justBstamping.blogspot.ca: Bright & Cheery Blog Hop (Tri-City Stampers)

Why is it that Mondays are so much harder in the winter? Is it that I go to work in the dark and come home in the dark? Or that I spend all weekend snuggled up in my warm bed binge watching Netflix? This weekend I tried to overcome that urge to hibernate and spent some time in my craft room playing with some new Stampin' Up! Occasions and Sale-a-bration items, pairing them with some sets from the annual catalogue that I set aside for Christmas--some of them have never even seen ink! That's one of the best parts of Stampin' Up! for me: the coordination of products so that you don't have to start from scratch every time.

I'm thrilled to participate this week in the monthly Tri-City Stampers Blog Hop, featuring my co-members in my upline's team. Our challenge this month was to create a "bright and cheery" card to help combat those winter blahs, and I have to say, it worked!

My card features the Celebrate You Thinlits, which are dies you can get for FREE with a $120 purchase. That's right--FREE dies!! And I love the fonts that come in this set.

For me, nothing is as bright and cheerful as a rainbow, so I broke out a bunch of bright ink pads and my aqua painter and got to work watercolouring a rainbow background:

Next I stamped and punched seven balloons using the Happy Birthday Gorgeous stamp set and coordinating Balloon Builder Punch, and white embossed three balloons on some vellum paper as well. By adhering the vellum balloons to some of the solid colour balloons I was able to get a lighter variation in colour, without needing more colours of cardstock. Vellum is a great way to stretch your colours even farther!

I used the "celebrate" die from the free die set to cut my sentiment from silver glimmer paper, and I bent it slightly when adhering it to my background piece so that it formed an arch, rather than being straight. I thought this helped cement my rainbow theme pretty well!

I attached all of my balloons across the bottom of my card, popping some of them up on dimensionals to give a 3D effect, and "tying" them all with silver thread that wraps underneath and is adhered on the back of the layer. I added a very thin black layer behind my watercoloured piece, and then attached the whole thing to a Real Red card base.

What I love about this card is that it could be used to celebrate anything--a birthday, anniversary, retirement, graduation, award....well, you get the idea. In order to keep it general I didn't stamp a greeting on the inside of the card, but rather stamped "Hip Hip Hooray" and a couple more coloured balloons. This way I'll be able to use this card for whatever celebration I want. :)

Throughout the week I'm going to post some pictures of other bright and cheery cards I made, so be sure to follow me on Facebook or Instagram (@justBstamping) to see everything I worked on this weekend. And check out my teammate's designs too, they are sure to cure any lingering winter blues you have! Just click the links below:

A La Cards (Leena)

LollyandSand (Sandy)

JustBStamping (Barb--you're here!)

Stampingjen.BlogSpot.com (Jennifer)

Hofkissed (Stephanie)

Have a great week!

Barb

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