CTC #163 - Sale-A-Bration

Welcome to another week at CASEing the Catty Sunday Blog Hop / Challenge, where we take inspiration for our creations from one of the sections of the current Stampin' Up! catalogues.

This week we are taking our inspiration from the Sale-A-Bration (SAB) catalogue, full of lovely products that you can earn for Free with any $90 AUD purchase, isn't that great!  

I took my inspiration from the bottom card in the image above from page 18.

I changed up the colours, but kept the rest of the card pretty much the same as the original.  Instead of Lemon Lime Twist, I sponged the striped DSP with Pool Party using a Sponge Brayer to give it an ombre look.  In keeping with my current Razzleberry Phase I added a panel of Rich Razzleberry behind the sentiment.  I used both Pool Party and Rich Razzleberry to colour the flowers in this stunning sentiment from the SAB stamp set Happy Wishes. This set has a massive 16 stamps and is one of two Level 2 products in the catalogue that you can earn by spending $180 AUD. 

  

I hope you are inspired to join in the challenge this week, just create a project inspired by any of the samples in the SAB Catalogue and upload a picture of it to the CTC Facebook Page.

  

Time to hop on over to see what Rose has been inspired to create this week.

Happy Stamping
Monique

CI #26 - Under the Sea

Welcome to another Colour INKspiration challenge, where a group of South Pacific Stampin' Up! Demonstrators take inspiration from a photograph taking out the main colours and matching them to ones from the Stampin' Up! range. We would love for you to join in each week, if you don't have the exact colours use ones you have that closely match.

I can almost smell the sea when I look at the image for this challenge, the briny smell of the ocean, sand on my feet, the slapping sound of fish falling from the nets ... brings back many a childhood memory!  The colours for this challenge are:

• Emerald Envy
• Bermuda Bay
• Tranquil Tide
• Sahara Sand

I spent a number of my childhood years living on a yacht, and I always used to wonder if mermaids were real, often looking over the side of the boat in the hopes of spotting one, so it is no surprise that I was drawn to the pretty little mermaid from the Magical Day stamp set for this challenge.  The "seaweed" has been cut using Swirly Scribbles Thinlits, and by making a small cut between the mermaid's tail and hair I was able to slip her in behind the seaweed.  The bubbly sheet from the coordinating specialty DSP works so well for this card don't you think?

I love how the Copper Trim is actually a tube and can be cut down one side and stretched out like a scrap of fishing net.  The sentiment has been cut using the Mini Treat Bag Thinlits, and I gently dabbed it with Crumb Cake Stampin' Blends to make it look a bit more weather worn and like it has been dragged up in the nets. 

  

I hope you are inspired to join in the challenge which runs for two weeks, just create a project using this colour combo and add a picture of it to the CI Facebook Page. 

  

Time to hop on over and see what the lovely and talented Kim has created this week.

Happy Stamping
Monique

CTC #162 - Sweet Soiree

Welcome to another week at CASEing the Catty Sunday Blog Hop . Challenge, where we take our inspiration from a section of one of the current Stampin' Up! Catalogues. 

This week we are being inspired by the Sweet Soiree section of the Occasions Catalogue, pages 10 - 14. This section has such a pretty suite of products, with flowers and cakes and lots of sparkle and silver!

I took my inspiration from the image on page 10 of the catalogue, the right hand card in the photo above. I really liked the layout of this card, although I made quite a few changes with the colours and images I used.

I was itching to use my new Petal Palette stamp set and this was the perfect opportunity. If you visit my blog regularly you will know that I often go through phases, I think I am in my Razzleberry Phase at the moment as I have been drawn time and again to this beautiful colour.  I started by stamping my images in Rich Razzleberry before colouring with Stampin' Blends, for the flowers in Rich Razzleberry and Pink Pirouette and Old Olive for the leaves. I think stamping in a non-black ink gives the overall finish a softer look.

There are lots of little details on this card that I missed on my initial glance at it, one of these was that there was a stitched circle layer behind the other images, and one of the others was the little strip of DSP along the right side of the main panel.  I made mine by cutting a thin piece from the Painted with Love Specialty DSP, choosing a segment with Rich Razzleberry and gold.

The sentiment is from the lovely set from the Lots of Happy Card Kit stamped and embossed in Gold on a 1" strip of vellum. I made a second banner in Basic Black to layer behind the vellum and attached the two together with a staple in the left side. I coloured the staple with the dark Daffodil Delight Stampin' Blends so that it was more gold than silver to coordinate with the rest of the card.

