A Little Bit of Sunshine

Just a quick post tonight as my computer was on a go-slow in uploading the pictures for this post and it is now bed time!  I made this card yesterday for the Freshly Made Sketches and Just Us Girls challenges.

For this card I used two of the papers from the Domestic Goddess selection, the checked DSP was almost identical to the table cloth in the inspirational photo so I knew I just had to use that.  I chose the second DSP because of both the colour and the pattern, both of which fit well with the inspirational photo.  The photo made me think of a lovely barbecue down at the park with friends on a lovely summery day, and the pattern on the DSP with the suns just seemed perfect.  I used the Reason To Smile promotional stamp set because flowers too remind me of time outdoors - something I am not doing much of as it is winter here in Australia at the moment and we are having quite cold, sometimes overcast days.  It was lovely to make a card that reminded me of the fun times of summer.

Happy Stamping

Baby Shower

Today I went for a baby shower to a special friend from work who is expecting a baby girl in just over a month.  I wanted to make something special for her and was a bit stumped at first as I don't have any 'baby' stamps, then I thought back to the card I saw at Convention made by Felicity Fernandez ...

Card by Felicity Fernandez

And this is my version of the card and matching envelope ...

I decided to use the Nursery Nest DSP as it made me think of pretty wall paper in a baby girl's room.  I used this to steer me toward a colour palette for the rest of the card, including Blushing Bride for the card base, and Perfect Plum for the frame and sentiment. The dress is cut from Flirtatious Specialty DSP using the Edgelits Adorning Accents die cut on an angle.  I just love finding a new use for one of my Stampin' Up! tools, especially when it is a cute as this.

We had a fun time at the baby shower, we played some games (not the horror ones you hear about), and I won "My Water's Broke" by being the first person to free a plastic 'baby' out of an ice cube! One of the other games we played was guessing the name of the Nursery Rhyme and it was surprising how hard that was!  Great way to spend a drizzly cold Saturday.

Happy Stamping

Top Pick

What a lovely surprise to see that my Peek-A-Boo Christmas card was chosen as this week's winner at Festive Friday!   I am a double winner because I am getting nicely ahead with my Christmas cards!

Happy Stamping

A Peek-A-Boo Christmas

I just love the Festive Friday Challenge, not that I have had the chance to join in lately, but hoping that will change in the coming weeks.  I was extra inspired to join in this week because last weekend at the Stampin' Up! Convention I got to meet the very lovely Nicole who runs the challenge!!!  I just love Convention because I get to meet in person those I know on-line.

 In a double Convention hit this week I have chosen to use one of the sneak peek items that will be in our upcoming Annual Catalogue in September.  We got to use this new Big Shot Die at the I Am Creative class on the Friday night, I can't wait to get my hands on these when the new catalogue comes out, I can see so many options for this one!

I have also used the DSP from the Christmas pack - I just love the way the pattern on this one seems to sparkle and it went so well with the Glimmer Paper '25'.  

The window opens up to show a cute little image underneath, aren't these cute?  They come in a variety of shapes, all open up to reveal a surprise underneath.  For this one I chose to use another image from the stamp set we used in our creative class, I inked this up with a Basic Black Stampin' Write Marker so that the '25' on the stamp did not get inked.  This is another of my attempts to use this set as more than just an advent set.

Happy Stamping

Freshly Made Blossoms

Having some fun with my new toys!  This time I am using some DSP that I received at Convention, and the matching Bright Blossoms stamp set that is available in our current Autumn/Winter Mini Catalogue.  I wasn't initially going to get this stamp set, but have slowly been falling in love with it seeing the beautiful creations made with it by other crafters, then with the new DSP in my hot little had I knew I just had to order it!

I am entering this card in two challenges, Freshly Made Sketches and Colour Q Challenge.  The thing I like about Bright Blossoms is that it is challenging me to use a brighter palette of colours, and the Colour Q Challenge is just the start!

