The Occasion is Valentine’s Day!

Aloha, all!

     And welcome to the SUDSOL Blog Tour!  SUDSOL is an online group of Stampin' Up! demonstrators to which I belong and it's one of the best groups for Stampin' Up! demonstrators on the web right now.  I don't have an active upline for my demonstratorship, and SUDSOL has become my 24/7 upline (one of their tag lines, and it's well deserved!)

     Today's Blog Tour features many, many members of SUDSOL, all of whom are showing off projects that we've made with products from Stampin' Up!'s 2011 Occasions Mini Catalog, which runs through April 30th of this year, or the Sale-A-Bration catalog, which runs through the end of March.  I really wish I could show off ALL of the products in these catalog because they're some of the best ever minis!  But instead, I'm going to focus on one of the "occasions" featured in the Occasions mini, and that's Valentine's Day.  In particular, I'm going to show off the Specialty Designer Series Paper set, Love Impressions, along with a few other items from the mini.

     Two of the projects I'm featuring today are mini photo albums, that can also be decorated and sent out in standard A2 size envelopes as Valentine Cards for someone special.  The patterns for both of these albums are available on the SUDSOL website, which is available only for SUDSOL members (or those who choose to sign up for a Two-Week FREE trial membership!). The third project is unabashedly a greeting card, and I had a lot of fun figuring out the design for it.

     Fellow Stampin' Up! demonstrator, Ann Clemmer, demonstrated the first project as a presenter at a Stampin' Up! regional seminar.  It is a mini book that is so easy and so economical to make!  The inside of the book uses just one piece of card stock or designer paper, and you can decorate it with scraps from other projects – just as I did! 

I decorated the front of this little book with one of the designs from the Love Impressions Designer Paper Set, and layered on a stamped definition of Valentine that's found in the brand new stamp set, Valentine Defined (who would have figured that?!)  To give the front just a bit of pizzazz, I added Whisper White Brads, that are part of the Neutrals Brad set in the annual Stampin' Up! catalog.  The cover of the book is a piece of Textured Real Red Card Stock that was a scrap from an earlier project.  I NEVER throw any kind of leftovers away!  The book is tied closed with a piece of Real Red 1/8" Taffeta Ribbon.  I like how the white edge of this ribbon "ties" in with the rest of the decor.

     Inside there are enough pages to hold 6 photos and 6 pages of journaling – journaling is SO important in any kind of a memory book, no matter how small!

     The second project I'm sharing with you is also a photo album or greeting card, but it's a bit more labor intensive.  Nonetheless, it calls for only one piece of 12" square card stock and one piece of 12" square Designer Series Paper (guess which Designer Series Paper I used!)

Now I know it doesn't look much different on the front from the first album, except for the decorations.  But it's just slightly larger (this is a 4" square album, and the mini book is a 3" square album).  What's really different is what's inside.

But let's just take a quick look at the front before we look inside.  The heart in the center of the front is punched with Stampin' Up!'s Full Heart Punch, using the brand new Red Glimmer Paper from the Occasions Mini.  I matted it with a piece of Whisper White card stock cut with the Stampin' Up! exclusive Sizzix Embosslit, Scalloped Heart of Hearts.  What's really fun about this album front is the full border using the Scallop Trim Border and Scallop Trim Corner punches.  To find the right measurement to make the corner and border punches work perfectly together, I just headed for the SUDSOL files and there it was!  Oh, and that paper with the embossed hearts?  It's one of the "Specialty" papers in the designer series paper set!  Just gorgeous paper!  And everything's tied together with some Whisper White 5/8" Satin Ribbon.

     OK, now let's look at the inside of this album.

     Look at all those folds!  And you wouldn't believe how simple it is to make.  I know because I wrote my own version of the instructions for this album and then followed them and it took no time to get the basic album put together.  Now figuring out just the right paper for each page, and the right stamps for my journaling blocks – I did pray over that a bit.  But it was fun (I try not to do things that aren't fun!).  The stamps are also from the Valentine Defined Stamp Set, so you can see I've been making good use of that set!  And about that set of instructions – here it is! 

    

     And finally here's a greeting card using the other one of the "Specialty" sheets from the Love Impressions Specialty Designer Series Paper set.  The letters of the alphabet cover this sheet of paper, with the letters L, O, V, and E, highlighted in Whisper White on one side.  Unfortunately, you can't just cut that section out and put it on a 5-1/2" x 4-1/4" greeting card (portrait OR landscape).  But I really did want to use them on a card.  So I cut them out individually!  Here I punched them with the Small Tag Punch, matted them with some Pretty in Pink Card Stock, some of it punched with the Pinking Hearts Border Punch.  I "tied" the tags on with some Pretty in Pink 1/8" Taffeta Ribbon onto the other paper from the Love Impressions set, and tied the whole card front together with Pretty in Pink 5/8" Grosgrain Ribbon.  The final touch was the "U" cut out of the designer paper.

     These were all SOOO much fun to make.  And I still have a big stack of paper left over from the Designer Series Paper Set!  More fun for February! If you don't have some of this fun paper, you can just order it online right now – and then go have some fun with it yourself!

     You can find these projects and many, many, many more in my very own gallery on the SUDSOL Website!  Just click here for a two-week FREE TRIAL!