Hello, crafty friends! Our June Release launched last week and there were so many new goodies to share that I didn’t get much of an opportunity to introduce you to our newest ink & cardstock colors —Pineapple and Blue Raspberry! To begin, I’d like to show you a comparison of Pineapple with two other hues of yellow and Blue Raspberry with two other hues of teal blue already in the Taylored Expressions’ color family. I know it’s helpful to see the colors side by side, so I’ve stamped a floral image from the new Tropical Florals stamp set onto Sugar Cube cardstock and also cut Ppopsicles with the Popsicle Stacklets die set from the coordinating cardstock colors so you can see the cardstock comparison and just how well our ink and cardstock match.

Let’s start with the yellows:

Pineapple doesn’t technically sit between Potato Chip and Lemon Meringue, but instead offers a warm golden yellow color that isn’t quite as bright as Lemon Meringue.

Now for the teals (my favorite hue!):

Our newest color, Blue Raspberry, is the darkest shade of teal in the TE color family with Confetti Cake the lightest and Cookie Monster squarely in the middle.

If you’re looking for inspiration using the new colors than you’re in luck! I’ve put together a free printable color chart download with several recommended color combinations for Pineapple and Blue Raspberry to get you started. Click the link above or the image below to add the free download to your cart!

And now let’s look at two projects that Jean Manis created — one tropical-themed and the other patriotic-themed — using two of the color combinations included in the chart.

For the tropical-themed card, Jean chose Pineapple, Lime Zest, Guava, and Cupcake. The flowers and foliage were stamped with the Tropical Florals stamp set and cut out with the coordinating dies. The tone-on-tone background was created by stamping Flirty Florals onto Pineapple cardstock with Pineapple ink. The Tropical Florals sentiment was stamped in Oreo ink on Sugar Cube cardstock, cut with a die in the Stitched Circle Stacklets set, and adhered to a larger circle cut from Guava cardstock.

For the second project, Jean designed a patriotic Eclipse card using the Blue Raspberry, Red Pepper, Blue Corn, and Sprinkles color combination from the chart. The largest fireworks image from the Freedom & Fireworks stamp set was stamped in Blue Raspberry, Cherry Pop (used in place of Red Pepper), Blue Corn, and Sprinkles ink on Sugar Cube cardstock. By simply rotating the stamp, Jean was able to create a varied pattern to cover the card front. She then used several of the smaller individual fireworks images to cover any obvious blank spots in the overall design.

For the Eclipse effect to work best, be sure to have stamping in the area that will be cut with the letters. After stamping the fireworks into the background, Jean cut into the design using the Caps Lock–USA die and put Sugar Cube cardstock behind the negative space. You could choose to pop up your letters back into the design with foam adhesive (as Jean did on her project) or build up layers of the USA letters cut from Sugar Cube cardstock and adhered on top of one another (approximately 4-5 of each letter for the desired thickness. To finish it off, simply add the heat-embossed ‘Land of the Free’ sentiment cut with one of the Double-ended Flag Stacklets.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this quick introduction to the two new Taylored Expressions colors—Pineapple and Blue Raspberry—and that the ideas shown have inspired you to get creative! Just one more quick note before I head out for today; when you purchase the full-size ink pads for these two new colors, we’ll send you the side labels FREE! You can find a full set of ink pad labels for the rest of our colors here. Thanks for stopping by today!