Silly Old Bear for Freshly Made Sketches 753

I'm back from a lovely holiday and have finally made it back into the craft room, now that the unpacking is done and the washing mountain is taken care of. I was looking for inspiration to try out a wonderful gift from a friend and that came from the sketch at Freshly Made Sketches.

And that was the beautiful Silly Old Bear suite. I don't think anyone of Commonwealth background doesn't love Winnie the Pooh, especially with the original EH Shepard illustrations. I loved it as a child, my children did and now, so does my granddaughter. Oh, to be frolicking in the Hundred Acre Wood in pursuit of a heffalump!

I was torn between hoarding the irreplaceable items forever and cracking on and using some of them. You can see that I have no willpower...

I enjoyed getting out the papers, dies and stamps and just having a good old play. I think I'm in love with the Hundred Acre Wood map embossing folder already!

Unfortunately, this suite of products is not available in New Zealand, Australia, Canada or the United Kingdom.

If you live in New Zealand and don't have a Stampin' Up Demonstrator, I'd love to be yours. I can help you with ideas, get you catalogues and provide you with Stampin' Up products. You can leave a message in the comments or contact me using any of the methods listed in the Contact Me tab at the top of the page. 

You can stamp with me, and shop with me, from anywhere in New Zealand. Click here.

Fern & Flora for As You See It 381

 The latest challenge at As You See It is a colour challenge chosen by ... me. 😀

I was intrigued by the colour combination of two grays with a bright pop of blue. Feel free to use black, white and metallics as free colours, as long as the three main colours are obvious. I hope you enjoy playing with these colours, as I did. 

I often play around with circles and I started here by cutting three stitched circles of various sizes from Stylish Shapes. I layered them together then cut the them in half, then attached them to the card front with the hemispheres off set. 

The card base is Basic Gray and the card front, Smoky Slate. I used a retired hexagon folder for this to tie in with the pattern on the DSP circle. The DSP is from the Ordinary Beautiful Life DSP, which has a black and white pattern on the reverse side of each piece.

I cut two ferns from the Fern & Flora die set, one in Azure Afternoon and Smoky Slate and layered them over the offset circles.

The sentiment is foiled in silver from the Sweetly Sentimental hot foil dies. To finish, I found some retired Basic Gray pearls in my embellishments box.

If you live in New Zealand and don't have a Stampin' Up Demonstrator, I'd love to be yours. I can help you with ideas, get you catalogues and provide you with Stampin' Up products. You can leave a message in the comments or contact me using any of the methods listed in the Contact Me tab at the top of the page. 

You can stamp with me, and shop with me, from anywhere in New Zealand. Click here.

I hope you enjoy playing around with these colours as I did. You can see what the rest of the team have done, and link up your entry, on the As You See It page.

Neutral Noel for Paper Players 802

I hope everyone had a great time playing with Jaydee's Tic Tac Toe challenge last week. From the wonderful entries we had in the gallery, it would seem you did!

This week, our hostess is Joanne and she has a theme challenge for us: Candles. Birthday, Christmas, whenever... you decide. 

I'm afraid that I was rather literal in my interpretation of the theme. I was looking through my stamp library seeing what inspired me with candles and I kept coming back to some fun stamped candles I did a couple of years ago. 

I took myself down to the local discount store to see what they had in the way of plain white candles. I wasn't too happy with the size of them as I'd hoped for something more substantial but sometimes, you just have to make do. 😀

Anyway, I assembled my supplies: Noel Tidings and Welcome Noel stamps, Mossy Meadow and Pecan Pie Ink, Daffodil Delight blend, plain white tissue paper, some waxed lunch wrap and a heat tool.

If you've never stamped on candles before, it's really very easy to do. 

1. Stamp the design you want onto tissue paper.
2. Do any colouring you like. I've coloured the windows of the house.
3. Trim around the stamping, leaving about 2-3mm. There's not really a rule about the margin but you don't need a lot of excess tissue to deal with. 
4. Place the tissue design on the desired position on the candle.
5. Cut a strip of waxed lunch wrap that's tall enough to cover the stamped area and that is long enough to wrap around the candle with some overlap so you can hold the ends and keep the waxed paper tight over the tissue paper. Make sure the waxy side is towards the candle.
6. Gently heat the stamped area with a heat tool. This won't take very long. Within seconds, you'll see the waxed paper go glossy. That's enough. Lift the waxed paper off carefully. You shouldn't be able to see any tissue paper - it should be sealed over with wax. 
7. If you can still identify the tissue paper, then reposition the waxy paper and give it another few seconds of heat. 
8. That's all there is to it!

