Thinking Stamping

Jan Clothier - You are here

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

Friday, 5 September 2025

Gallery Blooms for As You See It 356

Welcome to a new challenge at As You See It. This week, we have a sketch to inspire you.

I enjoy a sketch challenge and I particularly like seeing the varied projects that arise from the same starting point.

I had the Beautiful Gallery DSP on my desk. It's so pretty and I really haven't made enough use of it... yet.

I started by choosing a design from the DSP stack and cutting it to a suitable width. Then I cut it into horizontally into three pieces the same width.

I embossed the Basic White card front with the Damask Designs embossing folder, which is part of the Beautiful Gallery suite. After attaching that to the Secret Sea card base, I added the three strips of DSP, making sure to preserve the pattern and to space them evenly while keeping them to the left, as in the sketch.

I used the sentiment from Beautiful Motifs and cut it out using a banner from Stylish Shapes. As the colours in the DSP were Cloud Cover and Secret Sea, I cut out some small foliage using the Gallery Blooms dies and arranged them in behind the popped up sentiment banner.

To finish, I added three large Flat Pearls in Secret Sea to the left of the DSP strips, to suit the sketch, and added two smaller ones to accent the sentiment.

I'd love to see how you see this sketch! Visit the As You See It page to link up your entry and to see the rest of the team's inspirations.

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

Sunday, 31 August 2025

Thankful Garden for Paper Players 753

Thank you everyone who contributed to the wonderful gallery last week for Jay Dee's sketch. Beautiful work! This week at The Paper Players, Joanne has a Tic-Tac-Toe challenge for us. This one's a lot of fun. Just choose a line: a column, a row or a diagonal and let it guide your creation. Once you finish, you'll probably discover that you've fulfilled more than one!

I've chosen the top row: celebration, flowers and stencil.

One of my favourite florals at the moment is Thankful Garden. I like it because it offers two kinds of flowers and has nice sentiments. However, I really like that it has a set of stencils to colour the images with along with dies to make the cutting easy.

My card base is Secret Sea, a colour I've come to love. I stamped the large flower image twice with Secret Sea then coloured them using the layering stencils. I daubed the flower centres with Darling Duckling. The flowers were coloured with a base of Pretty in Pink and additional layers in Strawberry Slush. The foliage is done in Shy Shamrock.

I set one of the coloured and stamped images aside. I used masking paper to create a mask for the large floral image, covered it over then stamped the same image in Pretty in Pink randomly over the paper. After removing the mask, I cut out the flower with one of the Everyday Arches dies. I cut the next size up in Secret Sea and layered them together.

From the second coloured flower image I fussy cut the flowers. The topmost flower I mounted on dimensionals directly over its own image in the arch. The smaller flower I added, also on dimensionals, to create a three-flower cluster.

I embossed the white card front with my favourite Exposed Brick 3D embossing folder before adhering it to the card front, then added the archway of flowers.

The sentiment could have been anything but I do like the 'celebrate' from Beautiful Motifs. I stamped that in Secret Sea and die cut it with a banner shape from Stylish Shapes - my most used die set. I cut a smaller banner shape and added it underneath the main banner to add some colour details. When adding the banner (also on dimensionals) I made sure to tuck it under the third flower of the cluster.

Finally, I added some Flat Pearls in Secret Sea to finish off.

What will you do with Joanne's Tic Tac Toe? You can see what the rest of the team have done and link up your entry on 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

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

Wednesday, 27 August 2025

Joyful Tidings for Colour INKspiration194

Welcome to the 194th challenge at Colour INKspiration. This challenge runs for nearly two weeks and will finish on Monday September 8, 7pm AEST.

This colour palette was chosen for us by Crew Member, Rose Packer.

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

Although this colour palette seemed quite vintage to me, I really wanted to try out Joyful Tidings, one of my preorder sets from the soon-to-be-released September-December Mini Catalogue.

So I've tried out a non-traditional Christmas card with it.

The card base is Secret Sea with a Calypso Coral mat. The wreath image is stamped in Secret Sea and coloured with Stampin' Blends in Soft Sea Foam, Fresh Freesia and Calypso Coral.

I added in some Purple Fine Shimmer Gems in Fresh Freesia to add a touch of bling.

This set will be available from 3 September.

This was a quick and easy card to make, and if you prefer traditional Christmas colours, it would work well if you were looking to create multiples. I think next I'll try it out with some gold embossing.

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, 24 August 2025

Branching Out for Paper Players 752

How lovely it was to see all the Clean and Simple Critter cards in Elizabeth's gallery last week! So much creativity! This week at The Paper Players, Jay Dee is our hostess and she's given us this super sketch to inspire us.

It's no secret that sketch challenges are my favourites and this one is great. As my preorder for the September- December Mini catalogue had arrived, it seemed the perfect chance to try out something new.

