October Stamping Challenge #11

Hello!  This card came together in a flash because the focal panel was already in my scrap box.  All I had to do was cut a card base and tape it on (foam tape for dimension).  I also added a small pearl to the centre of the medallion.  If I recall (from too long ago than I care to admit), this panel was sponged with various shades of pink, coral and burgundy.  All stamps and paper are by Stampin' Up.

Thanks for reading!  Hope you find some time to stamp this weekend.

Stampin' Up Colour Renovation

Hello,

I have two important things to pass on:
1. When our computer had its near-death experience, it suffered partial amnesia, including all email and email addresses. So, if you are anyone with whom I have corresponded by email, I no longer have your email address. If you would like to continue our virtual correspondence, please email me :-)

2. I know I said I was retiring from my Stampin' Up demonstratorship, but I wanted to pass on some important information about the colour collection. Stampin' Up will be renovating their colour collection. I am very excited about this because it means they will be introducing 5 new colours (including a fabulous dark brown that I have been wanting for a long time, and a lovely yellow that's not too bright and not too dull). They will also be bringing in 5 new In Colours and they will last 2 years! Next year another 5 will be added, and so on. Yay! I'm a bit sad to see some of my favourites retiring (I will be stocking up on Bordering Blue for sure, and also Mellow Moss and Going Gray), but I am much more excited about the new palette. Also, some great In Colours are coming back - I can stop hoarding Pink Pirouette and Wild Wasabi :-) You will note a 'new' brown called Crumb Cake. They've renamed kraft paper and will add ink, etc. to the lineup.

I wanted to let you know about this in case you need to get more of your favourites while they are around. They will meet all orders until the end of May, after that it will be while supplies last. They are also discontinuing the large pads of craft ink except black and white (and vanilla?) so if you are a large craft pad stamper, you may want to get your favourites.

Lots of information, but exciting news. If you have any questions, drop me a comment at the bottom of this post.

I can't seem to upload any of the images showing the new colour lineup, so I'll refer you to this blog to see them. There's also a great signing bonus to get the new colours, so if you've been considering that, now is the time!

Evening with Shelli

A local Stampin' Up demonstrator, Kim Assaly, recently won a Workshop of a Lifetime with Shelli Gardner, co-founder and CEO of Stampin' Up. You can get the full details about that on Kim's blog. As part of her prize, Kim was kind enough to host a demonstrator evening with Shelli. There are more details and pictures on Kim's and Shelli's blogs.

I went to this event out in Hawkesbury, and had a such a great time. I even got to meet Shelli and get my picture taken with her and her daughter, Sara. Shelli is so warm and sincere and it was a real pleasure to hear her speak that evening. Very inspiring! Poor Shelli and Sara had their luggage go astray, so that's why they were wearing hats. How they managed to look so put-together and stylish anyway, I will never know! It was a great evening and I got some great swaps and make-and-takes. It was a wonderful time, and a great way to close the circle on my demonstratorship. I will be letting that lapse in order to make more time for what's most important to me - my family. I will still be stamping, and teaching at Heather's, and I really want to keep up with all the wonderful people I've met through Stampin' Up. This is definitely bittersweet for me. [edited to add: I will have to leave the demonstrator disclaimers on my sidebar until my demonstrator ship lapses, which will be July 1st. I just won't be doing classes or sales events anymore, but will likely keep enjoying the discount while I still can! :-) ]

I will take this opportunity to thank each and every one of my customers and friends who have supported me along the way and made this a truly wonderful and rewarding experience, one that I will always treasure. Thank you!

Before I get too maudlin, I will share my swap card that I made for that night. It's Stampin' Up only, using the I {heart} Hearts set and Stemp Sayings, and the colour scheme is Soft Suede and Bermuda Bay. The popped-up glitter heart is a mixture of the turquoise and aqua glitters, on double-sided tape punched out with the Small Heart Punch. I also used the current Sale-a-bration punch (Scallop Trim Border) for the accent. The saying is stamped in Soft Suede, with Taken with Teal for the word "heart". Very quick and easy to put together, but still quite nice, if I may say so. I like the colour scheme - makes it not feel so Valentine-y.