The team and I would love to see your take on the candle theme. You can see what everyone has done and link up your entry at The Paper Players. And again, thank you for continuing to play along with us!

Here's a quick recap of our challenge rules:

1. Create a new paper-craft project specifically for this challenge.
2. Upload your creation to your blog with a link back to us.
3. Please provide a direct link to the post featuring your challenge entry.
4. Please link your card to no more than four challenges, TOTAL, including ours
5. Have fun, and thank you for playing with us!

Don't forget to check out the great inspiration from the rest of the design team.

Jaydee

LeAnne Pugliese

Claire Broadwater

Joanne James

Ann Schach

Jan Clothier - You are here

Stef Perry

Christy Stanford

You can stamp with me, and shop with me, from anywhere in New Zealand. Click here.

Butterfly Flight for Paper Players 801

Jaydee has an exciting Tic-Tac-Toe Challenge for us this week at The Paper Players. Firstly though, a big thank you to everyone who played along with our 800th challenge. The look back to the very first sketch challenge brought out such gorgeous entries to the gallery, it was even more difficult than usual to choose winners. I hope you all have as much fun with this week's inspiration. 

I've chosen the centre column: things that fly, free and texture. Butterflies are my things that fly, my free choice is Hot Foiling and texture comes from an embossing folder and tone-on-tone diecuts.

I started by using the Butterfly Flight Hot Foil dies and silver foil to create the butterflies. I coloured them using the Butterfly Flight decorative masks, blending brushes and Fresh Freesia, Highland Heather and Gorgeous Grape inks.

After die cutting them out, I cut a second set of outlines in Fresh Freesia so that I could add them as shadows under the dimesionaled up butterflies on the card front.

I cut out a Basic White rounded corner rectangle from Nested Essentials. Then I cut some foliage from the Butterfly Flight Hot Foil dies and added them to the rectangle for a background for the butterflies.

The sentiment is hot foiled in silver with the Sweetly Sentimental Hot Foil dies.

The card front is embossed with the Floral Spray 3D embossing folder, because butterflies need flowers, right?

To finish off, I added a trio of Purple Shimmer Gems (retired).

The team and I would love to see what you will choose to use from the Tic Tac Toe Challenge. You can see what everyone has done and link up your entry at The Paper Players. And again, thank you for continuing to play along with us!

Here's a quick recap of our challenge rules:

1. Create a new paper-craft project specifically for this challenge.
2. Upload your creation to your blog with a link back to us.
3. Please provide a direct link to the post featuring your challenge entry.
4. Please link your card to no more than four challenges, TOTAL, including ours
5. Have fun, and thank you for playing with us!

Don't forget to check out the great inspiration from the rest of the design team.

Jaydee

LeAnne Pugliese

Claire Broadwater

Joanne James

Ann Schach

Jan Clothier - You are here

Stef Perry

Christy Stanford

You can stamp with me, and shop with me, from anywhere in New Zealand. Click here.

Butterfly Flight for As You See It 380

It's time for at new challenge at As You See It and sketch week is always my favourite. I love sketch challenges because they give guidance but also give plenty of leeway to do your own thing. I'm also always amazed at the way the one sketch can lead to so many different interpretations.

For the quartered panels, I used pieces embossed with the Stone & Vine 3D folder. 

For the horizontal, I used a fishtailed banner, embossed with the retired Subtle 3D folder. Then for the sentiment, I used one the sentiments from the Sweetly Sentimental Hot Foil dies.

The sentiment was mounted onto one of the butterflies from the Butterfly Flight Hot Foil dies. The butterfly was coloured with the Butterfly Flight decorative masks. I used blending brushes with Flirty Flamingo and Melon Mambo inks.

To finish off, I added a trio of retired pink gems.

You can see what the rest of the Design Team have done, and link up your entry, on the As You See It page. The team and I are all keen to see how you see it!

If you live in New Zealand and don't have a Stampin' Up Demonstrator, I'd love to be yours. I can help you with ideas, get you catalogues and provide you with Stampin' Up products. You can leave a message in the comments or contact me using any of the methods listed in the Contact Me tab at the top of the page. 

You can stamp with me, and shop with me, from anywhere in New Zealand. Click here.

 

Lily of the Valley for Colour INKspiration 216

 

Welcome to the 216th challenge at Colour INKspiration! Today's colour challenge palette was chosen by me, so I hope you enjoy playing along with us!

This challenge runs for nearly two weeks and will finish on Monday 7 September, 5pm AEST.

