Enjoy Your Day

Hello again! Today I have a card featuring a number of products from the up-coming Occasions catalogue.

Oooh! That gorgeous Blushing Bride shimmer paper again! I'm really not one for wearing pink, but I do often enjoy creating with it. The flower dies are from the Botanical Builders Framelits dies. There are so many dies in this set, the envelope is jam packed with flowers and leaves. I've used three different flowers dies and one stamen die here, and if you look closely you might be able to pick out that these flowers all have the exact same shape - I love that! With the two that I layered I positioned them so that the petals lined up with the matching petals on the other flower, but you can always have things more hap-hazard.

I also love the large flower I have used here, with it's petals being cut with an inner and outer section. And then there are the coordinating Botanical Garden Jewels! The Mint Macaron flowers in the background are from the Botanical Gardens designer series paper, another style of flower that you will also find in the framelits set. There are so many wonderful coordinating items in this suite.

It was only when I was putting together my colour graphic that I realised these colours are very similar to those I used on the Pink and Gold Delicate Ornament card, so it's a nice demonstration of how different something can look with changing one colour, and how you use the colours.

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Pink & Gold Delicate Ornaments

Hello again! With Christmas just days away, I have one last Delicate Ornaments card to share with you.

This card  came into being rather differently to my usual process. I had originally cut the gold ornaments for the Colourful Delicate Ornaments, but when I changed tack with those ornaments the gold ornaments were left sitting around unused. Do you see the glimmer paper I have used on this card? It's another sneak peek from the up-coming Occasions catalogue. I had thought I might use the gold ornaments with silver or Dazzling Diamonds glimmer paper ones, but as soon as I saw the Blushing Bride glimmer paper I knew the fate of the gold ornaments was sealed! While making this card I paid more attention to the clock, for those who have been curious about how long it takes to make these ornaments. For these particular ornaments they took about 10 minutes each, though as I have said before these are the simplest of the three so the other styles would take a little longer.

The other interesting part of this card is the strip down the right hand side. I was working to include some plain Blushing Bride cardstock to coordinate with the Blushing Bride glimmer paper, and I wanted to work ina  little more gold. The Winter Wonderland washi tape (on the Holiday catalogue retiring list, less than two weeks left to order it) over Blushing Bride cardstock only let a tinge of colour show through, so I went with Watermelon Wonder cardstock instead. The washi tape over Watermelon Wonder is a few shades darker than Blushing Bride, but the pop of colour works in well.

The colours for todays card:

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

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:

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

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

Jolly Jumping Reindeer

I haven't got very far with making Christmas cards this year, but got back into the swing of it with the Jolly Christmas set.

As is often the case, the idea that came to mind was multiple colours on an image, so out came the markers for some direct to rubber technique. I did cheat a little bit in using the Blushing Bride inkpad to ink up the top and bottom lines. As I was working on this my brain was ticking over how I would do the rest of the card, and initially I thought I would have the reindeer leaping more to the right hand side of the card, but when I started spacing things I found there wasn't a lot of room at the side... but plenty at the top.  The idea to shape the top of the reindeer layer came not long after, and I have to say I am really pleased with how it came out. I trimmed the Sahara Sand cardstock to the width I wanted, then positioned it so it was half in/half out of the Deco Labels framelit so just the top edge would be cut.

Almost traditional Christmas colours used today:

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Wonder Woman Is Made Of Win (And Butterflies)

Have been busy lately and a few of the things I have been working on aren't completely finished and ready for sharing just yet, but yesterday I finally made a point of attempting something I've been wanting to do for some time...

With all the other geek and super hero cards I have made, it was frustrating me that I hadn't come up with an easy one for a female character. SupaNova is starting in Sydney today (and I'm going tomorrow, yay!) so I thought this would be a good opportunity to give a female super hero card a crack. I had thought the Triple Banner punch would be good for doing the W's on Wonder Woman's outfit, so I had a go... and the angle wasn't any where near right (let alone needing to fold the cardstock, and I just couldn't do that to the gold!). I then moved on to plan B, and plan C... and a myriad of options which saw me considering absolutely everything. And that is the only way it happened - if I had stuck with geometric shapes I wouldn't have a card to share with you today. Which is perhaps the thing I love most about punch art, using the shapes in unexpected ways! Once I started trying things out with the Bold Butterfly die it didn't take long to figure out how to trim it down to get a good look and the rest of the card essentially made itself.

Here are the colours I used, with the addition of gold (metallics don't look metallic in these simple colour swatch graphics... I might have to sort something out for that too!)

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Welcome Best Thoughts!

The day has come! From today you can order products from the 2015-2016 Stampin' Up! catalogue :D The set I have used today, Best Thoughts, is one you can only get from hosting a workshop or placing an order that qualify for Stampin' Rewards - or Hostess Dollars under the old system. All these changes can be a little confusing, but playing with this new product is definitely fun!

After I did my Petal Potpourri card I've really been bitten by the watercolouring bug again, so these stamps were perfect to let me have another play with it. The butterfly and flower were both stamped on watercolour paper with black StazOn, watercoloured, then cut out.

Just the two new In Colors in this card, here's the colour graphic for easy reference -

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog