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This Really was a Stamp-a-Stack!
Aloha, all!
As I shared with you yesterday, I held a Stamp-a-Stack just for myself earlier this week in an effort to make AND send out a nice number of Easter Cards. In a Stamp-a-Stack, at least the way I do them, I have two or three basic layouts and papers and card stock cut to the size of a sketch that I've made for myself. Then I stamp and mix and match the colors of the papers and card stock with Stampin' Up! inks.
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Here are three of the ten cards that I made with today's layout. All of them use stamps from the Stampin' Up! Stamp Set, Everybunny. I just love this little bunny up in his Hot Egg Balloon throwing Easter flowers down to us all. Fun image! The basic idea for this layout came from a much more detailed and carefully constructed card by fellow Stampin' Up! demonstrator, Mary Jo Price-Williams. I would love to have CASEd her card completely, but I just didn't have the time – or the energy! – to get that detailed!
As you can see, each card, though it has the same layout, has different colors highlighted. The only thing that's the same throughout is the Poppy Parade that I used for the mats for all three of the layered sections. The other colors are the same colors as I showed off in yesterday's card – Peach Parfait, So Saffron and Wild Wasabi. And all of the Designer Series Papers are from the same paper set that I used yesterday, Just Add Cake. The result of using different colors and papers for the same basic layout keeps the whole project from being too boring (and I get bored easily!).
The only "embellishment" that I used for these cards is the texturizing with the Perfect Polka Dots Sizzix Embossing Folder. These slip right into Stampin' Up!'s Medium Envelopes, and definitely require NO extra postage, as might a card with too many brads and ribbons.
Subscribe to the comments for this postCute Bunny for a Little Girl!
Aloha, all!
I was bound and determined that Easter was not going to get by without my having made – AND SENT OUT! – Easter cards! Yes, I made lots of Valentine and St. Patty's Day cards. But most of them are still sitting in my stash of unsent greeting cards. I am very pleased to say that every Easter card I made this year has been put into the mail! Yay!!!!
And, of course, most of my cards this Easter were made with the Stamp Set, Everybunny, and/or its companion Stampin' Around Wheel, Every Egg. This little Girl Bunny is just one of the cards that I made this week, and it's on its way to one of my granddaughters in North Carolina. I made another card with the same layout, and both of them used the Designer Series Paper set, Just Add Cake. I love the colors in that set, and it's got some designs that are so flexible that you can use them for any brightly-colored card you might want to make.
I colored in the little Girl Bunny with her Easter Basket using Poppy Parade, Wild Wasabi, Peach Parfait, and So Saffron Stampin' Write Markers. For her dress, I stamped the image on some of the Just Add Cake paper and then cut out the dress – hey, paper dolls!! Ooooh, I loved those when I was a little girl. I guess I still do!
Since I was on a mission to make a lot of cards AND get them mailed in a fairly short period of time, I basically set myself up for what we demonstrators call a "Stamp a Stack." Lots of cards with the same materials and basic design. Tomorrow I'll show off some of the others that I made.
And because this was such an easy card to make and since there are tons of Stampin' Up! rubber stamps that would fit in that little square, I've drawn the sketch out for you to use, too! Have some fun with it!!
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Think Spring!
Aloha, all!
I spent most of the early part of this week making cards that highlight Spring or Easter! For these few days of blog posts, I'm going to focus on the cards that I made from the Easter Stamp Set, Everybunny. It is SUCH a cute set, and I especially like it because it's one of those sets that I can play like I'm a child again and really try to color inside the lines!
As soon as I saw that cute little egg popping up from the flower pot and pretending to be a spring flower, I just knew that I wanted a row of them across a landscape oriented card. My intention was to color each of the eggs differently. But in testing the colors out on scratch paper, I decided that I really like this version of the colors. So they're all alike, little eggs in a row!
