Product of the Month Collaboration - February's Painted Illusions

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. This month the POM is some really lovely 12"x12" DSP, 12 sheets in the pack. 

I wanted to make a card that really shows off the beautiful paper, and this fancy fold really does that beautifully.  I have made two cards to show two off the different patterns.  This first card features the beautiful sentiment from Memories in Bloom stamp set. I have finished off this card with some of the pretty gold vellum embellishments from the Beautifully Adorned Ephemera Pack.

Here you can see the card opened, as you can see most of the front cardstock panel has been removed so that the back of the DSP panel is visible. I'll pop the measurements at the end of this post. 

Here is the second card I made, showing a second of the patterned papers. This card uses the gorgeous Layered Thoughts for the sentiment embellished by another strip from the Beautifully Adorned Ephemera Pack and finished off with some Moody Palette Glossy Dots.

Here is the inside of the second card, don't these colours look so lovely together. You will certainly want to get your hands on this lovey DSP while it is still available. 

Now for how to make these cards, each one uses a piece of DSP that is 6"x6", so you can make four from a piece of 12"x12".  These instructions are in metric, but are easy to translate into imperial.

• Card base 13.5x14.5cm; scored at 3cm
• DSP 14x15cm; cut two strips off each 2.5cm wide
• Basic White panel 10x14cm
•  Adhere one of the small strips to the thin front panel, and one to the piece of Basic White. Use opposite sides of the paper
• Adhere the larger piece to the back of the thin front panel so that when the card is open or closed you can see both patterns of the DSP

Time to keep on hopping to see what the rest of the team have created with this lovely paper. 

Happy Stamping
Monique

CTC #556 - CASE The Made With Love Suite

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 Made With Love Suite from the January to April Mini. I was initially a bit stumped as I don't have any of the products from this suite, but then I remembered that we are just taking inspiration from the projects so took a second look and picked one to CASE. 

I was inspired by this card from page 30 of the Mini Catalogue, I am not sure what it was that drew me in, but I decided to take it in a completely different direction from love hearts in pinks and reds. 

Instead, for my card I use the Nature Walk DSP as the starting off point, and used three of the different sized circles from Stylish Shapes dies instead of the hearts. I am so happy with how it turned out, I love this DSP and while I was initially going to have a Soft Seafoam base card, I decided the circles looked better on the Pretty Peacock background. I finished off with Moody Palette Glossy Dots from the current Online Exclusives, and a sentiment from Greenery Lane.

  

I hope you are inspired to join in the challenge this week, just use the Made With Love Suite projects to inspire your creativity, then post a picture of your project to the CTC Facebook page.

  

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

Happy Stamping
Monique

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