Maybe a Bit Overboard?

Aloha, all!

     There was a challenge yesterday to make a card with some new Stampin' Up! catalog products that we're really anxious to use.  Well, I'm ready to use them all!!!  But this also got me going on making a card based on a piece of fabric I saw last week while we were on vacation.  It was the upholstery on one of the chairs in our hotel room.

     My first thought was of the new hexagon designs that Stampin' Up! is featuring in its new catalog. We already have the Honeycomb Embossing Folder (introduced in an eaerlier catalog).  But now we have a Hexagon Punch as well as a stamp set that is perfect for this punch, Six Sided Sampler Stamp Set.

     I left the embossing folder and punch in their storage locations for this project, though, and just concentrated on the stamp set.

     Now you can see from whence I got the title of this blog – Maybe a Bit Overboard?  You see, I couldn't just stop with the striped stamp from the Six Sided Sampler set.  I had to add lots MORE new products just because I'd really wanted to see how they worked!  So here are the products I used:

• 3/8" Ruffle Stretch Trim.  This trim comes in the new 2013 In Colors, and I used Baked Brown Sugar on top of the sentiment layer, and Crisp Cataloupe on the bottom.  I had a bit of trouble figuring how to attach this trim without stretching it too much.  I think this is one of those products that will take some practice to master (and I'm going to try, for sure!)
• Candy Dots.  Stampin' Up! no longer has brads per se in their catalog.  There are now brad bases on which we can stick the adhesive-backed Candy Dots – in all the core colors!!!  Oh, but you can also use the Candy Dots just by themselves – which is what I did!  I used Pear Pizzazz, Wisteria Wonder, and Basic Gray.
• Four You Stamp Set.  There are four stamps in this set (thus the name) and they are all basic sentiments:  hello, Thinking of You, Thank You, and Birthday Wishes.  What a nice basic set!
• New ink colors include Basic Brown Sugar and Crisp Cantaloupe.  I also added in Wisteria Wonder, Cajun Craze, Pear Pizzazz, Summer Starfruit, and Basic Gray.  I used a Blender Pen to add in a few "swishes" of color in the middle of the large white strip in a few of the stamped images.
• Crisp Cantaloupe Card Stock to mat the stamped layer.

     The card base and the stamped sentiment are Cajun Craze Card Stock, which has been with us for awhile.  The two basic tools that I used to make this card were the Stamp-a-ma-jig (the only way I knew how to get those hexagon stamp shapes lined up pretty perfectly) and my paper snips to make the indented ends of the sentiment layer, which I adhered to the card front with Stampin' Dimensionals.

     So – it may be a bit overboard – but I had a lot of fun making it, and got started with more than half a dozen of my new products from Stampin' Up!.  One of my fellow Stampin' Up! demonstrators commented that, while it may be a bit "overboard," it makes a nice masculine card.  I didn't even know I knew HOW ot make a masculine card, and here I made one by accident not even thinking about it.  It's amazing what happens when I just let myself go with what strikes me at the time I'm working on a project.  Now that's fun!