If you haven't played with us before, we are a group of Stampin' Up Demonstrators from the South Pacific. Challenges are shown and entered via our Facebook Group page. If you don't belong, and would like to, click here. Don't forget to answer the three easy questions you'll be asked when you ask to join the group.

Each challenge, Top Picks and a winner are chosen by the crew and the winner offered a chance to Guest Design with us for a future challenge. We welcome Mariel Altamirano as our guest designer for this challenge.

If you don't have an exact challenge colour, feel free to replace it with whatever you have that's closest, for example Highland Heather for Fresh Freesia. Black, White, Very Vanilla, Crumb Cake, Basic Beige and metallics are free colours, as are flesh-toned Stampin' Blends.

I felt that these colours lent themselves to something floral and delicate so that had me reaching for the Lily of the Valley bundle.

My card base is Blackberry Bliss. I embossed the card front with the Floral Spray 3D folder.

Although the large Lily of the Valley stamp and die is a showstopper, I've always had a soft spot for the smaller stamped image. So I stamped two of them and coloured them with Stampin' Blends in Fresh Freesia, Blackberry Bliss and Soft Sea Foam. Then I die cut them out. I also cut out a piece of the trellis from Blackberry Bliss cardstock.

I used a piece of retired Beautiful Bokeh DSP to create a horizontal bar then arranged the trellis and the flowers over it. 

As it happened, I'd been experimenting with the new Hot Foil system and had a pile of sentiments from the Sweetly Sentimental Hot Foil dies and chose this one 'here's to another year'. I liked that it would work for both a birthday or an anniversary. 

To finish off this simple little card, I added a trio of Sunset Sparkle sequins.

You can see what the rest of the Design Team have done with the colours in the Crew Inspiration Album on the Colour INKspiration Challenge Facebook page.

If you live in New Zealand and don't have a Stampin' Up Demonstrator, I'd love to be yours. I can help you with ideas, get you catalogues and provide you with Stampin' Up products. You can leave a message in the comments or contact me using any of the methods listed in the Contact Me tab at the top of the page. 

You can stamp with me, and shop with me, from anywhere in New Zealand. Click here.

Neutral Noel for Paper Players 800

This week is a special week for us at The Paper Players as it is our 800th challenge! That's some dedication from the women who started up the challenge, some of whom are still on the team. At roughly 50 challenges a year, that means it all started up sixteen years ago. Sixteen years ago, I didn't even know what a rubber stamp was, let alone how to use one!

To celebrate this wonderful milestone, our hostess Ann has brought out the very first Paper Players Challenge for you to play with again for Challenge 800.  We also thank the many of you who loyally play along with us so often. We're all interested to see what you do with it!

Since this challenge landed on my desk at about the same time as the pre-order for the September-December Mini Catalogue, the choice of set was made for me! It was going to be the Neutral Noel suite and a Christmas card. 

Instead of the central rectangle of the sketch, I used the large oval die from Noel Tidings to cut a Basic White oval which was then embossed with the Softly Woven folder. This folder has quickly become a favourite of mine already. 

For the strong horizontal element, I used one of the beautiful foil-heavy patterns from the Neutral Noel DSP pack. All of these are beautiful, single-sided and heavy-weight papers. 

For the Christmas cluster I used a mix of the stamps and dies from both Noel Tidings and Welcome Noel bundles. The little houses were stamped in Crumb Cake and Pecan Pie. The foliage was stamped in Mossy Meadow, the branches in Pecan Pie, the deer in Early Espresso while the berries were cut from Cherry Cobbler and the wreath from Mossy Meadow. This was all arranged and adhered, some on dimensionals.

The sentiment is gold embossed and cut with a label die from Noel Tidings. The trio of embellishments are the Gold Adhesive Backed Dots that are part of the suite. Pretty, aren't they?

The team and I would love to see what you do with this very special sketch challenge. You can see what everyone has done and link up your entry at The Paper Players. And again, thank you for continuing to play along with us!

Here's a quick recap of our challenge rules:

1. Create a new paper-craft project specifically for this challenge.
2. Upload your creation to your blog with a link back to us.
3. Please provide a direct link to the post featuring your challenge entry.
4. Please link your card to no more than four challenges, TOTAL, including ours
5. Have fun, and thank you for playing with us!

Don't forget to check out the great inspiration from the rest of the design team.

Jaydee

LeAnne Pugliese

Claire Broadwater

Joanne James

Ann Schach

Jan Clothier - You are here

Stef Perry

Christy Stanford

You can stamp with me, and shop with me, from anywhere in New Zealand. Click here.