Party Animal

Happy New Year everyone! Hopefully there aren't any of you regretting being so much of a party animal this morning... which leads me to todays card, another look at the Balloon Builders set from the Occasions catalogue - which launches tomorrow!

You may have noticed in the Occasions catalogue there is already a lot of inspiration for this set:

When I returned home from OnStage - where everyone received this set - I decided to see what other animals and things I could come up with:

Yeah, I think this set is going to be a lot of fun!

Normally I have a vision in my head of the card I want to make before I start - though things often get changed along the way. For this card I made it up as I went along. Working from my sheet of test stamping, I replicated the horse for my card, stamping the ballons on Whisper White cardstock with Crumb Cake ink. I then used So Saffron and Calypso Coral on the long and short skinny balloons respectively, stamping the images in a rough circle to create the sun rays. The sentiment was stamped on So Saffron cardstock with Calypso Coral ink then punched with a 1 1/4" circle punch. I laid it in position without adhesive so I knew where I wanted to trim the top edge, and once trimmed I attached it to the cardfront with a couple of dimensionals.

Todays colours are:

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Delicate Pastel Ornaments

Last week I showed you another Delicate Ornaments card. This week I will show you what I did with the other pieces from those ornaments.

I kept the styling very similar to the matching ornament cards, but since the ornament frame was white I used a coloured background instead. I think I like these ones slightly more than their counterparts, I think it's the multiple colours in the ornaments themselves, but think both types come out really pretty. However, these ones were a bigger headache to make... if you think about it, with the other ones I was popping the white pieces straight out and into the coloured frame. So all those pieces from the coloured frames had to have already come out right? And I wasn't thinking terribly clearly when I did that. This is what I was working with for these cards:

What a mess! At least after a little while I stopped looking for specific pieces and just randomly picked up pieces to see if their shape could quickly tell me where they went. Eventually I caved to the idea that I should have done when popping them out of their frames: keep the colours separated. Oh well, I got there in the end! Here are all 6 cards finished:

I did "stuff up" a little when putting these together, as I had planned to put those ornaments with a lot of blue on the green background and vice versa, but I shuffled things around a bit too much and didn't realise till I had already stuck most of them down. Another "Oh well"! They still look nice, just not exactly what I had planned.

Colours and supplies are the same as the Pastel Delicate Ornaments.

Pastel Delicate Ornaments

Today I have another Delicate Ornaments card for you, another made by inlaying the little bits from one or more colours into the frame of another.

For this card I kept the overall design simple, and even just the two colours for the ornament itself. By now I was learning...

..take the bits from one and put them straight into another! You might already sense what is coming, but that will be a post for another day. Instead of punching a circle to back these ornaments, I used the matching bold ornament framelit die. It is ever so slightly larger, but this isn't a major issue - especially if you cut it in the same colour as the frame you used. Other than that, the rest of the construction was the same as the Stained Glass-esque Ornaments. As you can probably already tell, I cut some ornaments in white and some in a variety of colours. You might be wondering why I would bother doing this technique if I was just using one colour of the little bits. Basically, I hate to waste anything, but also it does give a different look to just backing the ornament frame with another colour. Here is a shot of this group of cards all finished:

While I wanted these cards over all plain I did want a little interest on my background, but didn't feel any of the current embossing folders had the look I wanted so for that I turned to the retired Beautifully Baroque folder.

Colours used on these cards:

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Occasions Catalogue Sneak Peek

As I mentioned last week, over the weekend I attended one of the new events put on by Stampin' Up!, OnStage Local in Melbourne. Other than the usual catching up with old friends and making some new ones, we got to see a lot of new product from the upcoming Occasions catalogue - oh boy I think this one is going to be as popular as the current Holiday catalogue! We also got to see product the upcoming Sale-a-Bration catalogue. Everyone received a few of the new goodies, and I had to get stuck in and have a little play yesterday. Another perk of attending was being able to purchase more product before the pre-order period offically begins, so I am crossing my fingers that arrives before the weekend so I can have more of a play. I know, I know, I am teasing you horribly. So here's a glimpse of what is in store:

This is the Balloon Builders set, which has a variety of balloon shaped stamps that are fabulous for combining to create other images - it's a great one for letting your imagination run wild! Along with the stamped images I used some sequins (just like those that were scattered on the tables at OnStage, that felt fitting) to jazz the card up a little. I even tucked some clear ones behind my cardstock layers, which you might be able to see a little better below (above the T and diagonally up to the left from my watermark):

I also decided to make a stripped back version, for those who don't like the jazzing-up:

Like what you see? Let me know if you'd like to receive a catalogue, when they become available I can pop them in the mail for you to drool over. If you book a workshop you could even earn some of the products for free!

Colours used:

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog