Let's Craft Together Blog Hop - Make It Red

Welcome to the monthly Let's Craft Together Blog Hop, thanks for joining us. We are a group of multi-cultural Stampin' Up! Demonstrators in Australia who have developed a strong friendship through our love of stamping and our admiration of each other's style of crafting. 

Welcome to the monthly Let's Craft Together Blog Hop, thanks for joining us. We are a group of multi-cultural Stampin' Up! Demonstrators in Australia who have developed a strong friendship through our love of stamping and our admiration of each other's style of crafting. 

The challenge this month is to make a project using shades of red which seems appropriate with Valentine's Day around the corner!  Though it doesn't have to be a Valentine's card at all, let your imagination run wild. 

I have to say red isn't a colour I use often, so it was a little bit of a challenge, but then I pulled out the beautiful big flower stamp from Simply Beautiful and using my new Stamping Positioner stamped in Grey Granite onto water colour paper.  I then added colour with water colour pencils and used my Aqua Painter to activate the water colour and create depth.  This was such a calming process as I love colouring with pencils.  I then waited until it was completely dry before putting back into my stamp positioner and stamping in versa-mark and then using gold embossing powder to bring out the lines.  I find this works better than embossing before colouring.   The sentiment is from Greenery Lane from the Jan to Apr Mini Catalogue, as are the Beautifully Celebrated Dies used to cut the two layers. 

Time to hop on over and see what the rest of the team have created using this Make It Red theme. 

Happy Stamping

Monique

CTC #555 - CASE A Sketch

Welcome to another week at CASEing the Catty Sunday Blog Hop, where utilise the projects within the current Stampin' Up! catalogue to inspire our own projects each week. We also invite you to join with us in the challenge each week by using this inspiration in your own creations and uploading a photo to our Facebook page.

This week we are taking inspiration from the sketches on page 17 of the Mini Catalogue. 

Here is a a picture of all of the sketches, you can use any of them to create a tag, card, scrap page or even 3D item. Feel free to shake it up and use a tag sketch to make a card, or any thing you like!

I chose this sketch from the sketches on page 17, I liked the simplicity of it and thought it would be a great way to show off some of the new products I recently ordered. 

I kept my card really simple for this challenge, wanting the sketch to shine.  I realise that I didn't even add any embellishments, but I think with all that is going on with the floral panel additional distraction wasn't needed.  I used my new Lovely Arrangements Bundle for the sentiment and die cut, and cut a little slit in each side with a small punch from my stash, but you could use a precision blade or even trimmer to cut this for the ribbon.  The ribbon, like the DSP, is part of the Lovely Blossoms Collection that was in the January On-line Exclusive release. It is Cloud Cover Textured 5/8" Ribbon an is so lovely and soft, just perfect for this project, and although I didn't create a bow on this card it is soft enough to tie a pretty bow. 

  

I hope you are inspired to join in the challenge this week, just use the sketches on page 17 to inspire your creativity, then post a picture of your project to the CTC Facebook page.

  

Time to hop on over and see what Rochelle has created this week.

Happy Stamping
Monique

Product of the Month Collaboration - Fabulous Sayings

Welcome to the January 2026 Product of the Month (POM) Blog Hop!  If you've followed my blog for  while you will know that in previous years we have had a period of Sale-A-Bration (SAB) at the start of each year. Well Stampin' Up! have implemented a new initiative instead of SAB, and that is Product of the Month. For POM there is a new product released every month that can be earned for a greatly reduced cost, $9 in Australia, with the purchase of $125 in product.   So a group of demonstrators decided to help showcase these products we would run a blog hop each month to give ideas.

The Product of the Month (POM) for January is an amazing stamp set containing 10 sentiments, in the words of SU "This versatile stamping set features all-occasion sentiment stamps for birthdays, thank-you notes, love, friendship, and support cards. The mix of a handwritten script with a classic serif font pair beautifully with a wide range of card making and paper crafting styles."  You can check out some great samples in the SU on-line store here. 

I love the fonts used for this stamp set, and think this set will be a favourite of mine for some time to come. The sentiments are quite large, and you can see with the Happy Birthday they are great for cards like this one, where a piece of torn DSP and he sentiment stamped in a coordinating colour is all you need for a beautiful card. This is a great design if you need to make some quick and easy cards either at an event or to send out to friends and family.  The DSP is from the new Lovely & Beautiful pack featured in the Jan to Apr Mini Catalogue, I chose to add some Brushed Brass Butterflies which are still available in the on-line store, to finish the card. 

Time to keep on hopping and see what the rest of the team have created with this versatile stamp set, follow the links at the end of each blog post to make your way around the hop.

Happy Stamping
Monique