Recipe Challenge for As You See It 377

 At As You See It, after the Fill in the Blank challenge comes the Recipe Challenge. Just take the five given ingredients, add whatever you like from your own stash and see what you can cook up. Be sure to visit the As You See It page so you can see what our Guest Designer has done. The winner of our Colour Challenges is invited to be Guest Designer at our next Recipe Challenge. 

The five ingredients: Enamel Dots, Flower, Large bold sentiment, die cut and shades of yellow had me going down a retro path straight down to my craft library. One of the delights of crafting is  building up a library of useful and pretty things to use for future projects, all the while adding new items and weeding out the less useful, just as you do in a traditional library.

I don't have a lot of DSP so I went to the very pretty retired Floral Delight DSP since I remembered that it used a lot of yellows - and lots of florals so it would kill two birds with one stone. I cut some scrap rectangles into triangles and created a strip-pieced background, making sure to keep the florals in the most prominent positions at the centre and at the edges. 

I mounted the strip-pieced panel onto a piece of Daffodil Delight adn then adhered it to an Old Olive card base. 

The big, bold sentiment and die cut ingredients were also ticked off in one step with this retired die cut 'Happy Birthday' from the craft library. I cut one from Old Olive and one from Daffodil Delight then layered them so the Daffodil acted like a shadow. Then I applied a liberal coat of Wink of Stella before adhering it to the card front. 

Then the final ingredient, Enamel Dots, was also taken care of from the craft library: I still have some of those wonderful Glossy Enamel Dot Assortments, which included some in a golden  yellow.

The team and I would love to see what you cook up with our five ingredients and your own flair!

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.

Garden Gatherings for As You See It 376

Welcome to a new challenge at As You See It. It's our Fill in the Blank challenge and we're asking you to tell us about your favourite Embossing Folder.  

This is a tricky thing for me because I love embossing folders. I use them all the time. I choose to use them over patterned paper almost always. So asking me for my favourite embossing folder is a bit like asking me which is my favourite child... I love them all! Over the years, my favourites have been the Subtle folder, Exposed Brick and Softly Falling. 

Of current folders, my favourite changes pretty much daily. The new Floral Spray is awesome but the one I keep coming back to is Lazy Daisy, so that's what I've used today. 

To add a bit of interest, I embossed a piece of Basic White, then tore one edge of it before attaching it to the card front. 

I've used my latest acquisition, Garden Gatherings for the flowers. I cut two vases from scraps of Beautiful Ordinary Life  DSP. The squat one, I ran through the Lazy Daisy folder to give it some patterning.

The flower stems were stamped in Pretty Peacock. The flowers were stamped in Flirty Flamingo, daubed with touches of Melon Mambo. The front vase and flowers are popped up on dimensionals. 

The sentiment is from the same set and is cut using a banner die from Stylish Shapes. I finished off with a trio of dots from Array of Dots.

The team and I would love to see what you do with your favourite embossing folder for this challenge. 

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.

Fern & Flora for As You See It 375

 It was Joanne's choice for colour week at As You See It and she's chosen a bright and breezy, summery colour palette that I'm sure you'll enjoy working with. 

It was kind of hard to go past florals, although I didn't come at it head on with florals - more a sideways approach using the Fern & Flora bundle.

I stamped two of the small stems of flowers in Tuxedo Black, then coloured them with Melon Mambo, Berry Burst and Lemon-Lime Twist Stampin' Blends. Then I die cut the pair of them out. 

On the card front, I stamped the small tally lines in Coastal Cabana and a fern in Lemon Lime Twist as a background. Then I arrange the two die cut stems over it, with the top one popped up on dimensionals. 

I stamped the sentiment in Tuxedo Black then die cut it with a stitched rectangle from Notes of Texture (retired)  and shadowed it with some Coastal Cabana. 

I stamped one of each of the moths in Tuxedo Black, then coloured it with a Coastal Cabana Stampin' Write marker (retired) and Berry Burst Stampin' Blends. Then I added some highlights with a white gel pen before die cutting them and adding them to the mix popped up on dimensionals.

The finishing touch was a trio of Basic Rhinestones coloured with a dark Melon Mambo Stampin' Blend. 

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.