I used the remainder of the strip to decorate the inside of the card.

  

I hope you are inspired to join in the challenge this week, just upload a picture of your project to the CTC Facebook Page.

  

Time to hop on over to see what the talented Elizabeth has created this week.

Happy Stamping
Monique

Panda Birthday Fun

 

I had the opportunity to spend my whole day crafting which was just wonderful, most of the card I made were for upcoming Design Teams that I am part of, but I also had chance to make a card to play along with two challenges, Sunday Stamps sketch, and Seize the Birthday anything goes challenges.

When I saw the three squares in the sketch I knew I wanted to use the cute little Sale-A-Bration Party Pandas which seemed perfect.  The bright fun colours of Painted With Love DSP seemed to go so well that I just had to use that too.  I stamped then cut the pandas with Layering Square Framelits giving each a Rich Razzleberry scalloped frame.  I coloured each one of the squares with the Light Pink Pirouette to let the pandas stand out a bit more.  The sentiment is from Picture Perfect Birthday.

Happy Stamping
Monique

CTC #161 - Sale-A-Bration

Welcome to another week at CASEing the Catty Sunday Blog Hop, where we take a look at a section of one of the current Stampin' Up! catalogues and use a project within it to inspire our creations.

This week we are looking at the Sale-A-Bration (SAB) Catalogue, which is filled with products you can earn for free with every $90 or $180 purchase from any of the Stampin' Up! range in any current catalogue, or off the Clearance Rack! There isn't any restriction on our SAB CASEs so any image in the catalogue is fair game.

I chose the Lemon Lime Twist card in the above image from page 8.

I decided to switch up the colours but keep with the same stamp sets, Lots of Lavender for the flowers, and the stamp set from the gorgeous Lots of Happy Card Kit. This kit is really worth getting as not only do you get a great stamp set with some amazing sentiments and floral images, but also four water colour pencils, two of which are exclusive to the kit!

I used Painted With Love DSP for the panel and coordinating Rich Razzleberry and Calypso Coral for the layers. I have never been able to get ribbon to sit right behind a panel like this, so cheated a little and each of the four pieces you can see are actually individual pieces and don't join up behind the card!  By doing this I could position each exactly where I wanted it, and also saved quite a bit of ribbon in the process!

    

I hope you are inspired to join in with the challenge this week, you don't need to have any of the SAB items, just take inspiration from one of the projects and substitute a set you do have (or pop in an order and get a SAB set of course!). To join in just post a picture of your project on the CTC Facebook Page. 

  

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

Happy Stamping
Monique

ESAD Blog Hop - 2018 Occasion to Sale-A-Brate!

 

Welcome to another ESAD Blog Hop, our first for 2018!  For this hop we are showcasing some of the amazing products in the Occasions and Sale-A-Bration catalogues, and what a great range of products there are, so I am very excited to see what my fellow demonstrators have created.  So grab a cuppa, sit back and hop your way around from blog to blog, following the link at the bottom of each post. 

I wanted to showcase a few of the new products in my project for you from both the Occasions and Sale-A-Bration (SAB) catalogues, and thought a gift bag and matching card would be the perfect way to show a number of them. I have used eight products from the new catalogues, can you spot them?

Here is just the bag which I made from a sheet of the gorgeous Petal Passion DSP, I made the bag up prior to colouring it, but then decided it could do with a bit of colour.  My solution ... Brusho!  I spritzed each side of the bag with water then sprinkled on the Gamboge (orange) Brusho crystals and let them go where they wanted.  It was a bit messy and I would highly recommend that if you want to use Brusho on DSP, you do so before making your bag!  Once it had chance to dry out in the sun for a little while it turned out beautifully.  I love the speckled colour that is achieved with this product.  The tag was made with a stamp and flower framelit from the Petal Palette Bundle and one of the framelits from the level 2 SAB Celebrate You Thinlits.

The gift card was made using one of the cute little Whisper White Narrow Note Cards & Envelopes from the Occasions Catalogue (bottom of page 18). The flowers from Petal Palette were stamped and Gold Embossed then I used Brusho to colour them in, this was one of my first plays with Brusho and I fell in love!  Some of the colour leaked slightly outside the lines but I think this adds to the overall look of the card.  I think the sentiment is so beautiful with it's mixed fonts and little squiggle at the end!  The envelope was stamped with another stamp from the same set which I stamped off to give a softer look.