Thanks for stopping by! If you are one of my customers and looking for a new demo, I can recommend some fantastic ladies in the Ottawa area, otherwise I'd suggest looking on the Demonstrator Locater on http://www.stampinup.com/ and you will get a list of local demos in your area.

Happy stamping!

Art Canvas

In December I went to my upline's Demonstrator Christmas party and a highlight of this great event is the gift exchange. It's one of those where you draw numbers and get to steal or open a new one. I came away with a fabulous present, a set of four cubes decorated beautifully. I didn't manage to get a picture of them before I gave them away today at my stamp club Christmas party as a prize for the Christmas trivia game. They were beautiful though, all done in old olive, real red, and chocolate chip, very crisp and clean and stylish.

Here's the project I made for the exchange, an embellished art canvas. I started with one that was 8x8 and it came already gessoed. I had planned to make a 12x12 one but they weren't on sale, and this one was, so I went with this one! I had a vision in my head of soft creams and blues and different textures and for once it turned out like the vision in my head! (Usually it's my head that's soft and I'm blue...)
I started by painting about four different shades of cream and taupe and blue on the canvas, using some acrylic paint we had on hand from our plywood cutout Christmas carollers. (Yes, we are a plywood cutout kind of family... in my defence may I say that we also have some original -non-plywood-based art in our house?) Once the background was painted, I made some papers, using the colours from the Bella Bleu designer paper pack as inspiration. I started with Very Vanilla paper and stamped on the Medallion and some images from the Boho Backgrounds set. I tore the edges and sponded them, and added in some layers of paper for interest. I also made some butterflies from vellum and cardstock, and ran some of them through the big shot using my texturz plates. I used some of the new shimmer paint on the butterflies, which adds a very elegant touch. A few halfback pearls from the pretties kit provided the finishing touches.
Some of the canvases I've seen on-line have the paper adhered with mod podge but I like the textured look better, so I used sticky strip. I hope it all doesn't peel off. The image in the frame is Stampin' Up's Statement of the Heart, which I thought was appropriate for the demonstrator event. You could use any nice quote here, or even a photo.

This was quite quick, all in all it only took me about an hour, not including drying time for the paint. I did the background painting the night before I made the rest of the project, displaying an uncharacteristic degree of forethought in a project.

Thanks for stopping by!

Big Bow Club

Hello! Thanks for stopping by!

Today's card is living proof that you can teach an old leopard new spots. I've joined the enormous bow club! Kinda-sorta. I cheated - it's not layered on massive buttons and tied with twine. But still, for a big bow virgin, it's a big bow. I was hesitant, but I took the plunge. And I feel that the bold image and the strong colours called for a bold embellishment. In fact, the turquoise brads, which usually scream on a card, are muted to a whisper in the face of all the other exuberance on this card.

This was going to be a club project, because the hostess is a bright colours fan, but I couldn't remember if we'd done this technique. Also, it takes a while, and the last time I tried to get the ladies to do some messy stamping, there was almost open revolt. Instead we will be doing a nice tidy project, but still with bright colours :-) No crooked letters and blurry watercolours!



Anyway, back to the card. I just love this summery colour scheme! It's the new colours with tempting turquoise: crushed curry, dusty durango and melon mambo (mamba? I always forget which is the steamy dance and which is the deadly snake...and where I would normally trail off into a mumble to disguise my uncertainty, I have no such options with a blog, because as liberally sprinkled with ellipses as this blog is, they would look ridiculous, even by my astonishingly low standards, at the end of mamba. Mambo. Whatever....). I would love to have some flip flop (or plip plops as DD2 used to say) stamps for this colour scheme. I also love how the watercolouring on the curry cardstock turned out. It's so intense, and it blended quite well. I'll be trying that again too. I also love the white embossing - just freshens things up where black would be too severe. I just love it when a design comes together [the next day after a lot had been thrown out and I went to bed in a stamping huff].



So do you think this needs two more turquoise brads? I wasn't sure if that would be too symmetrical, and once the holes are punched, there's no turning back. (Which is why the brads are on there in the first place.....)



Thanks for looking!



