Seaside Wishes for Freshly Made Sketches 707

Sometimes, a stamp set just takes hold of you. So today's project is one from the stamp archive. I had a hankering to play with the retired Seaside Wishes bundle and Freshly Made Sketches had just the sketch for it. 

To make the four panels of the sketch, I cut a piece of Basic White into four sections, then embossed the top left and bottom right with the Seaside Wishes embossing folder. I added in some Pool Party splatters using a stamp from the set. 

I die cut a sea urchin in Basic White and coloured with Misty Moonlight and a blending brush. I cut some seaweed in Pool Party then stamped and die cut a pair of starfish in Pretty in Pink. 

The sentiment, stamped in Misty Moonlight, is from Simply Said. The embellishments are from pink gems.  The card base is Misty Moonlight.

This card has quietened the hankering to play with this set but.... if only I hadn't misplaced the sea urchin die somewhere in the process!

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.

Country Woods for Colour INKspiration 197

 

Welcome to the 197th challenge at Colour INKspiration. This challenge runs for nearly two weeks and will finish on Monday October 20, 7pm AEST.

This colour palette was chosen for us by Crew Member, Vicki Boucher. 

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 Jan McQueen 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 Secret Sea for Night of Navy. Black, White, Very Vanilla, Crumb Cake, Basic Beige and metallics are free colours, as are flesh-toned Stampin' Blends.

To me, the colours were rustic in feel, so I looked through the papers in the Country Woods collection because I was certain there was a lovely weathered looking paper using Misty Moonlight. Turned out that I was right - and there was also a woody weathered looking paper using Crumb Cake. From there, a card was born!

I wanted some large foliage so used the Thankful Garden dies to cut some in Crumb Cake and Night of Navy. (If you don't already have the fabulous Thankful Garden bundle, then go check out the Last Chance list.)

Then I decided that I wanted a compact sentiment that would fit into a circle die. So out came Simply Said and the Spotlight on Nature dies. The sentiment is stamped in Night of Navy to match the card base. There is a matte layer of Misty Moonlight. 

Since I had some die cuts left over, and some offcuts of the DSP, I used some of them to decorate the inside of the card. 

To finish off, I added some classic bling with the Rhinestone Jewels.

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.

Celebratory Sips for Paper Players 736

 Claire's gorgeous sketch gave us such wonderful entries last week at The Paper Players. Thank you to everyone who joined in with us. I'm interested to see what everyone makes with Joanne's theme challenge this week. 

All of us manage to find new bits and bobs for our craft room. If you're a Stampin' Up! demonstrator you might well have added some new things in the last month as it's been the pre-order period for the 2025-6 Annual Catalogue. I certainly have!

One of the great pleasures of new things, I think, is mixing and matching them with the existing things in your stash. 

I thought I'd share something easy with you this week, that mixes some fun new DSP with an old set of dies and an old sentiment set. 

I've been playing around a lot with the Celebratory Sips DSP because the suite is the featured product for the Creativity Abounds Stamp Camp. If you're interested in joining in, the details are here. 

Anyway, the playing around has lead to some strips of off-cut pieces and some scraps, so I decided to use them up with a strippy background.

I took my scraps and cut them into trapezoid shapes, then adhered them in a pleasing pattern  on to a piece of Blackberry Bliss card. After trimming off the excess, I adhered that onto a piece of Lemon-Lime Twist.

Before adhering the panel to the Blackberry Bliss card base, I added a piece of the lovely Gold Mesh ribbon that's part of the suite. 

Since the background is quite busy, I wanted to keep the sentiment simple. So I chose a sentiment from Simply Said, stamped it in Blackberry Bliss and cut it out with one of the dies from Nested Essentials.

I finished off by adding a trio of Holographic Resin Dots, another great part of the Celebratory Sips suite.

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:

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

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.

Season of Green and Gold DSP for AYSI 329

 It's time for a new challenge at As You See It. As always, after our theme challenge comes the Recipe Challenge - just take the given ingredients and see what you can cook up with them!

You can add all sorts of other ingredients in your recipe but you must use all of the five given ingredients in some way: trees, embossing, twine, birthday and shades of green. 

This combination felt masculine to me and I enjoyed indulging in a good dose of greens along with some rustic texture. 

Perfect for adding in the shades of green is the new Online Exclusive DSP Season of Green and Gold. Although it's actually a Christmas paper, the reverses are great all year round. I don't think anyone would look at the DSP in this card and automatically think 'Christmas.'

I love tree stamps and have a few in my stash. I broke out one of my all-time favourite retired sets, Rooted in Nature and coloured the tree using Stamp'n'Write markers by directly colouring the rubber before stamping. I love that technique because of the gorgeous transitions of colour that can be achieved but with more control that some other techniques. I picked some colours from the DSP: Old Olive and Mossy Meadow, mixed with some Lemon Lime Twist and some Early Espresso for the limbs and trunk.

If you don't have a tree like this in your stash already, then the Loveliest Tree set from the 2024-5 Annual Catalogue would be a great addition to your collection.

The sentiment is from Simply Said, a good basic greetings set. I used Deckled Rectangles to cut the tree. I embossed the Basic White card front with the Timber 3D Embossing Folder. 

As embellishment, I added a button from my button box and threaded it with some Linen Thread, a favourite element of mine.

The team and I would love to see how you see these ingredients. Visit the As You See It page to see what the rest of the team have done and to link up your entry. You can join in the challenge until Wednesday August 14, 11.59pm PST.

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 shop with me from  anywhere in New Zealand here.