Forever Lovely - Onstage Auckland 4

When I presented the Forever Lovely bundle at On Stage Auckland last November, we were allowed to show a maximum of 10 items on the display board. Naturally, I did a lot more experimenting with the set than that! For my 10 cards, I chose ones that showed off the set's versatility and included cards that suited beginners, casual and avid crafters. You can see those cards here, here and here.

Today, I'm going to show you some of the ones that missed out hitting the display board at On Stage.

This one is a 4"x 4" card where I repeat-stamped the single rose, layered with gold and used some of the die cuts in gold and Soft Sea Foam for the cluster on the sentiment strip, which is also gold embossed.

The decorative corner die-cuts make a nice variation for the inside panel of the card too.

 I like the clean lines of this card along with the layering of stamping and die cuts. With these beautiful distINKtive stamps, it's best not to use a really juicy ink pad or else you just get blobs. If your ink pad is new, try adding the ink with a dauber instead. Or you can even stamp off and use the second generation stamp.

This one is not my usual style at all but I so loved that two-step floral spray that I wanted to use it twice! The Soft Sea Foam makes a good neutral background. The two-step spray has had some die-cut flowers added in.

I'm not a big user of DSP but this floral frenzy pattern was so appealing that I had to try to use it!

Finally, I played around with this fancy fold. I used my Take Your Pick tool to make the inlaying of the die pieces easy.

This is how it looks opened. 

So, these are the ones that stayed at home.

The Forever Lovely bundle will be available when the Occasions catalogue goes live on January 3 2019. This set covers all romantic occasions, is great for special birthdays or even Mother's Day. Is it on your wish list?

Forever Lovely On Stage Auckland 3

In addition to the four cards I presented during the Product Spotlight at On Stage Auckland, I had a display board with an additional six samples of Forever Lovely bundle, part of the All My Love suite.
I've shown you the presentation cards and three other samples already and here are the final three from the board.

This bundle is perfect for any romantic occasion, special feminine birthday or even Mother's Day.

This pretty card is a breeze to make with the edgelit and with a different sentiment - or even with this one - would make a lovely invitation to an engagement party, or special wedding anniversary.

This is the inside but those repeat stamped DistINKtive roses would look great anywhere.

This card is for the unashamed romantic! I loved how easy it was to use the sentiment to create a background with Stamparatus. My favourite thing is the extra foliage and flower die cuts that work so well with the stamped images to let you build up delightful clusters.

And those single rose stamps with the matched framelits are so easy and have such a lot of impact.

For my final card, I chose one that showcased the DSP. Regular readers will know that I'm not much of a paper user but the paper in this suite is so very pretty that I HAD to use it. Thanks to my team mate at The Paper Players, Anne Marie Hile, who gave the team a sketch challenge a few weeks ago that I adapted very slightly to show off the paper. I especially like the vellum circle. Again, Stamparatus came to the fore letting me stamp, then clear emboss, the sentiment to get a bit of shine happening.

So now you've seen all the cards I either spoke about or showed at On Stage Auckland. Perhaps another day, I'll share a couple that almost got on to the board but ended up being left at home...

On Stage Auckland 2 Forever Lovely

As well as presenting Forever Lovely at On Stage Auckland, I also had a board to display other samples for people to look at. Pictures are worth a thousand words, so here are some of the other ways you can use Forever Lovely, whether you are an avid, casual or beginning crafter.

The edgelit in the Forever Flowers die set matches that pretty floral fretwork spray, so it was just begging me to use in with an acetate window.

Inlaying die cuts can be a demanding task but the new Take Your Pick tool made manipulating those tiny pieces easy-peasy.

Something less demanding is to stamp the two-step spray twice, with a 180 degree rotation. The flowers have a coat of clear Wink of Stella that really sets them twinkling when they catch the light. If you're not a Valentine's day person, grab out Itty Bitty Greetings and change it to what you want: You're Engaged, Happy Anniversary, Many Thanks... you choose.

For something really quick and easy, how about these lunchbox love notes or briefcase billet-doux? That little distinKtive heart cluster is a quick, sweet background to any sentiment.

If you're liking the look of the Forever Lovely bundle, it will be available in January and there will be more to see in tomorrow's post.

On Stage Auckland

Yesterday was  very exciting as I was at OnStage in Auckland. It was also nerve-wracking, as I was giving a ten-minute presentation to showcase a new product.

On Stage is a Demonstrator only event held to launch new catalogues and, in this case, also to celebrate Stampin' Up's 30th birthday. It's an event held simultaneously around the world with the main one this time being in Orlando and others held in Brisbane, Melbourne, Berlin, Paris, Birmingham and Utrecht. So it was a global event in that all centres followed the same programme and did the same activities in as close to the same time as possible.

However, at each event local demonstrators are given the chance to do a Product spotlight - and this time it was me! Who knew that happiness and stressfulness could co-exist so well?

I was privileged to be able to participate in this way and was given a very pretty, romantic set called Forever Lovely. This will be available to customers in January.

During the presentation, I had to show four cards. One had to be for an avid customer, who likes to craft and enjoys a challenge, so I made this pocket card that shows off the lovely two step floral spray and coordinating die cut. What a fantastic wedding card or invitation this would make!

One card had to be for a casual customer - someone who just likes to come to class and make cards so I did this one, which you could stamp with a sentiment for any occasion: engagement, birthday, anniversary or just a hello to you card - if you aren't a Valentine's Day kind of person.

One card had to be for a beginning stamper - super easy and using only stamps, ink and paper. Wouldn't this make a lovely Mother's Day card?

My last card could be one that I'd done that made me fall in love with the set, so I chose this one because I love all the extra die cuts that come with the Forever Flowers framelits. They're perfect for adding to layered clusters. I love the way that sweet foliage stamp works perfectly to stamp in the round with Stamparatus and I thought the clear epoxy heart, coloured in with a Soft Sea Foam Stampin' Blend was a sweet finishing touch. I also liked that this card showed you don't have to dominate a love themed card with pink and indeed, this card would work perfectly well as a birthday card or a pick-you-up/thinking of you card.

Since I was using Stamparatus with this card, I stamped the sentiment in Crumb Cake then overstamped it in Versamark and clear embossed it to give the sentiment a bit of shine.

In addition to the four cards I showed, I submitted an extra six items for display. If you're liking the look of this set, I'll be showing some of the other items over the next few days.