Color Fusers Blog Hop – February 2017!

Aloha, all!

     Welcome once again to my favorite monthly blog hop, the Color Fusers Blog Hop, in which we are given 4 or 5 colors and challenged to use at least 3 of them in our blog post for the day. This month's color challenge is to use:

     The list of all this month's blogs is at the end of this post. I hope you will visit them all because there are some fab projects! Now on to my project for this post.

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     What a great color combo – and Stampin' Up! itself came up with it first in the fun Cupcakes & Carousels Designer Series Paper Stack. All four colors are in that set of papers. So I figured it was a no brainer to use that set of papers to make a card (what I make the most of these days) focusing on 3 of the 4 colors. So I did make a card that went pretty quickly, and poof! I was done!

     But wait. There are some really creative folks in this blog hop, so that simple card (which I'll introduce in a blog post after Valentine's Day) seemed like it was just a bit too easy for this crowd of hoppers. What I did was to think about this a little bit, look through the Stampin' Up! 2017 Occasions Catalog, think some more – and, voilá! I decided on a bit more ambitious of a project!

     I stuck with the Carousle & Cupcakes Designer Series Paper, but moved around a bit in the Occasions Catalog and found the Balloon Adventures Bundle to make this paper a lot more interesting! Not only that, but it turns out that one of my favorite Sisters-in-Law (they're all favorites!), who is also in my Stampin' Up! downline, had a birthday this past weekend, and I was SOOOO excited to have a fun card to make for her!

     This first step that I took in making this card was to create the inside of the card. I'd not yet used the framelits from this Bundle to make a card, but I did have a bit of experience with the concept. Nonetheless, I chose to watch the YouTube Video that Stampin' Up! produced to introduce this. I've included a link to this video at the end of this post. Oh, and how did I know there was a video for this? When you look at a Stampin' Up! catalog, occasionally you'll come across this symbol. When you see this, you know that Stampin' Up! has a video at youtube.com/stampinup.

     To keep my theme going for this card, I did a few things that weren't in the video. First of all, I used papers from the Designer Series Paper Stack both for the background and the foreground fo the left and right balloon on the inside. I created the background by punching papers using the Balloon Bouquet Punch and the top layers using Thinlits. I also used Designer Series Paper for the center balloon, even though it had to be folded to make the pop-up style of the card. I folded this balloon before I adhered it to the already-folded pop-up element.

     I also managed not to stamp the "let's celebrate" sentiment onto the center piece of the pop-up element before I did all the scoring and folding required (won't do that next time!). So I had to stamp onto another piece of Whisper White Cardstock, then fold the piece I cut out from the stamped image and adhere it to the already-folded banner shape. The final elements inside this card are the "gift packages" on either side. The tops and bows are made with the Thinlit set, and I rounded the bottom corners using the Project Life Corner Punch.

     I got away from the Balloon Adventures Bundle a bit with the central stamped image on the front of the card. There was a lot of trial and error here (errors?) before I realized that I wasn't going to be able to accomplish what I wanted with the Thinlit dies that were in the bundle. So I went looking for something else with the same kind of shape, and settled on the Lots of Labels Framelits for the sentiment for the card front. Even then, I couldn't find the "perfect" fit (perfect being what I wanted, darn it!), so I ended up die-cutting both the image in the center of the Designer Series Paper/Early Espresso layer as well as the inserted image using the same die. I trimmed the straight sides of the Early Espresso piece a bit, then cut it in half and reduced the size from top to bottom before taping the pieces together with transparent tape at the back. Then I stamped the sentiment onto the piece of Designer Series Paper before trimming it to fit on the Early Espresso layer.

     I cut the holes in both ends of the Espresso layer using the little circle die from the Tags and Labels Framelits. Finally, I made a both on both ends, one with Calyso Coral Thick Bakers Twine and the other with Bermuda Bay Thick Bakers Twine. Then I adhered this layer to the card front using Stampin' Dimensionals. Done! And it's already in Maryland by now (I can only hope!)

     Here's the video from Stampin' Up! that provides some great ideas for using the Balloon Adventures Bundle!

     Here is the list of bloggers on the hop this month:

• Patty Bennett
• Jason Loucks
• Heather Osborne
• Nicole Tugrul
• Paola Phillips
• Jo Anne Hewins
• Melissa Kerman
• Robin Messenheimer – You are here!
• Pat Ertman
• Debbie Henderson

     And here are the products that I featured in my project for today!