Spotlight on Nature for As You See It 373

It's Speed Stamping Week at As You See It. This regular challenge is one people either love or hate - or maybe they love to hate it? Anyway, it is a bit of a thrill and if you ever wanted to combine adrenaline rush with stamping, this is your challenge!

If you've never taken up a Speed Stamping challenge before, this is how it goes. 

• You have ten minutes to complete your card.
• Thinking time is not included, so you can have planned it in your head.
• Supplies can be assembled but not used. So block up your stamps, get the embellishments out on the desk, put the dies beside the machine and so on.
• The  timer starts the moment you cut, ink up, stamp or emboss anything.
• Thankfully, clean up is not on the timer!
• Don't forget to tell us what your time to completion was. 

Spring bulbs threw me a bit because although I have lots of flowers, most of them were not bulbs. I actually used Google Image Search to identify the flower in Spotlight on Nature (retired) and it told me this was most likely a tulip, so I ran with that!

I stamped the image in Gorgeous Grape then used a blending brush and Fresh Freesia ink to add an explosion of colour around the flower heads. Then I used a water painter and some Fresh Freesia ink to add splatter.

I added the sentiment, from Rolling Waves, in Gorgeous Grape ink.

As I still have just under 8 minutes left on the clock I decided to go a bit further and cut the image out using Everyday Arches. I embossed a Basic White card front with the Beautiful Pattern embossing folder and adhered it to a Gorgeous Grape card base. (These things were in my 'if I have time' plan.)

To give it all a bit more oomph, I popped the arched panel up on dimensionals and finished off with a trio of Purple Fine Shimmer Gems. 

The inside was pretty simple - just a quick stamp of the top part of the floral image and a quick brushover with the blending brush.

Then I stopped the timer...

 

I quite surprised myself as I'd expected to be a bit closer to 8 minutes. But I was well planned in my head and had all my supplies on hand. 

What will you do in your ten minutes? You can see what the rest of the team have done and link up your entry at the As You See It Challenge page. 

Flowering Fair for As You See It 371

 This week at As You See It, it's recipe week. All you have to do is use the 5 ingredients in the recipe below, add bits from your own pantry and see what you come up with!

So here's my check list.

• One Word Sentiment - 'Hello' from Beautiful Motifs.
• Die Cut - Frame from Gallery Blooms dies
• Frame - cut from Gallery Blooms dies
• Flowers - Flowers Fair stamp
• Shades of Pink - Melon Mambo card base, Flowers coloured in Melon Mambo and Flirty Flamingo and embellishments in Pretty in Pink and Strawberry Slush.

I am a little obsessed with the Flowers Fair background stamp, ever since team-mate Joanne James enabled me into buying it. 😀

Hence, it's come out to play again today! I stamped it in Tuxedo Black then coloured the centre portion only with Stampin' Blends: Melon Mambo, Flirty Flamingo, and Granny Apple Green.

After stamping the sentiment, I simply adhered the frame to a central position, making sure that all exposed flowers were coloured. I did consider popping it up on dimensionals and kind of wish I had now. Next time!

To finish off, I added the pink gems to the flower centres and around the sentiment. A nice easy card to do and one that could be done in any colour palette and with almost any linear sentiment. 

So what will you cook up with these five key ingredients? We'd love to see what you do.

Visit the As You See It page to link up your entry and to see the rest of the team's inspirations.

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.

Flowers Fair for AYSI 369

 It's colour week at As You See It this week and LeAnne has chosen this gorgeous combination of colours for us to work with. Isn't it wonderful?

Full confession - today's card is entirely the fault of my team mate, Joanne. I'd been ignoring the siren call of the Flowers Fair background stamp from the March Online Exclusive drop. But she didn't... and then she started posting wonderful cards made with it. Nek minnit, it had fallen into my cart and arrived at my house yesterday.

This is the first thing I've made with it, so it's a fairly straightforward use of the stamp. 

I stamped it in Tuxedo Black, then coloured the flowers and leaves with Stampin' Blends: Pretty in Pink for the petals, Soft Sea Foam for the leaves and Pool Party for the flowers centres and to create shadows under and around the images. I like the way the shadowing gives a subtle 3D effect, making it seem at first glance that the images are lifted off the page.  Using a blending brush, I sponged some Pool Party ink at the bottom of the page to define the edge and to let the Pool Party bleed up the image.

