I recently found another design challenge, and this one is based around colour. Putting colours together is not something I am traditionally all that good at so I like these challenges. They force me to use colours I wouldn’t normally use.

Colour Inspiration can be found over on Facebook. A couple of times a month they have challenges and a crew blog hop. It’s full of very talented people and well worth checking out. This week’s challenge requires us to combine Sweet Sugarplum, Lemon Lime Twist, Bermuda Bay and Soft Suede. I actually don’t own the Soft Suede ink pad, but thankfully I own the Stampin’ Write marker in that colour, and we can use it directly onto the stamps themselves – so cool! Buying this set of markers has opened up so many other colours for me to use.

I actually made two cards for this challenge. The first one used the stamp set ‘Picture Perfect Birthday’ from the occasions catalogue. I predominantly bought this one as it has a heap of really useful sentiments.

I stamped the candles in Sweet Sugarplum, Bermuda Bay and Lemon Lime Twist and then fussy cut them out. I used a standard sized card base, and then cut a strip out of the front panel leaving a gap slightly smaller than the candles. For the top and bottom panels, I created my own ink pad combining re-inkers in the three above colours onto a baby wipe. The confetti stamp is from the same Picture Perfect Birthday stamp set.

For the bottom panel I stamped the sentiment by colouring the stamp with my Soft Suede marker. Often when I do this the sentiment comes out a bit lighter than if I had used the ink pad – luckily my stamparatus (positioning tool) arrived on Friday so I was able to stamp the sentiment a few times to get it nice and dark.

I used my Bermuda Bay Stampin’ Blend marker to colour a border onto the card base itself, and then stuck my confetti pieces on over the top.

For my second card I pulled out my sponges, I know I have said it before but I find sponging very therapeutic.

I masked the setting sun using a circle punched out of sticky note. For the sky I sponged very lightly in Lemon Lime Twist – a little strange using a green colour in the sky but stay with me. I then started working in some of the Sweet Sugarplum. This created a pale yellow colour which worked well for the setting sun. I continued sponging Sweet Sugarplum to finish the sky.

The land portion uses stamps from the new Waterfront Stamp Set (Occasions catalogue). I stamped by colouring the stamp directly with my Soft Suede Stampin’ Write marker.  The bottom section has a bit of Crumb Cake sponged along the very bottom, and then Bermuda Bay for the rest of the water. I also brought a tiny bit of the Sweet Sugarplum into the water as I think it makes it look a bit like the sun reflecting in the water.

I finished by stamping some seagulls and some shrubs from the High Tide Stamp set, and then some tall trees. The trees come from the Waterfront stamp set – I basically stamped them in the air and then drew in the extra trunk with my marker.

All in all I found this challenge – well challenging, but I guess that’s the point isn’t it. Hope you enjoy these cards.