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Tuesday 15 December 2020

Window Card (Blog Hop)

 It's our last blog hop of 2020!  I'm excited to put this year to bed and move on to a more social 2021.  

Our theme this month was Window Cards, which is not something I had done before.  After a bit of research I went with my favourite holiday set this year, Coming Home, because it has coordinating dies that I knew would work perfectly for this design.

I am in LOVE with how this card turned out!  The snowy forest DSP background, the little red card Christmas tree shopping, and that bright yellow house just peeking through the trees--it ended up just as it looked in my imagination.  :)

The card front has a couple layers.  I added a snowy hill (accented with a light pool party blend for some depth) and several trees coloured and shaded with Old Olive (light and dark) and ivory/bronze trunks.  I added a sentiment strip in Cherry Cobbler to match my car, with white heat embossing.  And for that final touch I added some snow on the trees with a white gel pen.

Window cards are a great way to change up a standard card, and hold a couple of surprises for the recipient.  In this case, because I used the coordinating die for the house, you don't even realize at first that there is a cut out there.



And the second surprise is when you open the card and the scene continues inside!  I had so much fun adding all the extra scenery inside, as though the car has moved further down the road and is coming to stop at its own house.

The yellow house is coloured with crushed curry blends with a smoky slate roof, while the second house is crumb cake.  I added another snowy hill and more trees to the inside scene, so that it matched the outside, and some wink of stella to make the windows on everything sparkle.

As a final bonus, the window cut out in the shape of the house made the perfect embellishment for a matching envelope!



I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season this year despite the circumstances, and maybe find a few new traditions that you'll look forward to including next year too.

Don't forgot to follow the hop!  








Sunday 15 November 2020

Gift Card Holder (Blog Hop)

 Happy Holidays Everyone!  It feels waaayy too soon to be saying that, especially with the beautiful weather we've had in Cambridge this week, but the holiday season is upon us despite the balmy temps.  Every year I buy more and more gift cards as it becomes harder and harder to buy the perfect gift, and I always worry that it's a bit of a let down for the recipient...where's the fun?!  So I was really excited that our theme this month is gift card holders--we are bringing back the wonder!

I am once again featuring the colourful and fun Coming Home bundle and DSP--because I can't get enough of it!!  The DSP includes two sheets of this full 12x12 scene.  

I'm not a scrapbooker but this is such a great scene that I knew I wanted to feature it somehow in a card, and this pull out design was the perfect choice.  

It took a bit of fussy cutting to get everything to line up just perfect, but I think it was worth the effort. :)

I followed a tutorial from 2018 on Patty Bennett's blog for the original pull-out dimensions, but I altered the gift card holder to be a full pocket, so that the scenic design wasn't interrupted.  

I also decorated panels on the back of the pull-out and the card base, so there was a space to write a holiday message without disrupting the design.\

I have loved colouring these little houses and trees!  They are very simple designs and the perfect size to practice shading with our Blends alcohol markers.  


This design was so easy and fun I made another one featuring the Poinsettia Petals bundle, some traditional green/red DSP, and some of the Forever Gold Laser Cut specialty paper elements.



It's hard to see the shine from the gold elements, but in real life it provides such an elegant touch.

Please continue to hop along and be inspired by the other designs this month, and as always I'd love to hear from you!



Thursday 15 October 2020

Not A Christmas Blog Hop

Our challenge for this month's blog hop was to showcase how a Christmas stamp set could be used year-round--getting more mileage out of stamps!

I chose to use the Coming Home Bundle for my interactive Pull Tab card, which I created to celebrate a new driver earning their license.  :)  The design would also work as a retirement card, or a new house....really any occasion for moving on.

Here is my non-Christmas card:


The pull tab opens to reveal a hidden sentiment:


And as a reminder of the intended use, here is the same set on a Christmas card:


I love the coordinating dies because they also come with the horizon pieces, one with trees and one a plain hill.  They are great for adding depth and dimension.

But back to my non-Christmas version!

I started by cutting out my sentiment space with a stitched rectangle die on a Basic Grey panel.  I added a forest background from the coordinating DSP (which just happens to be on sale this month AND the dies cut out the printed images!!).


I inked around the edges of my panel with Basic Grey ink and popped it onto a card base where I had heat embossed "congratulations" in white to line up with the pull out opening.

I coloured a neighborhood of houses with my blends in Soft Sea Foam, Crumb Cake, and Calypso Coral.  My little VW bug is coloured with Burmuda Bay.  I added some accents with a white gel pen.

Because my 16-year-old has not decided to try for his license yet I decided to keep the inside blank for now....maybe someone will move first!


And here is one more look at the completed card:



Thanks for hopping by today, here are the links to see the other projects:














Tuesday 15 September 2020

Happy Holidays Blog Hop

 The fall weather has definitely arrived!  I love the crisp mornings and emerging colours, but it sure seems like Labour Day came and a switch was flipped this year.  It will be Christmas before we know it, so this month we are showcasing holiday cards with product from the new August-December mini catalogue.

One of my favourites is the Poinsettia Place Suite.  It has everything you need to make beautiful cards--stamps, dies, paper, embellishments, ribbon AND specialty paper.  My card is a fun fold that showcases all that pretty paper, and would be great for using up every last scrap!