Once I'd had my fun colouring in the stamp, serious thinking had to happen. It looked as though it would be a good birthday card, so I had to have a rummage through my sets to find a sentiment that would fit a circle. Why a circle? It just seemed right. I lit upon a sentiment from Simply Said, which I've used a lot recently.  

The sentiment caused me quite a problem. If you look in my bits box, you'll find one stamped black on white and one white-embossed onto Pool Party. If you look in my bin, you'll find one stamped black on Pool Party with a rounded rectangle die from Nested Essentials (just proving to myself that it had to be a circle) and a white embossed one on black using a circle from Spotlight on Nature. Honestly, it took me as long as the colouring! For the record, this one is white embossed on black and cut using Stylish Shapes.

After (even more) deliberating, I went with Black Baker's Twine from the Essentials Pack to tie in with the stamp outline. I added in a Pool Party shadow circle to peep out and break the black and finally a trio of Pretty in Pink gems. 

I look forward to more experiments with Flowers Fair!

What will you do with these soft, pretty colours?

Visit the As You See It page to link up your entry and to see the rest of the team's inspirations.

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.

Nature's Symphony for As You See It 368

We're back to a sketch challenge on the roster this week at As You See It Challenge. I love a sketch - they're my favourite kind of challenge. 

I had to think about this one though. Initially I couldn't decide whether I needed to have something circular as my main element or just something large that the sentiment could be centred over. Clearly, I've come down on the latter!

I've used the wonderful Nature's Symphony as my bundle of choice for this card. I inked up the foliage stamp in Old Olive and added in some generous daubs of Shaded Spruce, then die cut it out. 

I also die cut a leafy spray in Silver Foil from my stash. Together, these made up my focal point.

The sketch seemed to be asking for a matted frame, so I've used Basic White as a 'separator' between the Secret Sea card base and the Secret Sea DSP from Nature Walk.

Before adhering the DSP to the Basic White matte, I ran it through the die cutting machine using the dotty die from Nature's Symphony, just to add a little more interest. Then, even though I was thinking masculine for this card, I added a white twine bow, using the white Baker's Twine from the Twine Essentials pack. 

The sentiment is stamped in Secret Sea and cut with a die from Textured Notes. I've added the 'Happy Birthday to the inside, although it's from Rolling Waves.

I added a trio of green Sparkle Dots (retired) to finish off. 

What will you do with this sketch?

Visit the As You See It page to link up your entry and to see the rest of the team's inspirations.

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.

 

Friendly Foliage for As You See It 367

Well, you either love it or hate it but it's SPEED CHALLENGE this week at As You See It. Every sixth challenge is one of these and if you've never played one before, they're interesting. All you have to do is create a project that uses the theme and complete it in UNDER TEN MINUTES. This time, the theme is PURPLE.

You'll be pleased to hear that set up and clean up are not included in your ten minutes. The rules are simple. There are things you can do before the clock starts:

• You can plan out what you're going to  make
• You can get out your equipment and have it set up to go. For instance you can get out your stamp set and block the stamps you intend to use. Your inkpads can be on the table as can things like embossing folders, dies or embellishments.

BUT 

once you cut anything, ink anything or emboss/die cut anything then the timer is on. 

I had my babywipes and ink bottles to hand and  quickly made a temporary ink pad using Gorgeous Grape, Petunia Pop and Fresh Freesia ink. I stamped the image from Friendly Foliage, making sure to be across all the different purples on the baby wipe. 

Then I die cut it out. 

Then I embossed the card front with the Beautiful Patterns folder and adhered it to my Gorgeous Grape card base. Then I centred the die cut foliage and adhered it to the card front. 

Next I stamped a sentiment in Gorgeous Grape, cut it using a banner from Stylish Shapes and popped it up on dimensionals over the foliage die cut.

The finishing touch was the addition of a trio of Purple Gems. 

The Basic White inner got a quick foliage stamp before I attached it to the inside.

With racing heart, I stopped the timer....

Anyone who says stamping isn't an adrenaline sport has obviously never done a speed challenge! What will you do?

Visit the As You See It page to link up your entry and to see the rest of the team's inspirations.