Did you find all the products? Now can you find them all in the catalogues?  Even when I have looked through a catalogue a few times there are still some little surprises that I seem to miss, so here is a list with the new products I used and the pages on which you can find them:

• Petal Passion DSP (Occ p23)
• Petal Palette Stamp Set (Occ p23)
• Petals & More Thinlits Dies (Occ p23)
• Whisper White 1/4" Organza Ribbon (Occ p23)
• Celebrate You Thinlits Dies (SAB p17)
• Light Pumpkin Pie and Light Old Olive Stampin' Blends (Occ p31)
• Whisper White Narrow Note Cards & Envelopes (Occ p18)
• Gamboge and Moss Green Brusho (Occ p26)

  

Time to hop on over and see what my good friend Cathy has created.


In case you get lost, or one of the links isn't working for you, here is a full list of the blog participants:

1. Cheryl Algie

2. Nicole Wilson

3. Amity Knight

4. Sharon Dalton

5. Lou Kitzelman

6. Carly Middleton

7. Kelly Kent

8. Kim Oliver

9. EllenWoodbridge

10. Fi Cobbin

11. Megan Lenske

12. Barbara Williams

13. Peta Stephen

14. Maree McIntosh

15. Delys Cram

16. Renee Lynch

17. Monique Fielder  

18. Cathy Pinchbeck

19. Courtenay Heuston

20. Leonie Schroder

21. Libby Dyson

22. Rachael Lewsley

23. Jessie Holton

Happy Stamping
Monique

Magical Sketch

Another challenge that caught my eye this weekend was the TGIF Sketch Challenge, I knew it would challenge me with the main panel to one side and a large amount of space on the other, and I love a good challenge.

 Happy to play around with more Brusho I made the panel with Brilliant Red and Prussian Blue on Shimmer Paper, letting the colours blend together quite a lot. I found pushing the pools of water around a bit with a paintbrush helped get the blending I was after.  Having stamped him in Gold Embossing Powder I also used Brusho with my Aqua Painter to colour the dragon from Magical Day stamp set. I just love that this set has Fraemlits to cut out all the critters.I love how much depth of colour you can get with concentrated Brusho, it really makes him pop off the card.  

Once the panels were in place I decided the base of the card looked too plain, so used a little trick Alisa Tilsner showed in one of her videos and mixed some Craft White ink with water and splattered it across the base card having masked the main image. I used her technique of tapping the Aqua Painter to drop the ink onto the cardstock, but then wanted a finer finish so used my fingernail to flick the bristles and that worked well. 

Happy Stamping
Monique

Trending Magical Galaxies

 I have had a wonderful couple of days with nothing to do but create!  Having had almost four weeks on holiday from work it is nice to finally have time to let my creativity lose.  So I went in search of some challenges to enter as I find these spark my mojo and push me in directions I might not have otherwise taken.  The Just Us Girls Galaxy Challenge caught my eye. 

Recently I had a crafting day with a friend and fellow demonstrator, and had my first play with the new Brusho that is in the latest Stampin' Up! catalogue. I made a sheet of water colour paper using the Brilliant Red and Prussian Blue and we all agreed at the time it would go perfectly with the Magical Day stamp set. Other items from this suite of products were also perfect for this challenge with the beautiful sparkly stars on the Myths and Magic Specialty DSP paired so well with the theme and the colours on the "You" cut from a piece of shimmer paper coloured with Brusho. Finishing off with the more stars on the Myths and Magic Specialty Washi Tape under the sentiment stamped with Tabs for Everything.  

I wanted to focus your attention for a minute on the main "galaxy" panel.  I loved the way the colours had blended on this piece and chose it because I could see the swirl of colour being the result of some spell or other being cast by the wizard. I wanted to highlight this part of the panel so used the tiny stars from the Magical Day stamp set, and totally love how it turned out, I think it really looks like he is affecting the fabric of the galaxy!

Happy Stamping
Monique

CTC #160 - Picture Perfect Party

 Welcome to the first CASEing the Catty Sunday Blog Hop for 2018, I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and that 2018 has been kind so far!

Not only is it the start of a new year, but also the start of us CASEing a brand new catalogue! That's right, the Occasions Catalogue is now current and for this first challenge we are taking our inspiration from projects in the Picture Perfect Party section of the catalogue, pages 4 - 9.

