Thinking Stamping

Jan Clothier - You are here

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.

Friday, 13 June 2025

Trusty Tools for AYSI 350

Hello everyone! We're back to the beginning of our challenge roster with a sketch, this time from Joanne.

Are your ideas flowing yet? I love a sketch challenge because I find the structure really gets my mojo going.

For this challenge, I used the Trusty Tools stamps and dies - a great masculine set if you have a DIY-er in your family. Instead of going for traditional 'tool' colours, I went for something bright and breezy: Lemon-Lime Twist and Azure Afternoon with Smoky Slate.

For the three vertical elements in the sketch, I chose three of the tools in the set. I stamped them in Tuxedo Black then coloured them with Stampin' Blends in Lemon-Lime Twist, Azure Afternoon and Smoky Slate. I used the pegboard die from the set to create a board for the tools to 'hang' on. For added colour, I put a piece of Lemon-Lime Twist behind it.

It's a little early for Father's Day but I'm sure it will be upon us before we can blink, and I'll be ready! The sentiment label is cut using a banner from Stylish Shapes.

To finish off, a tie of Black Baker's Twine from the Essentials Pack and some Neutral Matte Dots. A Basic Black card base brings it all together.

The whole team would love to see what marvels you can create in ten minutes or less. You can see what the rest of the team have done, and link up your entry, at the As You See It Challenge page.

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

Wednesday, 11 June 2025

Impressions Abloom for CI189

Welcome to the 189th challenge at Colour INKspiration. This challenge runs for nearly two weeks and will finish on Monday June 23, 7pm AEST.

This colour palette was chosen for us by Crew Member. Monica Formosa. It might get you thinking of florals or it might send you off in a completely different direction.

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 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 Daffodil Delight for Darling Duckling. Black, White, Very Vanilla, Crumb Cake, Basic Beige and metallics are free colours, as are flesh-toned Stampin' Blends.

You might have noticed that three of the challenge colours are from the 2025-2027 In Colors. We will be celebrating the new In Colors in the next few challenges but if you don't have them yet, feel free to use close substitutes.

I'm still really enjoying playing around with the Impressions Abloom bundle. For this card, I used the dies and created a bloom using various of the 'extra' bits and pieces in the set: i.e. the ones that aren't outlines of the stamped images.

To add interest to the Basic White panel, I embossed it using the Pressed Flowers embossing folder that is part of the Floral Impressions suite.

The sentiment is from a fabulous new words-only set called The Right Words. One of the many things I like about this set is that the sentiments are two-part: something for the inside and something for the outside. I've used the smallest irregular hexagon die from Nested Essentials to cut it out.

The background DSP is from the 2025-27 In Color 6x6 stack. I was going to use the mottled stripes on the other side but decided I liked this one better! Best of all, there's one of these stacks available for every colour family.

I've added some Secret Sea Flat Pearl embellishments to finish off.

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, 8 June 2025

Impressions Abloom for Paper Players 741

Welcome to a new week at The Paper Players. I was delighted to see the many interesting bits and pieces that people recycled or repurposed in their projects for my 'Recycling in In' challenge. This week, Stef has a sweet colour challenge for us.

I was keen to try out the new soft blue from Stampin' Up!, Cloud Cover for this challenge. Sadly, Stampin' Up! had some difficulties with the quality of the ink pad for this colour. I have an ink pad in Cloud Cover and was happy to use it as it looked perfect. I was sorry to see that in the photos, it does look more grey than blue. In real life, it was an exact match for the card base and DSP.

Anyway, colour photography woes aside, I was happy with this card. I used the Impressions Abloom bundle to stamp one of each of the three flowers in Cloud Cover and gave them a Peach Pie centre. I added in some Soft Sea Foam die cut leaves. The tiny flowers are also cut from Peach Pie.

The DSP is from the 2025-2027 In Color 6x6 stack. Lovely pattern, isn't it? There's a stack for every colour family.

The embossed background is the Exposed Brick 3D embossing folder and the sentiment is from The Right Words. The sentiment label is from Stylish Shapes - my most used die set.

It will be fun seeing the different ways that people use these colours over the next week.

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:

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

Sunday, 1 June 2025

Beautiful Motifs - and some recycling - for Paper Players 740

Welcome everyone to a new week at The Paper Players! We had some wonderful entries last week for LeAnne's sketch and I'm looking forward to seeing what you all come up with for this week.

