Sea Turtle for CAS Colours & Sketches 549

One of my favourite challenges, even though I don't often get time to play, is CAS Colour & Sketches.  

I like the alternating of sketch and colour challenges and the variety of challenges the designers offer up. 

Here's my take on it, using a favourite set of mine, Sea Turtle.

I blended a strip of Balmy Blue ink with a blending brush, then stamped some bubbles on it with Balmy Blue and Azure Afternoon. Then a school of Melon Mambo fish swam along.

The Blueberry Bushel small turtle and sand dollar, and the Melon Mambo starfish, were stamped and popped up on dimensionals. I added the sentiment in Blueberry Bushel ink from Simply Said. 

It wasn't until I came to blog this card that I realised I'd jotted down the sketch very loosely and perhaps haven't given the sentiment the prominence it should have. But this card was definitely inspired by the sketch so I've shared it anyway! 😀

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.

 

Magnolia Mood for Colour INKspiration 178

Welcome to the 178th challenge at Colour INKspiration. Today's colour palette was chosen for us by Crew Member and Stampin' Up! Artisan, Vicki Boucher. Aren't the colours just so soft and pretty?

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're delighted to have not one but two Guest Designers: Janette Goodall and Yvonne Spikmans - Van Bruggen.

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

This challenge is open for two weeks and closes Monday December 9, 7pm AEST.

Well, I just couldn't help myself. I took the obvious path and went with a floral card. Really, what's the point in having beautiful floral stamps if you don't use them? 😀

I got out Magnolia Mood  bundle from the Online Exclusive section. These products are ones that can only be seen online and not in any paper catalogue. It's worth a browse in here as you might well discover some things you thought had retired! You can view the online exclusives here.

I stamped the large spray of flowers and two buds in Old Olive then coloured them with Calyspo Coral and Soft Sea Foam Stampin' Blends. After die cutting them out, I also cut the large spray die in Soft Sea Foam to create a background of lacy leaves.

The fun part was layering up my various stamped images and die cuts to create the bouquet. The Basic White panel was embossed with the Dotted Circles 3D embossing folder. Striking, isn't it?

The sentiment is stamped in Old Olive and I used a die from Everyday Details to create the label. To create the Calypso Coral jewels, I coloured some Basic Rhinestone Jewels with the darker Calyspo Coral Stampin' Blend.

We'd love to see what you do with the challenge colours. You can join the group in the following link, if you aren't already a member. Don't forget to answer the questions when you ask to join. You can see what the rest of the Design Team have done with these 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.

 

Cake Celebrations for Paper Players 717

Jaydee's Clean and Simple Christmas Challenge was an absolute winner last week. There were so many wonderful CAS creations in the gallery, I was glad not to have to be choosing the Cut Above! I'm sure that Stef's lovely sketch will be just as popular.

It's funny how a creation can evolve. I'm usually quite well planned and know pretty much how something is going to turn out before I sit down to start making. But every now and again, the project just develops a mind of it's own. Certainly, it was the case with this card. It ended up a long way from where I expected it to - but I like it anyway!

Perhaps my mistake was in starting with a piece of DSP. The Unbounded Beauty DSP collection was looking at me, begging to be used, so I used that for my diagonal element. I also die cut a 'cake' from it.

  

The DSP then made all the colour decisions for me: a Berry Burst card base and icing, a Pretty in Pink mat, a Pretty Peacock cake stand and some touches of Shy Shamrock and Peach Pie.

I enjoyed using the Cake Celebration bundle to make the cake and to stamp the sentiment. This bundle can be found in the Online Exclusives but not in any paper catalogue.

I used the Deckled Rectangles to cut the centre panels and the Cute Crochet embossing folder over the card front. I like the subtle textures of this folder. The finishing touch was the addition of a trio of Peach Pie shimmer gems.

We'd all love to see your take on Stef's sketch. You can see what the rest of the design team have done, and link up your entry, at The Paper Players page.

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

Anne Marie Hile

Ann Schach

Jan Clothier - You are here

Stef Perry

Eliz Stewart

Jolanda Johnstone

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 shop with me from anywhere in New Zealand here.

Decorative Trees for AYSI 337

 Hi fellow stampers! It's time for a new challenge at As You See It. It's week 6 of the roster, so it's time for the love it or hate it SPEED STAMPING CHALLENGE.

For a speed challenge, you need to create on the given theme in ten minutes or less. 

Sound impossible? Well, you'll be relieved to know that it is possible and these are the rules around it:

• Thinking time is not counted in the ten minutes, so you can have planned out what you're going to make.
• Gathering supplies is not counted. So get out the set you want to use, block the stamps, put the embossing folder and dies by the machine, get the embellishments out of the drawer. 

• Clean up time is not included.

BUT...

Once you start crafting - eg cut some cardstock, ink a stamp, emboss or die cut anything then the timer has to start. 

SO....

Your challenge, should you wish to accept it, is to create something on the theme of Trees in ten minutes or less.

Don't forget to tell us your time in the post.

