Stamp Review Crew – Crafting Forever

Welcome back to another edition of the Stamp Review Crew! This week we’re featuring the fabulous Crafting Forever stamp set.

If you don’t know, the Stamp Review Crew is a group of International Stampin’ Up! demonstrators that show one Stampin’ Up! stamp set at a time, every first and third Monday’s of the month. By focusing on a single step, we give you tons of ideas and inspiration for the set if you have it, and may just entice you to buy it if you don’t. You’ll want to visit each blog to see all the creative ideas.

I love this stamp set – it has something for just about every kind of crafter. I was fortunate enough to receive this stamp set ahead of the On Stage event in April. I made several cards using this set to be displayed at the event.

First up are the pens. I love that each pen has a design to color in. Here I used Daffodil Delight, Bermuda Bay and Real Red. I also used some of the new Bermuda Bay stitched satin ribbon that was part of my catalog sneak peek.

Next up is the pot of paint brushes. Yes – I cut around all those brushes, but it really wasn’t that bad.

The last one is my favorite. It’s not really obvious in the picture, but I stamped the small jar from the Jars of Love set on a piece of window sheet. I stamped the wooden spool twice and colored in the thread in Real Red and Daffodil Delight. The final peg I stamped and wrapped bakers twine around and twirled the end off the card. I really like the way it turned out.

I hope you like my cards. Now hop on to Yapha’s blog to see what fun projects she has to show. Thanks for visiting!

Stamp Review Crew – This Little Piggy

Hello and welcome to the Stamp Review blog hop. It’s been awhile since I hopped with this talented group of demonstrators. I’m so happy to be joining in this hop. I’m the end of the line this time, so if you’re hopping in order, you just came from Cindy Elam’s Heart’s Delight blog.  She has a distinctive style I just love.

This week we’re featuring the This Little Piggy stamp set. I fell in love with this set when it came out in the catalog this past June. I was so glad for this hop and the chance to get inky with it.

My first card is a tri-shutter card. You can find a tutorial for it here.  Tri-shutter cards have that real wow factor, but they’re really quite simple to make.

Closed, the card is a normal A2 size:

Here it is out of the envelope:

And completely stretched out:

The paper is from the Delightful Daisy dsp pack. I did a little creative inking and masking to get the sentiments and piggies to look like I wanted. I like that they’re poking out beyond the white card stock.

I stamped each pig twice, cutting the second image out and sponging it with Powder Pink. Then I glued the colored image on the stamped background image, letting the pigs overlap the side of the paper.

When I was going through my stamps to get my piggies, I came across another set that gave me a fun idea for a second card. Remember the old Mystery Date game? Sometimes you opened the door and a handsome guy was waiting on the other side.

And sometimes you got this guy:

This just cracks me up. I used the stamps and framelits from the At Home With You bundle. I love that the framelits include a rectangle that cuts the door out so you can open it up.

I just love this piggy set and I hope you like my cards. Now it’s time to hop on to Rochelle Blok’s blog – The Stampin Blok – to see what she has in store for you. Thanks for stopping by!

                      

 

Display Stamper – Lemon Punch

How sad is this? I haven’t posted in ages. It’s been so long in fact, I forgot my password and had to reset it. On top of that, the WordPress interface has completely changed since the last time I used it. But I really want to get back into posting – I have so many cards to share with you. So bear with me while I go through the learning curve of figuring out how to do this again. 🙂

This past April, I attended the Stampin’ Up On Stage event in Savannah. I had such a great time! Two of my downline, Carol and Vera, attended with me. And my parents and husband came along and we made a long weekend family trip of it. So much fun!

The cherry on the top was that I was selected to be one of six display stampers at the event. A couple of months before the event, Stampin’ Up sent me a box of goodies – stamps, papers, and embellishments from the upcoming annual catalog. One of the first things I used was the lemon punch – no matching stamp set, so I really had to use my imagination to come up something.

First up was this card:

The paper is from the retired Fruit Stand designer series paper (was current at the time). The colors and fun design was perfect for the card I created with the punch.

Next up was a “framed” design I created using the new Color Theory designer paper for the background.

This was so much fun to make. I love the paint chip look of the paper. I shaped and sponged each of the lemons and leaves that I cut out with the punch to give them a cool 3D shape. The flowers are made with the now retired Petite Petals punch, with one of the centers from the Botanical Blossom Builder framelits.

