New Product Blog Hop!

Hi! Thanks for joining in another ESAD Blog Hop! You may have come from Kelly’s blog or just come across my blog today, but either way I’m sure  you will enjoy the Hop! Today’s Hop is to show you some of the gorgeous new products and colours in the new Idea Book and Catalogue. I hope you have fun checking them all out!

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.

I really like this new Hostess set called ‘Faith in Nature’. It’s a lovely set and can be used for feminine or masculine cards, and a variety of occasions. Here are 3 cards I created with it …….

For this one I inked up my pear stamp on the Versamark inkpad, then the Chocolate Chip inkpad before stamping. Then I sprinkled it with clear embossing powder and used my heat gun to emboss it. This allowed me to watercolour it without smudging the image.

I think this could make a nice sympathy or get well card.

I couldn’t resist using the lovely new In Color ‘Wisteria Wonder’ to create this card. It’s a lovely colour and teams well with Concord Crush. I’ve also sponged some Champagne shimmer mist in the centre of the flower to give it a little bit of sparkle. We made a similar card to this at my launch last week and will be also making a similar one at the workshop I’m at this afternoon while everyone is hopping around!

I hope you like these cards. If you’d like to get your hands on the Faith in Nature stamp set, then all you need to do is contact your local demonstrator (if you don’t have one I’m sure you can find one while you check out the Blog Hop! 😉 ) and book a workshop to earn it for free!

We are offering Blog Candy on this Blog Hop and there will be 2 winners – one from Australia and one from New Zealand. Rules for the Blog Candy are

1. You must visit and comment on every blog in the blog hop

2. Once you have completed the Blog hop they must email Sharlene (torresfamily8@hotmail.com) and advise your Name, email & location. If you are a winner then you will be contacted for your mailing details.

3. Stampin’ Up! Demonstrators are not eligible to win Blog Candy

Okay, that’s all from me today! Have fun hopping along to see what fabulous creations Christie has come up with and thanks in advance for any comments you leave me 😉 take care, Kari

PS Here’s a list of all the blogs in the Hop in case you get lost!

 

1. Keryn Campbell   http://www.kerynscards.blogspot.com

2. Michelle Halling   http://www.michellehcreations.blogspot.com

3. Richelle Fletcher   http://www.stampingwithrichelle.blogspot.com

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

5. Carole Stedman   http://www.carolestamping.com

6. Monique Fielder   http://www.stamping-with-moni-q.blogspot.com

7. Juliette Chapman   http://www.juleskraftikrafts.blogspot.com

8. Debbie Lamb   http://debstampinstyle.blogspot.com

9. Leonie Schroder   http://www.stamp-a-latte.com

10. Tanya Bell   http://www.stampingt.com.au

11. Kelly Nelson   http://www.kellysstampinspot.wordpress.com

12. Kari Hughes    http://www.karigail.wordpress.com

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

14. Ann Gerlach   http://www.discover-ink.blogspot.com/

15. Sharlene torres   http://www.stampwithsharlene.com

 16. Mel Sharp   http://www.astampaddiction.blogspot.com

 17. Dani Fender   http://wwwdanifender.blogspot.com

 18. Nicole Derendorf   http://www.stampingdownunder.wordpress.com

 19. Elizabeth Dyson   http://www.libbystampz.blogspot.com/

 20. Andrea Buckland   http://www.creatingcardswithandrea.blogspot.com

 21. Michelle Grech   http://www.stampmeshell.wordpress.com

22. Narelle Hodges   http://www.stampwithnarelle.blogspot.com

 23. Sally Williams http://www.sallystampingdelights.blogspot.com

 

 

 

 

New Idea Book and Catalogue!

Yes, it’s here (and it has been for 10 days now, sorry I haven’t posted on here before now!) Isn’t it gorgeous? Lots of lovely new products and also 5 new colours!

If you’d like to check out the catalogue online then you can click here or if you’d like your very own copy, then email me and I can arrange that for you!

I’m joining in another Blog Hop tomorrow, so please come and visit again after 12noon AEST and join in the hop to see some fabulous ideas using the gorgeous new products!

🙂 K

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!

Sew sketchy!

