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