Challenge Time Again!!!

Let me start by saying a belated Merry Christmas to you all, as I haven't been blogging much over the last month.  I haven't been creating much over the last month apart from some Christmas cards and not wanting to post those here until at least they got into the mail (some are still waiting on a stamp - yes I am that slack with Christmas cards!!!  To get back into the swing of creativity I took some inspiration from a couple of challenges from a some of my favourite challenge sites.

This first one is a double challenge.  Firstly I took inspiration from Mojo Monday Sketch Blog - Challenge 171, it was a round or square challenge and I chose square, then couldn't locate my square punch so took some licence and did scallop squares instead!  The second challenge to inspire me was the Colour Lab Challenge #22 over at My Create Ink, although I didn't use all the blues in their challenge.  My Create Ink have the best colour matching tool, really good to use if you are stuck for which colours to put together.  I used one of the level 1 hostess sets on this card, Silhouette Sentiments, and decided to use the stamp name as inspiration to try my first attempt at silhouette stamping, I was pleased with the result as it gives just a little definition to the flowers.  The sentiment is from Well Scripted, I just love stamps that include two fonts in the sentiment!

This next one was the card I created based on the Saturday Sketch Challenge over at Stamping 411. Again this one was a blue based card but not the same colours as in the Colour Lab challenge, this one I used some of the DSP from the colour collections and tried out my new stamp out of the Heard from the Heart set that I got as part of December Frenzy.  The  cute little gift bag is from the level 1 hostess set Birthday Bakery, and I used Crystal Effects to give some gloss to the heart on the bag and on the three punch out hearts at the top.  Crystal effects really brings the underlying colour to life, and with just a sprinkle of Dazzling Diamonds glitter, adds some subtle bling to a card. 

I hope you have enjoyed looking at these two cards, and come back and visit again.  I will hopefully be posting a little more regularly now the life is returning to "normal" whatever that is lol.

ESAD Summer Mini Blog Hop

Its time again for another Blog Hop from the lovely and talented ladies at ESAD.  What is ESAD? ESAD stands for Extra Special Australasian Demonstrators and it is an online group just for Australian and New Zealand demonstrators for Stampin’ Up!

We so love what we do and not only do we love to share it with our customers, friends, and wonderful blog visitors but we share our love for what we do with each other as Demonstrators. We run swaps, challenges, tutorials, product know how and cyberstamps and we are always there to help and support each other when its needed. So if you are a Stampin’ Up! Demonstrator located in Australia or New Zealand then please feel free to click here to join our wonderful group.  If you are interested in learning about the great benefits of becoming a demonstrator yourself please contact me gavnmon@internode.on.net

You might have started with my post, or you might have hopped over from looking at the wonderful creations that Kim Conway has over on her blog KC  CARDS.  The beauty of a blog hop is that it doesn't matter where you start you just keep hopping to the next blog by following the link at the bottom or each post.  Don't forget we all love to hear what you think of our creations, so please leave a comment as you hop around.

The new Summer Mini Catalogue is full of a variety of products to tempt you, Trims, Punches, Dies, DSP and of course Stamps.  One of the benefits of being a demonstrator is we get to pre-order from the catalogue so here are some of the things I have created using these great new products.

Firstly I thought I would share a scrapbook page, I haven't done a scrapbook page in about 8 years and have been promising myself I would get back to that side of paper crafting.  I was finally inspired to do one using this picture my mum sent me last week.  Can you spot the three new products I have used?

- Firstly is the Victoria Crochet Trim, this is such a delicate woven lace trim, it has a wonderfully vintage feel about it and is just great to use, on this I have backed it with a strip of Real Red card stock to bring out the colour in the flowers and to highlight the pattern of the lace.  

- Second new product is the "Wonderful Mother" stamp from the Well Scripted stamp set.  For this page I used a marker to stamp technique to just stamp the word Mother, rather than the whole image.  I love the swirly font the stamp set uses.

- Thirdly is the Pinking Hearts Border Punch, don't you just love the delicateness of this border, the tiny hearts sit perfectly in the "v" of the border.  Like the Scallop Trim Border Punch, this one also has a matching corner punch so you can make complete borders for card fronts and scrapbook pages.

Next on the list of creations I wanted to share is a simple but effective Easter card using a great technique for making the cross using the Scallop Trim Border Punch. 

I love this because it shows the versatility of the Stampin' Up! punches.  I saw this technique on another blog and can't for the life of me find the link, so please leave a comment if this is your creation and I will give you credit (or update my post when I find the link).  I have also used the Lattice Embossing Folder from the Summer Mini on this card. Its a great folder that just give a wonderful fine texture to the card.

My final project was inspired by my Secret Sister October gift.  I wanted to recreate the decorated bag and use some of the fun little gold paper bags that I have recently acquired (I think I did an OK job of it). The base of this bag is Basic Gray with a Blushing Bride Top Note, layered with a Very Vanilla Top Note that I pre-stamped with images front the Grunge Rock stamp set and then ran through the Lattice embossing folder.  Grunge Rock is such a fun set, and it goes really well with Extreme Elements. 

I wanted this bag to be have a vintage sort of feel so have topped it off with a Victoria Crochet Trim bow, I wanted to bring out the gold in the bag so secured the bow with one of the stunning Antique Brads from the Idea Book and Catalogue - these two products go so well together! 

The guitar from the Grunge Rock stamp set I have embossed in gold onto Basic Gray.  I showed this to my 15 year old daughter (my official Blingologist) and her comment was "Oh mum, that is sooooooo cute. Can I have it?" - a good sign that I hit the mark I was aiming for.  These would make nice gift bags either full of goodies for a birthday girl, or as treat bags for guests.

I hope you have enjoyed my creations, please hop on over to see what Kerryn Campbell has to tempt you with over on her blog Kerryn's Cards.

Just in case you get lost here are a list of all the demonstrators in the blog hop, just click on their name and you will jump right to thier blog ...

Jan McAnulty

Sharlene Torres

Gail Kirby

Nicole Derendorf

Vicki Were

Teresa Leggo

Sherylee Tutt
Kim Conway

** Monique Fielder **

Keryn Campbell

Steph Gray

Susan Joyce

Amy Buchanan