Bright and cheerful circles

Lately I have been using the Colour combo of Peach Parfait, Poppy Parade and Daffodil Delight quite a bit …. and throwing in a smidge of Pear Pizzazz to give me my green fix! It’s a nice cheerful colour combination and just makes me think of spring! I originally grabbed the colours to co-ordinate with the Sunny Garden DSP (which I hardly used until the last couple of months!) but now I have tried other cards with the colours. Here is the card we made at my workshop on Friday night …….

I used the Circle Circus stamp set with it and added some of the lovely poly ribbon in a matching colour. The technique I used on this card is called inlaid embossing. I ran the stamped piece of cardstock through the Big Shot in the Square Lattice Embossing Folder to create the texture before adhering it to the mat layer. For some extra interest I stamped, punched and then mounted one circle using a Stampin’ dimensional and added a rhinestone for some bling too

Here is the same card using Poppy Parade for the mat layer and ribbon …

Hope you like them! Thanks for visiting! Kari

Stamping friends

I have been very lucky to ‘meet’ some lovely girls in the past few years and lucky me, I am getting to meet some of them in just over a weeks time! Can you tell I am excited?!! I am so excited that I can’t even decide what stamping things I want to take with me because I know I will probably chatter too much and not get much stamping done! LOL! Anyway, my reason for this post is that I wanted to thank 2 of these lovely online friends for the blog awards they gae me a while ago. I know my blog has been a bit hit and miss over the past year but I hope you have seen some more regular posts lately and are enjoying my creations. So thankyou to the lovely Cath Dean (who probably thought I was insane the first time she spoke to me on the phone when I chatted to her for several minutes and then exclaimed! “Oh! You’re Cath from the forum!” silly me!) be sure to have a look at Cath’s lovely blog here if you haven’t already visited her during the blog hop … or just visit her again

The other gorgeous person to give me an award was Clare McIllhatton :) Clare makes me smile everytime I read her blog and has so many inspiring ideas (she is a whiz with punches!) and you can check her blog out here. Clare also decided to inspire some of the INKlings team that weren’t able to make it to Convention this year and one of her challenge was to make an orange bag in honour of the orange convention bag! Here is my orange bag  (and orange card) ….

 

Now, seeing as Clare’s favourite colour is orange, guess where I sent the bag and card?! Glad you liked it Clare xx

You can see that I embossed the Upsy Daisy flowers on the Sunny Garden DSP with White Embossing Powder. Love the way this looks and will have to use more DSP like this I think

So, to honour the awards , I am now supposed to tell you a few things about myself and then link to some other blogs I am inspired by, here we go …..

* I love my electric blanket and was devastated when I had to go without it for a month!

* I have 2 boxes full of fabric and another one full of sewing kits in my study wardrobe! …. and don’t get me started on the yarn collection in there!

* I am a hoarder (see above!)

* 3 favourite things: wine, coffee, chocolate ….. not always in that order

* I love organisational things but just never seem to actually BE organised!

* I am excited like a little kid to see the new bulbs flowering in the garden at the moment!

* I love sending and receiving postcards – so exciting to get snail mail these days!

Well, there’s some facts about me, and here are some lovely blogs I have found to pass the awards on to:

Beth Stewart     http://elisabethstewart.typepad.com/bethinking/

Michelle Frost-Stevenson    http://stampinground.wordpress.com/

Michelle Le Breton    http://www.michellescraftclasses.blogspot.com/

Dani Fender     http://danifender.blogspot.com/

Sharlene Meyer    http://www.magpiecreates.com/

Christie Kunkel    http://www.christiescreativecorner.blogspot.com/

Meg Loven     http://lovenstamps.com/blog/

Homemade by Jill     http://homemadebyjill.blogspot.com/

So thank you girls for thinking of me and I hope these other lovely blogs give you more inspiration! K

ESAD Blog Hop – Retiring products!

Sniff, sniff, yes it’s time to say goodbye to some lovely products! Today’s Blog Hop is brought to you by the lovely ESAD group and will feature some favourite products from the Retiring List to give you some ideas how to use them …. and if you love them so much you MUST have them, then contact your demonstrator ASAP to place your order!

You may have found me from Sharlene’s Blog or just come visiting me today (aww, thanks!) either way, have a look through the hop for some inspiration and we all love to read comments, so feel free to leave a comment to let us know what you think of our projects!

What is ESAD?
ESAD stands for “Extra Special Australasian Demonstrators” and it is an on-line group just for Australian and New Zealand Stampin Up demonstrators. We so love what we do and not only do we love to share it with our customers, friends, and wonderful blog visitors, but we share our love for what we do with each other as demonstrators.  We run swaps, challenges, tutorials, product know-how, and cyberstamps, and we are always there to help and support each other when it is needed. So if you are a Stampin’ Up! demonstrator located in Australia or New Zealand, then please fee free to click here to join our wonderful group

On to my creations …..

I have to say, ‘Scribble This’ is a favourite stamp of mine. I just love the large pointy flower and have used it on cards from birthdays to anniversaries and you can use so many colour schemes with it. My favourite way to use it is to stamp it in Stazon on Whisper White and then use my markers (the brush tip end) to add colour. Very quick and easy - best bit is the colouring doesn’t have to be perfect because of the sketched lines of the flowers. 

And here is a similarly done one that I CASEd from Jayne Mercer! All you need to do is mask off around where you want to stamp (love post-it notes!), stamp, colour then pull the post-its off! This would look great for an invitation too.

 

Another way I have used it is by stamping with Black stazon on Vellum and then layering it on top of DSP on the cardfront. Here you can see I have used a layer of the Lap of Luxury DSP and I just happened to have the piece with the word ‘Love’ so I think this will make a nice engagement or anniversary card. I added some brads and a ribbon slide from the HodgePodge Styled Silver Set (also retiring) and a piece of Black Grosgrain to finish it off.

 

Another set that I love for very quick and effective cards is ‘Christ is Born’. I LOVE this flower and I think I cut out over 100 a couple of years ago but I am sorry to see this go. You can make simple 1-layer cards or dress them up and cut out the flowers too. The first one I’ve kept to using simple colours, Poppy Parade and some Sunny Garden DSP. I embossed the sentiment on the DSP using White embossing powder and once I cut the flower out I used my bone folder to curl the petals to add more dimension. You could also add ribbon, or glitter, but I like the simple red and white look. 

This next colour combination is my favourite for this set, Naturals Ivory cardstock and Riding Hood Red and Chocolate Chip Inks – sometimes I throw in a little Old Olive (or Kiwi Kiss when it was in!) too. Just a nice simple background of the flowers and the sentiment stamped straight over the top. If I have time, I like to add drops of Crystal Effects onto the centres of the flowers to give the card some texture. Not sure how easy it is to see this on your screens, but I also stamped the flowers while I had the cardfront on a thick paper pad. As I pressed the stamp down I gave the stamp a slight rock all around (not too far) and this gives you the impression that the ink is darker at the edges of the petals, especially the tips. 

I hope you’ve enjoyed my projects today. Next stop on the Blog Hop is Mel Sharp. Thanks for visiting! Kari

PS There’ll be another Blog Hop in a few weeks to showcase some new products too!