A Touch of Old and New

I can't believe it has been a week since I got home from my holiday in QLD, and that I have only made one card since coming home!  It prompted me to go searching for inspiration and I found a couple, well three, challenges that took my fancy.   

Mojo Monday, Colour Throw Down, and Hand Stamped Sentiments. There were a couple of others that caught my eye, but you can only fit so much onto one card! Don't forget to pop over and check out what all the design teams have come up with to inspire us.

With the new Idea Book & Catalogue just around the corner the current hostess sets will be retiring so I thought I would take this opportunity to give them another inking up before saying good bye.  I wasn't sure if there was too much pink, but I think the Soft Suede breaks it up sufficiently.  The flourish is from the Creative Elements stamp and I think it works well on the back panel.  I know a few birthday girls at the moment, now I just have to pick who to send this to!

Happy Stamping

Challenge Time ...

Well I am back home from a lovely visit to my family in Central Queensland, sooooo much warmer up there than here, will be warmer still when we go up in January for my brother's wedding!!!!!  No stamping or creating for 2 weeks meant I came home and had itchy fingers so got straight into creating. 

Now you know by now I love The Friday Mashup Challenges, and this week is no exception, but I didn't do the full mashup.  The theme this week was a colour challenge and a birthday challenge, I just couldn't get my head around the colours for the birthday card I wanted to use so also headed over to The Colour Throwdown which was to use a rainbow of colours.  I also took inspiration from Mojo Monday Sketch Challenge and came up with this little card.

Not my 'usual' style but I was in an experimental mood!  I liked the layout and as soon as I saw it I thought of the Party Hearty stamp "celebrate you" which I stamped in Pacific Point, cut out with the scallop circle punch and layered on another scallop circle cut from Pumpkin Pie. The centre I also layered with Daffodil Delight and a little present stamp from the same set, which I added some bling with Dazzling Diamonds.

Using the Stamp-A-Ma-Jig I split the row of cakes from Birthday Bakery Hostess set so they would fit into the layout better.  I used some of the Pacific Point DSP from the Brights Patterns Stack to add some extra colour and then spent some time deciding on what to do for the background.  I was so happy when the idea to use News Print DSP came to me, I had overlooked it initially as black and vanilla DSP doesn't really lift a rainbow themed card!!!  But then it struck me that I could sponge colour over the DSP to give it the boost I needed - what do you think?  I was really happy, randomly sponging on Pacific Point, Real Red, and Daffodil Delight. 

Don't forget to pop over to the Challenge Blogs to see what their design teams have come up with as well as the participants in each challenge. 

Happy Stamping

Birthdays ... Take 1

One of my favourite things are birthdays, be they mine or someone else's!  It's a bit like Christmas with the anticipation, seeing things arrive in the mail that get squirreled away by my daughter, the being spoilt or getting to do the spoiling, celebrating another year of life.  I don't focus too much on the age, if I did that I might feel older than I do!  My next few posts are all about birthdays and not just because my own birthday was last week, but I also have a few projects I have made for other people who also share birthdays at this time (one friend shares my birthday with me!).  This first post is also an entry in the Stampin' Up Only Challenge ...

Firstly I will share the entry into the SUO challenge.  This is a "little something" I put together for my on-line friend and fellow Stampin' Up Demonstrator Steph.  She loves the new In-Colour Concord Crush (who doesn't) and so I used that as the starting point of my project.   I have wanted to try a little tea-light candle cake for ages, and this seemed like just the right time.  I then made a little windowed box to put the cake in (I was really pleased with how it turned out!

Then onto the card. I have a fairly long list of "things I want to try" and an Easel Card has been on the list for a while, and just seemed to fit perfectly with this little cake, as did the Birthday Bakery stamp set.  I just love the sentiments in this set and used one of them on the front of the card "If you are what you eat, eat something cute".  The trimmed Top Note highlighted the stamp just perfectly. 

I completed the card by stamping an additional birthday sentiment on the inside, this one from the A Word For You stamp set.  You can see in this pic the scallop circle.  For this I punched 1 scallop circle in Very Vanilla and a second in Concord Crush and layered them off centre to create the little cake stand, which of course is also what holds the easel in place.

Happy Stamping

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.