Springs

Valerie Wilson is our hostess this week at Stampotique Designers Challenge Blog. Her challenge is "Springs".  

Here's what she had to say about this challenge.

"In my town, there is still snow on the ground, but I'm hoping that if we keep thinking "Spring" really hard, that Spring will arrive! To encourage the arrival of Spring, I'd like to see you actually use springs or something that makes things spring up off your project!"

If you'd like the chance to win your choice of $30 worth of Stampotique stamps, you should play along with this challenge. Visit Stampotique Designers Challenge blog and be sure to read the rules so that you'll have the chance to win that great prize!!

Here's my card with Twinkie (Daniel Torrente), Hat Cube (Daniel Torrente), NY, NY (Janet Klein), Taxi! (Janet Klein), Barcode Text (France Papillon), and Super Hero Text (Linda Peterson).

I must admit that I was a bit stymied at first by this challenge, but then serendipity struck. My husband has an old Cross pen and it needed a refill. I unscrewed it to take the innards with me to Staples to be sure I got the correct refill. Lo and Behold! There was a tiny spring inside the pen! I didn't pirate that one, but we periodically get free retractable nib/ball point pens in charity mailings, though in all honesty I wish they'd keep the postage and their stuff instead of inundating us with unrequested things. Anyway, these pens work for about five minutes then run out of ink, so I tested the pens in our desk drawer. The pens that still worked went back into the desk. The pens that were inkless got stripped of their springs, which went up to the craft room to be used in this card and other future Steampunk-style projects.

Twinkie and one of the hats from the Hat Cube were stamped with Tuxedo Black Memento ink, colored with Copic markers, fussy-cut, then edged with black marker. 

While cleaning my craft room recently, I came across an old 8x8 pad, called Get Happy (Cosmo Cricket), which features painty-looking patterned papers in primary colors. I thought these papers would work really well with the way I had colored Twinkie and his hat. I started to layer the papers to create a scene, then decided that I wanted Twinkie to be flying over a cityscape after launching into the air by his springs.

Out came NY, NY, which was stamped with Tuxedo Black Memento ink onto one of the patterned papers from the White Basics 6x6 pad (Basic Grey), fussy-cut, then edged with black marker. A strip of green patterned Get Happy paper was cut, edged with black marker, then layered onto a sheet of blue patterned Get Happy paper. I decided that the Road washi tape would be perfect, so I added that between the blue and green patterned papers. NY, NY was adhered over the washi tape. Then I decided that a taxi would look really cute. So out came the Taxi! stamp, which was stamped onto Neenah cardstock, colored with Copic markers, fussy-cut, edged with black marker, and adhered to the Road washi tape.

The blue Get Happy patterned paper had type on the left side so it needed some type on the right side to balance it. "Proof of Fun" from the Barcode Text set was stamped with London Fog Memento ink. 

Some clouds were needed in the sky, so white cardstock was cut with the Clouds trio of dies (Memory Box), detailed with grey markers, and adhered to the blue Get Happy patterned paper.

It was time for Twinkie to spring up into the air and fly over the city, but first his head got a bit of a trim and then his hat was adhered. A triangle cut from red canvas-textured specialty paper was hand detailed then adhered to Twinkie's back to be a super-hero cape. Foam tape (3M) was added to Twinkie's back and he was adhered in position over the cloudy blue sky. 

Super Hero Text was stamped with Jet Black Archival ink onto the striped Be Happy patterned paper, fussy-cut, edged with a black marker, and a 1/16" eyelet was added. Silver thread was used to connect the sentiment banner with Twinkie's hand and the sentiment was popped up with dimensional foam adhesive. Gold thread was used to add a gold metal spring (these pens only had gold-colored springs!) under each of Twinkie's boots.


The blue scene was edged with Black Soot Distress ink, then mounted onto diagonally striped Be Happy patterned paper. This was adhered to a 5x7 white card and the card told me it was finally done! 

BTW, I tried but couldn't get rid of the shadows caused by everything being popped up and dimensional. Oh well.

Thanks for visiting today!