Thinking Stamping: September 2025

Jan Clothier - You are here

Christy Stanford

Wednesday, 24 September 2025

Branching Out for Colour INKspiration 196

Welcome to the 196th challenge at Colour INKspiration. This challenge runs for nearly two weeks and will finish on Monday October 7, 7pm AEST.

This colour palette was chosen for us by Crew Member, Lou Kitzelman.

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 Smoky Slate for Gray Granite. Black, White, Very Vanilla, Crumb Cake, Basic Beige and metallics are free colours, as are flesh-toned Stampin' Blends.

I used these colours to play with a new bundle from the September-December Mini Catalogue, which is now available. Branching Out is an interesting bundle. There's all kinds of branches and cones and berries to let you build your own tree as well as a good mix of sentiments, yet it can also easily be a Christmas set too.

This card grew as it went along. I started with a piece of DSP from Woven Textures that used Gray Granite. While thinking on how I might use it, I decided to stamp the design directly onto the paper. After stamping the branch in Early Espresso, I added some pine boughs in Shy Shamrock and Summer Splash. The I stamped some background splatter in Gray Granite using the berry die and the pollen die. Then I stamped in some pinecones in Early Espresso.

With the background work done, I die cut some pine boughs in Summer Splash, some berries in Shy Shamrock and some pinecones in Early Espresso. I arranged these around where I wanted the sentiment to go. The greenery got a coat of Wink of Stella for a bit of shine.

The sentiment is stamped in Early Espresso and cut with a die from Nested Essentials. The finishing touch was the addition of some Flat Pearls in Shy Shamrock and Summer Splash.

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.

Sunday, 21 September 2025

Beautiful Gallery for The Paper Players 756

Welcome to a new challenge at The Paper Players. Thank you to everyone who played along with LeAnne's subtle colour challenge. As always, the entries were gorgeous.

This week, it's my pleasure to be the hostess for our Clean and Simple challenge and I've chosen the theme of Watercolour. So maybe you'd like to stamp or emboss an image then use your inks to watercolour, maybe you'd like to get down and dirty with some ink smooshing, or maybe you'd like to try something wild like blowing the ink or using salts. However you'd like to play with water colouring, this is your challenge.

Just remember that it's also a CLEAN AND SIMPLE CHALLENGE, so your finished item should:

have lots of open white space
have a single focal point
have minimal layers and embellishments

I started this challenge by die cutting some of the foliage and flowers from the Gallery Blooms dies from Fluid 100 Watercolor paper. After wetting the die cuts with a Water Painter, I coloured them using Summer Splash, Pretty in Pink and Petunia Pop inks. I like using inks on wet paper as the colours more readily move and flow. Once they were dry, I arranged them on a tag cut from the sadly retired Tailor Made Tags die set.

I cut a second tag from Basic White and did a second watercolour technique with it. I used the floral stamp from Beautiful Motifs and Pretty in Pink ink for this.

I wet the cut tag with a Water Painter, then stamped the floral image onto the damp card. This meant that the edges of the stamped image bled a little and gave a softer finish. If you're doing this on Basic White card stock, then be light handed on the water. If you're using Fluid 100 Watercolor paper, then go for it.

The embossing folder on the card front is Damask Designs, also part of the Beautiful Gallery suite. The sentiment, stamped in Gray Granite, is from Beautiful Motifs and is cut using a banner die from Stylish Shapes. The Gray Granite twine is from the Baker's Twine Essentials pack. The embellishments are In Color Flat Pearls in Pretty in Pink.

What magic will you work with water colour? And remember it's also a Clean and Simple Challenge. You can see what the rest of the team have done and link up your entry on The Paper Players page.

Here's a quick recap of our challenge rules:

Create a new paper-craft project specifically for this challenge.
Upload your creation to your blog with a link back to us.
Please provide a direct link to the post featuring your challenge entry.
Please link your card to no more than four challenges, TOTAL, including ours
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.

Anne Marie Hile (on leave)

Jan Clothier - You are here

Christy Stanford

Friday, 19 September 2025

Prairie Grass for As You See It 357

Welcome to a new challenge at As You See It. As always, a sketch challenge is followed by a colour challenge. This week, we're delving into some of Stampin' Up!'s 2025 In Color range. So often with the In-Colors, I look at an individual colour and it doesn't grab me but when you put them together, they're a great team. I think that's very true of this year's colours. I've become especially fond of Secret Sea and the Secret Sea/Cloud Cover combo. Anyway, we'd love to see how you see these colours working together.

Regular readers will know that I've been experimenting a lot lately with circle masks as backgrounds for other stamps. This card is an extension of that playaround.

I started by stamping the grass image using two of the stamps from Prairie Grass in Secret Sea. The I used some masks I'd cut from scraps of window sheet using various sizes of circles to lay down some background pops of colour in Cloud Cover, Pumpkin Pie and Timid Tiger.

Then, I wondered what to try next. So I embossed the lefthand side of the card front using one of the folders from Glass & Gardens.

After stamping the sentiment in Secret Sea, I used one of the rounded rectangle dies from Nested Essentials to cut out the sentiment. I attached the card front to the Secret Sea card base but added in a panel of Timid Tiger underneath where I'd cut out the sentiment label. Then I popped the sentiment back into place on dimensionals, which allows for a pleasing flash of colour to peek out from behind.

I added a trio of Flat Pearls, one in Timid Tiger and two Secret Sea to finish off.