NSR SPOILER: Has anyone watched Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food? I was really inspired. I try to cook for my family, but living in town now we eat out more than we should. This week I made a few stir fries, even venturing to the local fishmonger for a fishy stir fry. I was able to coax the kids into eating it too - and they loved it (not so much the second night, turns out that purple cabbage, despite it's wonderful colour, is still cabbage...). I love the idea of cooking in the community. I will have to let the idea percolate a bit.


Supplies (all Stampin' Up): Stamps: Jumbo Alphabet, One of a Kind; Ink: whisper white, dusty durango, crushed curry, melon mambo; Paper: crushed curry, dusty durango, melon mambo, tempting turquoise; Other: eyelet border punch, crushed curry ribbon, white embossing powder, tempting turquoise brads.

Stamping Extravaganza!

Two friends of mine hosted a Stamping Extravaganza on Sunday afternoon and what an extravaganza it was! Picture a beautiful home in the country, delicious refreshments, gracious hosts and 24 ladies stamping away on a sunny Sunday afternoon. It was wonderful! A great big thank you to the co-hosts! You're the best! And another thank you to the ladies who came out for an afternoon of stamping and general merriment. A special thanks to those who came from out of town, and to those who were new to stamping.

The projects we made are shown above (picture them looking better photographed by a camera whiz using a spiffy light tent). Because many were new to stamping, I kept them fairly straightforward. We also made a gift box to put the paper in (lid - Bella Rose designer paper, bottom - Riding Hood Red, organza ribbon tied around). We made 3 of each design except the birds (2) and bear (1).

Bear: Under the Stars (I loved the squadron of mosquitoes diving in), Wow Flowers; Kraft, Handsome Hunter, Brocade Blue/Bordering Blue (ran out of former); Basic Black, Whisper White ink; Watercolour Wonder Crayons

Scalloped Oval: Oval All; Riding Hood Red Ink; Very Vanilla, So Saffron, RHR, Pumpkin Pie, cardstock, Washington Apple designer paper; Large Oval Punch, Scalloped Oval Punch; Earth Elements brads, So Saffron marker

Birds: Branch Out, Sincere Salutations; Whisper White, textured Kiwi Kiss, Baja Breeze, Pacific Point, Chocolate Chip; Chocolate Chip, Kiwi Kiss and Pacific Point ink; buttons (assorted colours, corduroy also)

Pink Birthday: Priceless, Hugs and Wishes; Cameo Coral, Pirouette Pink, Baja Breeze ink; Whisper White, Cameo Coral, Pirouette Pink cardstock; Pretties half-back pearls and rhinestone brads (2 pearls, 1 brad per person), Top Note die

I'll be having an all-occasion stamping class myself this spring (just as soon as I can convince DH it's a good idea, or possibly sooner). I'll keep you posted.

Thanks for stopping by!

Fabric flower

Here's a card we made at Stamp Club last week. I wanted to show the Big Shot in action and thought it would be fun to use it on something besides paper. I went to the local fabric store and got some pretty floral fabric and Heat & Bond and we used that. You apply the Heat & Bond to the fabric according to manufacturer's directions, and then run the whole thing through the Big Shot. You could also apply it to chipboard before you cut it out, if you wanted some extra dimension. The leaves are cut similarly, with a green fabric from the same line as the floral. You could use fabric from your stash if you have suitable scraps. I only had Christmas fabrics after my pre-move purge, so I had to go get some. (If only all 'chores' were as much fun as a trip to the fabric store!)

The backdrop is Sahara Sand and Elegant Eggplant, and the card is mounted on Lavender Lace. The floral fabric had a gold flower very similar to the single flower in Eastern Blooms, so that flower got stamped in Encore gold on the card base. I also showed the ladies the trick of heat setting the Encore with the iron, to avoid smearing. The sentiment is stamped in eggplant and mounted on ovals (punched). The flower centre is one of the flower punches from Boho Blooms, punched in brushed gold cardstock.

This card was quick to put together, and the shimmer and texture add a lot of interest. I'm looking forward to trying other shapes and textures as my collection of dies expands.

Thanks for stopping by!

All supplies Stampin' Up: Stamps: Eastern Blooms, All Holidays; Ink: Encore gold, Elegant Eggplant; Paper: Sahara Sand, Lavender Lace, Elegant Eggplant; Other: Bigz die (Flower Layers with Leaf), punches - Boho Blooms, Large Oval, Small Oval, fabric (Kimono Prints by Wilmington Prints), Heat & Bond.

