Monday, April 8, 2013

Challenge: Fly

Feathers are showing up in the Simon Says Stamp shop in addition to the usual lovely birds that love to flock onto craft projects of all sizes and styles. From charms to paper accents, stamps to paper - this week we’re taking flight!
 
It is up to you if you choose to jump onto the feather trend, put a bird on it, or perhaps take the challenge more loosely and take a soaring approach - perhaps just blue skies or talk about what makes you feel like you’re on cloud nine in your art journal, or even use a metal bird (aka an airplane!) on your project. From butterflies to angel wings - whatever approach you take - we can’t wait to see how you spread your wings and fly creatively this week.
 
Anita often has dreams of being able to fly across the world, but for this challenge she choose to make a bird who can hardly fly at all , not even if you gave him 10 chances.
Ah the peacock...probably the most gorgeous bird in the land, the male that is. He can't fly far, but the beauty of his feathers make up for any self-esteem problems he may have. I just love the deep, beautiful jewel toned colors in the peacock's feathers, and I tried to mimic those tones here, but as you can see this bird is sort of strange looking. That is because I used all 10 of the numbers in the Tim Holtz Numeric Stamp Set from Stamper's Anonymous to create the body of this peacock. The wing of the peacock is from Tim's Mini Ornates Stamp Set, and the Vintage Peacock Feather images are from Maya Road.

Tracy is flying on dragonfly wings this week to create her vintage cabinet card.
My inspiration this week was simply to use another stamp set that I have not yet inked up and as I set myself a challenge at the beginning of the year to use all my stamps, I am forging ahead and sticking with my personal challenge. I really wanted a different shape to showcase the dragonfly from the Stampers Anonymous Classics 1 stamp set and the Vintage Cabinet Card die really appealed this week. I am also really drawn to mowed lawn and salty ocean Distress Inks at the moment, they are my all time favourite!

Candy's love of Spring and birds was her inspiration for this week's challenge.
"Fly" was the perfect theme to create this sweet, shabby chic paper mache book paying homage to our feathered friends. I adore Emily Dickinson's sentiment from Artistic Outposts' Quotable Quotes.  It truly was my inspiration for this piece. The book is washed with Claudine Hellmuth's Studio Classic Teal Acrylic Paint followed by a wash of her Traditional Tan.  Heavily textured "pages", meant to look tattered and worn, are created using Wendy Vecchi's wonderful new Embossing Paste. In my tutorial, I will show you how to create this book, including the addition of your own little drawers from chipboard and Tim Holtz' Hitch Fasteners as knobs. 7 Gypsies Conservatory 8x8 Paper Pad were the perfect complimentary papers for this piece. 

Trace just had to use her favorite flying creature for this week's challenge.
Butterflies are definitely one of my favorite creatures, so I just had to use them for this week's theme. The Tim Holtz Papillon rubber stamp set is so fabulous, it actually gives you seven different butterflies to choose from as well as two background stamps! You might recognize this background as another one of my mop up tags, but this time I embellished it with The Crafter's Workshop Mini Peony stencil and Wendy Vecchi Embossing Paste. A coat of Distress Crackle Paint was applied and left to dry overnight, and wanted a bit more subdued look so I applied Tim Holtz Distress Picket Fence paint all over the tag. I love how it pools in the concave bits of crackle.
 
Dan took some winged things and gave wings to something else to create his vivid card.
This week I present you with this flying trio. I'm particularly happy with the way the red wings turned out, they were embossed with white embossing powder and then coloured with a crimson promarker - it instantly looked like I used red embossing powder, who knew? Well, ok, you probably did, but I didn't, but better late than never, right? Plus, now it's like I have hundreds of colours of embossing powder at my fingertips, limited only by the choice of promarkers! I used several stamps and sets for this, the cupid and splatter background both had their first outing out of the packaging. The man from the Winged Things 2 set is one of my favourite stamps and those of you who are familiar with my blog will have seen him more than once. I gave him a rest today and used the little boy from the same set instead.

Ashli's flock of three, all snuggled up, gave her the perfect excuse to get scrappy and "put a bird on it!"
The feather and bird trend is just so fun, isn't it? I have played around with it a bit here and there, but decided this was my week to really go for it! After layering up some of my favorite Washi Tapes, I simply adhered some feathers to my page to act as a little cushion for my photo flap. A little strip of washi creates a photo flap that also lifts up to show my ephemera and journaling. With that all set, I grabbed my Baby Bird Sizzix Die and some Grunge Board. A title and some Doodle Twine complete this page all about my little birdies.

Sandra Mouwen loves her some wings, she wishes she could fly all around the world.