The colors come from the Designer Series Paper set, Cheerful Treat, which is a hostess set of papers (only $8 for Stampin' Up! orders of $150 or more!). I featured another card made with floral papers from this set yesterday. But there's a delightful striped design in this set, too, and this seemed like a perfect card with which to use it! There's a small sheet of one of the Melon Mambo single-color designs that forms the bottom mat for the front of this card. I try whenever possible to use a couple of layers of Designer Series Papers – which is much lighter in weight than card stock - when I'm making a multi-layered card to keep the card's weight down, especially when the card base is Whisper White (as is this one) or Very Vanilla. That card stock is lighter in weight than the rest of Stampin' Up!s Card Stock, and I just don't like to weigh it down too much.
Oh, and the colors in the eggs and their little flower pots are: Melon Mambo, Pink Pirouette, Bashful Blue, and Lucky Limeade. And, of course, I had to add in some ribbon to tie the card all together! For this card, I used the Melon Mambo 1/2" Scallop Dots Ribbon and I think it's just the perfect accent for the cute little eggs, which have some Melon Mambo dots of their own!
I smile every time I see cards that I'm making with this stamp set – Everybunny – and all the papers that I've pulled out to use with it. I hope you're having the kind of week that makes you smile at all the projects on which you're working!
Congratulations, Michelle Laycock!
Aloha, all!
Here it is another Tuesday and time for the biweekly Stampin' Up! Only Challenge on SUOChallenges.com. But this just isn't any old challenge week. Nope, it's a week when we on the SUO Challenge Design Team are congratulating one of our own – Michelle Laycock – on reaching her 10th Anniversary as a Stampin' Up! demonstrator.
Congratulations, Michelle!
And, of course, we were to make a Card of Congratulations for the occasion! There are going to be lots of opportunities for needing Congratulations cards as the Spring progresses, so we challenge those who like to participate in challenges to make such a card and enter it in the Stampin' Up! Only Challenge this week. What fun for all of us!
For my card today, I wanted to use bright and cheery colors. And I also wanted to try to use up some of the Designer Series Papers I have hoarded since the beginning of the current Stampin' Up! year because I'm going to have one less month to use them this year. Stampin' Up!s new annual Idea Book and Catalog is going to be starting on June 1st this year instead of July 1st! So the rush is on!! The paper that I ended up choosing for this was the Hostess set of Designer Series Papers, Cheerful Treats. The colors that I used to highlight the Designer Series Papers are Melon Mambo (the bright pink), Concord Crush (the gorgeous grape color – which will retire as an "In Color" with this catalog), and Lucky Limeade (the fab green, which will be staying with us for another year).
I used two stamp sets for this card. The strip on the top is from the set that coordinates with the Designer Series Paper and it's called Borderlines. There are three stamps in this set and each of them is replicated in one color or another on the Designer Series Paper. The Congratulations greeting is from the set called Curly Cute. Love all the curls in the five greetings in this set!
As is so often the case, I tied this card together with some ribbon, in this case some Concord Crush Stitched Poly Ribbon. I'm almost out of the ribbon, but was really glad to have enough for Michelle's card! Oh, and there are some of those twinkly little Basic Rhinestones top and bottom, too. Gotta have some glitz for a Congratulations card!
I also (at long last) have a sketch for this card! I had to measure the heck out of those strips to make the design work as I had envisioned it when I first started. But I had a blast making this card for Michelle, and I hope you'll have fun with the sketch making a fun card for a friend or family member of yours! One thing you might note is that the ribbon covers the bottom of the square on the left and the top of the square on the right. You could certainly make those squares shorter if you wanted to use a different size ribbon.
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Some Fun New Stampin’ Up! Products!
Aloha, all!
Here we are at the beginning of April, and what a month it will be in Stampin' Up! land!! To begin, we are now able to order some products that will be in the 2012-2013 Idea Book & Catalog. The line of products is called "Summer Smooches." But I'm not having any problem in using it right now and right here, in the middle of Spring and with Easter and Spring Birthdays coming up!