This is a tri-fold shutter card and is the easiest fun fold you'll ever make--it's really all about the mountain/valley folds.  Start with a 5.5" x 12" piece of cardstock and score it at 2", 4", 8", and 10".  Give the paper a quarter turn and use a craft knife to cut a line between the first and last score lines at 1.5" at the top and bottom.  You can see the full tutorial that I followed at Splitcoaststampers.

From there it's just a matter of alternating folding some score lines (valleys) and out (mountains). The truly easy great part of this fun fold is that you end up with sections for DSP that are consistent in size, so you just cut strips of paper to fit and don't waste anything!

I used Crumb Cake ink to stamp my poinsettias, and added soft Sahara Sand shading.  The leaves are Old Olive with Sea Foam Green shading.  I could have highlighted the centres of the flowers with the Beaded Pearl embellishments included in the suite-it doesn't get more elegant than those--but instead I made my own with a combination of Basic and Metallic Pearls.


I used the same stitched die for the "inside" of my card to create a space for a personalized message, and added some soft stamping as embellishment.


I love the shading for this stamp set...they are separate pieces so you can use them or not, and they are almost like a watercolour, not intended to completely fill the stamped outline.


Continue the hop to see the other Christmas cards in our collection this month!











Saturday 15 August 2020

August-December Mini Blog Hop

 We have another catalogue--already!  This one is chocked full of fall and winter images, paper and embellishments.  I'm not quite ready to dive wholly into Christmas for real, but fall is my favourite time of the year, so I decided to focus on the beautiful new Plaid Tidings DSP and the Stitched Leaves Dies (because who doesn't love EVERYTHING stitched?!).

I used a resist embossing technique on my background along with a stencil of winter trees from the Basic Pattern Decorative Masks pack.  These stencils can be used with embossing paste, sponge daubers, or ink pads, but I decided to rub a Versamark pad over the stencil and heat emboss the trees in white on some watercolour paper.  I then watercoloured a mix of inks over top to make my fall background....a combination of Crushed Curry, Cajun Craze, and Crumb Cake.  The heat embossing resists the water/ink, so that the trees seem to pop right off the page.

I absolutely love stitching on dies, it is a simple way to add a bit of texture and detail.  These dies are pretty unique though, as the stitching is a separate die....so you can choose to add the detailing or not.  Also, the outline dies leave stitching on the negative piece, so you end up with a cut away leaf opening and stitches around it. 
There are so many great plaid designs in this paper pack and I can't wait to use them all.  One side of the paper is more Christmasy colours, and the other side is plaid suitable for fall or other times of the year (there is a great magenta piece!).  I layered a piece of neutral plaid behind my watercoloured piece, and then die cut two leaves out of other matching prints for my focal point.  
I added a stitched circle sentiment and lots of gemstones, as well as a tied linen thread bow as embellishments.

I kept the inside of my card blank for now but added a strip of the matching background DSP across the bottom.  I'll add an appropriate message inside before sending the card to a recipient in the future.

That's it for me folks, thanks for stopping by!  Please leave me a comment below before hopping on to the rest of the pages:


Wednesday 15 July 2020

Watercolour Technique (Blog Hop)

It's Christmas in July everywhere you look these days, so I was inspired to add a twist to our blog theme this month!  Our focus this month is on techniques and I had to use my very favourite technique--watercolouring--on this Christmas card.


I repurposed my Good Morning Magnolia stamp into a poinsettia!  

I heat embossed the flower image in gold and then used several ink colours to add depth and dimension.  This really is the EASIEST way to watercolour.  The heat embossing keeps the water and ink contained so you never colour outside the lines!


I layered the coloured and die cut image on a Forever Gold Laser Cut frame (with a rectangle of white cardstock behind to help it pop), and put it all on a card base of Shaded Spruce.  


Some added gems helped anchor my sentiment as well as provide the sparkle every Christmas card needs.


I kept the inside of my card simple with some more gold embossing.


For some added fun I decided to watercolour a matching envelope!  I used my (retired) Envelope Punch Board to create the envelope out of watercolour paper, and repeated the gold embossing and colouring on the front and back.



I think this will make a wonderful holiday surprise for someone when it really is Christmas. ;)

Please continue hopping along to see all the other wonderful techniques showcased this month:







Monday 15 June 2020

Blossoms in the Garden (Blog Hop)

So many great new products in the new catalogue, where to begin?!  Our theme this month should have been easy--anything new--but it's so hard to choose!

I ended up going with one of my favourites samples featuring the Forever Greenery suite.  And I had to pair it with a new technique to me, a pleated fold!


I used a new Just Jade card base and embossed just the bottom of the card with one of the new Greenery Embossing Folders. 


 I used some DSP from the Suite for the pleated feature, and the sentiment is from the Grace's Garden stamp set.  I love how Stampin' Up's products work so well with each other!


This card is my favourite because it features something else brand new to me--I made my own felt embellishments!  I adhered some off-white felt to scrap cardstock pieces using regular adhesive tape, and then ran it through my big shot with the Forever Flourishing Dies.  I am going to be doing this SOOOO much now!


I hope you enjoy the rest of the hop, follow these links to see what every one else is featuring today!