [146934] $9.50	Share What You Love Artisan Pearls [146927] $8.25	Petal Burst Textured Impressions Embossing Folder [141493] $10.25	Garden Scene Framelits Dies [146355] $41.00
Big Shot [143263] $150.00	Liquid Multipurpose Glue [110755] $5.25	Glue Dots [103683] $7.00	Stampin' Dimensionals [104430] $5.25	Mini Stampin' Dimensionals [144108] $5.50