Watercoloured Angel

My stamp club ladies wanted to do some more watercolouring, so this is what I came up with. It needed to be fairly straightforward as it was a big group of ladies this month, but still nice. I tried a few versions, and settled on this one. It's an unconventional colour scheme, but I was short on designer series paper, so purple and yellow it was! Maybe more an Advent colour scheme with the purple and blue, and the yellow of the candle flames. Yeah, that's it, that's what I planned all along. (That's now my story and I'll stick to it!)

The angel is from Holy Triptych and is embossed in gold on watercolour paper. We used Stampin' Spots mooshed (the technical term) on yogurt lids for our colour, applied with aquapainters. The image is mounted on elegant eggplant on a gate-fold card base, secured with a punched circle (from the scraps of the saffron dsp!).

Thanks for looking!

All supplies Stampin' Up: Stamps: Holy Triptych; Ink: Encore gold, elegant eggplant, almost amethyst, lavender lace, bashful blue, brocade blue, so saffron, more mustard, paper: so saffron and so saffron designer series paper, watercolour, elegant eggplant; other: 3/4" and 1/2" punches, aquapainters, gold embossing powder.

Embossed Peace, Love, Joy

Here's a card we made at my stamp club this month. The ladies wanted to try heat embossing and I wanted to show a Christmas card, so this is what I came up with. Although this image looks great coloured in, I thought I would show how simple and elegant it can be just embossed. We used gold embossing powder on Very Vanilla, and edged the panel with a gold leaf pen. It doesn't really show up, but we used Bella Toile and versamark on the background. That is my new favourite background stamp!

Thanks for stopping by.

All Supplies SU unless noted: Stamp: Holy Triptych, All Holidays; Ink: gold encore, versamark; Paper: Very Vanilla, Handsome Hunter, Bravo Burgundy; Other: scallop edge punch, gold embossing powder, gold leaf pen (not SU).

Christmas card stamp camp

Here's what's been keeping me busy for the last little while - I've had Christmas card stamp camps the last two weekends. Good times!

The ladies made 3 of each design, and we had lots of other treats on the go as well. For door prizes I gave away some ornaments from the Holiday Mini ornament kit, and little packages of gift tags that I made. I'll make some more and post them - I need to make some stuff for the Christams bazaar at church, and I think the gift tags would be good projects for that.

The Noel card was inspired by this card on splitcoast by akbride. Supplies: Stamps: Big on Christmas; Ink: Basic Black; Paper: Whisper White, Real Red, Old Olive; Other: markers in Brocade Blue, Real Red, Old Olive, ornament cuttlebug folder, red glitter pen (swirl accent).

The tree card was inspired by this card on splitcoast by jcslegs. I changed up some of the colours to suit my design and I didn't want to use heat embossing for my second camp as there were a lot of novice stampers, and I didn't want to overwhelm them with techniques, even though heat embossing is easy. It's just another step to remember. I like it like this one. The Naturals White adds a nice rustic feel to the card. The card shown uses Ski Slope dsp, but two of the three cards featured Kiwi Kiss dsp instead.

Supplies: Stamps: Snow Swirled; Ink: Brocade Blue; Paper: Naturals White, Ski

Slope/Kiwi Kiss designer paper, Real Red, Brocade Blue; Other: square rhinestone brads (ice), Top Notes die, red gingham ribbon.

This card was a bit different, more of a vintage feel. Although this card looks great coloured in, I felt that would be too time-consuming so I showcased how good the line art can look just stamped in one colour, with a hint of watercolour wonder crayons added here and there for accent.

Supplies: Stamps: Home for Christmas; Ink: Always Artichoke; Paper: Very Vanilla, Bravo Burgundy, Always Artichoke; Other: burgundy grosgrain ribbon, burgundy watercolour wonder crayon, aquapainter

This card was my favourite - I think I saw one like it somewhere, but I couldn't find it again to give the credit. If it's yours, let me know and I'll post a link to your original. That being said, there are lot of cards out there with variations on this theme.