Since Christmas is nearing, I decided to go with using the Decorative Trees bundle. To keep things simple, I went for asimple colour scheme: Basic White + Shy Shamrock. 

I started with a Basic White thick cardbase and a panel of Basic White, embossed with the Forever Plaid 3D Embossing Folder.

I cut a Shy Shamrock tree shape, then used Shy Shamrock Glimmer paper to cut the decorative overlay and stars. Using double sided adhesive sheet on the glimmer paper made removing the pieces quick - they peeled off with the backing.

I popped the tree up on dimensionals and  added three glimmer paper stars. The sentiment is stamped in in Shy Shamrock then popped up on dimensionals. 

As there was still time on the clock, I added in three Shy Shamrock shimmer gems. 

Time taken:

There's nothing quite like having the clock running while you craft to turn this into an adrenalin hobby!

The team and I would love to see what you can do in ten minutes or less. Visit the As You See It page to see what the rest of the team have done and to link up your entry. You can join in the challenge until Wednesday December 5, 11.59pm PST.

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 shop with me from  anywhere in New Zealand here.

Creativity Abounds November

This month the international team at Creativity Abounds has a great theme for our bundle and hop: Holiday Packaging and Decorations. This hop - and the associated tutorial bundle - will give you a lot of examples for Holiday decorations and packaging. 

Even if you don't have the exact sets, you'll find inspiration in the gift packaging ideas.  If you get the tutorial bundle, you'll have step-by-step instructions for thirteen projects, all of which you'll see as you go around the hop.

You can earn the Tutorial Bundle as a free gift from me with a purchase of $100 or more (excluding P&P) or by being a member of my team. You can shop with me, and join my team, from anywhere in New Zealand.

There are two parts to this post: a decoration idea and a sneak peek at my tutorial project.

A Christmas Decoration Idea

I'm a big fan of the Round We Go bundle and it's just tailor-made for making Christmas tree (or any occasion) decorations. I like that you can choose to make either round scallop-edge rosettes or pointy ended one. 

While you can make these out of any DSP, I've used the Season of Green & Gold (an online exclusive), Gold Foil and Festive Glimmer Paper. The hanger is made with Gold Twisted Thread (another online exclusive).

There's nothing tricky about these. Just use the dies as intended and away you go! I did think about adding a large gem in the centre but decided there was enough bling-iness going on already. 

PS A hot glue gun is handy, but not essential, in putting these together. 😀

Tutorial Bundle Peek

My bundle project is a cute little mini shopping bag, which I adapted from one shown to me by my up-line many years ago. They make great table favours for any occasion but made from Christmas papers they work well to add a festive element to the table if you don't want crackers. They're also perfect for packaging small gifts or for little thank-you favours. It's just the right size for some wrapped lollies or some tea bags and chocolate squares. 😀

Here's a sneak peek at the rest of the tutorial bundle.

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 shop with me from anywhere in New Zealand by clicking here. 

If you don't live in New Zealand, you can get it from any of my team mates in your country. Here they all are. We welcome Lisa and Ingrid to the team! 

Save the Date Stamp Camp 2025

Reindeer Fun for The Paper Players 716

Time is certainly zipping by - it's not only time for a new challenge at The Paper Players but it's getting very, very close to Christmas. Our hostess this week, Jaydee is getting us into the Christmas swing for sure with this CLEAN and SIMPLE theme challenge. First though, I'd like to say how much I enjoyed looking at all the creations for Claire's bright and fun colour challenge last week. Great work, everyone!

In general, I tend to be happiest when I'm creating more towards the Clean and Simple end of the cardmaking spectrum so I enjoyed this challenge. 

If you're wondering about Clean and Simple, at The Paper Players we mean that we'd like to see projects that have a lot of open white space, few layers and few embellishments. That can be quite a challenge, even for our design team! (Especially when we go off and create and miss seeing the CAS part of the instruction - I've done that at least once! 😄)

Believe it or not, this card is created with the Reindeer Fun bundle. One of the things I most enjoy about this bundle is that while you can have as many prancing, flying reindeer as you like, there's plenty to play with without them too! And the sentiments are just great - love this 'Merry Christmas'!

I also enjoyed the chance to pair it up with another Christmas favourite of mine, the Christmas Tidings embossing folder. Sadly, it's retired now if you were hoping to add it to your stash but if you still have it in yours - don't forget to get it out and give it a run. If you don't have it, you could use whatever Christmassy folder you have. If I didn't use this one, I'd use the Forever Plaid 3D embossing folder.

To make the presents, I used some scraps from the Take A Bow DSP stack and the Festive Glimmer Paper pack. To jazz them up, I did add three adhesive Peppermint Dots (probably not strictly CAS), while the sentiment was cut using one of the banners from Stylish Shapes.

We'd all love to see your Clean and Simple Christmas projects. You can see what the rest of the design team have done, and link up your entry, at The Paper Players page.

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

Anne Marie Hile

Ann Schach

Jan Clothier - You are here

Stef Perry

Eliz Stewart

Jolanda Johnstone

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 shop with me from anywhere in New Zealand here.