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Doesn't this look as bright and cheerful as those daffodils and crocuses popping their heads up this time of the year? I do miss having that experience living out here in the tropics (but I don't miss the snow that precedes them!).
I just love all the colors that make up the set of Designer Series Papers called (as you might imagine) Summer Smooches. There is a stamp set that goes with this product line called Bright Blossoms, and the little leaves that are stamped beneath the brad is one of the stamps. The Summer Smooches Button Brads, however, while they're available now – and during the entire month of April – will ONLY be offered during April. Yes, it goes wonderfully with the new papers and stamps and so forth. But it's a special JUST for this promotion during April. You can see a list and pictures of all the items in this month-long promotion by clicking the link at the top of the right column on this page.
And, yes, there is ribbon and I'm sure you'll be seeing it here at some point during the month. I have used it in a project that I'm going to highlight in my next newsletter as part of my upcoming classes (and yes, finally, I have figured out how I'm going to be doing my Newsletters going forward – so you won't have to wait another 3 months for one!).
Now off to make a few Easter cards! I'm definitely NOT missing Easter cards this year because I just love Stampin' Up!'s Easter Sets! I hope to be able to post quite a few during the week!
In Sympathy
Aloha, all!
A good friend of a neighbor and customer of mine passed away this week, and she asked me to make a special card for his family. As we went through the stamps that I thought might be appropriate, she decided that she needed two cards rather than one – that's easy to do because there are so many beautiful Stampin' Up! stamp sets and colors that I can use to make lovely sympathy cards.
For the first card, I used the appropriately named stamp set, Love and Sympathy. I particularly like the flower in this stamp set as it makes a beautiful watercolor-style image and all I have to do is color the stems and flower with different colored Stampin' Write Markers. For this card, I used Lucky Limeade and Wisteria Wonder for the flower, and carried the Wisteria Wonder color through the rest of the card. The ribbon is the Wisteria Wonder 3/8" Ruffled Ribbon, and I used Wisteria Wonder Card Stock for the card front, texturizing it with the Perfect Polka Dots Embossing Folder. To mat and accent both the stamped layer and the main card front layer, I used Concord Crush Card Stock. The light colored card stock is Confetti White, which adds a natural look to the card overall. Before I put the card together, I printed a personal message from my neighbor to her friends on the inside. (You might recall that I made a lovely Sympathy Card not too long ago, and that might have been a perfect card for this occasion – except that my neighbor wanted to have that personal message printed on the inside of the card and there was already a message on the inside of the other card.)
The second card has several of the same features of the first card, but an entirely different feeling to it. It's a bit less subdued than the first card, and I think that's because of the large amount of white space on the stamped layer. I fussed around with this a bit, using some stamps on a vellum overlay to give me an idea of how the finished product might look if I added a stamp or some embellishments in that empty space. But when it was all over, I decided I just liked the little sentiment from Teeny Tiny Wishes out there all by itself. The flowers from the stamp set, Bordering on Romance, and using Bashful Blue and Pretty in Pink, with a bit of Certainly Celery for the leaves, seemed to be a nice bouquet of solace under the sentiment.
The features that I repeated from the first card were the dark mat, in this case Night of Navy, and the main layer texturized with the Perfect Polka Dots Embossing Folder. I stamped this card on the inside with a sentiment from Petite Pairs and the smallest flower from this stamp set to carry the design from the card front to the inside.
I hope that, for the rest of this week leading up to Easter, I'll be making cards that are much more cheerful!
What a Beautiful Gift!
Aloha, all!
I had the wonderful experience this week of meeting up with a fellow Stampin' Up! demonstrator who was here in Hawaii with her family. Marlene Dirkes and her family are only on our island for a couple of days and we had been crossing our fingers that we'd be able to meet when they drove to my side of the Big Island. Yay, it worked out!!
