Papertrey Ink July Blog Hop Challenge

I’m back with another Papertrey Ink Blog Hop challenge. I had to skip June’s challenge since I was out of town for work when it took place, but I’m jumping back in for July. The blog hop is a day-long event held each month for crafters to share their creative projects made using Papertrey Ink products on their blogs. Each month there is a different image presented by Papertrey Ink which serves as the inspiration for the project.

July Challenge Description and Image:

“We have been so inspired by the ocean themed products that Papertrey Ink has been releasing and what a perfect theme for this summer blog hop. Pull out all of your fun ocean themed products! Or maybe you might find inspiration in the color theme or even the polka dot patterns that stand out on this inspiration piece. What are you inspired to create?”

I love this sea scene! And now I’m kicking myself for not buying any of the recent Papertrey Ink ocean sets released in June. I especially liked the sweet sea turtles from the new Salt Air: Fauna stamp set. But this challenge made me instantly think of the Papertrey Ink ocean sets I do have: Keep Swimming and What the Doodle: Waves. I decided to make an ocean themed card using the color palette from the inspiration photo, so I selected four ink pads for stamping the images: one red and three shades of blue. I use Hero Arts Red Royal and Cornflower, and Memento Nautical Blue and Teal Zeal as shown in the photo below.

It was a real challenge keeping track of the individual tiny clear fish stamps from Keep Swimming, and I lost one before I even started, so I ended up using the bubble stamps as fillers. I like how the bubbles turned out, even though I was disappointed not to have the fish stamp I wanted to use. I looked everywhere – mostly on the floor of my friend Wendie’s craft room – and feared maybe her dog had eaten it. The next day she told me she’d found the fish – in her bathroom sink ready to swim down the drain! Most likely it had been stuck to my hand or the stamp shammy I use to clean my stamps when I went to the sink to wet it. Whew. No fish – or dogs! – were injured in the making of this card after all.

To create my card, first I stamped the waves directly onto my card front, and then I stamped the whale beneath. After that, I filled in the rest of the card below the waves with carefully stamped fish and bubbles. I was afraid of making a mistake with each stamped image. I don’t know if I would have had the heart to start over from the beginning if I’d completely messed up! Next I stamped and die cut out the sailboat to perch on top of the waves, and carefully stamped the greeting. “Thanks for keeping me” is a single line stamp so I stamped just half of it each time to break up the words into two lines. Originally I’d planned to keep my stamped card two-dimensional to achieve the poster-like quality of the inspiration photo, but my card seemed so flat, so I ended up re-stamping the whale, then die cut and layered him over my original image with foam mounting tape. I also used foam mounting tape to give dimension to the sailboat. I was much happier with the finished result after adding dimension!

To “sea” all of the projects crafters created for this month’s challenge, visit the Papertrey Ink blog. I can’t wait to check out all of the projects linked at the end of the post. I’m going to be looking for cards made with those darling sea turtles!