Tuesday, March 29, 2011

You'll Be Missed

Embellish Magazine Challenge is one my favorite challenges to partake in, because it pushes my boundaries when it comes to themes & color combos. I'm not a bold, colorful person, and tend to grab blacks, krafts, browns, whites and let the stamping, pattern paper, or color penciling do the color-talking. Anyone else out there feel the same? So this week, Embellish is challenging me to two areas: masculine cards (arg!) and colors.


Another fun challenge that is going on this week is happening on Jenny's blog. The WeeMemories team is sponsored by My Favorite Things, one of many companies whose stamps I adore. This doesn't get any easier, since the theme this week is:
The tricky part for the creation process was wrapping my head around blues, green and red as "masculine" colors prescribed in the Embellish Magazine Challenge. I get the gray and blue, but the red was way too cheery.

You know what I really liked the most of this challenge? The visual poster - two weeks ago you heard me swoon about the macarons; this week you'll hear me swoon about planes. Ashley sure knows how to put these posters together, right? I fly a lot and often find myself living at the airport (for better or for worst) for the past two years or so. The best parts are sitting at the gate and watching planes land and take off. It's quite fascinating to see all the operations go back and forth - the lil truck that pushes the plane from the gate back, the dudes with their glowing sticks to help navigate the plane in and out of the gate, the baggage wagon zooming back and forth. Perhaps I should have been an aerospace engineer or a flight controller. But alas, I detract.

What I meant to say is that this card was inspired by my loads of travel and my joy in finally being able to use my impulse purchase. Yes, I picked up the little airplane punch at Michael's about half a year ago and it hasn't made a debut on any projects yet - hey, it was on sale for $2 and better late than never ;)


You'll Be Missed
Stamps: (Goin' Places) My Favorite Things; (Free Spirit - Sentiment) Waltzingmouse Stamps
Paper: (Paper Basics Card Stock - Spring Moss, Spring Rain, White) Papertrey Ink; (Key Ingredients Kit - Winnie's Walls) Taylored Expressions
Ink: (Memento - Tuxedo Black; Versamark) Tsukineko

Embellishments: (Steel Dies - Cloud 1 & 2 Die Collection) Papertrey Ink; (Airplane Medium Punch) EKSuccess; (Embossing Powder - Ebony) Martha Stewart; (Double-ended Art Markers - Cool Greys) Prismacolor

I started punching out nine little planes and colored them in a monochromatic gray from 90% cool gray up to 10% cool gray. I knew that I wanted to play around with layering them and making it look like a plane was taking off into the sky - exactly against what background, I was still unsure.

You'll Be Missed

Then I remembered that I had to incorporate fun colors and what better way of utilizing these fun, bold colors by breaking in some negative space in the form of clouds? Planes live in skies which have lots of clouds...

You'll Be Missed

It still looked empty at this point and then I remembered I had a fun city scape in My Favorite Things "Goin' Places" stamp set. A little embossing action and a city skyline was quickly created - easy peasy.

You'll Be Missed

That's when I realized I needed to add a sentiment - preferably masculine looking. The "Bon Voyage" sentiment was too cursive for my taste, so I pulled out my handy-dandy and trusty Waltzingmouse "Free Spirit - Sentiments" to make it work. I actually could not find a fitting sentiment for what I was looking for and was about to pull another set out, when a bunch of lightbulbs lit up in my head. You see, I was thinking "How sad, I'm not sure where the little jet plane is flying to..." when it occurred to me, this card is perfect for when someone leaves...and I have plenty of friends that keep leaving the area to venture into other jobs or they go back to their home countries.

If you made it this far - kudos to you reading my ramblings. Hope you like this little card. As you can tell, when I create cards, I often don't have the entire card designed out. I let myself be inspired by my stash. Also, sometimes that perfect sentiment is exactly not the one I had in mind and "making it work" often forces me to think outside the box.

So, what kinds of cards throws you out of your comfort zone?

17 comments:

Lee said...

This is a stunning card, Ren-Yi. Great take on the challenge.

Ines said...

What a great idea. Love the card. Thanks for sharing.

Greetings from Germany, ines

Trinh said...

Love the scene you created, Ren-Yi!

Karin Åkesdotter said...

Your card really stood out when I skimmed through the Embellish entries and it was even better here! WOW I really LOVE your card and such a perfect take on the challenge!!!

Ezlie said...

great card! you did a good job with the challenge and those punches!

Anonymous said...

This is so fun! Thanks for playing along with us this week at Wee Memories :)

Jenny said...

Such a great card!! TY so much for playing!! :) :) :) :) :)

Vera Yates (Ling) said...

Ren-Yi, I love this! Great design. Thank you for playing with us Wee Memories.:)

Handmade Creations by Stephanie said...

Wow love this love all the little details you added so fun thanks so much for playing along with us at Wee memories!!!

Ann said...

Super cute creation, girlie! Thanks for playing with us at Wee Memories this week!

Charlene Austin said...

GET OUT of town!! (totally playing on the airplane theme with you...heehee). Seriously though this card rocks. LOVE every detail. A WOW card for sure. Thank you so much for playing along in the Embellish Challenge.

Cheryl said...

Fabulous card! I just saw you were one of the top picks at Wee Memories and had to stop by.

Erin (Homemade Cards by Erin) said...

Love this, congrats on the Embellish shout out.

kari bell said...

so gorgeous, Ren-Yi!! you did an amazing job.
Kari
karikards.blogspot.com

Jocelyn Olson said...

What a stellar card! I LOVE it!! The design rocks and I love the planes!

Rae said...

Very cool card. And hey, I wonder how many punches are owned for years by "some of us" and those said punches NEVER see the front of a card, or other papercrafting project?
Uh, I wouldn't know anything about that, tho...

Dianna said...

0h my goodness! i love this card! The plane punch is too cute! I would love to have one, but cant find it. Would you consider selling it? :) Thanks!

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