Better Together - A Mix and Match Challenge Using Capsule Crafting Week 1 Andie

During this time of quarantine, Brandy and I miss crafting together.  It isn't that we did so often - we didn't see each other every week sometimes.  It's more that we can't see each other.  So I had an idea to create a challenge each week - one just for Brandy and she could create one just for me.  Brandy has to amp the idea up and came up with our official title:  Better Together - A Mix and Match Challenge.  As the quarantine process has extended and even though there are re-openings everywhere, out of an abundance of caution and love for our fellow citizens, we continue to isolate to help slow the spread of the virus.  As such, we decided to modify the challenge for the month of June.  Instead of a weekly challenge, we determined to use a capsule crafting approach.  Capsule crafting was created by Kristina Werner and you can see her take in these posts.  I explained how I chose my capsule supplies in this post.  

For this card, I ended up using my Waffle Flower Springs dies to make an arrangement on the front of my card.  I ink blended Distress Oxide inks onto white cardstock, die cut the sprigs and placed them on an ink blended matting which I had sprinkled with Distress Oxide ink.  The sentiments came from my Clearly Besotted Sweet Little Sentiments  which I fussy cut out to create a unique sentiment strip.  The sentiments were also stamped in Distress Oxide inks.

As you can see, I played around a bit with the layout and colors arranged on the card front.  I also did a bunch of different sentiments so that I don't just add a bunch to the stash with the same sentiment.  So much fun!

Better Together - A Mix and Match Challenge Using Capsule Crafting Week 1 Andie

During this time of quarantine, Brandy and I miss crafting together.  It isn't that we did so often - we didn't see each other every week sometimes.  It's more that we can't see each other.  So I had an idea to create a challenge each week - one just for Brandy and she could create one just for me.  Brandy has to amp the idea up and came up with our official title:  Better Together - A Mix and Match Challenge.  As the quarantine process has extended and even though there are re-openings everywhere, out of an abundance of caution and love for our fellow citizens, we continue to isolate to help slow the spread of the virus.  As such, we decided to modify the challenge for the month of June.  Instead of a weekly challenge, we determined to use a capsule crafting approach.  Capsule crafting was created by Kristina Werner and you can see her take in these posts.  I described my selection for the capsule in this post.  

This card is also very similar than my previous cards using my capsule for crafting in that I am using my Honey Bee Stamps Cherish stamps and dies.  The technique that I used here is also very different than my previous cards.  I stamped the images onto some Toner Grey paper that I had using VersaFine black ink.  I then colored the images using my Polychromos pencils, die cutting the images after coloring and arranging on my card base.  The background was ink blended with some Black Soot Distress Oxide ink to further highlight the shadows created by raising the sentiment frame off the background with some foam squares.  Whew!  I'm having fun with our capsule crafting challenge and giving this very old-to-me Honey Bee Stamps stamp and die set.

Better Together - A Mix and Match Challenge Using Capsule Crafting Week 1 Andie

During this time of quarantine, Brandy and I miss crafting together.  It isn't that we did so often - we didn't see each other every week sometimes.  It's more that we can't see each other.  So I had an idea to create a challenge each week - one just for Brandy and she could create one just for me.  Brandy has to amp the idea up and came up with our official title:  Better Together - A Mix and Match Challenge.  As the quarantine process has extended and even though there are re-openings everywhere, out of an abundance of caution and love for our fellow citizens, we continue to isolate to help slow the spread of the virus.  As such, we decided to modify the challenge for the month of June.  Instead of a weekly challenge, we determined to use a capsule crafting approach.  Capsule crafting was created by Kristina Werner and you can see her take in these posts.  I explained my capsule selection in this post.  Here's a picture of the mood board that Brandy selected for me:

My second card used the same stamps and dies as my first card, but the technique is different.  

For this card, I stamped using my Honey Bee Stamps Cherish stamps to stamp clusters of flowers onto Bristol cardstock.  I then watercolored with my Distress Oxide inks so that the card.  My previous attempts at using the Oxides to watercolor weren't very successful and there are varied failures in this card panel, but overall, I'm extremely pleased with how this card turned out.

Better Together - A Mix and Match Challenge Using Capsule Crafting Week 1 Andie

During this time of quarantine, Brandy and I miss crafting together.  It isn't that we did so often - we didn't see each other every week sometimes.  It's more that we can't see each other.  So I had an idea to create a challenge each week - one just for Brandy and she could create one just for me.  Brandy has to amp the idea up and came up with our official title:  Better Together - A Mix and Match Challenge.  As the quarantine process has extended and even though there are re-openings everywhere, out of an abundance of caution and love for our fellow citizens, we continue to isolate to help slow the spread of the virus.  As such, we decided to modify the challenge for the month of June.  Instead of a weekly challenge, we determined to use a capsule crafting approach.  Capsule crafting was created by Kristina Werner and you can see her take in these posts.  We selected supplies from the stash in the following guidelines which also includes my selections:

• 5 stamp sets

1. The Greetery Alphabuds stamp
2. Clearly Besotted Sweet Little Sentiments
3. Honey Bee Cherish
4. SSS Beautiful Day
5. Clearly Besotted Stamptember My Best Friend

• 7 dies sets (2 have to be separate from stamp set)

1. The Greetery Alphabuds dies
2. Honey Bee Cherish dies
3. Waffle Flower Springs dies
4. Papertrey Ink Shape Shifters Circle 2 die
5. Waffle Flower A2 Layers dies
6. SSS Stitched Rectangles
7. Avery Elle Wonky Stitches Elle-ments

• 1 watercolor option (select from pencils, pens, markers, pan, but ONLY one).

1. Zig Clean Color Real Brush

• 1 colored pencil option.

1. Polychromos

• No limits on paper
• 1 embossing media (embossing powder or paste)

1. White embossing powder

• 1 stencil 

1. Tim Holtz String Layering stencil

• 1 ink brand (oxide and regular distress are separate brands)

1. Distress Oxides

• No limit on functional tools (die cut machines, pokers, paperclips, adhesives, etc.)
• 1 bling embellishment (bling, confetti, sequins mix)

1. Clear sequins

• 1 no line  and black ink option (i.e., Versafine and SSS Fog are acceptable.)

1. Versafine Black Ink
2. White Pigment Ink

• 1 can't live without it item of your choosing, but only one.  Can be an extra to the items above like a 6th stamp set, but not matching dies.  It could be one extra ink color not in the selected brand, but not a whole additional brand of ink.

1. SSS You Are background stamp

In order to inspire us, we each created a mood board of images form the internet.  Brandy's Mood Board for Andie:

So, here's my first set of cards made using my capsule supplies and inspired by Brandy's selection for the mood board.  I used my Honey Bee Cherish stamp and dies along with my Distress Oxides to stamp these cards.  The SSS Stitched Rectangle dies cut out the frame and mounted onto some patterned paper/cardstock.

I'm having so much fun and the inspiration is fabulous, so I'm sure more cards are coming from this challenge.