Challenge: Into the woods

Whether you’re a rugged lumberjack or out for a casual stroll in the woods, are inspired by adorable woodland creatures or want the chance to play with wood grain products this week we invite you to join us on a creative walk into the woods. Create something inspired by a mountain wildflower meadow, in a forest friendly color palette, or perhaps something whimsical with fairies or wood sprites! There is a lot of room for creative interpretation this week from using a wood grain patterned paper to an owl stamp and anything in between - have fun! 

 

When Anita saw the word "wood" in the challenge for this week she took it very literally in more ways than one.

I loved the theme for this challenge! Not only do I love working with wood, but I am from the woods of southern New Mexico. I decided to make something to give to my parents, and I thought it would be great to paint a mountain scene on a slab of raw wood. I used nothing but Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Paints, and several die cuts including three from our very own Simon Says Stamp...the Mod Tree, Small Forest Tree, and Tall Forest Tree.

 

Ashli decided to document her family's favorite place for this week's challenge:

Ever since we took our first trip to Driftwood Beach, it has always held a special place in my family's heart. This week's theme was the perfect reason to scrap about how much we love this magical piece of land! To get started, I simply grabbed some of my favorite wood themed products from Alison Kreft's collection with Webster's Pages. To add to the rustic feel of my page, I played a bit with some Martha Stewart Raffia and hand stitching. I just love the texture this adds. A Heidi Swapp Color Pop Tag provides my title and a couple of Brads from My Mind's Eye finish off this layout of our favorite spot.

 

Dan's favourite musical is "Into the Woods" and it's the inspiration for his tag diptych.

I was excited when I saw this week's theme, I love the show "Into the Woods" so I sat down and watched it again for inspiration.  If there is any fairy tale character that is synonymous with "woods" it has to be Red Riding Hood so my subject this week was a no-brainer.  I planned at first just to make a single tag but the face stamp was so large it really needed to be a double-tag spread to make the composition work.  I used the Winter Sketchbook, Home Sweet Home and Classics #5 stamp sets.  The hood came from the Lost and Found paper stash.

Suzz loves the grain on the wood texture paper and decided to use it as the background on her project this week.

Into the Woods made me think of  wood texture paper.  I had sitting on my desk the lovely new metallic distress inks,  Stampers Anonymous - Best Friends and Pink Paislee - Hope Chest.  I decided to paint the wood texture with the bronze distress paint.  I then used the sweet image stamped with black ink and heat embossed with black embossing powder to make it really pop. The muslin is tied through three holes  to use this as a journal cover.  A perfect cover for a mini-album or journal for a child.

 

 

Tracy was inspired to use wood products, woodland branches and an owl in her nature inspired canvas.

I must admit this weeks challenge had me stumped! I spent many hours searching through my products until I stumbled on the Crafters Workshop Mini Branches Reversed
stencil and then I was on a roll. No forest is complete without
branches and mine were given fabulous texture using Wendy Vecchi's White Embossing Paste through the stencil. Lots of wood products included here, from Prima Wood Leaves and Flowers, Prima Nature Garden Wood Tickets, and even an owl cut from Metal Foil Tape.

Trace challenged her self to make a "girly" wood grain card.

To make this card I went hunting in my craft room and found some awesome wood grain stamps. I have used this Hero Arts Designer Wood grain stamp for many manly cards before, but now I needed to "girly" it up! Simon Says Stamp Lots of Hearts clear set with it matching Large Hearts die set was the perfect compliment, especially stamped in Tim Holtz Distress inks in colours- Picked Raspberry and Barn Door.  I found this Die-namics Fancy Flourish  die cut out in the same home made paper as the background provided an anchor for the hearts, and added just a wee bit more femininity to the card. Challenge met!

Sandra Mouwen went back to one of her first creative hobbies, making her own bags

I make my own bags for a few years now. Ever since I learned to sew. My favorite bag was all worn, so it was time to make a new one. And this time I wanted to do something different and make it sort of card/canvas like. So I cut out a piece of natural canvas and started stamping with all my favorite Tim Holtz Paris stamps, such as Papilon, Paris Memiors, French Market and more. Then my favorite wooden embellishes, the Stars and the Speech Bubbles, came into play. I've covered them with Glue 'n Seal so they are protected from the rain and the Label Letters will stay in place.

  

Sarah was temporarily overtaken by a puff of pretty pastel colour with her home shaped hanging...

Maybe I have been reading too many fairy tales or watching too many baby programmes lately but I seem to have gone a bit girly this week! Flowers, butterflies and soft tones were on call today. I am always looking for an excuse to snip out lots of Wendy Vecchi flowers and butterflies and the into the woods theme led me down quite a feminine path. I love adding Art Parts to a piece to create weight and dimension and these leaves are perfect. I cut my house from scrap card and then slowly built up the layers of soft colours and detail. Now I just need to find my house a home...

 

Candy took a different approach to this week's challenge by using her favorite Tim Holtz paper stash release, French Industrial, to completely transform this plain white wooden craft organizer.

Thanks to an Espresso Paint Dabber and several Tim Holtz products, this plain white wooden organizer went from ho hum to WOW.  Just covering the wood with  Tim's new French Industrial Paper Stash could have been enough.  But all of the metal elements really added some cool dimension and detail.  Speaking of detail, I used Tim's Detailer Water Brush and various Distress Ink colors to add color to the vintage ads on the top portion. The stacked Ornate Plate, Keyhole and Clock Key holding the dangling smaller Locket Keys make a great dimensional embellishment.  On the opposite side, a simple Collage Key and Fleur De Lis hang next to those three dashing Frenchmen. 

 

Anna-Karin will be sharing her project and a tutorial later this week.

I love forests and will share a step-by-step tutorial on Wednesday here on Simon Says Stamp & Show. The tutorial is full of fun techniques that you can use to create texture on your projects.

 

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 June 2  EST.

Please note that we have changed our policy - you may enter up to five creations in each challenge. Each must be its own post, and be a new creation/posting of course. For the full rules, read the "challenge rules" posted in the side-bar here on our blog.