I kept to the challenge but decided against using ribbon, instead I used my Dotted Scallop Ribbon Border punch, but didn't punch right the way to the edge. This let me slip the polka dot piece of DSP underneath. Instead of a bow I used a 3/4" circle punched out of Lucky Limeade with an In-Colour brad through the centre.  As a first attempt I was pretty happy with the finished product but had a feeling that it needed a little something else, so I decided to sleep on it.

After a good night's sleep I woke with a couple of ideas, firstly I carefully removed the top layer of the card and stamped one of the images from the Bright Blossoms stamp set over the base card with Lucky Limeade ink.  I re-adhered the DSP layers back onto the card, and then added a couple of little tags from the Tiny Tags stamp set and matching Jewellery Tag Punch.  Isn't it funny how a couple of little additions can give a project a lift!

Happy Stamping

411 Christmas

We have a long weekend here in Canberra and so, having put the housework behind me, I am getting in to join in with some challenges.  The first one I want to share is a card I made for the Stamping 411 Sketch Challenge.

 I was quite inspired by this challenge, and knew immediately what I wanted to do for this one.  A bit of back story first, last weekend was the Stampin' Up! Convention, an amazing annual event. This year there was a optional I Am Creative class, and we were lucky enough to get a bag full of items to make an advent calendar, the truly exciting thing about the bag was the inclusion of products from our up-coming Annual Catalogue (note the name change from Idea Book & Catalogue).  I used some of these products in this card, the DSP is from the new Christmas pack, and the little wreaths are from the new stamp set.  The Merry Christmas is from the Delightful Decorations set.  I love how they work so well together in this lay out.  

I wanted to give the card some bling, so used my 2 Way Glue pen to make some dots on the wreaths and added red super fine glitter, I also used my blender pen to pick up some Champagne Shimmer Paint and coloured in the bows and star.

I will be using more of the sneak peek sets over the next little while so please do pop back to see some glimpses of what we will be able to order here in September.

Happy Stamping

Tutorial - Butterfly Card

Here is the step by step instructions for the butterfly card I made for one of my Convention swaps this year.   You will notice that the colour changes part way through, from Calypso Coral to Island Indigo, this is mostly because I didn't think of doing a tutorial until part way through the process and by then had stamped and punched out all my butterflies in Island Indogo!  I found using the Vellum rather than card stock gave the butterfly's wings a softer look and let some of the light through.

Products

• 8.5 x 8.5cm piece of Vellum Card Stock
• A5 Confetti White card stock
• 10cm x 14.3cm Coloured card stock
• 9.5cm x 13.8cm Very Vanilla card stock
• Ink: Lucky Limeade, colour of choice to match coloured card stock, VersaMark
• Stamps: Mixed Blossom, Loving Thoughts, Creative Elements
• Other: Sizzlits Lots of Tags Die, Blossom Punch, Silver Embossing Powder, Heat Tool, Brayer, Embossing Buddy

Instructions

• Use your Brayer to cover some card stock weight Vellum with your desired colour.  If you are mass producing you can do this a sheet at a time. I found cutting widths of 8.5cm allowed me to emboss a few at a time.
• Either use your Heat Tool to dry the ink, or leave it overnight to dry naturally.  

• When the ink has dried turn the vellum over so the un-inked side is facing you.
• Rub over the Vellum with the embossing buddy and then stamp the flower image onto the vellum using VersaMark ink.
• Cover this with embossing powder and heat with the heat tool. You can see the image to the left is only partly heated at this point.

•  Allow the embossing to cool and then punch out the stamped image with the Blossom Punch. I am totally in love with this punch at the moment, and with this particular image out of the Mixed Bunch set too!
• Cut away two of the petals as you can see in this picture.  Save these off cuts as you can make another butterfly with them too (see below).