I now have the stamp set that goes with this punch and I’ve made some cute cards with it, but this framed art remains my favorite so far.

I’ll be back soon (I promise) with more of the cards I made for the On Stage event. Thanks for stopping by!

Beautiful You!

Happy New Year! It’s been awhile since I last posted. I’m hoping to do better in 2017.

I’m kicking the year off with a post about one of my favorite stamp sets from the new Occasions catalog – Beautiful You! This set is especially great for water coloring using the new water color pencils (also in the catalog). But in our class tonight, we did a different kind of “water coloring”.

We used one of the larger acrylic blocks and applied three colors of ink to it.Using a Stampin’ Up spritzer, we sprtized the block 5-6 times and waited a minute for the colors to blend. Then we “stamped” water color paper with the acrylic block.

I love this technique. It’s not new – it’s bounced around on different blogs and Youtube for several years. However, I could never quite get it to look good. But I love the look and decided to play with it until I got it right. I watched several videos and experimented until I got it looking like I wanted. Here are some things that worked for me:

• Use water color paper or Shimmery White card stock. These stand up to water better than regular cardstock. And you’re going to use a lot of water.
• I found that using the new foam ink pads worked better than the old linen pads. I also read you can use the Stampin’ Write markers, but that didn’t work out well for me.
• In addition to spritzing the block after inking it up, I also spritzed the paper. This helped to move and blend the colors.
• I placed the paper on top of the Stampin’ Up paper piercing foam sheet for a little more give.
• Take time to press the block firmly on the paper, moving your finger over the block in order to get all the colors transferred to the paper.

Here’s a closer look at the green card. We used Bermuda Bay, Marina Mist and Wild Wisabi. I thought the image was a little light so I took a chance and re-stamped it. I was a little off, but I kind of like it – it adds to the blurry look of the card.

We also made this version with Crushed Curry, Tangerine Tango and Sweet Sugarplum. This was the first card I made and the colors didn’t blend quite as much as the green card. I really like these colors together, though.

The fun thing about this technique is that no too backgrounds end up the same. Which is your favorite?

Pick Your Pet

My poor blog – It has languished all summer while I was crazy busy doing other things, including 3 car trips to Alabama in a month and a half. Now my youngest is at Marion Military Institute starting his first year in college. Life has settled down, at least a little, so maybe I’ll have a little more time to devote to my blog.

I had to write today because I’m so excited about my newest class – Pick Your Pet. It’s based on two adorable sets in the main catalog – Bella and Friends and Pretty Kitty.

This is a product-based class where you choose from one of the stamp sets and get the set, instructions, and supplies to make three cute cards.

Here’s Bella and her friends. This cute puppy is actually modeled after the real live fur baby of Angie Judah, a Stampin’ Up million dollar sales achiever. One of the things you get in recognition of this milestone is to design a stamp set. (The bird is Skittles, also a member of the family.)

I’m more of a cat-lover, but this little guy is so cute. There are so many possibilities with this stamp set.

 

I used the same card layouts to create the Pretty Kitty cards. Aren’t they sweet?

The class was last Saturday and it was very well received. It was so successful in fact, I’m offering it as a Class to Go.

Are you interested? The cost is $30 (plus shipping). Deadline to order is September 15. Be sure to specify which stamp set you want.

 

Lots of Llamas

In my last post, I shared pictures of our first mini stamp camp. We had so much fun making birthday cards. I used the Birthday Fiesta set to make this cute card:

It’s such a fun set and has matching framelits (love that!). The Festive designer series paper is also fun and full of bright colors like the papers in these cards.

 

I like to show several ways to use a stamp set so I put together a display board with the following cards:

 

 

For this card, I cased a gift bag in the catalog. There are so many great ideas in the catalog – you don’t have to recreate them exactly (although you can). Just use them as a starting point for your own creations.

 

I used some of the designer series paper to add a guitar to the card above. Like the embossing on the Pumpkin Pie paper? It’s the Festive embossing folder designed to go with this stamp set.

 

 

And one last one – another llama. This one sports a neck tie and a jaunty sombrero (cut from the dsp).

 

I hope these give you some ideas for this stamp set, because I think you need it!

