A three colour challenge (without the use of black!) at Our Creative Corner

Hi everyone. It's time for this month's Our Creative Corner challenge, and I'm the host!

This time the challenge is to use only shades of blue, brown and purple/plum - no black lines, even on your stamped or digital images!!!

You can definitely use stamped or digital images if you want to, but you must change the colour of the lines in your image to a shade of brown, blue or purple. White is acceptable as a base, for example a white card blank, but shouldn't be a main colour. Anyone submitting projects containing anything other than blues, browns and purples/plums will immediately be disqualified to make it fair to the other entrants.

And this month we are pleased to announce that one randomly drawn entrant will win a prize from our generous sponsor Nicecrane Designs.

Colour is an important part of the creative process for me. I will often start by choosing the colour palette for a project before finalising the design, and as time has gone on I've learned to try to limit the colours to a maximum of three.

This works for me and I'm excited to see if it is equally successful for you.

A useful tip for those who have never changed the colour of the lines on their digital images; this is easy if you use one of those image or photo manipulation programs available for free on the internet. They will contain transformation tools that make everything sepia, for example. Go on, give it a go. We'd love to see your tags, ATC's, cards, canvases, journalling, 3D art, etc.

As well as sticking to the colour palette for this challenge, I wanted to show that it is possible to use digital images without having those harsh black lines. And just wait 'til you hear what I printed the main image onto!

Let's start by identifying this beautiful digital image. It is a Nicecrane Designs image from the set 'Nature Notes of an Edwardian Lady'. I opened it in my photo editing software and used a setting which transformed the black into sepia (the heads of the birds are actually dark brown but seems to look black here despite my best efforts using the camera).

So what did I print this image onto? A piece of Tim Holtz Idea-Ology paper stash 'French Industrial' paper! It takes ink beautifully and there's no reason why you can't use it in the same way you would any other blank card.

Using a fine paint brush, Distress Inks and water I 'painted' over the image to add more colour. This is great as it makes you look like a real artist.

A coordinating shade of brown Distress Ink was blended on the edges of the card to finish this base layer.

The frame was created by layering the mauve textured card underneath a mirror card filigree piece, altered with alcohol inks. The base layer of this frame helped to bring out the colour of the flowers.

The stamped bird at the bottom of the frame is in fact a different species, but by using a similar colour palette/pattern to that used on the others it blended rather well. The die cut branches were useful both for providing a perch and for adding interest around the sentiment.

As mentioned at the beginning, I tend to choose a set of colours towards the beginning of a project and stick with it. This does take some of the time out of the decision making process which can hamper the completion of projects. So, for example, I grabbed Seedless Preserves, Coffee Archival and Antique Linen for the sentiment strip, knowing those colours would work perfectly with the rest of the design.

Now I've shown you mine how about you show me yours!! The Design Team over at Our Creative Corner have come up with more gorgeous inspiration for you, and then it's your turn to put this colour palette to good use. I can't wait to see what you come up with.

Take care of yourselves, Jenny xxx