Stamping With MoniQ

Sunday, June 18, 2017

CTC #133 - Love and Sympathy

Welcome to another week at CASEing the Catty Sunday Blog Hop,

This week we are taking our inspiration from the Love and Sympathy section of the Annual Catalouge, pages 86 - 101.

I took my inspiration from the card on the bottom left of the above image from page 101 of the catalogue. I think it was the fact that I have been thinking about getting the Birthday Blooms stamp set because I love the big blossom image and was surprised to see the image from You've got this gives a similar effect when cut off the stem!

I did want my card to be brighter than the original and and thought that the beautiful papers in the Wood Textures DSP Stack would be perfect. I used two of the sheets and layered them onto a Very Vanilla Thick Cardstock base.

I wanted to show you a close up so you could seek a bit better how I used Copper Metallic Thread to coordinate with the Copper Embossing Powder on the flowers. I coloured them with Watercolour Pencils and a Blender Pen, although unlike the original I decided to add some Daffodil Delight to the Melon Mambo on the petals and Old Olive on the leaves. I also used Shimmery White cardstock for the flowers to give them a little bit of a lift. I also added some of new Glitter Enamel Dots, and even though they are from the Berry Burst dots the lovely ombre options in each colour allow them to be coordinated with other colours.

I hope that we have inspired you to join us in the Love and Sympathy challenge this week, it is really simple, just take inspiration from any of the projects in this section of the catalogue and use it to create your own project, then add a picture of it to the CTC Facebook page.

Time to head on over and see what Rebecca has been inspired to create this week.

Happy Stamping
Monique

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

CI #11 - Distressed Daisy

Welcome to another Colour INKspiration Challenge.

I love the inspiration picture for this challenge, it reminds me of lazy days, the smell of freshly brewed coffee, and sharing yummy macarons with friends. Isn't it great how a single image can evoke so many things? The beautiful colours this week are: Early Espresso, Marina Mist and Soft Suede.

Having just received my bundle of Daisy products I wanted to make a card featuring them, although I wasn't sure how a blue daisy would go! I stamped in Marina Mist and then sponged a little with the soft suede to take away the starkness of the Very Vanilla. The sentiment is also from the same stamp set and coordinates so well with the other sentiment that I popped into the inside panel.

Here you can see the inside of the card with the lovely sentiment. As well as that stunning main daisy the stamp set has three two-step stamps featuring stems and flowers. I thought this little grass like one would work nicely inside the card and fit the simplistic feel of the project.

For the background I sponged Merina Mist at the top of the Very Vanilla panel and Early Espresso at the bottom then used Soft Suede to fill in the space between them. Having had a lot of fun with my Aqua Painter recently I decided to see what sort of effect splattering the background then gently patting the water with a tissue to remove it. I love this look, I think it really helps to distress the card while keeping neat lines. I like how the splatters over the Espresso have left a reddish mark. I finished the card off with a Metal Rimmed Pearl and some LOVELY new Very Vanilla baker's twine. It is somehow softer or more loosely woven than the Whisper White.

I hope you are inspired by all the creations of the Design Team using this wonderful colour combo. If you are just upload a picture of your project to the Colour INKspiration Facebook Page.

Time to hop on over and see what the very talented Kelly has created.

Happy Stamping
Monique

Sunday, June 11, 2017

CTC #132 - Birthday Balloons

Welcome to another week at CASEing the Catty Sunday Blog Hop. What a fun week this is as we take our inspiration from the Birthday section of the Annual Catalogue, pages 68 - 85. If you are a frequent visitor of my blog you will know that I LOVE birthdays, whether they be mine or someone else's.

I took my inspiration from the above image that you can find on page 84 of the catalogue. There are a few things that drew me to this card, I love the balloons and have been itching to use my new Balloon Punch, one of the other things is the different mediums and textures, and my idea to add even more texture!

I kept almost 100% to the original layout, but made a card instead of a gift bag. I used the small stamp from Eastern Palace stamp set for the main Berry Burst banner, and Happy Birthday Georgeous for the balloons and sentiment. I love the font used in the bigger sentiments in this set, a lovely mix of straight letters, with just the touch of flourish.

I added some of the balloons to the inside of the card, stamping straight onto the insert and using a Post-It note to mask them to give some depth.

The other change I made was to add the texture using the wonderful new Embossing Paste which arrived at my front door on Friday afternoon. Let me just say that I LOVE this new product in the SU range almost as much as I love birthdays! It allowed me to add not only a 3D feel to the clouds, but more so that I "roughed up" the finish to add even more texture.

We have an opening on the design team so are looking for some new crew members, if you would like to join the team just enter into our challenges in June and let us know that you would like to be considered. We are looking for demonstrators from the South Pacific Region to make it a little easier on scheduling and checking on posts. If you would just like to play along that's fine too, just upload a picture of your creation to the CTC Facebook Page.