As I was flicking through facebook the other day, I spotted a blog post from a fellow demonstrator who had done a sketch challenge recently. Now, for the life of me I can’t remember who it was or even find it again (I think facebook swallows things sometimes!) but I found the sketch because I thought it would be a lovely one for me to use with my Sew Suite stamp set.

Here is the sketch (from www.makeeshabyl.com.au):

And here is my card:

The Sew Suite stamp set and matching Sweet Stitches DSP is only available until the end of July as the Autumn-Winter Mini Catalogue will come to an end. It’s a cute set and just perfect for a card I wanted to send with a parcel as part of a sewing swap I am involved in at the moment! We are each sending another person in the swap 4 items (can be fabric, ribbon, lace, button, zips, whatever you like) and then they have to create something with them, kind of like Ready Steady Cook, but instead it’s Ready Steady Sew!

Anyway, back to the card …. I finally used some pompom trim on a card! LOL! It is really cute and added a nice texture to the front. You can see that I took a bit of license with the sketch, but that’s the fun of doing a sketch challenge, you can use the basic sketch for inspiration and adapt it for your project!

Hope you enjoyed! Kari 🙂

The INKlings Christmas in July Blog Hop

Welcome to The INKlings’ Team’s Christmas in July blog hop. You may have arrived here from Christie’s inspiring blog or just be visiting my blog, whichever way once you’ve checked out my creations you can continue the hop through the link at the end of this post to the next team member.
 
How quick is this year going! Have you started to think about your Christmas cards and projects yet? The INKlings team has and we thought that this month was the perfect time to host a Christmas in July blog hop. You’ll find lots of great ideas provided by 15 team members’ fantastic blogs.
 
Want to win some Blog Candy? Simply leave a comment on each blog and then email clare@crafty-cow.com with ‘INKlings Blog Candy’ in the subject field and let her know you’ve done so and you’ll be in the running for a fantastic prize of 17 handmade items plus other goodies, you have until 1st August to enter. 
 Sorry Blog Candy prize not available to SU! demonstrators but you’re more than welcome to leave us a comment! 
 
I thought I’d use some sets for my Christmas cards that I’ve had for a while, but not used for Christmas cards until now. I’ve used ‘All in the Family’, ‘Loads of Love’ and ‘Family Favourites’ . I also had in my mind that I wanted to use circles … why? I really don’t know, but it’s what I had pictured so I went with it and came up with 3  cards ….. 

Card #1:

For the background on  this first one, I have used a strip cut with the Tasteful Trim Big shot die down the left hand side and on the right hand side of the  I stamped my inkpad straight onto the cardstock.  I used a post-it note to mask the truck while I stamped the tree as shown below and I now have the ‘Loads of Love Accessories’ set on my wishlist too as then I could put a little person in my truck! (I wasn’t game to try to draw one in freehand!)

Card #2:

For this one I used the children stamps from the ‘All in the Family’ set. with those ones, the legs, body and arms are together so all you have to do is add a head and you are done! Of course I used my Stamp-a-ma-jig to help me line up all the little stamps and I also drew a faint pencil line before stamping to help me keep the images level (see below). The presents are actually stamped and cut out then mounted using dimensionals. I think this could be a cute family Christmas card to send out – of course, my Audrey doesn’t have this much hair yet …. maybe by December she will?!

Card #3:

And lastly, this is my Aussie Santa card! Shorts and a tank top – although I probably should have coloured the singlet blue, not red! LOL! To get the circles on the background, I stamped the cricket ball image from the ‘Family Favourites’ stamp set using Versamark and then clear embossed it, it adds a bit of texture as well as breaking up the blank space. I also did some masking again when I stamped the presents under the tree, see the images below, the yellow is a piece of post-it note that I stamped and cut out and I added a cut out present at the front too.

Well that’s all from me, hope these cards have inspired you a little? I have to admit , one of the reasons I don’t pull out these sets very often is because I think of them as fiddly little ones, but I actually stamped these cards quite quickly in one evening and then sat and coloured the images the next night, so I think they could be quite easy to mass produce. I watercoloured them all with an aquapainter and picked up colour from a palette that I scribbled a Stampin’ Write marker on. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask 🙂

Next stop on the INKlings’ Team Blog Hop is the fabulously talented Joanna Wassens. Have fun and don’t forget to leave a comment on each blog to win some great Blog Candy. Thanks for hopping by! Kari
 
If for any reason you find a missing link on the blog hop head back here to find links to all the members taking part.

