Color Me Monday: I Love the Winter Weather

I love the winter weather... OK, so perhaps I don’t love being in the winter weather, but I do enjoy looking at it. When the world is covered in a blanket of glistening snow and everything is touched with silver, it’s a pretty beautiful thing. Today’s final installment of Color Me Monday celebrates that look with a color combination in Buttercup, Grey Flannel, Outdoor Denim, and Sky. You’ll note that all the colors here are soft, with the exception of punches of Denim, reminiscent of a December nightfall. The Buttercup and Sky stamping (the background of the Winter Cheer card and pennants) are all in second generation, to give just a hint of color.

And just like the outdoors, every piece of artwork today is brushed with silver—the sentiments and snowflakes on the card are created with glitter rub-ons, the One of a Kind card is brushed with pearl paint, and my Mix ‘n’ Mingle clear banner is lavished in Dimensional Elements snowflakes frosted in silver and embossed in silver as well. Makes me want to cozy up for the end of the year!

And speaking of “end,” I did indeed say that this would be the very last post on Color Me Monday. It’s been such fun to experiment with color, share color tricks, and show my artwork and artwork created by my friends and fellow stampers in our art studio. If you’ve enjoyed Color Me Monday each week, then I think you’ll like what I have planned for 2011, too! I’ll be sharing “52 Weeks of Wonder,” a stamping technique every single week. Can’t wait to see you then!

Color Me Monday: The Best Gifts

Presents are on everyone’s mind this week. Did we choose the right one? Is it wrapped and ready? Did it arrive in the mail yet? While getting and giving gifts is definitely a fun part of the season, I have to admit that the best gift of all is time together—and of course, the scrapbooks we create to preserve it all.

Today’s color combination in New England Ivy, Garden Green, Cranberry, and Crème Brulee features a layout that really hits home with that idea. This adorable little girl is Abbie, daughter to Stacy, our Marketing Manager. She’s an only child and apple of mom and dad’s eye! Stacy is such a sweet and caring mom, and Abbie is a favorite around the office, always sharing little notes and colorful drawings with the marketing team. I love this layout, which showcases a dozen of the things Stacy loves about her daughter—each one concealed inside a fun peek-a-boo window that Abbie will enjoy opening again and again. What a great gift!



And of course, because the season is in high gear, I couldn’t resist adding a few cards to the mix, too. Check out the wonderful Santa image on my 6”x6” square card. The details on his face, hair, and ivy boughs were created simply by using a blending pen and ink pads—it gives a slightly softer look than markers and gives you even more precision than a waterbrush. May the gifts of the season be yours!

You Asked, I Answered: Making Your Own Christmas Trees

A couple of you posted comments that you’d love to re-create the trees shown in this week’s Color Me Monday. It takes a little time, but the project is a simple one and the results are totally worth it!

Start by making a 12” and a 10” cone out of topiary cardstock. You may use a protractor or use a long string attached to a pencil. Measure out 12 “on the string and mark it. Hold this mark exactly at one corner of the paper while you draw a line on the bottom curve of the paper with the pencil. Cut on the line and roll the sides together keeping the corner where you held the string at the top. You now have a 12 inch cone. Adhere the sides together lapping only slightly using hot glue (or sew with thread and needle to give it extra reinforcement). Repeat for the smaller tree using a 10 inch string.

To make the small tree punch approximately 64 one-inch circles from Pear cardstock and punch about 60 one-inch circles from the Topiary leaf-print B&T paper taken from the Splendor Level 2 Paper Packet. (Or use any combination of green cardstock and B&T scrap paper that you may have from other projects—your trees will look a little more eclectic, but it’s a fabulous use for scraps!)

For the large tree, punch 84 Pear cardstock one-inch circles and about 75 from the same Topiary leaf B&T paper. Using a White Daisy Exclusive Inks Pad, direct distress one side of each circle. Allow ink to dry for several hours or set ink with a heat gun. Slightly curl each circle by wrapping it around a pencil loosely. Using a hot glue gun or glue dots start at the bottom of each cone with the pear cardstock circles. Overlap them slightly as you go around the entire bottom circle. Alternate the paper for the next row and also overlap each circle slightly as well as lapping over the bottom row slightly. Continue alternating rows until you reach the top. At the top of the large tree add two small bows of Blush gingham ribbon back to back using a glue gun. At the top of the small tree add two Dimensional Elements Stars back to back (using Glue Dots) that have been inked with Topiary ink. On the large tree, for a little extra flair, embellish the “leaves” with pink Sparkles using large ones at the bottom and smaller ones at the top. On the small tree use the green Sparkles to embellish the tree. Put them in the center of your table with fluffy fake snow underneath and enjoy!