For this card, we stamped an all-over pattern using the snowflakes from Snow Swirled (isn't this such a versatile set!) and then added some designer paper and a felt snowflake. The ladies got one snowflake in each colour and I did two red cards and one blue card for this design. It doesn't show in the scan, but the snowflakes have a lovely sparkle - I brushed on some Crystal Effects and sprinkled on Dazzling Diamonds glitter. I can't tell you how pretty that was. I am going to do that to all my snowflakes!

Supplies: Stamps: Snow Swirled, Heard from the Heart; Ink : Chocolate Chip, Riding Hood Red, Baja Breeze; Paper: Whisper White, Real Red, Chocolate Chip, Ski Slope designer paper; Other: small Felt Flurries, crystal effects, dazzling diamonds, scalloped edge punch.

Thanks for looking! And to the ladies that came to my Christmas card camps - a great big thank you! I had a lot of fun!!!

Colour-blocked daisies

I celebrated World Card Making Day on Saturday with an Open House. This was also my new catalogue open house, and my first time having all my stamping friends over to the new house. My parents were visiting too, so it was a celebration all around.



One of the projects we made was this card, which was inspired by this card by cullenwr on splitcoast. I knew I wanted to do a sponged silhouette technique and had a great card planned out with Fresh Cuts, but at the last minute (as in the night before 14 people were coming to stamp), I decided to change the design. Much as I love Fresh Cuts, I thought it would be hard for people to get the square stamped straight the first time. It's much easier to stamp and then cut it out, but with that many people stamping, I wanted to minimize the steps.



I turned to Upsy Daisy for a quick and easy silhouette but I couldn't get the layout right with a deadline looming. When I saw cullenwr's card at work (it was lunch time!), I knew colour blocking was the answer. It's quick, easy, and has the wow factor I wanted for the Open House.



The silhouette is stamped using a sponging technique I learned in my Stampin' Up demonstrator magazine. You stamp the whole image with the lightest colour (here it's Baja Breeze) then you sponge on additional colours here and there (here we used Kiwi Kiss and Pacific Point). Everything is mounted on coordinating cardstock with Chocolate Chip as the grounding neutral. People could choose one of the three sentiments in this stamp set and stamp it in Chocolate Chip. A Kiwi Kiss/Vanilla ribbon finishes it off.



The other project was a gift tag, heat embossed in gold or silver on burgundy or hunter, using the scrolly frame stamp from Holy Triptych.



My Open House was a lot of fun - I met some new people and sent many retired stamps and accessories to new and loving homes. I'll miss them, but it's time for them to get the TLI (tender loving ink) they deserve. Thanks to all the ladies for coming out (and thanks to all my helpers for making it happen)!





Thanks for stopping by!



All supplies Stampin' Up: Stamp: Upsy Daisy; Ink: Baja Breeze, Kiwi Kiss, Pacific Point, Chocolate Chip; Paper: Very Vanilla, Baja Breeze, Kiwi Kiss, Pacific Point, Chocolate Chip; Accessories: dimensionals, Kiwi Kiss ribbon, stampin' sponge.

Stamp club projects

This will be short because I am supposed to be packing. (Those of you who know me, though, will know that I will do anything short of climbing a ladder to get out of packing....)

Here's what we did last club night. I wanted to showcase products from the new catalogue, and the hostess had requested we do the Joy-fold card ( splitcoast tutorial).

For the blue card, we used all new In Colours and Wow Flowers. There is a line of piercing above the sentiment panel. The ladies made cards that were slightly better proportioned. This was my prototype and the sentiment panel is a little too wide.

Supplies (Stampin' Up only): paper and ink: whisper white, pacific point, kiwi kiss, tangerine tango, baja breeze; accessories: paper piercer, scallop edge punch, stamps: Heard from the Heart, Wow Flowers.

The other project was a Joy-fold card (see link above for scs tutorial), which opens twice and is closed by a hidden punched circle under the flower. One of the ladies wanted to know how to dye flowers from the Pretties kit with re-inkers so that's how we did it. The pink panel on their cards was the pale patterned pink sheet from Bella Rose, but I flubbed the stamp on it and needed the rest of the paper for club ladies, so mine is pirouette pink instead. I didn't have enough of this flower for everyone, but this card also looked nice with the next size down flower, set on top of the five-petal flower punch for a closure. One lady did this with a red flower, on a pink flower, on a red flower and it looked fabulous. The ladies could choose to dye their flowers Riding Hood Red or Pirouette Pink. Tip to demos: just use a tiny bit of water and add more as needed.