Birthday Bash Mini Stamp Camp

Yesterday we held our first Stamp Camp. I was joined by my two good friends and downline, Vera and Carol. We had 3 tables set up and each participant made two cards at each table. We also had lots of card samples displayed, gave out catalogs, and at the end, we  had cake for Vera’s birthday. Fifteen ladies joined us for an afternoon of making birthday cards.

I’ll show our cards in another post, but today I want to show you some of the fun we had:

Lining up at the Big Shot table.

Busy creating at Carol’s table.

We’re using the llama set at my table.

Hard at work at Vera’s table.

We got very positive feedback from everyone who came. Did you miss out? We’ll be doing it again at our Christmas in July Stamp Camp next month. Hope to see you there!

 

Palm Beach Glam

I live right down the road from Palm Beach. Seriously, it’s about a 20 minute drive down the highway and across a bridge. I’m there hobnobbing with the rich and famous all the time. NOT. But my daughter was part of a volleyball club that practiced at a gym there for awhile. Twice a week, I’d trek up to the island and drop her off.Then I’d drive around and try to peak at all the houses. Most were pretty well hidden behind tall walls, but it’s still a fun sight-seeing trip.

The new stamp set, Pop of Paradise, makes me think of Palm Beach Glam. Think black and white stripes with gold, deep green tropical leaves, and pops of bright pink. And of course, flamingos! It doesn’t get more Florida than that. I knew this would be the first stamp set I got from the new catalog!

And here’s the glamorous card I made with the set:

I used paper from the Pop of Pink designer series paper, as well as a gold foil sheet and some of the gold thread. Ink colors used are Melon Mambo, Emerald Envy, Garden Green, and Momento Black.

I’m partial to flamingos, so I’m sure you’ll be seeing more cards made with this set. What do you think?

Stamp Review Crew – SAB!

 

Hello and welcome to a special edition of the Stamp Review Crew. Our regular hops feature a stamp set from the Annual catalog, but today we’re featuring Sale-A-Bration.  It’s a bit of a free for all – we get to pick the set(s) to feature. I have several I’m featuring today. First up is the Flowering Fields set.

 

For this set I CASE’d a set of note cards I saw on the Facebook blog. In addition to the Flowering Fields set, I used the Wildflower Fields designer series paper.

 

 

I love this set of outline flower stamps. For these cards, I colored the stamps with markers and then used a water brush to fill in the outlines. These little cards are quick and easy to make.

 

 

I used our envelope framelits to line the envelopes with more of the designer paper.

 

Next I combined the Hello stamp set with the What I Love set. Again, I used paper from the Wildflower Fields paper pack. The idea for the layout came from the Freshly Made Sketches website.

 

 

Finally, I have a card I made with the cute airplane set – The Sky’s The Limit. I think today is the last day this set is available, but it’s a favorite with all my customers. This card was inspired by Mary Brown’s square card. I love the graphic look of the plane with the red paper and black and white designer paper.

 

 

I hope you like my projects for today.  Now it’s time to continue on with the hop. Next up is Linda’s site – can’t wait to see the great projects she has for us.

 

    

Stamp Review Crew – I Think You’re Great

 

Hello and welcome to another edition of the Stamp Review Crew. If you’re not familiar with our group – we’re a team of Stampin’ Up demonstrators from around the globe who get together on the first and third Monday of each month for a blog hop. Each time we feature one of the stamp sets in the catalog to give you lots of ideas on ways to use the set. With so many creative demonstrators, you’ll always find great out-of-the-box ideas for these sets.

 

This time around we’re featuring the I Think You’re Great stamp set. If you’re hopping in order, you just came from Rochelle’s blog. She always has such fresh ideas to share. You can continue to hop in order or click on the banner above to see all the links. There are no rules 🙂

 

This set is tailor-made for the kissing technique, which I’m sure you’ll see on one of the hop stops this week. There are 2 background images you can ink up and then “kiss” against one of the other stamps in the set. But I also like the idea of using the background stamps to dress up a punched piece. So I stamped the swirled background in Blushing Bride onto white card stock and then punched out hearts using the Sweetheart punch.

 

 

I also stamped the swirls image onto white card stock to create a strip across the bottom. The hearts are popped up on Blushing Bride paper, which I sponged around the edges. I also used a strip of the new Blushing Bride glimmer paper – it’s so pretty IRL.

 

I hope you like my card. The next stop is Tanya’s blog. Hop on over and see what she has in store for you.