I'm delighted to be the hostess this week and I hope you'll be excited by the theme I've set which is to recycle something or re-purpose something in your creation.

I have a small stash of deleted library books, picked up for next to nothing at sales, chosen for the interesting text or illustrations. One that has repaid the pittance price many times over is a broken-spined, tired looking "Book of Illustrated Fashion".

I've cut down a reproduction of an advertisement from November 1899 showing off the latest fashions for ladies. As gorgeous as they look, I imagine they were not at all comfortable to wear! It was however, a lot of fun turning them into cards.

I started by looking at the colours in the illustration and matched them to Early Espresso, Gray Granite and Cajun Craze.

Because I wanted these fabulous clothes to be the star of the show, I kept the treatment very simple. I matted each half of the advertisement onto a piece of Gray Granite, after trimming down to a card front size. The card base is Early Espresso and then I used Cajun Craze (a colour I rarely use) for the card front.

In keeping with the vintage feel of the images, I used the new Damask Designs embossing folder. I stamped the sentiments from Beautiful Motifs in Early Espresso onto Gray Granite and cut them using a small die from Perennial Postage.

To ground the sentiment, I added some Gray Granite twine from the Baker's Twine Essentials pack. To keep with the vintage feel, I added in a trio of Pressed Flower motifs as embellishment.

I can't wait to see what creative ways everyone recycles something for this week's challenge!

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:

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

Friday, 30 May 2025

Beautiful Gallery for AYSI 349

Time moves quickly and it's already rolled around to our most feared challenge of the roster - the SPEED CHALLENGE! For this challenge, the theme is water but the time remains the same: create your card in ten minutes or less.

Before you decide that's impossible, here's how it works.

Thinking time is not included. So you can have it all planned out before you start the timer.
Prepping equipment is not included. So you can get out the stamps and have them blocked up, the embellishments and dies can be on the table ready to go. The cardstock can be on the desk.
Thankfully, clean up is not included either.

BUT

The moment you ink a stamp, cut a piece of card, die-cut or emboss anything, then the timer has to start.

Over the years of doing the speed challenge, I've worked out a couple of tricks. One is to use pretty papers so they'll do all the heavy lifting that time-consuming techniques would usually do.

In this instance, I've turned to the Beautiful Gallery 6x6 DSP stack and I chose a moody water scene.

Part of the Gallery Blooms dies is one that cuts out three inset rectangles in a single pass. So I used it once on the scenic DSP and once on a piece of Cloud Cover. Then I replaced the centre scene rectangle with the matching Cloud Cover piece.

I stamped the sentiment, from Beautiful Motifs, in Secret Sea onto the Cloud Cover frame. The whole thing was adhered to a Secret Sea card base.

As I still had some time to spare, I added in three Secret Sea In Color Flat Pearls.

How long did this take? I was pleasantly surprised to see that it only took...

The whole team would love to see what marvels you can create in ten minutes or less. You can see what the rest of the team have done, and link up your entry, at the As You See It Challenge page.

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

5minutes 17 seconds

Sunday, 25 May 2025

Impressions Abloom for PP739

This week our hostess is LeAnne and she has a gorgeous sketch to inspire us with. Last week's Clean and Simple challenge brought out people's creativity and we look forward to seeing what you do with the sketch.

I think this is such a great inspiration that I'm going to keep it tucked away to use again.

I'm holding class this weekend and we're playing with the Floral Impressions suite which includes the very versatile Impressions Abloom bundle. Since it was on my desk still, it seemed to be begging for a go at this challenge. 😀

The Floral Impressions DSP is really lovely but I wanted to move away from the (pretty) colours in it and try something else. So I went with blues: Blueberry Bushel and Balmy Blue.

I started by stamping three flowers in Blueberry Bushel - one large and two medium. Although the stamps are two step, I like the effect of stamping the details straight on to Basic White card. I added in some Daffodil Delight centres.

I used the extra elements from the dies to cut some small Balmy Blue flowers and some detailed Granny Apple Green leaves.

The sentiment is white heat embossed onto Blueberry Bushel card, hand cut into a banner.

For the three vertical elements of the sketch I cut three pieces of Basic White card and embossed them using the Pressed Flowers embossing folder.

The embellishments, including the small flower centres, are Basic Rhinestone Jewels.

The rest of the team and I look forward to seeing what you create. 😀

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:

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