It’s week four over at Just Add Ink!  Isn’t it amazing how time flies when you’re having fun?

And judging by the number of entries in the challenges each week, a lot of you are having fun with the various assignments too!

For your stampin’ pleasure this week, it’s a colour challenge…

As many of you would know, I am a huge fan of colour challenges, and if not for them, it’s unlikely that I would use more than a handful of colours EVER!

In this case, Rose Red, Kraft and Whisper White get very frequent workouts at my stampin’ desk.   Sage Shadow a little less frequently, but I love it still.

More Mustard I also like, but am quite often stumped as to what to put it with, so it frequently stays in the ‘too hard basket’, while I move onto other colours that I’m more comfortable with.

For this reason, I was very happy to be challenged with it this week, and here’s what I came up with based on this set of colours….

The smokey effect of the flowers was achieved by stamping onto Kraft cardstock using Whisper White Craft ink, then dabbing Stampin’ Pastels over the top.  Except for the flower petals – those are just the plain ink.

I stamped the image onto two separate pieces of Kraft and cut the flower images out of the second one, mounting them on top of the first images using Stampin’ Dimensionals to give the card more dimension and realism.

The rest is pretty self explanatory, with some punching, some ribbon, a rub-on and a whole lotta layering to finish it off.

One thing that I will point out since we’re talking colour, is that you will notice that although there are five different colours used in this card, they’re not used in equal proportions.

In order not to have all the colours competing with each other, and to achieve a good balance, you want to make sure not to use the same amount of each colour, but use a slightly lesser proportion each time you add a new colour in.

You will notice in my card that Kraft is the colour that you can see most of, followed by Rose Red, Whisper White, Sage Shadow, then More Mustard.

It’s a rule I follow with all of my stamping and creating and it seems to have served me well.   I can always tell when I haven’t quite got the proportions right, as I won’t be happy with the result until I add some colour here or subtract some there.

Give it a try and let me know how you go!  I’d love to hear if this little tip has helped you out

“Just Add Ink Challenge #4″
Stamps: Inspired by Nature
Paper: More Mustard, Whisper White, Kraft, Sage Shadow, Raspberry Tart DSP
Ink: Whisper White Craft, Rose Red
Accessories: Eyelet Border Punch, Rose Red double stitched grosgrain ribbon, Whisper White taffeta ribbon, Chit Chat Rub-ons, Stampin’ Pastels, Stampin’ Dimensionals, Stampin’ Sponges

At the end of May, the quarterly team stamping day for my team A Klass Act was held and was the usual wonderful mix of friends, food and a little bit of stampin’!

What I love most about the team is that aside from the very few of us that knew each other prior, we have all been brought together due to each of us having become Stampin’ Up! demonstrators and we always have SUCH a fabulous time together!

As usual, there was swapping, business discussions, a ‘workshop wow’ demonstration, this time by Narelle, and 3 stamping projects for everybody to complete.

There was also home-baked scones (thanks Janny!), a 40th birthday celebration (hip hip hooray Chantell and thanks for the yummy cake Sue!) and enough chocolate to sink the Titanic!

Here are the projects we completed on the day….

This card project was provided by Jaz and was a wonderful example of the chalkboard technique.

This Explosion Box project was courtesy of Chantell, who has a never ending supply of 3D project ideas to keep us all busily entertained!

Here it is all neat and closed….

This is what happens when you take off the lid…

… and then this is what it looks like post-explosion…

Pretty cool huh?!

Everybody also completed a 12×12 scrapbooking layout of my design, but I have saved that for a post of its own as I have already included photo’s on mine, along with which goes a bit of a fun story, so I thought I’d make a bit of a feature of it…

You might recall my Trinny and Susannah reference of a couple of days ago…?

Stay tuned for the story!

If you like the sound of team day and have ever considered the opportunity to become a Stampin’ Up! demonstrator yourself, I encourage you to check 0ut the Join my Team information right here on my blog, and contact me if you’d like further information.

I’m always ready to welcome new members into my team -perhaps the next one will be YOU!