Color Me Monday: A Cozy Winter Party

If you’re feeling a little “blah” this winter, then here’s a color combination sure to transform the drab days into a real party!  Today’s color combination includes Pear, Topiary, Baby Pink and Smoothie and features everything you need for a great winter gathering. In addition to the great colors, the “All Decked Out” stamp set (D1308) is really the star of the show—I call it the “build-a-snowman set,” and it’s an adorable, easy way to create all things snowy.

First up, a fun invitation to a “Happy Snow Days” party, complemented by placemats made from cardstock and strips of your favorite background and texture paper (I pulled leftover B&T paper from Splendor, Cherry-O, and Olivia paper packs for mine). To dress up the placemats, each attendee gets a name card made from our clear cards and snowmen from the All Decked Out set. You can see mine have banners for Mason and Belle—and I think they’ll love keeping their card long after our winter party is over.

Everything gets pulled together with Dimensional Elements snowflakes used as napkin rings and a great party banner—I absolutely love the twist of springy colors used on a banner that says “Winter;” how great is that? To make everything just a little more festive, you’ll note that everything shimmers and sparkles—that’s because I’ve used a generous amount of Prisma glitter, Twinkle brads, Sparkles and even glitter rub-ons everywhere possible. No drab winter day here!

“Jingle” all the way!

Carla, you are the first to correctly guess that “Jingle” was the paper collection that inspired my Studio J layout in Barn Red, Cocoa, and greens. (All of you are so smart, look how many of you buzzed in with that answer!)

Here’s an image of the “real” Jingle, so you can see how very different it looks once the colors have been changed to suit my palette. I used the stripes and polka dots from the paper collection (each kit includes super versatile patterns and near-tonal designs that can be adapted to just about any theme or season), clicked out the colors, and voila: an entirely new look.

Carla—please send me your contact information (e-mail to me@jeanettelynton.com) and I’ll arrange to send you a 5-pack Studio J card so you can start creating your own masterpieces online—in any color combination you choose!

Color Me Monday: Home for the Holidays... With Studio J!

Today’s color combination is a holiday classic in Barn Red, Cocoa, Garden Green and Olive.  The two Christmas-themed cards are elegant (check out the pearl Opaques, used as tree trimming and as ornament hangers—I tell you, these are just the most versatile accents of the season!), but I admit that the big story of today’s post is the layout. It features some great photos of Kristine Widtfeldt’s clan enjoying last year’s holiday activities, and it was created using one of my anytime favorite activities—scrapbooking in Studio J!

There are a ton of things I love about this layout, but I’ll try to narrow it down to five. Here goes:

5.  PHOTOS ARE FUN.  Check out the three photos at the top of the right page. They’re just 2”x2” and I never would have had that size on hand if these photos had been printed. But thanks to Studio J, I can drag, drop and easily size my photos to fit in just about any photo well.

4. JOURNALING IS JAZZY. If you’re like me, journaling might be something you procrastinate when you design a layout, either because you don’t love your handwriting or you want to journal in a professional computer typeface. Problem solved: Studio J layouts include journaling boxes (I can add more or delete them, if I want), plus a great diversity of fonts and colors I can choose from. I can even reverse out the type in a light color on dark cardstock, as shown in today’s artwork. No more unfinished layouts!

3. TIME IS ON YOUR SIDE. The holidays are crazy, but you can always find time to pull together a layout in Studio J. This particular layout was designed—from importing photos through checkout—in under 30 minutes. It’s the perfect way to give yourself a creative escape and preserve those holiday memories before the turkey leftovers are gone!

2. THE BLING IS THE THING. Look closely—this is an embellished Studio J layout. It’s so easy to add texture, dimension, and a little extra zip when you mix your classic supplies with Studio J panache. Here, a touch of ribbon, some stitching along the top, stamped trees near the title, and the added glitz that only Sparkles can bring really make this layout a wonder.

1. CAPTIVATE WITH COLOR. Color flexibility is perhaps my favorite part of Studio J. You can mix and match our exclusive 60-color palette among each kit’s Background and Texture papers, cardstocks, and embellishments as well. So if you love a kit’s design but not its palette, presto chango! Make it work for you. And being Color Me Monday, that’s exactly the magic worked on this layout to make it rich with Cocoa and Barn Red hues.

In fact, it might surprise many of you which kit was used in the design of this layout. Because of the color changes, it scarcely resembles the original kit! Before I share the answer, I invite you to look closely and then post your guess.

The first person to correctly guess the name of the original kit will win a FREE Studio J 5-pack so you can work your own color wonders!

Color Me Monday: Winter... In Bloom?

You probably think of Juniper and Tulip as great colors to use for cheery spring projects (and they are!). But they also make for fun and cheery WINTER projects, too, with just a little help and inspiration from great stamps! Today, I’ve added Cocoa and Desert Sand to these two blooming, traditionally-springy colors for warm winter results.

