PTI Celebrates 9 Years of Awesomeness!

Papertrey Ink is celebrating their 9th birthday!  And I'm playing along today with all the great challenges they are running during the celebration.

I combined challenges 1 & 2:

The first challenge is to create a card that's inspired by an outfit in your closet.  The second challenge is to create a card using only the products you can grab in 5 minutes.  [I keep my craft supplies super organized, so it's easy to find exactly what I want whenever I need it.]  I chose a super cute maxi dress as my inspiration piece and created a panel the size of an A2 card front using the Mehndi Medallion and Mega Mehndi Medallion stamp sets.  Since I only wanted to use part of the panel for the card I had in mind, I ended up using the rest of the panel on a second card. 

Papers:  Hawaiian Shores, Enchanted Evening, Simply Chartreuse, 

Stampers Select White, Stampers Select Vellum

Dies:  Tipped Tops, Button Stacks II, Tag Sale #5, Hero Arts Hello

Inks:  Aqua Mist, Hawaiian Shores, Simply Chartreuse, Enchanted Evening, 

Tropical Teal, VersaMark

Other:  White Filigree Embossing Powder, Bakers Twine, Kool Tak Clear Foam Tape

Papers:  Aqua Mist, Enchanted Evening, Tropical Teal, Stampers Select White

Dies:  Tipped Tops, Birthday Trio

Inks:  Aqua Mist, Hawaiian Shores, Simply Chartreuse, Enchanted Evening, 

Tropical Teal

Other:  Sequins from Pretty Pink Posh

I also combined challenges 3, 5 & 6:

Challenge 3 is to create a card that's inspired by one of the inspiration posts that is shared during the release blog hop.  Challenge 5 is a super cute and fun one!  The PTI design team created a Color Pop Fortune Teller to help you randomly choose a color combination to use as a color recipe for a project.  Challenge 6 is to create a thank you card to send to the PTI warehouse staff for all the hard work they do to get our orders shipped out to us.  [Nice idea, don't you think?]

I started my "fortune" with the number 3 and then repeated 3 again because it's my birthday month (March).  The colors I ended up with were Winter Wisteria (my favorite!), Hibiscus Burst and Ripe Avocado.  A perfect combination for flowers!  

Here is the card I chose as inspiration from the blog hop [created by Kay Miller]:

This card is incredibly awesome because of the amazing new products used to create it; the Color Pop Floral stencils from the new Color Pop; Make-it Market Mini Kit!  

These are so super cool!  They are designed to layer perfectly over the top of one another to create an awesome background!  I LOVE this concept and I hope they continue to release similar stencil sets.  Since I don't have anything like this in my stash, I created my own stencil by die-cutting some images from vellum.  

I used my DIY-stencil to create a background on a card panel and then used the coordinating stamp set to add the layers on each flower and leaf.

Paper:  Stampers Select White
Stamps:  Happiness in Bloom, Script Sentiments
Dies:  (for stencil) Beautiful Blooms I, Happiness in Bloom

Ink:  Winter Wisteria, Hibiscus Burst, Ripe Avocado, and to add a little extra depth to the flowers I used Plum Pudding and Raspberry Fizz for the inner-most layer.

Other:  Magic Transparent Viva Pearl Pen

Challenge 4:

Challenge 4 is to create a 5.5 x 5.5 square card using 9 white 1.5 inch squares.  Each square has to be altered using a different technique.  I looked back at the Make It Monday challenges to find inspiration for each technique.  I've listed the techniques used on the close-up images.

Papers:  Stampers Select White, Soft Stone, Smokey Shadow, Stampers Select Vellum
Dies:  Delightful Dahlias, Come All Ye Faithful (doxie dog reverse mask)
Stamps:  Rosie Posie, Beautiful Butterflies, Delightful Dahlias, Background Basics Retro, Embroidered Blooms, Fancy Flourishes
Inks:  Winter Wisteria, Royal Velvet, Hibiscus Burst, Ripe Avocado, Simply Chartreuse, Aqua Mist, Pure Poppy, Fresh Snow, Summer Sunrise, Harvest Gold, Terracotta Tile, Vintage Jadeite,
Hawaiian Shores, Orange Zest, Plum Pudding, VersaMark
Other:  Clear Filigree Embossing Powder, Perfect Pearls, Copic Markers,
Simon Says Stamp Masking Paper

Challenge 7:

Challenge 7 is another really fun one.  They created a paper crafting alphabet to use as a card making recipe!  The idea is to write your name in a vertical column and then fill in the required techniques and/or products that you will need to use for your creation.

I used my last name; Powers.

P- use pink somewhere on your project

O- incorporate an ombre effect

W- add watercoloring

E- incorporate emboss resist technique

R- round some corners

S- incorporate real or faux stitching

I started off by stamping a piece of watercolor card stock with a background stamp and VersaMark ink.  Then I added some clear embossing powder and heat set it.  The background stamp I used has oodles of swirly flourishes in a stitched line pattern.  Then I sponged on some Distress Inks in an ombre pattern, so that I could have a nice solid base color.  Then I used those same inks and smooshed them onto my craft mat.  I sprayed the ink with a little water and dipped my card panel into the ink.  This created that lovely watercolored splotchyness.  

After heat setting my ink, I used a dry paper towel to buff any excess ink off of the embossed background pattern.  Isn't that an awesome background!  It's pink, ombre, watercolored with emboss resist and faux stitching!  Then I used my corner chomper to round the bottom two corners of the panel.  For decoration, I added some vellum butterflies so that the background panel wouldn't get covered up too much.  The butterflies are embossed with white embossing powder and a gorgeous, Silver Pearl embossing powder.

Paper:  Stampers Select White, Tim Holtz Distress Watercolor Paper,
Stampers Select Vellum, Berry Sorbet
Ink:  Distress Spun Sugar, Worn Lipstick & Abandoned Coral, VersaMark
Stamps:  Beautiful Butterflies Layers, Penny Black Dotted Fusion
Dies:  Beautiful Butterflies & Beautiful Butterflies Layers
Other:  White Filigree Embossing Powder, Clear Filigree Embossing Powder,
Wow Silver Pearl Embossing Powder, Ranger Mister Bottle



WOW!  This turned out to be a super long post!  But I wanted to include all of my PTI Challenge projects in one post rather than doing a separate post for each card.  It seemed appropriate since I combined several of the challenges for some of the cards I made.

Judging by the blog hop inspiration posts, this looks like it's going to be an incredibly great release month!  [Not surprising since this is Papertrey Ink we're talking about!  Every release month is awesome!  LOL)  I'm extremely happy to be celebrating their 9th year in business.  They are such an incredible company!  Their products are top notch, they have great customer service, their design team is made up of a bunch of absolutely genius card makers, and I could go on and on...I hope they stay in business for many, many years to come!  I have been a loyal customer since I first discovered them years ago.  [At least 7 years, but I'm not sure exactly when or how I first found out about them.  I'm just glad that I did!  ;)  They have been a huge inspiration to my life as a crafter!]  I can't wait for the final reveal post for this month's release products!

Happy Birthday, Papertrey Ink!
TTFN

(All products used in this post are Papertrey Ink unless otherwise noted.)