Gears & Textures for CAS Colours & Sketches 589

Just a quick post today. I was procrastinating at my desk, avoiding planning next month's class, when I spied the new challenge at CAS Colours & Sketches. Next thing you know, stuff has jumped onto my desk, rather like a boisterous puppy, wanting to be played with. 

Nothing to be done but go with it!

I started with a scrap of Nature Walk DSP and cut a stitched square from it using Stylish Shapes.

From a scrap of retired  copper Specialty Metallic papers, I cut two cogs in different sizes from the Gears & Textures dies. From Pecan Pie, I cut an outer cog and from Early Espresso a ladder.

I stamped the Pecan Pie outer wheel with a Pecan Pie and a splatter stamp from Gears & Textures before adhering it over the copper die cut cog so there was the appearance of an inner and outer ring.

Note: Gears & Textures is still available as a bundle for a 10% saving.

The sentiment is stamped in Early Espresso and is from Garden Gatherings.

After layering up the elements with respect to the sketch, I added a trio of Faux Bronze Pentagons. 

Masculine birthday card all done!

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 (and friends) for The Paper Players 789

As always, Joanne's Tic Tac Toe challenge brought lots of wonderful projects to the gallery. Thank you, everyone who entered. This week, it's theme week at The Paper Players. Our hostess is Stef and the theme is:  Masculine.

Well, I had a lot of fun with this although if you don't live in New Zealand (or maybe Australia) this card might not mean as much at first sight. But believe me, here it has instant brand recognition!

New Zealand is a sports-mad country and no sport excites the population quite like rugby. It's fair to say it's our national sport - even a national obsession! And the apex team is the All Blacks, our national rugby team.

The All Black's black shirt, often with white trim, is legendary and the emblem of all New Zealand sporting representatives is the silver fern.

So an All Black shirt, complete with silver fern, is about the most masculine appropriate card you could have in this country!

I turned to my craft library and used the Handsomely Suited dies to create the collar and buttons, although the collar could easily be cut by hand and the buttons made with any small punch or die. 

I used a Basic Black card base, a mat of silver foil then another rectangle of Basic Black for the shirt. The thing that can't be replaced in the supply list is this glorious fern from Fern & Flora, since it's just perfect for a New Zealand silver fern emblem. Handsomely Suited also had the perfect sentiment and die for this card. I knew I kept that bundle in my craft library after it retired for a reason!

A simple inside completed the deal. (Although the Black Ferns are the national Women's Rugby team. 😀)

The team and I would love to see what you do with Stef's theme. Visit The Paper Players to see what the rest of the team have done and to link up your entry. 

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 (on leave)

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.

Gears & Textures for Paper Players 774

Thank you to everyone who entered into JayDee's CAS Floral Challenge last week. Great entries! 

This week, Claire is our hostess and she has a lovely sketch challenge for us to play with. I love a sketch and I especially enjoy seeing the different cards that come from the same starting point.  

I was going for a masculine card so reached for the Gears & Textures bundle. The various gears and steam-punky bits are a lot of fun and look different with a switch up of colour and arrangements. 

I took my colour choices from a scrap of Nature Walk DSP. The pointy shape was cut down from the last remaining triangle of that pattern and fortunately, worked in well with the sketch! I eked out enough of the reverse from another scrap to use the reverse side for the horizontal - ask me why the strip is that width!

The sketch had some curly elements in the horizontal, so I added in some die cuts in Early Espresso. In the interest of adding in some other colours to lift it, I added in a third die-cut in Pecan Pie for the centre.

The large cog was cut from a scrap of the bronze sheet in Metallic Textured Specialty paper. The circle is cut from Early Espresso and, although it's hard to see in the photo, stamped with Early Espresso ink splatter to add some texture. 

I wanted something subtle to emboss the background with, so went to the retired (but very useful) Subtle embossing folder. I'll bet many of you still have this one in your stash!

The sentiment is from Sweet Jar, stamped in Early Espresso and cut with a banner from Stylish Shapes.

The embellishment is a trio of Pecan Pie dots from the Natural Matte Dots pack.

I'd love to see what you do with this sketch!

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 (on leave)

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.

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 Gnomes for The Paper Players 775

The lovely Christy is our hostess this week and she has a great theme for us - Mythical Creatures. More on why that caused me problems later because first I want to thank everyone who entered my sketch challenge last week. What creativity came from that one sketch! It was a pleasure to tour the gallery and a headache to choose the Cut Above!

Now Christy's challenge caused me a wee problem because, although I am a big fantasy fan possessed of a large fantasy fiction library, it seems this does not translate into the acquisition of stamps! Not a single dragon, unicorn, orc, troll, giant or harpy was to be found. I did find my Dalek stamp set but that wasn't quite in the ball park.... 

In stepped one of my downlines who lent me her Friendly Gnome bundle (retired). It was fun to play with, so maybe I'll have to do something to remedy my lack of fantasy inspired stamp sets soon!

It turned out that the dies that come with this set are awesome. I had fun playing around with some stamped gnomes (there's one on the inside of the card) but it was that die cut bearded beastie that I kept coming back to. So he has a Cherry Cobbler had, shaded with some White coloured pencil, Secret Sea boots and a Petal Pink nose.

I also cut some toadstool caps, where I coloured the impressions with more White colouring pencil, some Crumb Cake stems and some Old Olive grass.

I stamped the sentiment in Secret Sea at the base of the card front then embossed the rest using the Beautiful Pattern embossing folder. After masking off the sentiment section, I stamped in some grass along the base and sponged on some Old Olive with a blending brush.

