April Crate Color Challenge

Hello-hello Crate fans! Tara here today to kick off the month with a brand new Color Challenge! Do you know what the month of April is? I'm happy to say that this April makes 1 year that I've been posting the Color Challenges here at Crate! ~ Here's to another year of color!

Alright, back to business. With Summer vacation right around the corner (only 6 more weeks!) I've been daydreaming about how we are going to spend 3 glorious months of no homework or hectic schedules! This month's color combination is very much inspired by vacations and traveling.

The color palette for this month is: Fuschia Pink - Map Blue - Canary Yellow

and the inspiration wire for this month:

Just a few guide-lines for the challenge before we start:

- You may submit a card, layout or project to be eligible. Projects need to be submitted by midnight (EST) April 15th. Please email your work to: [email protected]

- You may use the colors in any proportion you wish, as long as you use all 3 colors in the palette. And you may add black, white or kraft paper to the colors.

- Projects must use at least 75% Crate Paper - you may mix any paper lines you like, old and new.

- The winner will be announced on April 16th and I'll share some of my favorite projects here on the blog.

- The winner will be selected based on creativity and quality of work.

For my first project, I decided to go the road less traveled and create a shadow box. I happen to pick up this frame from Ikea over the weekend and wanted to create something that included an A and a R (my husband's and my onw last name intials), for our front entry room. I forgot how much fun using a shadow box can be, especially when you like to use lots of chipboard pieces and foam pop-dots!

I started this piece by hand cutting a few butterflies from the Story Teller collection. I played with the arrangement of chipboard pieces and the butterflies until I liked the configuration and then used lots of foam pop-dots to add height to each of the layers of paper.

These pretty flowers were cut out of Random's - Vintage paper.

and here's my finished Shadow Box frame, hung and displayed!

For my second project, I wanted to create a very small piece of framed art. I sometimes find it challenging to work with such a small size, this frame measures slightly larger than the size of an atc card. However, much like the shadow box frame I created, I layered little bits of paper in the center and used a snippet from a vintage map as my base paper.

I also tucked in a vintage gold foil photo corner in between some of the layers of paper. I really like combining contrasting textures and colors into my projects!

It's your turn now! I hope you'll be inspired to create something lovely using Crate's April color combination! I'll be back on the 16th to showcase some of my favorite entries and to announce the winner of this month's color challenge. Good luck everyone and Happy Creating ~ Tara