Seaside Wishes for Stampin' Fancy Friday

This month, the theme at Stampin' Fancy Friday is a sketch. 

We don't blog hop as such but the team at Stampin' Fancy Friday do a daily inspiration post on Instagram. The team at Stampin' Fancy Friday are all current or past members of Stampin' Up!'s Artisan Design Team, so it really is a great place to pick up ideas or recharge your creative mojo.

This sketch seemed perfect for a stack-and-switch approach: a good way to make three cards in one go. I used an up and coming favourite of mine, Seaside Wishes, paired up with some Country Woods DSP.

I stacked the two pieces of my chosen DSP and cut them according to the sketch outline. Then I assembled them onto pieces of Basic White then ran them through the SCEM with the Seaside Wishes hybrid embossing folder. After that, it was just a matter of die cutting and sponging various other elements and stamping up some Petal Pink starfish, 

Here's a closer look at each one. 

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 shop with me from anywhere in New Zealand by clicking here. 

Around the World on Wednesday November

 

Welcome to the latest hop at Around the World on Wednesday!

On the second Wednesday of each month, the team put together a thematic hop to give you some inspiration for your own crafting. We love it when you try out something new or CAS(E) one of our projects. The team is truly international, with members from each time zone of the world that Stampin' Up! operates. You're with me, in New Zealand - the first place in the Stampin' Up! world to change the date. 😀

Our inspiration this month is a Christmas Colour Challenge. Our team leader, Angie, has given us a choice of working with either at Coastal Colour palette or a Traditional Colour palette.

I don't think much guesswork will be needed to see that I've gone for a traditional palette!

Normally, I tend to inhabit a relatively Clean and Simple crafting realm... but I do like to go on holiday sometimes and to do things differently. It often seems to happen around Christmas that I go all vintage or shabby chic or distressed. 😀

I'm not quite sure what this one is but definitely not CAS!

I used the Decorative Trees bundle for this one. It's been such a great bundle this season - I think this one is going into my keepers shelf! The tree itself it quite straightforward: A simple die cut in Shaded Spruce brushed around the edges in the same coloured ink, then a gold foil die cut overlay added in. I gold-embossed the sentiment onto Cherry Cobbler,  cut it into pieces and assembled it on the tree. The gold stars are dies cuts from the Decorative Trees too.

Most of the fun part though was creating the background. The starting point was a piece of Cherry Cobbler cardstock embossed using the Distressed Tile 3D embossing folder then there was a lot of sponging, blending, splattering and embossing. As I say, the fun part!

You can see how I did it in this tutorial. Messy but actually very easy. 

The gold cord is one of the new online exclusives. It can be viewed, as can all Stampin' Up! products, in my online store. 

So, are you a Traditional Christmas person or more of a Coastal Christmas person? Keep on hopping to see what the rest of the team are thinking! Next up is Leonie Stuart from Australia, a demonstrator whose work I admire greatly. 

If you get lost on the hop or want to revisit anyone, here's the blog roll.

Jan Clothier - NZ - You are here

Leonie Stuart - AU

Rochelle Laird-Smith - AU

Danielle Kassing - NL

Ximena Morales - DE

Aurélie Fabre - FR

Mikaela Titheridge - UK

Tina Zinck-MacDonald - CA

Annette Ball - CA

Angie McKenzie - US

Kelly Taranto - US

Tricia Butts - US

Theresa McEntee - US

Bree Renwick - US

Lori Willcox - CA

Spotlight on Nature for Colour INKspiration 177

 

Welcome to the 177th challenge at Colour INKspiration. Today's colour palette was chosen for us by Crew Member Cathy Pinchbeck. If this image doesn't get us in the swing of all things Christmas, then nothing will!

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're delighted to have Sandra Strobel join us at 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 Night of Navy for Blueberry Bushel. Black, White, Very Vanilla, Crumb Cake, Basic Beige and metallics are free colours, as are flesh toned Stampin' Blends.

This challenge is open for two weeks and closes Monday November 25, 7pm AEST.

Having said how festive these colours were, I ended up going floral. I used the Spotlight on Nature stamp set and gold embossed the large flower image in gold. I coloured it using Stampin' Blends in Melon Mambo, Blueberry Bushel and Pretty Peacock. Then I added in some small splatter stamps in Pretty Peacock, thinking they were a bit like pops of pollen. 

After cutting the image out using the largest of the Perennial Postage dies, I mounted it onto a piece of Melon Mambo cardstock before adhering it to a Thick Basic White card base. 

The sentiment is stamped in Blueberry Bushel and cut with one of the banners from the Stylish Shapes die set. I finished off with a trio of Blueberry Bushel Tinsel Gems. 

A nice CAS card, ready to go!

We'd love to see what you do with the challenge colours. You can join the group in the following link, if you aren't already a member. Don't forget to answer the questions when you ask to join. You can see what the rest of the Design Team have done with these 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 shop with me from anywhere in New Zealand by clicking here.