So how do YOU see these colours? Visit the As You See It page to link up your entry and to see the rest of the team's inspirations.

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

Sunday, 14 September 2025

Impressions Abloom for The Paper Players 755

Hello everyone! Welcome to a new week at The Paper Players. Thank you for the lovely entries in Ann's Food and Drink themed challenge. Our hostess this week is LeAnne and she has a colour challenge for us.

I decided to break out the Impressions Abloom bundle for this one as I had in mind a softly coloured floral card and the die cuts in this bundle are gorgeous. I cut a white flower in each of the three sizes, some Lemon Lolly centres, some Soft Sea Foam leaves and some tiny Lemon Lolly flowers.

On the Basic White card front, I sponged some Soft Sea Foam with a blending brush. Then I did some fine splatters of diluted Lost Lagoon ink before embossing the front with the Exposed Brick 3D embossing folder. I curled one corner and added in some Lemon Lolly behind it.

The sentiment is stamped in Lost Lagoon and cut with a banner die from Stylish Shapes. I added some Iridescent Pearls to the centres of the tiny Lemon Lolly flowers, plus a couple more.

It mightn't have turned out quite as I'd imagined but pretty close. 😀

What will you do with LeAnne's colours? You can see what the rest of the team have done and link up your entry on The Paper Players page.

Here's a quick recap of our challenge rules:

Create a new paper-craft project specifically for this challenge.
Upload your creation to your blog with a link back to us.
Please provide a direct link to the post featuring your challenge entry.
Please link your card to no more than four challenges, TOTAL, including ours
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.

Anne Marie Hile (on leave)

Jan Clothier - You are here

Jan Clothier - NZ - You are hare
Leonie Stuart - AU
Rochelle Laird-Smith - AU
Cheryll Miller - AU
Danielle Kassing - NL
Marga Bultena - NL
Kelly Taranto - US
Chris Smith - US
Bree Renwick - US
Teri West - US
Cheryl Hamilton - US

Christy Stanford

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

Wednesday, 10 September 2025

Trusty Tools for Around the World on Wednesday September

Welcome to Around the World on Wednesday's September hop.

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. 😀

This month, we're doing something a little different. It's five years since Around the World on Wednesday started up, so we're doing some close-up looks at the team. This month, we're going to CASE team member Bree Renwick but also using the theme of remember when...

So I've gone back to Bree's first project for Around the World on Wednesday and CASED that.

I've retained the wide border with tone-on-tone stamping. Since I couldn't decide whether to use Lemon-Lime Twist or Azure Afternoon, I made one of each!

I also kept the layered centre panel with the sentiment going off to the right and with a die cut over the left hand end of the sentiment from Bree's card.

I've used Trusty Tools stamps and dies and The Right Words for the sentiment.

Keep on hopping to see how the rest of the team have CASEd Aurelie. Next up is the wonderful Leonie Stuart from Australia. I'm sure she has a treat to share with us!

You can shop with me from anywhere in New Zealand here.

If you get lost around the hop, or want to revisit, here's a blog roll for you.

Branching Out for Colour INKspiration 195

Welcome to the 195th challenge at Colour INKspiration. This challenge runs for nearly two weeks and will finish on Monday September 22, 7pm AEST.

This colour palette was chosen for us by Crew Member, Monica Formosa.

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 Petra Noeth 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 Gray Granite for Smoky Slate. Black, White, Very Vanilla, Crumb Cake, Basic Beige and metallics are free colours, as are flesh-toned Stampin' Blends.

After creating the trees and berries scene, and sponging the corner with some Crushed Curry ink, I cut the label using the stitched edge dies that are part of the set. I cut a larger one in Smoky Slate to layer with.

I added the birthday sentiment - also from the set - and added three gold Flower Accents as embellishment. The Basic Black card front was embossed with the Joined Together embossing folder.

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.

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

Sunday, 7 September 2025

Celebratory Sips for Paper Players 754

Thanks to everyone who played along with Joanne's Tic-Tac-Toe last week. There were many fantastic entries. I'm keen to see what everyone makes of Ann's theme this week: Food or Drink.

My go-to drinks set is Cheers & Sips, along with the fabulous Celebratory Sips DSP. I started with a strip of DSP and that led to the choice of Blackberry Bliss as the base colour and for the mat at the centre.

I embossed the central white panel with the glass folder from Glass and Gardens embossing folders. I curled the top right corner to add a little extra interest.

I'm not usually a ribbon user, but I did have sitting on my desk a roll of the Mossy Meadow and Gold ribbon. With the gold thread running through it, it's so pretty and the colour worked well with the foliage of the DSP. I added a strip of ribbon and a bow to create a horizontal.

The two glasses were fussy cut from a piece of the DSP. I ran the long glass through the SCEM machine to give it the impression of cut glass before mounting it onto the embossed panel. The short glass was popped up on dimensionals.

I stamped the sentiment in Blackberry Bliss ink and cut it using Stylish Shapes. The embellishments are Strawberry Slush gems.

What kind of food or drink will you celebrate? You can see what the rest of the team have done and link up your entry on The Paper Players page.

Here's a quick recap of our challenge rules:

Create a new paper-craft project specifically for this challenge.
Upload your creation to your blog with a link back to us.
Please provide a direct link to the post featuring your challenge entry.
Please link your card to no more than four challenges, TOTAL, including ours
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.

Anne Marie Hile (on leave)

Jan Clothier - You are here