Trucking Along and Let’s Go Shopping cards made using August Mood Board

 

Do you struggle for inspiration for your Stampin’ Up!® projects? Each month I try to help with this by creating a mood board to inspire you. And each month I try really hard to make a project using the mood board.

This time I have made not one but two projects, using the Trucking Along and Let’s Go Shopping bundles from Stampin’ Up!®. They are very different, to show just what a wide variety of projects the mood board can inspire. 

 

The mood board can be used for colour inspiration, for theme inspiration or both. The colours this time are Night of Navy, Wild Wheat, Berry Burst, Fresh Freesia and Balmy Blue. 

 

 

I was drawn to the beautiful sunset picture in the centre so began with a piece of Fresh Freesia cardstock. I punched out the wheel (circle) using the Trucking Along Builder Punch and used this as a mask before I started adding ink in earnest using Berry Burst ink and a Blending Brush.

Once I had my sky in place, I tore some used grid paper to create the hills and used this as a mask, this time blending in Night of Navy. The more colour you add, the darker it gets, so I went for full colour saturation in the foreground. 

 

Another photo on the mood board which inspired me was the incredible star trails in the night sky picture left of centre. I have created something similar in the past using a fine paint brush and clear water but I kept adding too much water and causing unwanted blobs. I tried with a really fine paintbrush but you couldn’t see the lines. So I switched to the (sadly now retired) chalk marker and it was fourth time lucky. I didn’t know when to stop so just carried on until I’d filled the whole sky. 

 

I already had a spare truck stamped in Wild Wheat from this Trucking Along craft session a couple of weeks ago so that was handy. I used to keep any spared images in my UFO (unfinished objects) box but never looked at them, so now I keep them in the relevant stamp case which makes far more sense. It was a nice surprise to find this in exactly the right colour for my project. 

 

I hadn’t used Balmy Blue, which I didn’t need to as the “rules” are very loose when it comes to using a mood board but I’m a bit of a stickler so created a wooden backing for my truck. It still felt a little empty so I added a pile of birthday presents too, colouring the Fresh Freesia sections using the stamp provided in the Trucking Along stamp set, then filling in the rest using ink pads and a Stampin’ Up!® Blender Pen.

I needed a small birthday greeting and found this in the Let’s Go Shopping stamp set. I stamped this on a scrap of white (always save your scraps!) and tied round a single strand of Wild Wheat Jute Trim. This way you get narrower thread and make your product go three times as far!

As Let’s Go Shopping was now out on my work space and it has a cute little books stamp set, I thought I may as well make another project from the mood board.

I love the dark blue books against the wooden background so this was my starting point. 

 

There are so many possibilities for different shops and cafés using Let’s Go Shopping, so I stamped and die-cut a little bookshop and coloured it in using a combination of ink pads and blender pens for the smaller areas, and ink pads and a paintbrush for the larger areas. Not ideal with Memento Black ink and Basic White cardstock but it’s fine if you’re quick and not too generous with the water. 

 

I popped this up on a white background embossed with Stampin’ Up!'s Timeworn Type 3D embossing folder, although even as I type those words I am kicking myself that I didn’t use Timber 3D embossing folder, to echo the wooden background of the books photo. But it’s a mood board, not a prescription, so that’s fine. 

 

I stamped the Let’s Go Shopping books all over the background using Fresh Freesia ink. This is a really old technique which I haven’t used a lot lately but I’ve noticed it cropping up in catalogue samples. It’s really useful for creating the look of patterned paper without overwhelming the project, and of course on a budget too. If you don’t have lots of ink pads, I strongly recommend you invest in a Versamark pad as this creates a watermark effect on any coloured cardstock.

The Happy Birthday greeting this time comes from The Best Family Ever stamp set from Stampin’ Up!®. I don’t know why I didn’t use the one from Let’s Go Shopping; it just happened.

The result is a cute little square card for a book lover. I am making more square cards lately because I picked up some envelopes in the local Oxfam bookshop which were too much of a bargain to leave behind!

 

I hope you like my Trucking Along and Let’s Go Shopping projects inspired my by August mood board and are inspired to have a go yourself. If you do make something, please tag @allthingsstampy on your social media.

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