• Stamp the flourish from the Creative Elements set on opposite corners of the Very Vanilla card stock.  You could use a Stamp-A-Ma-Jig for this, but I found that doing 50 or so I just did them by hand.
• Stamp on the body of the butterfly - I used Early Espresso ink for this.
• Adhere the Very Vanilla layer to the coloured card stock. Score and fold the A5 card stock in half to form the base of your card (not shown here) and then adhere the coloured layer to the front of the card.

•  Attach the butterfly to the card using the 2-Way Glue down the centre of the butterfly so that the wings lift a little.
• Cut out a frame for your sentiment and sponge the edges to match your card stock.
• Depending on how good your 'eye' is you can add the sentiment with or without the Stamp-A-Ma-Jig (I did use it for this step).
• You can then adhere the sentiment to the card either with SNAIL or with a couple of Dimensionals.

Variations

Here is a Calypso Coral version with gold embossing, while I quite liked this I was really taken with the silver, especially on the darker Island Indigo.

Remember how I said not to throw away the spare petals?  This is the butterfly made using two lots of petals, I angled them slightly so that the space at the bottom was just a bit smaller than the space at the top.

And finally this is the card made with the 'off-cut' butterfly.  You can see that I have stepped it up by adding some ribbon, and if you look closely some rhinestones down the body of the butterfly.  I have also used the Word Window and Modern Label punch for the sentiment and added some mini brads. 

You could use any sentiment or punch shape on the card, I am a big believer in use what you have on hand!  If you don't have the butterfly body stamp you could draw the antenna on by hand or tie a piece of Bakers Twine around the middle of the butterfly and use the knot ends for antenna (wouldn't work so well with the off cut butterfly)

Happy Stamping

Convention 2012

I have just been to the Stampin' Up! annual Convention and wanted to share some of it with you all.  I was planning on updating my blog each day, but there was so much to do I just didn't get the chance.  I managed to catch the flu while I was there and have spent the last few days in bed, but feeling a bit better now and up to a blog post!

I am pretty sure this is the night before Convention officially started, we could go and collect our Convention bags and check in early this year which was great, I did a little bit of swapping and then off to the ESAD dinner.  It was wonderful to catch up with my on-line friends in person, some I have met before, and others I got to meet for the first time.  We went for Turkish banquet in the city and all left feeling very very full.

Here is a pic of me with the lovely Shelli Gardner, CEO and co-founder of Stampin' Up!  Shelli is such a wonderful person, always smiling and looks just amazing all of the time, she has such a lovely vintage style.  She did a demonstration for us on Main Stage, and it was refreshing to see that even the CEO can "stuff up" sometimes.  You can read more about that in Shelli's own words on her blog So Shelli.

I did three different swaps, I will do a tutorial on the butterfly card in the next couple of weeks, but for now the short version is that I used vellum and brayered one side of it, let it dry overnight, and then used the stamp from Mixed Blossoms embossed in silver on the non-brayered side.  I then cut out two of the petals to form the butterfly.  The body comes from Butterfly Prints stamp set.

My second swap was also made with the blossom punch and the Mixed Bunch stamp set.  This time I stamped and punched the same image out on Whisper White card-stock and then punched a solid flower from the matching colour card-stock - in this case Cherry Cobbler.  I used a Reese's Peanut Butter cup in the centre of the flower and popped the finished flower in a mini cello bag.  The topper was made using the Framelits Die in coordinating DSP with the Oval All stamp adhered over the staple that held the bag together.

I don't have a picture of my third swap but it is a re-sized version of the Two Pocket Treat Holder that I saw on Chic N Scratch.  I made mine using 5.5"x5.5" DSP and popped a little dinner mint in the front pocket, I also used one of the Four Frames stamps and Decorative Label Punch on the front of the pouch, with the Thanks sentiment from Kindness Matters set.  I might just have to make up another one so I can share a picture of my version with you!

I hope you have enjoyed my update of Convention. I am hoping that I will get back to posting more regularly in the next few weeks.  I do have a couple of projects that I haven't yet shown you and will schedule over the next few days.

Happy Stamping