Taylored Expressions August Studio Challenge

Hi Everyone,

Guess what time it is? It's time for the Baker's Dozen Studio Challenge, which is a monthly opportunity for the Taylored Expressions team to share what makes our stamping studios hum.  Each month we  have a fun, crafty question or theme so we can share our favorites, some tips and tricks, stamping advice and more. The question for August is:

The Sky's the Limit! There are so many ways to create sky backgrounds for our cards and projects.  Often times, our blog readers are left staring at a beautiful sky and asking "How'd she do that?"

Show us one of your favorite ways to create a pretty sky background and make sure we know how to re-create it!

Well! This is one of my favorite topics because one of my favorite things to do is to create scenes and I love sponging up some sky! There are different ways to create skies - the one that I find the easiest is to sponge the sky using a sponger, some inks and the Cloud Border die. I was going to create a little video, but it would take hours to watch because usually it takes me all evening to figure out what I am doing :D

To start out with, I usually try to figure out what I am using and create a scene with some of the pieces of the card and try to figure out if I like it like that or if I have to move some of the pieces - for this card, I thought I would create a little scene using the 

sets Sky's The Limit and the mountains from the Happy Trails Stamp set:

 

1. After picking out which part of the stamp sets I wanted to use, I stamped them and cut them out and placed them around the card panel
2. I used the Cloud Border die with different inks - in this case - Memento Teal Zeal and Distress Broken China
3. Start of by sponging the ink on a dauber over the Cloud Border die to create the first layer of clouds

 4. Keeping adding Cloud Layers - I like to move the Cloud Border die around to create "white spaces" for the clouds that have different sizes - so for one line the die would be more in the middle of the line above it - its fun to experiment with this die and see what kinds of clouds you can make!
5. Sometimes, I like to use a darker color right on the edge of the die - to give contrast to the lighter color that I started with
6. After finishing the sky scene, then I like the start layering, coloring and adding the rest of the components for the card before I start gluing it down. Here I could have colored the mountains from the Happy Trails stamp set- but I thought that I would paper piece them (because I am that cray!) so I used some DP from the paper pack to create some paper pieced mountains after crumbling the paper a little bit for texture.
7. Not pictured here - but an option is to add a little more cloud using any of the clouds dies from Taylored Expression - I chose to used the new Build A Scene - Swirly Clouds dies which I cut out using vellum and then layered into the sun rays from the Build A Scene - Sunshine dies.

And here is the card after I finished: I used the Circle Number dies to cut out the #29 for my friend's 14 time celebrating her 29th birthday ;) and used the sentiment from the Happy Trails stamp set to create the birthday sentiment that I created a little flag for.

Card Ingredients:
Stamps: Sky's the Limit and Happy Trails from Taylored Expressions
Inks: Memento Tuxedo Black, Teal Zeal and Distress Broken China
Papers: Simple Stories - i heart summer
TE Dies: Build A Scene (Sunshine dies, Rolling Hills dies and Swirly Clouds die), Cloud Border die
Accessories: Foam Tape from TE, Swiss dots embossing folder, Stickles, copics

I can't wait for to see all the different skies that these amazing artists have created - please hop with me and check them out!!!

• Carole Burrage
• Charmaine Ikach
• Jen Shults
• Joan Ervin
• Kerri Michaud
• Sankari Wegman
• Shannon White
• Shelly Mercado
• Stephanie Kraft
• Tammie Edgerton
• Taylor VanBruggen
• Wanda Guess

Thanks so much for looking!
Big hugs,
Sankari :)