Time to hop on over and see what the lovely and talented Jackie has been inspired to create.

Happy Stamping
Monique

Sunday, June 4, 2017

CTC # 131 - Everyday Occasions

Welcome to this week's CASEing the Catty Sunday Blog Hop, it is an exciting week for us as we take our first look at the new Annual Catalogue, the Everyday Occasions section from pages 18-67.

I chose this lovely image as the inspiration for my project this week, it leaped out at me the first time I looked at the catalogue so I was excited to try and re-create it. Because I loved the original so much I didn't change much with it at all.

I bought this bundle from the previous catalogue and haven't used it as much as I had planned, so it was a great opportunity to use both the stamps and framelits. I chose Garden Green as my card base as I wanted it a little bit lighter than the original. I have to be honest this card took me some time to complete as I played with techniques to get the look I was after, but I am super happy with it.

One of the techniques I used to give this card a more aged feel was to over heat the embossing powder on the flowers, it sort of mottles it. I did the same with some of the gold embossing on the leaves and the sprinkling of gold on the stamped flower on the base of the card..

Here you can see a close up of the areas that I have over heated.

The other technique I wanted to try was embossing using water, yes you read that right embossing with water! Since the lovely Gold Wink of Stella has retired I needed to find a way to get lovely gold splatters on the base of a card. I took some photos of this process which you can see after the link to the next blog in the hop.

If you would like to join us, just create a project taking any inspiration from the Everyday Occasions section of the Annual Catalogue and then add a picture of your project to the CTC Facebook Page.

Now for the quick tutorial on water embossing.

Firstly I used my Aqua Painter to splatter some water onto the card base.

Keeping the card stock horizontal so the water wouldn't run I piled on heaps of embossing powder and let it sit there for about 10-20 seconds. This allows the embossing powder to "stick" to the cardstock.

Then gently shake of the embossing powder and use your heat tool to activate the embossing powder as normal. I did try heating from the underside of the cardstock but worked out that this wasn't necessary as the powder doesn't blow off.

Here you can see the final result, a lovely splattering of gold!

Time to hop on over to Simone's blog to see what she was inspired by this week.

Happy Stamping
Monique

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Kelly's Stamping Friends Happy Blog Hop

I am so blessed to call the lovely Kelly Kent one of my Stampin' friends, she is such a lovely, generous person and I was so happy that she asked me to be part of her anniversary Blog Hop. You see this month marks her 5th Anniversary as a Stampin' Up! demonstrator, something that makes us all happy. So "happy" was the criteria set for the hop.

I chose the beautiful Happy Birthday Gorgeous bundle which really does live up to it's name and is gorgeous. I have used the Happy from the Framelit, and the Birthday from one of the happy birthday sentiments. The flowers and leaves in the background are also from this set and I have stamped using Fresh Fig, Sweet Sugarplum and Tranquil Tide. Stamping again onto coloured cardstock and fussy cutting out the flowers and leaves to decorate the centre piece.

One of the things I love about photo-polymer stamps is the ability to cut them up! You can see in this picture how I have cut very carefully between the two parts of the sentiment to make it easy to use them separately. By leaving them with the weird sort of shape (not trimming them neatly) it is really easy to position them back together on a clear block and use as intended.

Time to hop along to see what Narelle has created with our happy theme.

List of Participants:

Happy Stamping
Monique

Sunday, May 28, 2017

ESAD Sneak Peek Blog Hop

Welcome to another ESAD Blog Hop, this time we are taking a quick sneak peek at the new Annual Catalogue which goes live on 1 June.

These are not my usual style of cards, but I really like them and they are such a cute way of showing off the beautiful new In-Colours. I am using the Happy Birthday Gorgeous Bundle which has an amazing 32 stamps including sentiments, flowers, banner, and of course cute little balloons which I have used in both cards. Having made one card with these great colours and bundle, I couldn't help myself making a second! Which is your favourite?

Here is my first card, if you look closely you can see that I have used Shimmery White cardstock and sponged the new colours to make a rainbow background. I love how easy the Shimmery White makes sponging a background with it's slightly coated finish. It also gives such a lovely shimmer which still shows through the sponged colours. I was just going to use Lemon Lime Twist for the sentiment but it needed something to make it pop, easy fix ... adding a second sentiment in black to give it a shadow. The cute little balloons are from Happy Birthday Gorgeous stamp set, which coordinates with the Balloon Bouquet Punch.

For my second card I added a banner stamped with one of the happy birthday sentiments from the stamp set. One of the things I love about photopolymer stamps is how easy they are to cut up! That's right I cut the stamps up as I find this gives me more versatility, in this case I carefully cut between the Happy and the Birthday and can now use the stamps together as intended or separately as I have on this card. In much the same way I have cut the framelit cut out to just have the "birthday" on the card, but this time cut it from Dazzling Diamond Glimmer paper which I then coloured with Lemon Lime Twist ink.