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.

Beautiful Gallery for AYSI 365

It's time for a recipe challenge at As You See It. All you have to do is create something using the five given ingredients plus whatever you've got in your stash. 

I think that the ingredients: A celebrate theme, vellum, shades of red, punch or die and bling is a recipe for going completely over the top - not my comfort zone! But I've given it a good crack....

It all started with a single card front of that delicious DSP. It was all I had left from two packs of the Traditions of Christmas DSP from the September- December mini catalogue. This last remnant seemed perfect for the blingy redness of the recipe!

I've used vellum to tone it down to provide a resting place for the floral spray and sentiment. The 'celebrate' is from Beautiful Motifs so it seemed sensible to look at Beautiful Gallery to give me a focal point. I do love that spray of three flowers. I gold embossed it to be in keeping with the DSP then coloured it with Cherry Cobbler and Real Red Stampin' Blends, along with some touches of Daffodil Delight and Old Olive. 

The sentiment is stamped in Cherry Cobbler to match the card base and cut using Stylish Shapes. The bling element of the recipe is some of the bright gold Flower Accent embellishments. 

What will you do with this recipe? You can see what the rest of the team have done - and link up your own entry - at the As You See It Challenge page.

You can join in with us until Wednesday February 11 11.55pm PST. 

f 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.

 

Shell Collecting for ASYI 364

 Happy New Year and welcome to the start of a new crafting year at As You See It. I hope you all had a happy holiday season. 

Our first challenge this year is a fill in the blank and with a period of gift giving, and a Stampin' Up! pre-order, there were plenty of things to fill in the blank with! Christmas was so busy, in a good way, that I didn't even get to open some of my preorder items until the New Year, so I'm filling in the blank with the most recent thing I opened from the box.... The Shell Collecting set.

Because the beach is my happy place, I'm a sucker for beach themed sets. And since one of the things I most like about the beach is taking a walk along the shore and seeing what serendipity brings me - most often a new shell -  this set was a must have for me.

This set is a reversible one but I wanted my shells to look clean against the white, so used them without the reversible option. I chose lovely summer colours: Azure Afternoon, Coastal Cabana, Balmy Blue and Pool Party.

I started by stamping the shell to create my own DSP. 

After trimming it down, I layered it onto Coastal Cabana then added some Linen Thread before attaching it to the Azure Afternoon card base. 

Shell Collecting is an image only set, so I used Simply Said for the sentiment, white embossed onto Coastal Cabana and cut using a die from Nested Essentials.  By itself, the sentiment got a bit lost amongst the shells, so I added in a second label shape in Azure Afternoon to create a visually calmer spot for the sentiment to rest against. 

To finish off, I added the Linen Thread bow and a trio of Basic Rhinestone jewels, subtly coloured with a Pool Party Stampin' Blend. So subtle, it barely shows in the photo! Should have used Azure Afternoon instead. 😀

So what's your most recent craft room addition? Why not get it out, make something and share it with us at As You See It?

Visit the As You See It page to link up your entry and to see the rest of the team's inspirations.

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.

Gears & Textures for AYSI 363

 Welcome to the last As You See It Challenge for 2025. We're ending the year with a colour challenge and, although the graphic has a Christmas vibe, those colours could take you anywhere. 

To me, they had a masculine feel so it seemed a good chance to try out one of my new preorder sets from the January-April 2026 Mini catalogue. This bundle is called Gears & Textures and I love it. Really, I just had fun playing with some of the stamps, then added in a few of the fabulous die cuts.

One of my favourite things about the set is the dinky little light bulb, so I couldn't resist hanging one in the mix!

The sentiment is from Simply Said and is on a label cut from Nested Essentials.  The Brass Hexagon embellishments are also from the January Mini Catalogue.

This set is part of the offering for the Avid Craft Collective Online Stamp Camp in January 2026. Watch out for details if you'd like to join me, along with Australians Tracy Held and Julia Quinn, to make 9 cards using the set and some super DSP. You'll get PDF tutorials and access to an exclusive FaceBook Group where there will be presentations on how to put together all the cards. If you're keen, message me.

What will you do with these colours?

Visit the As You See It page to link up your entry and to see the rest of the team's inspirations.

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.