Let's Craft Together: Let's Use DSP

Welcome to the monthly Blog Hop by Let’s Craft Together and thank you for joining us. We are a group of multi-cultural Stampin’ Up!® demonstrators in Australia who have developed a strong friendship though our love of stamping and our admiration of each other’s style of crafting.

The challenge this month is to use our DSP, to chop it and use it.  I know for me its been difficult to use up the pretty papers for fear of not having them when I want them.  But something that I have learned over time is that Stampin' Up! is consistently bringing out more beautiful papers all the time, so now I try to use them up before the next pack catches my eye.  

One of the things I like to do when I get a new pack of paper is to cut a 2" strip of each of the different sheets (usually 6 of the 12).  I cut this into 2 x 2" and 2 x 4" pieces.  The 2" pieces I stick onto plain cardstock and add to an A5 folder I have, cutting a small circle of the coordinating cardstock colours.  The 2"x4" pieces I punch a hole in the top of each piece and add to a ring to use as a reference. This serves two purposes: 1) it gets me to cut into the DSP; and 2) it gives me two reference points that I can go to quickly when looking for a DSP option.

One of the great techniques that I use to play with new DSP is the Triple Cut and Shuffle process. Simply take three pieces of DSP cut to fit on your card front, stack them together and cut them into three pieces, usually on the diagonal. Then you shuffle the pieces to have one of each on three card fronts, so its a great way to quickly make a stack of cards.

 

For my cards I just had to use the gorgeous Perennial Lavender 12"x12" DSP from the new mini catalogue. As a bit of an added extra, on this version of the card I covered the joins with a thin strip of coordinating cardstock.  The sentiments on the first two cards are made with the Heartfelt Hexagon Punch which is a great size for a number of different sentiment stamp sets. On the first card I used the Coordinating Heartfelt Hexagon Stamp Set and the second I used a sentiment from Perennial Postage which is part of the Perennial Lavender Collection.

My third card uses the Perennial Postage Dies paired with Go To Greetings.  I have embellished this card using one of the pretty paper butterflies and bling from the Perennial Lavender Collection.

I am happy to report that I have used quite a bit of this DSP, I made a second set of these cards using the same technique, but gave them away before photographing them.  Let me know in the comments what your favourite way to use DSP is. 

Time to follow the hop to Tracy's blog to see how she uses her DSP!

Happy Stamping
Monique