Mother's Day Rose

Yes, I know I said it'd be a while before I had another card with the Rose Garden dies, but I have to slip in this one even though it is very early for Mother's Day. I usually start thinking about Mother's Day cards when it's Easter as that is the next "big day" on everyone's calendar, aside from all the birthdays that are scattered (or clumped...) through the year. Easter Sunday is tomorrow, though it is at the "early" end of the possible timeframe for Easter.

The main reason that I had to share this now is that awesome glitterly strip down the right side of the card will not be available very soon. Sale-a-bration ends March 31, less than a week away! So you have less than a week to earn fabulous free goodies like the Metallics Glitter Tape. This was just the sort of thing I was wanting last year when working on Christmas cards, so I let out a huge "YES!" when it was released among the second wave of Sale-a-bration products. It will not be carrying over into the new Stampin' Up! catalogue so if you don't want to miss out you have only a few days left to snap it up. Sale-a-bration items can be earnt on any order for any products that total $90 and over.

Back to the oranges and yellows for this one!

Teeny Tiny Sentiments wood-mounted stamp set 130042, Rose Wonder stamp set & Rose Garden thinlits dies bundle 140804, Cucumber Crush A4 cardstock 138342, Pool Part A4 cardstock 124391, Tangelo Twist A4 cardstock 133684, Crushed Curry A4 cardstock 131288, thick Whisper White A4 cardstock 140490, Pool Part stamp pad 126982, Cucumber Crush stamp pad 138324, Metallics Glitter Tape 141020 (free with qualifying order), fine-tip glue pen 138309, dimensionals 104430

Father's Day In The Garden

Anyone else feel like the year is rushing by? I can't believe we are coming up to Father's Day already!

My Dad is a keen gardener, and ever one to buck the system I decided to make a male card with butterflies on it. This card was a lot of fun to make as I took advantage of the flexible nature of photopolymer stamps and varied how it was shaped as I randomly stamped it in Always Artichoke and Garden Green. I even mixed my inks a little as I skipped cleaning the stamp between inking it up, when I wasn't just sponging a bit of the other colour on to give the fronds some colour variation. Cutting out the fronds wasn't quite so much fun, but it is funny how you can zone out and time flies when doing something like that. To create the little sign I simply trimmed down the cardstock after stamping and punching it out. To get the even notches at the top of my "fence" I lightly penciled a line across on the back of the cardstock at the desired distance from the edge, then used the Christmas tree punch cut the little wedge out between the pailings.

Here are the colours I used:

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TBT - Petite Pennants

My desk is generally tidy - I've got no space to create otherwise - but I was doing some more tidying last week and camea cross a background piece I had made quite some time back and decided it was time to actually make it into a card.

I used the straight edge pennant from the Petite Pennants punch to make a bunch of triangles and then arranged them into this background. With the background already made, this card was pretty quick to put together. Though I remember the longest part of making the background was just deciding where I wanted each colour... the actual sticking them down went together much faster! I do remember at the time I deliberately avoided using the triangle punch for this effect as they would be smaller and take longer to put together, but in true Carol style that idea is grawing at me from the back of my head so I might end up giving it a go one day. Both the pennant and triangle punches are now retired, but you can pick up the triangle punch from the Clearance Rack while stocks last.

Some what amazingly, all the colours I used are still current!

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Mother's Day Mosaic

Feel like I have been chasing my tail since coming back from convention, so this is a little later than intended but better late than never!

One item I was really sad to see on the recent retirement list was the Mosaic Madness stamp set and co-ordinating punch. Thankfully we will still have the mosaic embossing folder! So I thought for a last hoorah I would use Mosaic Madness for some Mother's Day cards this year - and I would use images from the set that don't coordinate with the punch (since I tended to use those co-ordinating ones more). The Modern Label punch, and the Label Something stamp set are on the retired list as well. I've also used three of the retiring In Colors with Crisp Canteloupe, Strawberry Slush and Coastal Cabana. I really love these colours together and have been using them quite a bit over the last few months, it will be sad to see them go :(

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Challenge Accepted!

My friend Madonna Dunn is currently running We Stamp For Lara, a fundraiser to help her family adapt their car to cater for their daughter Lara. Along with daily tutorials there are challeges to take part in. During the first week we had a fun colour challenge of Daffodil Delight (of course!), Calypso Coral, Pool Party and Basic Gray. Here was my card:

It had been a while since I had used Mosaic Madness and the matching embossing folder... funnily enough the next challenge was to use a set we hadn't used before or hadn't used for a long time!

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Shaker Balloon

The new year is fast approaching, and with it come new Stampin' Up! goodies! The new Occasions and Sale-a-bration catalogues launch on the 6th of January. To whet your appetites I have a few things to share during the lead up.

It's been a while since I bought a versatile birthday set, so from the get go I was very keen on Celebrate Today and it's coordinating dies. I had the idea for a shaker card pretty quickly, then I had to waaaaaiiiit for my box of goodies to arrive... and then things were ramping up toward Christmas and I wasn't sure if I would find time to try out my ideas. I always find this so frustrating, ideas come to mind and you struggle to remember them when you sit down to create! Thankfully this idea wasn't one that was forgotten. I wanted to keep the rest of the card pretty simple to keep the focus on the balloon, though the brushed metallic cardstock has a slight texture to it which gives things a subtle interest.