Of course, when Stampin' Up! demos have a meeting like this, we LOVE to share our projects as gifts! And today I'm going to share with you what she brought for me. My, oh, my is this purse set just gorgeous (and it just matches some of the Pink Hibiscus in our garden!)
Marlene made this purse using the Stampin' Up! Flirtatious Designer Fabric. You can see all three of the patterns in this fabric set in this project, which includes the clutch purse and tissue holder that are shown in this photograph as well as a key fob that matches the handle of the purse. I am SOOOO excited to have this wonderful gift from Marlene, especially as I don't own a sewing machine that would be capable of handling this project (I have a mini only).
Along with the fabric, Marlene also used one of Stampin' Up!'s Fluerettes II, which she dyed with Pretty in Pink ink to match the purse, and attached with one of the buttons from the Twitterpated Designer Buttons set.
As we near the end of Sale-a-bration (tomorrow night!) I'd like to remind you that this fabric is one of the products that you can get FOR FREE by spending $50 on any products in our Idea Book & Catalog or in our Occasions Mini Catalog. This mini catalog is where Marlene found the Twitterpated buttons!
You might be interested in where Marlene found this delightful pattern – it's online and it's free! Just click here for the pattern. Another fellow Stampin' Up! demonstrator, Dawn Olchefske, has on her website a pattern for the tissue holder – using the same fabric used by Marlene! I have just GOT to get back to sewing with all this fab Stampin' Up! Fabric! Maybe I'll buy myself one for my half-birthday in August (I've always wanted to celebrate a half-birthday; maybe this year will be it!)
I've had a smile on my face all week thinking about this lovely purse. I hope whatever you're doing brings a smile to your face this weekend, too!
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A Bit of An Addendum
As I was straightening up a bit after some of my week's work, I came across this photo that I'd taken as I was planning how to stage the photo of the purse that Marlene gave me. I swear that purse was not on my work table more than 60 seconds when someone else in my household decided it was hers and not mine! Of course I had to take a photo of Cholla the Cat with the purse (I shooed her off right after photo. Her majesty was NOT pleased!)
Just One More Week for Sale-A-Bration!
Aloha, all!
I just received my latest box of Stampin' Up! products in a box that contains lots of FREE Stampin' Up! Sale-a-bration products that my customers earned each time they ordered $50 worth of products. There's also a Stampin' Up! Shopping Bag in the box that the hostess for this order will receive FOR FREE because the order was over $150! And there's even a few things for me in this box. Now if I could just get to it to open it!!!
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I hope that this will not be the LAST box that arrives for my customers during Sale-a-bration! But you only have one more week (and a couple of days) before it's over for yet another year.
For the next few posts I'm going to be featuring some of those products that you can order for free – and you've already seen quite a few over the last month or two! Don't be disappointed – and I promise that Cholla will NOT be allowed to sit on your box for any length of time after it arrives. (I do have to have a talk with her about this.)
Hello Spring!
Aloha, all!
Today I'm welcoming Spring in my role as a member of the Stampin' Up! Only Challenge Design Team! But I'm also taking a challenge from one of my online Stampin' Up! Demonstrator groups, SUDSOL, to make a card using only those Stampin' Up! products that you can find in the New Demonstrator Starter Kit. The one big thing that this particular challenge meant to me was that there was to be no use of the Sizzix Big Shot or such fab Stampin' Up! tools as the Simply Scored! Whoa, that slowed me down a bit! But then I refocused and realized that this was a challenge to be clean and simple with my design. Really clean! No sponges or sponge daubers, either!
But there were plenty of stamp sets and colors from which to choose! I chose for my project colors from the Stampin' Up! Subtles Collection of colors and the Stamp Set, Easy Events. A new demonstrator can choose 4 stamp pads and two Markers. Oops! I used 3 markers! Man, that challenge was harder than I thought! Well, I'm going to just assume that the new demonstrator who did this project for a workshop already had some Stampin' Up! products in her craft room ; ) .