First, take a peek at the December calendar page—the last one of the year, and what a way to end it! The snowflake designs are stamped in Versamark and heat embossed in clear for a great resist pattern. Then, using a mix of pearl paint and Juniper reinker misted from a spritz bottle right onto Colonial White cardstock, you’ll get a magical, shimmery result. Beautiful! Where did we get the spritz bottle? You can choose: an emptied Spritz Cleaner bottle works great, and so, too, does our brand-new Spray Pen—it’s coming out in our new Spring/Summer 2011 Idea Book, so you don’t have long to wait!

My “Season’s Greetings” and “Let it Snow” cards are also festive and merry in this springy-come-wintry combo, finished off perfectly with more of those Sparkles and Opaques. (I tell you, for $2.95 each, these are about my favorite embellishment ever—they go anywhere and dress up everything they touch!) Brighten up your December with a color combo that blooms no matter the season!

Color Me Monday: Rites of “Passages”

Today’s artwork centers on using kit papers you know work well in one theme, but using them in a completely different way. The kit in question? Passages, one of my favorites. It’s a great paper collection with an old-world travel feel. Aged documents, maps, and weathered leather-look papers make you want to pack your bags to discover a new exotic locale.

Except today, where Passages has been completely reinterpreted for Thanksgiving artwork. Its Brown Bag, Crème Brulee, Garden Green, and Smoothie color palette make it ideal for the holiday, right down to a great recipe box perfect for holding Grandma’s secret roll recipe! (My favorite touch: the Opaque pearl accents used to dot the “i” in “recipes” and for the mantel accents on the “warm welcome” card. They’re a perfect match!) Add in a few other seasonal colors for the hearth and the cornucopia, and you’ve made Passages pass for Thanksgiving!

Color Me Monday: A Perfect Sunset

If you’re relatively new to the art and science of creating color combinations, let me suggest starting with neutrals. They’re easy to work with and tough to misapply. Then, you can select virtually ANY color as your “pop” color to breathe life into a fun and functional combination. For today, my base color palette is all in browns—Bamboo, Desert Sand, and Cocoa. My pop of color? The perfect Sunset. It’s great for making the combo a delicious fall flavor, but this combo would look great if the pop were Hollyhock or Pear for spring, or Lagoon or Sunflower for summer, or even Cranberry for winter.

The layout features our Creative Marketing Manager Kristy and her four smart, great kids. One unique trick you might want to notice in the layout (and in the cards, too) are the great bracket shapes. In the layout, the bracket is used as a journaling box. For the “Blessings” card, the bracket forms a dramatic card edge, and in the “Thanks” card, the bracket is used to contain the sentiment. Where did these great shapes come from? Here’s the trick: They are all templates from the “Magic” book! The templates come on an included DVD, and you can easily resize them and print them to use smaller or larger than suggested for the layout patterns. By making the templates smaller, these bracket shapes became ideal templates used to create the journaling box, card front, and sentiment holder. Voila, it’s Magic!

Color Me Monday: The Palette of Gratitude

Today’s beautiful color palette is inspired by the brilliant Goldrush leaves (now falling on lawns everywhere), along with the shorter days and deepening blue skies of Lagoon, Outdoor Denim, and Pacifica. These are such perfectly seasonal colors; I’m surrounded by them when I look out any window. Every year, when these colors start invading the landscape, it triggers my “gratitude reflex” and I always become profoundly reflective on my blessings as we approach Thanksgiving.

One of my greatest blessings is my friendship with Monica, who has worked side by side with me at Close To My Heart for more than 18 years. When we met, she was literally just a teenager—but today, she’s a talented professional and a mom with six beautiful little blessings of her own. This simple but lovely wreath says it all—family, blessings, and seasonal gratitude in a glorious round you can hang on a door and share with every visitor to your home.

Note, too, that the cards I’m sharing today focus on using cardstock—with a little distressing and some just-right stamping, cardstock really is all you need to make a simple but bold statement. I hope you enjoy playing with this color palette—and that you’re enjoying similar seasonal colors wherever you live!

Color Me Monday: A Breath of Fresh Air!

Today’s magic color in my combination is Sky—even though it’s November now, we can all use a breath of fresh air! I absolutely adore this palette, which feels like autumn, but is also bright, cheery, and inspiring. Cranberry, Sorbet, and Bamboo make a great backdrop for this November calendar page with its seasonal leaves (don’t you love the corner-rounded “petals” for each date? This is one of my favorite tool techniques; easy and impactful). But it’s the touch of Sky that really elevates the whole look.

 

 

The cards the art studio created are exceptional—by paper piecing and distressing the edges of each flourished heart on the card, the images really pop. And the “Grateful” card uses a tissue stamping technique that makes each flower look like a puff of cloud rather than a stamped image. Light, breezy, and elegant—a perfect way to begin a chilly month!