Supplies (SU only): paper: Bella Rose, Riding Hood Red, Pirouette Pink; ink: chocolate chip, other: reinkers, Pretties kit, bone folder.

Thanks for looking! I won't be back for a week or so. See you later!

Happy stamping.

Watercolouring with inkpad lids

My stamp club wanted to do a project using watercolouring techniques and this set is just the perfect one. I know it's a fall image, but I love this set so much! It's going to retire so I wanted to feature it before it's no longer available. This apple bucket is one of my all-time favourite images. It can be coloured in many ways and it's just so pretty.

For this card, I showed them how to use a blender pen and inkpad lids to get this look. We used a few different colours to layer up the colour, which also adds interest. The apple in front of the bucket is popped up.

Thanks for looking!

All supplies Stampin' Up: Ink: basic gray, ruby red, real red, wild wasabi, blue bayou, close to cocoa; Paper: watercolour, blue bayou, wild wasabi; Stamps: Give Thanks, Polka Dot background; Other: blender pen, earth elements brads.

Groovy monochrome

Here's one of the projects from my stamp club. I thought I'd show them how to colour with an aquapainter and a re-inker. After a few elaborate card samples that I rejected as being too time-consuming, I came up with this design. I always like monochromatic cards, but I seldom think of making them. This didn't start out as being a monochromatic card, but a way to make a dent in my pile of groovy guava paper, which is about to retire. I also wanted to use up my hodgepodge hardware, and groovy guava ribbon. (Use-up cards are waaaayyyy more fun to make than Use-up Casserole, and waaaaayyy easier to impress the children with. DD1 really liked this card.)

Thanks for stopping by!

All supplies Stampin' Up: Stamps: Pick a Petal; Ink: stazon; Paper: shimmery white, bravo burgundy, groovy guava designer series prints, ginger blossom designer series prints, groovy guava; Other: aged copper hodgepodge hardware, groovy guava double-stitched ribbon, groovy guava reinker, aquapainter, 3/4" circle punch.

Fruit Stand Speed Demo sample

The countdown to Stampin' Girls Convention is on!!! Only 2 more sleeps till the big day. My up-up-upline hosts a really fabulous stamping convention each year for her downline. She really goes all out and we get great speakers, lots of swaps and displays, a yummy lunch and wonderful make and takes. One of the fun things she does is set aside some time for speed demos, where lots of great ideas are shown from start to finish in two minutes or less. This means lots of swap-outs along the way, but that just makes me feel a little bit like Martha Stewart, which is a good thing ;-)

I'm demo-ing stamping on painted cardstock for my speed demo. Basically, you paint some acrylic paint on dark cardstock (and admit it, you have some in your craft drawer!) and let it dry. It won't take long. Then, stamp your line art image with black stazon and colour in with markers. Because of the paint, you won't get great blending and the colours will lighten quite a bit as they dry. For my card I overstamped with Weathered once it was coloured. Then finish your card as desired. For this one I went a bit crazy with the matting, but I think I like it. The background is kraft, stamped with Canvas (in sahara sand) and the Itty Bitty Background spatter (with heavier concentration at the bottom) and the stitched exotic leaf (my current favourite stamp for adding the perfect finishing touch) in burgundy. (I'll re-make this card using my Judikins mosaic background for a non-SU event - I think it would be perfect!)

Thanks for looking!

All supplies Stampin' Up unless otherwise noted: Stamps: Fruit Stand, Weathered, Canvas, Itty Bitty Backgrounds, Stitched Exotics; Ink: black stazon, sahara sand, bravo burgundy; Paper: always artichoke, bravo burgundy, blush blossom, kraft; Other; sahara sand eyelet, mellow moss ribbon, slit punch, acrylic craft paint (Plaid).