I chose to CASE the card above from page 4 of the catalogue. I think this is a really fun card and love the bright colours, but I wanted to keep the layout and play around with the colour scheme a little bit to make it a bit more sophisticated. I used the beautiful Berry Burst Metallic Edged Ribbon (page 13) to base my new colour scheme on. I have included some tips for you on how to get this looking just right on your card at the end of my post.

The Berry Burst panel has been embossed with one of the Petal Pair Textured Impressions Embossing Folders from the Petal Passion Suite. These are a set of two cute little folders and for this card I ran the cardstock through a number of times to get the pattern right across the panel. These are easy to miss in the catalogue but can be found peeking out on the lower right hand side of page 23.  The DSP is from this suite also and is simply stunning with it's black and white images, perfect for leaving plain like this or for colouring with Stampin' Blends, Watercolour Pencils, or Markers.

Now for the tip on how to ruffle the ribbon:

I first cut a 1/4" strip of coordinating cardstock and ran a strip of Tear & Tape along its length. Once the backing is removed to reveal the sticky side I took a piece of ribbon and created ruffles at one end.  Because I didn't want to waste ribbon, or have the card too bulky, I left a gap for the sentiment panel and then started the other end of the ruffle, keeping going until I was happy with the length.

I used a bit of retired Washi Tape to hold both ends of the strip in place thorugh the process, it makes it so much easier. I then checked that the sentiment panel would position between the two ruffles by placing it over the gap but not sticking it in place. 

Once you have the ruffle right, remove the Washi Tape and trim the cardstock strip to size (just under each end of the ribbon.  By adhering the ribbon to the cardstock strip rather than directly onto the card it allowed me to get the ribbon nice and straight and to play around with exactly where I wanted it to sit on the card.  Once in the right place I used more Tear & Tape to adhere it to the card, then added the sentiment over the top using Dimensionals.

I hope you are inspired to join in the challenge this week, simply take inspiration from p 4-9 of the Occasions Catalogue and post a picture of your project to the CTC Facebook Page.

  

 Time to hop on over to see what Judy has been inspired to create.

Happy Stamping
Monique

Petals and Blends

I have a bit of a bitter sweet day today, my parents have been down to visit since Christmas Eve which has been so lovely, and they flew home yesterday, and as they live aproximately an 18.5 hour drive away, I don't get to see them as often as I would like. So it is a bit of a sad day today, waking up without them in the house, but in the quiet of the morning I have found time to sit and play at my craft desk and the mojo has been flowing!

It has been my first play with this lovely new Petal Passion DSP which is just beautiful, and I fell in love with it back in November when I saw it at OnStage. I decided to use some of the floral papers and colour them with my Blends.  Here I have used the blends as straight colour (not blending two shades together) keeping the darker pink to the bigger flowers and the light pink on the smaller blossoms. I used the darker pink to colour some of the gorgeous Whisper White 1/4" Organza Ribbon. Let me just say that I think I am going to be using metres and metres of this ribbon as it is so pretty and with the Blends so versatile and easy to match to any project. 

The sentiment is from the new Lots of Happy Card Kit which Santa popped under our Christmas tree for my mum, daughter and I to make while mum was visiting.  We had such a lovely time, and with mum being a total novice at card making the kit was perfect for her to make 5 lovely cards to take home and share with her friends. This is such a special memory!

This is my second card using the Petal Passion DSP coloured with Stampin' Blends, this time I did use the two shades of each colour to blend and add depth to each flower and the leaves. I also coloured the Silver Natural Trim Ribbon to coordinate with the card, and embossed another of the sentiments from the Lots of Happy kit.  I am not sure that the photo shows it off well but I decided to make the ribbon ombre, using the lighter Pool Party Blends under the metallic stripe, and the darker one on the top. 

Using the Stampin' Blends to make the ombre ribbon on my card I decided to have a play with the Whisper White Organza Ribbon, colouring one edge of the ribbon with the dark, and the other edge with the light Blends.  They worked so well I decided to make them into a little sampler using Tear & Tape in strips on the tag and trimming the edges.  All of them have the light colour on the top of the ribbon and the darker shade at the bottom (all except the Cherry Cobbler which I seem to have added "upside down"!!!). 

I don't have all my Blends yet, but have put tape where these will gone once I fill out my collection, that way I can just take off the backing and add more ribbon.

Happy Stamping
Monique