Another product that could be used for this card was a punch, and I used the default punch that was on the list – the Cupcake Punch. I have seen so many people using the frosted part of the cupcake to make clouds, and now I had an opportunity to do it myself. Woo-hoo! Before I punched the clouds, though, I used the "hello" stamp that was on one of the stamps in the Easy Events set, though not on the stamp with the flowers. Each of the 8 stamps in that set has a picture and a greeting. As there are many times such as these that I want to use an image with the greeting from another stamp, I cut the greetings apart from the images. If you're using the clear mount stamp set, it's easy to just cut the greeting and mount it on a clear block when you're ready to use it. For my wood mount stamp set, I mounted each of the greetings on the end of the wood block on which I mounted the image.
And I was so glad that ribbon was in the Starter Kit! Because you know I love to tie my cards all together with a ribbon! For this card, I chose the Pretty in Pink 5/8" Satin Ribbon. To get the bow oriented in the direction I wanted, I cut a 5" strip of the ribbon and wrapped it around the top two layers, adhering it on the back with Stampin' Up!'s monoadhesive, SNAIL (yes, it's in the Started Kit!). Then I cut a longer length of ribbon and tied a bow around the strip of ribbon on the front. Another nice feature of this way of constructing a bow is that you can slip it up or down on the straight piece until you get it right where you want!
This was my first project of the week, and it certainly provides a bright beginning for Spring! I hope your Spring is bright and that you'll have a great week with your own paper crafting! And if you're in Australia or New Zealand, where this is the first day of Autumn, I certainly hope that you're enjoying cool days and gorgeous colors to brighten your days, too!
Making a Difficult Project Easy!
Aloha, all!
I made this project originally for a blog hop that featured Stampin' Up!'s digital papercrafting product, My Digital Studio. Even though the blog hop is over, I still enjoy showing off this fun Stampin' Up! product, and hope you enjoy this blog post!
My project for today is one that I would absolutely never have considered undertaking with paper! I saw an ad in a magazine that caught my eye in an instant – big bold colors and a graphic design that really appealed to me. I immediately wanted to try to make a greeting card inspired by the ad. While I do this a lot, I just could not see myself cutting out all those little strips of paper, let alone lining them up and gluing them to a card without pulling my hair out!
My Digital Studio to the rescue! With My Digital Studio, I could start laying out strips of digital paper and resizing them – longer, shorter, wider, thinner – with no trouble – and no wasted paper!
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I began by opening a blank 12" x 12" page, and making some horizontal digital strips that looked to me like they would be a good approximation of the pattern in the model's shorts. For this picture, I used Pacific Point, Calypso Coral, Night of Navy, Whisper White, and Peach Parfait.
The next step was to make the same pattern in vertical strips, and then arrange them all together into a pattern that would be the basis for my diagonal design. I then "grouped" all the strips together, rotated the group 45 degrees and exported that page to a .jpeg file.
Working on another page of the My Digital Studio document, I located my new .jpeg picture file (using the browse feature), created a photo box; dragged the diagonal picture into it; and cropped the picture to make a neat square.
Now that I had the basic design, I made three copies of it and arranged them into the large square that you see in my finished project – and it was just what I wanted for my bright and cheerful Birthday Card!
There just isn't enough space in one little blog post to make this a full tutorial. But the great thing about My Digital Studio is that there is a whole online community that is dedicated to helping all of us learn all the ins and outs of this fun – and powerful! – program. It's called "MyDigitalStudio.net" and is open to anyone who wants to learn more about My Digital Studio and share projects with the rest of the community. And there's always your own Stampin' Up! Demonstrator who's there to help you, too, especially if he or she is certified in My Digital Studio.
If you have any questions about My Digital Studio, please let me know! I've received Stampin' Up!'s certification and I do work with it a lot. If you've got a puzzle, it will be a lot of fun for me to try to solve it – if I don't know the answer already!
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