Papertrey Ink 6th Anniversary Celebration: Printable Freebies Challenge

Hello Papertrey Ink Fans!
Here today with a set of cards I made using the free design printable over on Nichole's website for Papertrey Ink.

Today Nichole introduced (or re-introduced) the 2013 Stamp Designers.  Each of these women bring incredible design talents to the Papertrey Ink team.  To say that I admire them is a HUGE understatement.  They, along with Nichole, produce some of the most beautiful stamp designs in this industry that I love so much!  In honor of my great appreciation for them as a team I decided to make a project with each one of the images.  I set some boundaries for myself so that I could work fast:
1.  Go with the very first idea that popped into my mind.
2.  Don't sweat paper choices - go with the first thing that matches
3.  Keep it simple
4.  Make at least one item for my son on Valentine's Day

Here is what I came up with in 3 hours and 39 minutes - with one quick pick-up of my son from school as he had a half day today....

I must say that putting some limits on my creativity was fun! And productive for me!  And I like the way the projects came out - with only a few things I would change here or there if I had permitted myself more time.  It was also faster because there wasn't much stamping for me to do since I was using these gorgeous designer images - HERE!

Here are some individual project pictures:

 

I enlarged this image made by Dawn McVey so that I could create a circle card with the bigger image as the entire focal point.  A little bling and some layered diecuts and the card was done. If  I was going to take more time I would have hand cut the flower image and popped it up a level.  Dawn - I love how you use flowers on your cards and I have to say that your stunning pine cone stamp set this year made my heart melt! Just ADORE it!!!!  And also love your sentiment sets too!!! Your blog posts about your family always make me smile as I also come from a large Italian family!

 

I love the hombre effect of this image by Maile Belles!  I decided to make a blush card stock tag with lots of lovely layers so that I can use this for a Valentine's Day gift next week.  I love the arrow and the cool fonts she used! So fun and spot-on trend wise.  Maile thanks for your wonderful modern stamp designs.  Your blog is full of inspiration and I am always inspired by your incredible creativity with just a few items.  Love the white space! 

 

 I adore this "I love you" sign by Lexi Daly!  My son and I say I love you this way often and I thought it would be a perfect little Valentine's gift for him on the morning of Valentine's Day.  I kept it simple as we will be using this in his books that he brings home from school each night for his 30 minutes of reading.  I love the red, turquoise and white color combo and the matching twine on this one.  I also added some copic highlights and coloring to the image itself just for fun! Thanks Lexi for your awesome designs! I love "Comfort Food" as ice cream and gelato are favorites in my family!  So excited to see what this year holds!

 

Erin made this fun image!  It just made me think of summer time and trips to the Woodland Park Zoo here in Seattle.  So I chose to color it and add a sentiment from Summer Jar Fillers - "Sweet Summertime".  I think it would be a great card to give to my son Tim's teacher at the end of the year which is coming soon!

I love Erin's design style!  And her release projects always make me smile!  She has such a fun "blog-voice" and comes up with some very unique ideas - as all of the designers do!!!

 

This adorable image was done by Melissa Bickford.  I love Melissa's use of white and just a few colorful supplies and her wonderful $5.00 stamp sets!  Her cards are always crisp, colorful and fun and so I went with white on this card and tried to emulate her style!  I printed the image out on vellum and then backed it with clear cardstock and layered it into a square die cut window.  Love the way it looks in the light!   Love this image Melissa!  Thanks for your wonderful designs!  Your sentiments and images together make for some very sweet cards!

Lizze Jones made this sweet candle image!  I immediately thought of how many candles were blown out on my cake a few weeks ago and thought I would need to use more than one of these images.  Then this idea (which I first saw on Betsy Veldman's blog) popped into my head and I went with it.  I added velum to the center image to add the sentiment.  I love the way it helps bring focus to it.  Lizzie I love your designs - especially Love Potion!!!! So excited to see what new stamps sets you have coming out!

Heather designed this image and oh I love the chevrons!  I decided to add the color yellow with a copic marker to make it a bright happy birthday card for my sister.  Plus it is cloudy and rainy this afternoon in Seattle so I needed some indoor sunshine! LOL!  I think of Heather as the Kraft-Master...and she is also a Craft-Master too!  I love her use of kraft card stock and I remember the first time I ordered a set of Papertrey Ink Cardstock in Kraft was after seeing some projects on her blog!  I also love her scrapbook pages that she shares!  Thanks Heather!

This lovely image is by Tiffany Pastor and just made me smile as soon as I saw it!  Once again I thought it was just asking for some yellow and sunshine!  I think I should have used white for my card base but I still smile when I look at this card!  I hope you saw the additional frilly flower images on Tiffany's blog: HERE.  Just love Frilly flowers and her wonderful blog posts!  And Nativity Silhouettes is one of my favorite Christmas sets! And it contains the beautiful angel glow or sun ray stamp that I use ALL THE TIME! Love it!  Thanks Tiffany!

Wow!  Did you make it through this long post!  I just couldn't pick one image to use this year when I am inspired by all of these women and the entire design team at Papertrey Ink.  I hope to make a card from each of them next!!!  Won't that keep me busy and happily crafting away!  Happy 6th Anniversary Papertrey Ink!
Hugs,
Jill

Edited to add:  Kelly commented that I should upload each card separately so I uploaded this blog post as my first entry - for the card made with Dawn's image.  And I used photo bucket to upload the other 7 images although I think I did something wrong as the thumbnails did not show on the inlinkz tool on Nichole's website.  But it does work if you click through to photo bucket.  :) Jill