All supplies by Stampin' Up!
Cardstock: Bermuda Bay, Crisp Canteloup, Soft Sky, Tempting Turquoise, Whisper White, Window Sheet, brushed gold
Stamp set: Teeny Tiny Sentiments
Ink: Bermuda Bay, Soft Sky
Accessories: gold sequin trim, Bermuda Bay sequin trim, Confetti Stars punch, Ticket Duo punch, Balloon Framelit dies, dimensionals, Whisper White Baker's Twine, dauber

Christmas Break

I still have some Christmas cards to share, but thought it might be nice to share something else for a change. This card was kind of inspired by a few images of mixed tiles that I saw around the traps. I thought that using a mixture of embossing folders would be a great effect, though it was quite fiddly to put together! I mixed it up even further by flipping some of the pieces over, to get some positive and negative impressions. And since the new Stampin' Up! catalogue came out, with the new set of In Colors, I've been dying to put Rich Razzleberry together with the new Blackberry Bliss. It's taken me long enough but I finally got there... and this won't be the last you see of the pair, let me say that now!

All supplies by Stampin' Up!
Cardstock: Blackberry Bliss, Rich Razzleberry, Whisper White
Stamp sets: Label Something, Teeny Tiny Sentiments
Ink: Blackberry Bliss, Rich Razzleberry
Accessories: Whisper White Baker's Twine, Modern Label punch, dimensionals, Beautifully Baroque embossing folder, Perfect Polka Dots embossing folder, Vintage Wallpaper embossing folder, Argyle embossing folder, Lacy Brocade embossing folder, Elegant Lines embossing folder, Hexagon Hive die

TBT - Merry Mosaic

Another mosaic Christmas card for Throw-back Thursday this week. This time I moved away fromt eh Winter Frost paper and teamed the Very Merry Tags mosaic image with the Modern Mosaic embossing folder. You just have to love the thought Stampin' Up! put into coordinating items across product ranges! To create the background I put the cardstock through the Big Shot with the Modern Mosaic embossing folder, then used the Stamp-a-ma-jig to help line up the mosaic image to stamp on the embossed mosaic shape. It was a little time consuming, but it was the only way to achieve the look I wanted.

Most supplies by Stampin' Up! 
Cardstock: Gumball Green, Garden Green, Whisper White 
Stamp sets: Very Merry Tags, Teeny Tiny Sentiments 
Ink: Rich Razzleberry, Wisteria Wonder, VersaMark 
Accessories: Modern Mosaic embossing folder, Mosaic punch, Modern Label punch, dimensionals, gold brads, gold embroidery thread

Natural Birthday

Have you ever noticed that you have stopped using a particular colour? Recently I realised that I hadn't used the Naturals Ivory cardstock in a loooong time, so of course I have been using it a lot since that revelation! I often prefer it over Whisper White or even Very Vanilla for a general neutral colour, it has little flecks through it that give it a subtle interest where the other colours would be too stark and bland. For this card I went with a large area of Ivory and just a little bit of colour and decoration. To achieve the embossed stripes across the bottom I trimmed strips of cardstock to 1.4cm and carefully positioned them in the embossing folder (making the strip extra long and a spot of snail at each end helps keep it in place! And if it happens to tear a little while you are removing it fromt eh embossing folder it's not a problem, that bit will get trimmed off).

All supplies by Stampin' Up!
Cardstock: Mossy Meadow, Baked Brown Sugar, Hello Honey, Lost Lagoon, Naturals Ivory
Stamp set: Teeny Tiny Sentiments
Ink: StazOn Jet Black
Accessories: Baked Brown Sugar Thick Baker's Twine, Arrows embossing folder

TBT - Paisley Father's Day

I thought I would incorporate TBT - Throw-Back Thursday - in my blog as a way of sharing things using retired products. Hopefully you might get some ideas for long-lost items tucked away in your stash, pull them out and make use of them! Quite a few of my TBT posts over the next few weeks will be things I made during my blogging absence, but to kick it off I am sharing a card from Father's Day just past. The retired product here is the Spiced Paisley set. I'm a bit of a fan of paisley, but I just didn't use it much while it was available, so I am making up for lost time now. The stamps were inked with markers, one of my favourite techniques. Some images are quite detailed and it can be tricky to avoid getting the colours in the wrong spot, something I wasn't compeltely successful with here but I knew I could stamp this background ten times and still not get it perfect, so I decided there was no point sweating it - it was still well received!

All supplies by Stampin' Up!
Cardstock: Pear Pizzazz, Island Indigo, Whisper White
Stamp set: Spiced Paisley, Teeny Tiny Sentiments
Ink: Soft Suede
Accessories: Pear Pizzazz marker, Wild Wasabi marker, Soft Sky marker, Island Indigo marker, Soft Suede marker, Moderm Label punch, 1 1/4" circle punch, 1 3/4" circle punch

Happy Birthday Thoughts

On Saturday night Jayne hosted a cyber-stamp for the Elite Stampers. The first challenge was to use the colours from this month's Elite blog colour challenge to make a birthday card. I have to say I struggled with this one, because I was trying to resist using a tree again with these colours. In the end I gave in.

Quite a simple card, but it seemed to want to be for a guy and most of them don't like things too fussy. It's not very birthday either... no presents, no cake, no balloons or banners... except it does make me think of the Party Tree in Lord Of The Rings, so it is really a birthday card in more than just the words! The layer behind the sentiment was achieved by punching a Decorative Label out of Chocolate Chip cardstock, then instering one end back into the punch and punching it a second time.

All supplies by Stampin' Up!
Cardstock: Chocolate Chip, textured Very Vanilla, Very Vanilla, Crumb Cake
Stamp Sets: Thoughts & Prayers, Teeny Tiny Sentiments
Inks: Chocolate Chip
Accessories: Wild Wasabi marker, Chocolate Chip marker, neutrals brads, Decorative Label punch, Word Window punch, dimensionals

I've also caught up on March challenges over at the Elite Challenges blog, you can see those cards here and here.