I've used the new Branching Out bundle. This set has branches, cones and various bits to create a tree scene of your own design as well as a good range of sentiments that cover many occasions. The dies contain some pine-related bits but the bulk of the die package is a layered set of stitched edged labels.

I've used two of these new label dies to create the central cartouche. Although the set doesn't have any overtly Christmas sentiments, with these pines it would be easy to add one and quickly switch this into a Christmas card.

I've used the Joined Together 3D embossing folder, split into two panels for the background. I think that, together with the pines, there's a hint of Oriental in this set too.

I did add in a horizontal of Linen Thread and a bow which are additional to Jay Dee's sketch. The embellishments are Flower Accents and add a wee touch of luxury.

What will you do with Jaydee's sketch? You can see what the rest of the team have done and link up your entry on 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

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

Friday, 22 August 2025

Textured Notes for As You See it 355

Well, at As You See It it's once again time for our loved (and sometimes loathed) SPEED STAMPING CHALLENGE! What's speed stamping you ask? In this instance it means you have to complete your card on the given theme inside of ten minutes.

Before you go into complete meltdown mode, there are a few provisos that make the challenge do-able.

What you can do before the timer starts

Plan. Take all the time you need to plan out what you're going to make.
Set Up. You can get out your stamps and block them, put your dies on the table, get out the card stock pieces and ink pads, put the embellishments to hand: anything that's setting up what you will need.

But

Once you make a cut, put a stamp to ink, actually use your Cut and Emboss machine: anything that counts as creating, then the timer must start.

Thankfully clean up time is not included in the ten minutes either!

The speed challenge is one of those times when your cardmaking becomes an adrenaline rich activity!

The theme for this one is LEAVES. I got to choose this challenge and I love foliage. My go-to at the moment is Textured Notes, which I'm enjoying pairing with Elements of Text, .

Patterned paper is a good friend when it comes to speed challenges so I got out Woven Textures because I like the natural patterns. DSP gives big bang for little effort - just cut and stick. That leaves lots of the clock left for stamping.

A quick pass through the Cut and Emboss machine and the Textured Notes dies gave me a rectangle with a pretty edge all ready for stamping.

I stamped the large leaf stamp twice, using Mossy Meadow ink, but without re-inking for the second impression. I added in some text background stamping using one of the stamps from Elements of Text, using Gray Granite then some Crushed Curry splatters with another from the set. I created a similar, but smaller, cluster in the opposite corner.

I stamped the sentiment in Basic Gray. Then I added in some Crushed Curry around the stamped areas using a blending brush.

After adding the DSP to the Gray Granite card base and the stamped panel, I popped in three Glossy Enamel Dots in Crushed Curry (retired) to finish off.

And then.... don't forget to stop the timer!

I'd love to see what you can cook up in ten minutes or less! You can also see the rest of the team's inspirations there.

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

Sunday, 17 August 2025

Hippest Hippos for The Paper Players 751

Thank you for all the beautiful entries in Claire's colour challenge last week. I enjoyed seeing the rich autumnal colours used in such pretty ways. Our hostess at The Paper Players this week is Elizabeth and she has given us the Clean and Simple theme of 'Critters'.

Sometimes, I overthink things. I came to work on this challenge and realised that while I was very clear on what Clean-and-Simple meant (lots of white space, minimal layers and embellishments) I was much less clear on what a critter was.

I can remember Ellie-May Clampett talking about her critters on The Beverly Hillbillies way back when I was child. So maybe a critter could be any animal? A dictionary search told me that it was a word derived from 'creature' originating as a dialectal pronunciation and often used in informal way. It also told me that in American usage it is often used to refer to domesticated animals.

None of this was really helping me decide whether I could use my Beautiful Butterflies stamp set in the challenge as it was my only current set that contained a creature of any kind. Part of me felt like this was going in the wrong direction.

By chance, while looking through a box of old children's books in the garage, I came across some of Mercer Mayer's Little Critter series. This led me to conclude that critters are cutesy, anthropomorphised animals. This I could work with!

It was off to the retired shelves to find Hippest Hippos, an old Sale-a-bration bundle. I started by stamping the dancing hippo in Tuxedo Black then colouring it with Smoky Slate, Strawberry Slush and Pretty in Pink Stampin' Blends. I die cut it out. I paper pieced the skirt using a pattern from the 2025-2027 6x6 In Color DSP stack. I also used that to paper piece the umbrella from the dies and to create the love hearts.

The sentiment is also from Hippest Hippo. To texture the background, I used one of the folders from the Glass & Gardens pair of embossing folders.

Although the trio of hearts were acting like embellishments, I couldn't resist adding in a trio of Strawberry Slush gems too.

So, how do you see critters? We'd love you to show us this week at The Paper Players - and remember to keep it CAS. You can see what the team have done and link up your entry on 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