So Kind Swap Card

Stampin' Girls Convention was today (and last night for the more senior demos)! It's the stamping event of the year around here, hosted by my upline (a few levels up) for all her downline. People come from all over and I had a great time last year meeting people, even a few scs'ers. It was really great this year to reconnect with people I haven't seen in a while. It's fun to spend a day with like-minded people and Josee (the host) always great speakers and fantastic projects for us to do and today was no exception!

I got to pick up the Wow swap items for my upline and there were so many inspiring things. It's amazing what people can come up with.

This is the card I swapped. I got some fantastic swaps back that I can't wait to show my club. Lots of great ideas and things to try.

This card was a quick and easy one to do. I did a whole sheet at a time of the saffron, stamping it with various images from Stitched Exotics and in various colours. Then I did a whole sheet of the mustard using my jumbo It's Beautiful wheel (which I got for free when they had the promotion!). The main flower is also from Stitched Exotics and I stamped it in versamark, added Heat-and-stick powder, heated it, added fine cosmo glitter, heat set it, and cut it out. It's popped up on dimensionals. The sentiment is from Priceless.

Thanks for looking!

All supplies Stampin' Up: Stamps: Stitched Exotics, It's Beautiful jumbo wheel, Priceless; Ink: versamark, Apricot Appeal, More Mustard, Elegant Eggplant; Paper: So Saffron, More Mustard, Elegant Eggplant; Other: Heat and Stick Powder, Fine Cosmo glitter.

It's a dinosaur pop-up party!

Here's my unsuccessful entry to the monthly demonstrator stamping contest at Stampin' Up. This was entered in the 3D project category. There were a couple of months where nobody won due to nobody entering, so I thought I should give it a whirl just in case I could win by acclamation. (The prize is 3 free stamp sets!)

This card was fairly easy to make, just time-consuming. The little scene is actually a square, scored in the middle in both directions, and cut on one score-line to the centre point. You then adhere two of the quadrants together to form the "ground". (I got the idea from this VSN challenge from March 2007 that challenged people to make a 3D room card.

Unlike the VSN challenge scene, I added another score line on the diagonal to allow this to fold flat to fit in an envelope. The dinos are popped up in traditional fashion using wild wasabi paper strips to camouflage in with the background. I'll try to put together a tutorial to explain how to do this. It's not tricky and it's so cute how they pop up!

This little scene needed something in the foreground so I made a pond with some greenery that's actually the the treetops cut out. The t-rex is holding a birthday flag for the birthday dino (the one in the hat). I was quite pleased with this effort, and it was quite cute IRL.

Thanks for looking! Let me know if you try a scene like this too. There are so many possibilities!

All supplies Stampin' Up: Stamps: Prehistoric Pals, Amazing to Zany; Ink: Pumpkin Pie, Bravo Burgundy, Blue Bayou, Wild Wasabi, Handsome Hunter, Chocolate Chip; Paper: Whisper White, Soft Sky, textured Wild Wasabi, Wild Wasabi, Chocolate Chip, Summer Sun; Other: 1/2" circle punch, Stampin' Snips.

Riot of Petals Thank You

I'm sitting here enjoying some Bob Dylan while I stamp (one of my favourites, Subterranean Homesick Blues). I have a huge backlog of stamping to do (now there's a good problem to have!) but I also have other things needing doing urgently. I guess that's the nature of life. And I have just been asked to conjure up some squares for a funeral on Thursday. Sounds like a job for my two little bakers.

Here's a card I made today using Riot of Petals. I really like that stamp. It's a big one so I just used a portion of it here, and coloured it with mellow moss, so saffron, blush blossom, groovy guava, and pumpkin pie markers. The layout is really simple, just a torn background strip and the sentiment stamped in some white space. It's nice to do something quick and easy but still really pretty. I like more complicated cards too, but I just spent the weekend on a scrapbooking retreat so I'm feeling a little bit designed-out.

It was a great time and I got 16 layouts done and I won a great folder-tab punch and got to catch up with a good friend that I don't see very often. So all in all it was a good weekend, but I came home a bit tired. DH and the DD's held down the fort here and had a good time. On Friday night I left them a slow-cooker full of chicken soup, which had celery root and parsnip (and one carrot) in it for vegetables. On the down side this combination resulted in a fairly monochromatic look to the soup, but on the up side, DD#2 thought all the vegetables were "pea-totos" and hoovered them all up with alacrity. I have a feeling I'll be giving her more celeriac under the guise of pea-toto more often. DD#1 liked it too. It was an easy recipe that everyone liked that tasted good - that's a keeper! The secret ingredients were organic chicken stock from Costco and Mt. Scio savoury from Newfoundland (yum!). Oh yeah, and pea-totos.