1. Clare http://www.crafty-cow.com        
2. Janice http://www.janicespencer.blogspot.com        
3. Christie http://www.christiescreativecorner.blogspot.com
4. Kari http://www.karigail.wordpress.com        
5. Joanna http://www.joannawassens.com
6. Michelle http://stampinground.wordpress.com
7. Alana http://www.alanagalagher.blogspot.com    
8. Carol http://www.inkantations-and-inkarnations.blogspot.com  
9. Cath http://cathdeanpapercraft.blogspot.com    
10. Amy http://amyandersonsblog.blogspot.com
11. Vanessa http://stampness.blogspot.com    
12. Michelle D http://stampinkpaper.blogspot.com
13. Ryn http://rynscraps.blogspot.com
14. Fiona B http://fionajanestamping.blogspot.com
15. Liz Halbisch http://lizhalbisch.blogspot.com

but it’s only July!

And yes, I do have a Christmas card for you! Yikes! Don’t worry, I’m not getting carried away with over-enthusiastic preparation, but just sharing my third card from the Cyberchallenge night the other week. I’m not entirely happy with it (hence why it has been sitting on my desk half-finished for a week!) but I thought I’d share it and ask for opinions. The challenge was to create a Christmas Card from a non-Christmas set …. hmm, toughie and I decided to use Tiny Tags. I had seen the baubles made using the Artistic Etchings set last year and thought I would create mini-baubles in the same vein, anyhow …. what do you think?

I also used the Pendant Park stamp set for the ‘tree’ behind the baubles – I clear embossed the tree images and then sponged Always Artichoke over the top to create an emboss resist effect.

But wait, there’s more! Yes, tomorrow you will find MORE Christmas ideas on my blog! (no I haven’t gone crazy … well, maybe a little! ;)) But it’s for a BLOG HOP! The INKlings are having a Christmas in July Blog Hop again and so if you check back here tomorrow afternoon you will see my creations and then be able to hop around to another 14 or so blogs and get all inspired for Christmas!

See you tomorrow, lovelies! Kari 🙂

Colour Challenge

Jayne’s second challenge from last night was to use Cherry Cobbler, Basic Gray and Whisper White to make a card, layout or 3D item. I needed some thank you cards and I thought those colours would be nice to use on those. Here is what I came up with ………

I used the large En Francais background stamp in Basic Gray first and although I inked up the whole stamp, when I lay the Whisper White cardstock on the stamp (I tend to use the En Francais stamp facing up instead of stamping it onto the cardstock) I just pressed with my fingers in some areas instead of smoothly it and pressing flat all over like I would if I wanted all of the text to be stamped. I then stamped the large Vintage Vogue Flower in Cherry Cobbler, using 2nd, 3rd and 4th impressions so the colour was a bit lighter.

To get the frame around the label, I punched two Modern Label shapes from Basic gray and adhered them together so that they overlapped, then adhered the stamped and punched label in the centre of the two. A bit of the White organza ribbon (which is divine!) and I was done! Hope the girls who received the card liked it!

That’s all for tonight! Cheers, Kari 🙂

Cyberchallenge night!

Tonight Jayne has been setting some challenges for the INKlings on her forum! I had forgotten about it, but was keen to get creating (a good way to keep the fingers warm!) so I got started on challenge #1 – paper piecing. This is where you recreate the stamped image with stamped pieces of DSP (almost like a DSP quilt, if that makes sense?) I had trouble finding a set, I picked ‘For Everything’ off the shelf first, but though the bird was too little ….. 10 minutes later I went back to the bird!

I stamped the bird on the Whisper white first, then twice on the Nursery Suite Specialty DSP (once on each side of the piece) and then cut out the bird from the striped side then cut the flower and the breast of the bird from the So Saffron patterned side. Piecing the pieces together was made easy with my trusty 2 way glue pen 😉 …. here is the little birdie …..

And here is the card…….

Hope you like it, I’ll share some more cards from tonight once I’ve made them! 😉 K