CTC #164 - Kits

 Welcome to another week at CASEing the Catty Sunday Blog Hop, where we take a look at a section of one of the current Stampin' Up! catalogues and use the projects to inspire our creations.

We encourage others to join in.  This week we are taking our inspiration from the kits in the Occasions Catalogue, pages 15-17. This section contains my favourite Stampin' Up! Kit of all time, Lots of Happy Card Kit. There are quite a few reasons I love this kit:

• It comes with four water colour pencils (2 exclusive colours to the kit); 
• it makes 20 cards, some full size some note size; 
• each card has a coordinating envelope with a decorated insert;
• it has a black and white theme, with touches of colour added by colouring the various elements;
• it has five sentiment stamps that I just love, as well two cute little floral images;
• you can buy an refill kit;
• and one of my favourite things about this kit is that I got to make it with my mum and daughter at Christmas (Santa had left it under the tree for us!!!)

One of the cards is this very pretty hexagon card and I used it as my inspiration for my creation this week.  You can find it with the other cards from this kit on page 15.

I decided to make a square card instead of the hexagon of the original, but kept that shape on the front of the card using one of the Thinlits from the Window Box Thinlits, to do so I cut it from Sahara Sand and left the Thinlit in place and trimmed around the edge of it to get the hexagon then pressed the shape from it and mounted it over a hexagon of black cardstock.

The DSP is from Petal Passion DSP and is a salute to the striking decoration on the inside of the coordinating envelopes, the rest of the layout I have kept pretty much the same as the original with a banner of gold foil and Lemon Lime Twist ribbon. The flowers are made using the Petal Palette bundle, stamped in Rich Razzleberry and then coloured by running over the stamped image with a Blender Pen.

  

I hope you are inspired to join in the challenge this week, just take a picture of your project and upload it to the CTC Facebook Page.

  

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

Happy Stamping

Monique

Amazing Lavender

Having a bit of time to play with my stamps this weekend I found this sketch from CASE this Sketch and decided to play along.

As soon as I saw it I knew that I wanted to make it using Lots of Lavender Sale-A-Bration stamp set. I wanted to keep a soft feel to the card so I used White Embossing Powder on Sahara Sand cardstock, masking the bottom part of the card so the stems didn't stamp.  I then coloured the images with Stampin' Blends, Light Pink Pirouette for the flowers, and Light Old Olive for the leaves. 

I was initially going to add a sentiment on a banner, but then though the Celebrate You Thinlits Dies would be perfect, and add just a hint of sparkle to the card. I coloured the ribbon with the Dark Pink Pirouette Stampin' Blends and layered it over two pieces of Old Olive cut using the Decorative Ribbon Border Punch.  I stamped the "You" sentiment in White Craft Ink using Crazy About You stamp set.

Happy Stamping
Monique

Love is in the Air

I am not really into a lot of the Valentine's Day hype as some people are, but I do think it is a great opportunity to take pause and be grateful for the ones we love and to do something a little special for them. Thinking about making a card for a wonderful man who has been in my life for 32 years, 26 of them as my hubby, I came across two challenges Just Add Ink romance challenge, and Just Us Girls 

"Love" challenge ... perfect for what I had in mind.

I recently caved in and bought myself the Large Letters Framelits and was itching to try and eclipse card with them. I knew I wanted to incorporate the cute little hedgehogs from a previous hostess set as my hubby absolutely loves hedgehogs.  I have to say this card turned out, if anything, better than I had expected! I knew I wanted the little hedgehogs to be peeking out from behind the letters, initially thinking I would use the SAB Party Pandas, but swapping it over to the hedgehogs. I may still do one with pandas!

I coloured the hedgehogs with Stampin' Blends and added a little heart to each pair using the Owl Builder Punch.  So this card is a mix of shiny new toys and old favourites!

Now just have to keep it secret until Valentine's Day, but I think that is pretty safe as he never visits my blog :). 

Happy Stamping
Monique