After that, it was just a matter of arranging the gnome, the toadstool and die cut grasses into the background scene. Once that was done, I added in some Sparkle Dot Essentials in Secret Sea to lead the eye down to the words. Mission complete!

What mythological creaturs will you bring out to play? You can see what the rest of the team have done and link up your entry at The Paper Players.

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 (on leave)

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.

Rolling Waves for Colour INKspiration 204

Welcome to the 204th challenge at Colour INKspiration! Thanks for all the gorgeous entries for our first challenge of the year. We have another pretty combination for you this time around, chosen by crew member Lou Kitzelman.

This challenge runs for nearly two weeks and will finish on Monday 9 March, 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 Melon Mambo for Flirty Flamingo. Black, White, Very Vanilla, Crumb Cake, Basic Beige and metallics are free colours, as are flesh-toned Stampin' Blends.

Although I was tempted to go floral for these colours, instead I wanted to play with my new bundle, Rolling Waves. I thought they could pass as beach colours too. 

I started by stamping a wall of water in a mix of Soft Sea Foam and Lost Lagoon. I added a lacy die cut at the top to suggest a foamy wave and a different lacy die cut to suggest the water running in to the sand. The sand was stamped in Crumb Cake. Once the scene was set, I cut out a flag using one of the Party Banner dies. 

Then I cut another set of the lacy die cuts to create horizontals across the card front. Then I popped the flagged beach scene over the top of them.

 

I used the dies to cut some seashells in Petal Pink and Flirty Flamingo. Then I added some to the beach to complete the scene. 

I added a sentiment to the top of the banner, then stamped a 'Happy Birthday' on the inside. 

The finishing touch was a trio of Pearlised Faceted gems. 

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.

Gears & Textures for Colour INKspiration 203

 

Welcome to the 203nd challenge at Colour INKspiration! Thanks for all the gorgeous entries for our first challenge of the year. We have another pretty combination for you this time around, chosen by crew member Monica Formosa.

This challenge runs for nearly two weeks and will finish on Monday 23 February, 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 Verity Pursglove 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.

I've been having a bit of a love affair with the Gears & Textures bundle so thought I'd give it a run with these less expected colours. 

I started by stamping some lines, cogs, chains and ladders in Smoky Slate and different generations of Balmy Blue as a background. I tore a narrow strip from the bottom and mounted it on a piece of Smoky Slate before attaching it to the Azure Afternoon card base. Then the fun part began.

I created two lightbulbs in Afternoon Azure - I think these are my favourite things in the whole bundle. 😀

Then I cut some cogs in various sizes from Balmy Blue. I dabbed Versamark unevenly over them and silver embossed them to give a semi-distressed-but-still-reasonably-clean look. I cut the same cogs in Azure Afternoon and adhered them behind to create a shadow effect. Then I cut some small cogs and pieces in Balmy Blue and Azure Afternoon to add to the centres of the larger cogs before arranging - along with the light bulbs - on the base. I did rule in the lines to represent the light bulb cords. (Note to self: do this before adding cogs!)

To finish off, I added in some Basic Rhinestones. The sentiment is from Sweet Jar and is cut with a banner die from Stylish Shapes. 

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.

Gears & Textures for CAS Colours & Sketches 577

After last week's heat wave, this week we're having solid rain. Both are excellent reasons to inhabit the Craft Room.  Today, after completing some DT work and some tidying, I've played with the sketch at CAS Colours & Sketches. 

I'd actually left the craft room when I saw this sketch so had to skitter back there because it seemed to me to be made for the Gears & Textures bundle, which I've been playing with a lot. 

The gloomy weather made taking a photo challenging, so you might have to read on to hear about what colours this actually is!

I used Night of Navy for the base. I used the three long stamps to create the diagonal patterning. I used Night of Navy for the solid girder stamp, Smoky Slate for the ladder and Misty Moonlight for the chains. 

The cogs are cut from Silver Foil, from my stash, and the ring from Misty Moonlight (appearance in the photo not withstanding!) I popped them up on dimensionals then added the sentiment over them.

The sentiment stamp is from The Right Word and it's cut with a banner from Stylish Shapes. The embellishments are Faux Bronze Pentagons. 

So, the sketch let me create a masculine CAS card very quickly. Thank you CAS team!

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 Paper Players 768

 Welcome to the first challenge of 2026 at The Paper Players! I hope you're all feeling refreshed, with full buckets, after the holiday season and are ready to start crafting again. 

LeAnne has an intriguing colour challenge for us to play with this week. I do like blues, so the mix of Misty Moonlight and Night of Navy with Silver was very appealing to me - as I hope it is for you. 

I was keen to play with one of my pre-order goodies, the Nature's Symphony bundle, which I'd not had time to get to over Christmas.  The coordinating Nature Walk DSP is lovely, in shades of green but I thought the images would work well with LeAnne's palette too. 

The card base is Night of Navy, which peeks through the Basic White card base because I used one of the texture dies to punch in some lines of dots. I really like this die but there are other textures I could have used too. 

I stamped the large foliage with Misty Moonlight and added diecuts in Silver foil and Night of Navy. The die cuts were layered over the stamped image and the die cut lines of dots. 

The sentiment, from the set, is stamped in Night of Navy and cut using one of the Textured Notes dies.

A trio of silvery Rhinestone Jewels completed the card. 

What will you do with LeAnne's colours?

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 (on leave)

Ann Schach

Jan Clothier - You are here

Stef Perry

Eliz Stewart

Christy Stanford

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