When I think of flying, I think of wings. And I almost automatically reach for my favorite wings stamp, but I could stop myself and came up with something different. I really like the zipper look, and I made this dragon fly with it. It's so easy to do, but I had to become friendly again with my glue gun, and that was the hard part. For the background I used a scrap piece of Prima Marketing Zephyr Paper. Stamped with one of my new favorite stamps 36 of KaiserCraft. I'm so liking the Sun Kiss Flowers too. The little hearts are cut out with the exclusive Mini Hearts Die of Simon Says Stamp.

Suzz was thrilled to hear the challenge was all about flying as she loves the butterflies, birds, and dragonflies.
This challenge is perfect timing for me as the Robin's have just started showing up again which is a sure sign of spring.  I decided to create a little bit of spring for inside the house by using  the Weathered Clock die cut from Sizzix. I die cut three pieces of chipboard to create a frame.  The colors and the embossing were inspired by the sweet Prima Robins Nest. I added the Stampendous Bluebirds to my spring project. Hopefully the weather will follow my lead and melt away all the snow.
 
Anna-Karin loves birds, both real ones and handmade ones, and made three different happy little birds this week:
I love trying to spot birds flying by as I walk, or capture them on a photo. For this week, I decided to make three birds that happily fly around in my study. To make the birds, I used the fabulous Sizzix Bird die by Eileen Hull. One of them is a steampunky dry embossed metal bird with a Vintaj piece hanging from a chain and of course some gears. The middle bird is a text tissue bird with shiny kraft glassine wings and a word stick sentiment. The third bird was made with stencils, Dylusion mists, Vintaj star eyes and more Idea-ology embellishments.

Despite the snow, Sarah thought it was supposed to be Spring and so she decided on some bright and inky mini canvases with her favourite Wendy Vecchi butterfly...
I have a box at home full of "stuff I could use someday" and when I looked in it this week I was shocked at the amount of canvases I had accumulated over the years. I saw these three little ones and thought it would be great to have some mini inky fun. I played around with my Dylusions Inks and stencils as well as gesso and bottle tops! I wanted some bold lettering to show up against the backgrounds and just love my Worn Text Stamps. I'm still not out on whether they should be hung vertically or horizontally. Maybe I can change them around each week!

I (May) was thinking about dreams, plans that I hope will take off, and so I decided why not make a journal for these thoughts?
Sometimes the best way to help dreams take flight is to write them down. With this week's challenge in mind, I also added my favorite Hero Arts bird stamp to my cover. I love how I was able to layer both color and texture with my distress paints and that I was able to use my newest background stamp to add even more heart to this simple design. Armed with my customized notebook, now all that is left to do is start writing!
  

There are so many ways to be inspired by this challenge, and so many directions to run with it! For more inspiration click on our design team's blog links so you can see more photos (and full supply lists) for their projects.
 
As always, Simon Says Stamp is giving away a $50 gift voucher that will go to a random entry chosen by Random Generator. To qualify all you need to do is create a new project that ties in (in any way!) with our theme and post it, along with a link back to this challenge, and add a link here. This challenge will end at 11:59pm on Sunday April 14th EST.

For the full rules, read the "challenge rules" posted in the side-bar here on our blog.
 
 




18 comments:

  1. super grungy and awesome cards DT!

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  2. Fabulous inspiration from DTs !

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  3. beautiful projects!! i love all the mixed media :)
    -Rachel w k
    rwkrafts.blogspot.com

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  4. Such nice wok to inspire us, thans and lovely theme

    groetjes Coby

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  5. The inspiration is always fantastic but this week is super awesome.
    xox

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  6. What fun and inspiration. Thanks

    TTFN,

    CraftyGirl

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  7. Awesome DT inspiration, thank you for a great challenge! hugs Karen

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  8. Thank you so much for hosting this beautiful challenge and the marvellous examples by the design team!
    Greets, Manu

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  9. WOW the DT creations are amazing!!!! TFS

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  10. Love all the inspiration here! Thanks!!

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  11. uhm... I think you meant to say that the challenge will end on April 14th and not March 14th :)

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  12. I love all the inspirational pieced by the DT. Thanks!

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  13. OMG those are just amazing projects. They just keep getting more and more creative. Wow Wow Wow.
    Laura

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  14. What a fun challenge! The DT creations are amazing! Hugs, Hanneke

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  15. Thank you for a lovely challenge -- I am in awe looking at the creations by the DT - thanks for your inspiration - you are amazing!

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  16. LOVE the inspiration from the DT this week. UBER cool.!!!

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  17. Fantastic DT samples. Love your group of talented artists. Thanks for the "fly" challenge!

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  18. fabulous challenge and I love all the DT projects. Glad to be playing along this week.
    Annie x

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