Thanks for looking!

All supplies Stampin' Up: Stamps: Riot of Petals, Amazing to Zany; Paper: Whisper White, Pumpkin Pie, Mellow Moss, Apricot Appeal; Ink: Basic Gray, Pumpkin Pie; Other: Stampin' Write markers (mellow moss, so saffron, blush blossom, groovy guava, and pumpkin pie)

Fresh and fun thank you card

Here's a card I made a while ago but didn't want to post until it had been given to the intended recipient. I gave it to a hostess who had a class for her friends. It was a fun card to make since I (a) love colouring in, (b) love the colour scheme, (c) love glitter and (d) love the new rub-ons.

I coloured the images in with an aquapainter and blender pen and ink from my inkpad lids. The dragonfly's wings are coated with the green fine cosmo glitter. I made a matching nugget box to go with it, with the same image (cut down) on top and made from Blue Bayou designer print paper. I enhanced the nuggets with Avery labels and a stamp - memory fails me about which one, but probably the butterfly from Priceless or a flower.

All supplies Stampin' Up!: Stamp: A Little Bit of Happiness, Friendship Blooms (SAB); Ink: Basic Gray, Soft Sky, Wild Wasabi, Blue Bayou, So Saffron; Paper: Whisper White, Blue Bayou, Soft Sky; Other: Wild Wasabi double-stitched ribbon, SAB rub-ons.

Birthday card for class

Well, I meant to do a lovely green card yesterday in honour of St. Patrick's Day but with one thing and another I didn't get to it. I did make green eggs for lunch for my girls though and remembered to send DD1 to school with a green shirt on. Aside from these festivities, I was busy finishing up my card designs for a class I'm doing on Saturday. I've got them finished now, and this is one of them. (There are three: a birthday, thank you and all-purpose.)

I wanted to show the ladies how to use the wheel and handle on one of the cards since the current special is "Free Wheeling", where if you buy one of the selected stamp sets, you get the coordinating wheel free. The wheel shown here isn't one of the free choices, but it will show them how quick and easy the wheels are to use.

I used the Petals wheel and Tempting Turquoise ink to make the background and added a layer of Old Olive and Taken With Teal. The focal image is stamped on Whisper White and I inked the stamp using my Rose Red and Old Olive markers. I stamped "happy" on top in turquoise, and "birthday" on top of that in Purely Pomegranate. I finished off the card with some accents: magenta fine cosmo glitter on the round part of the flower, and some pomegranate ribbon. (The stitched ribbon is shown here, but my ladies will use the polka dot ribbon from the super-yummy Sherbet Ribbon Originals. Both look nice, but I want to use my Sherbet ribbon before it dies of old age and neglect.) I'll give the ladies the opportunity to stamp the nice birthday sentiment from Full of Life (Occasions Mini) on the inside. It says, "May every part of your birthday have happy in it!". I don't often stamp on the inside of cards, but this set is going to change all that I think!

That's it for this card - so quick and easy! I like that colour combination, but then I like anything with Purely Pomegranate on it. Thanks for looking.

PS. I fixed the recipe amounts from my last post - I had forgotten to put the units in for some of the items. Oops! I'll be giving a year's free subscription to my blog to the person who noticed ;-) (This is a joke - all blog subscriptions are free - you just click on the link in the sidebar and follow the instructions and you'll get an email whenever I post something.)

All supplies Stampin' Up!: Stamps: Polka Dots and Paisley, Petals Jumbo Wheel, Everyday Flexible Phrases; Ink: Tempting Turquoise, Purely Pomegranate; Paper: Whisper White, Purely Pomegranate, Old Olive, Tempting Turquoise, Taken with Teal; Other: Purely Pomegranate Double-Stitched Ribbon, Cosmo Fine Glitter, Glue Pen, Old Olive and Rose Red markers.