Watercooler Wednesday Challenge – WWC55 – Cuppa Friendship meets Jean’s Color Challenge

WWC55 – Jean’s Color Challenge

Welcome to this weeks Watercooler Wednesday Challenge.  And a belated welcome to our four new challenge artists.  Even though I didn’t participate last week I had a chance to view last weeks team projects with the rest of you and had my socks knocked off.  I hope you enjoyed them too. Thankfully my ring (see above in the picture or in my jewelry box :D) was made of sterner stuff and stayed around for this weeks challenge. {grin}

This week some of my favorite soft and Southwestern style colors are the theme.   Just like those in one of my favorite Southwestern style rings.  Don’t you love it when you look down and there is your palette for the next color challenge ready and waiting on your hand?   Easy Peasy.    Of course taking the picture was a tiny tad more interesting and eventually a gift from God.

Given the Southwest theme that hit my creative eye you might be expecting cactus or sand or horses or other such themes so I hope you won’t be disappointed.  What I most remember from my time in New Mexico, many decades ago, are soft and well worn calico type prints along with deep rich velvets, denims and silver.  Lots of silver.  On the table, in the jewelry and so on.  And tea…lots and lots of tea.  Both hot and iced depending on the time of year and the temperatures.  Where I lived in Deming it could get to 115º (or hotter) in the shade in Summer and well below freezing in winter.  We were after all sitting at about 7,000 feet high. 😀

I hope you’ll grab your own favorite cuppa while you continue reading.

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Cuppa Friendship

I love that the dies have everything you need for “tea”.  The teapot, a variety of cups, a creamer and silverware.  Not to mention fun bits to decorate the cups and teapot.  The only thing missing is a sugar bowl and I suppose you could put sugar in the “creamer” and use a spoon to serve it right?  Another cool thing…even if you opt not to get the bundle with the stamps the dies work quite well all on their own.  Of course…the stamps add a bit of sparkle to working with the dies and the matching designer series paper stack a bit more to the combination too.  😀

Supplies:

Stamps: A Nice Cuppa, Six-Sided-Sampler (sentiment)

Inks:  Basic Gray (sentiment and tea bag)

Paper: Very Vanilla, Perfect Plum, Tempting Turquoise, Mint Macaron Cardstock.    Silver Foil Paper (spoon and steam images) .  Pretty Petals Designer Series Paper Stack.

Punches: Word Window, Hearts Confetti, Curvy Corner Trio

Tools & Adhesives:  Big Shot, Cups & Kettle Framelit dies, Linen Thread, Dimensionals, Tombow Liquid Glue, Glue Dots.

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Couldn’t get any simpler than this.  Really.  We all know how to stack a set of cups right?  We know how to punch a corner and glue down paper layers?   I did do a few simple tricks to make my picture a bit more believable and make assembly a tad easier.

1. When cutting the cups out of DSP I made two.  One cut from one side of the two sided paper and one cut from the other.  This gave me flexibility in what order I wanted to stack.  I knew what pattern I wanted but when you flip a two sided paper…you may not get the pattern you want.   Cutting extra also gave me a headstart on my next card design too!
2.  I wanted the silver to look a bit distressed or like hammered silver…a theme in New Mexico for many reasons.   So…after die cutting the spoons I put them back on the cutting pad, put a rough piece of paper on top and used my most cut up cutting pad too.  that gave a worn, hammered/distressed look to the silver.  Much more interesting than the flat shiny look.  And as a bonus…it flattened the little dots that the dies often leave behind on the paper.
3. I used my thumbs to add a bit of roundness to the bowl of the spoon.  And while we are talking spoons….I added more than one to the stack.  After all…many of my friends need sugar or milk in their tea and we don’t all want to share a spoon.  So a stack of cups really do need at least a couple of spoons.  Notice that I’m assuming this is probably a stack of used cups…the friends have moved on from drinking to chatting now that they are relaxed.
4. I used a piercing tool to punch a hole in the tea bag tag and added a bit of linen thread with a knot behind the tag and a glue dot on the end behind the cup as well as on the tag itself.

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Now that we’ve had our “cuppa” for this challenge….

It’s time to move on and see what the other artists have done with my ring’s colors.   To see the rest of the design teams  Color  Challenge contributions head on over to the Challenge blog website here.   That’s also where you can add your own creation with the linky doodad.  When you add your own design and there are more than three entries, one of you will be a challenge winner or runner up and have the option to place our new badges on your own site.  Of course…you’ll also win bragging rights!

Sadly we didn’t have enough entries last week to declare a winner but you can look here to see the one linky and Artist Team entries.  Check the challenge site for rules on competing for future challenges.

I really hope you will add your own creations this week.  Really…this challenge is an easy one (even if all you do is punch shapes using the various colors and stick them down with a sentiment so I hope the soft colors will draw you in.

I hope you’ll join us next Wednesday for yet another Watercooler Wednesday Challenge.