You Kick BOOTY!!!

This month's My Paper Pumpkin offering is so much fun! For this card, I followed the directions in the flyer that comes in each package.

Those who know me will realize that "SERIOUSLY" is one of my favourite words - LOL! - so when I saw that it was one of the images in the card kit, I was THRILLED!!! I can definitely see me pairing it with other sentiments in the Stampin' UP! line.

I didn't get a chance to create any other cards with this kit, as I was busy prepping/planning for my Manly Man class on May 4th. The cards are all ready to go - I'm impressed with myself! :)

Here's just one of the SEVEN cards we'll be creating:

This card was inspired by a similar card I saw on Pinterest. It uses French Foliage and a sentiment from Bring on the Cake.

And once again, I have a step by step tutorial available for sale for just $2.95. Class participants will have the tutorial emailed to them following class.

What do you think?

STAMPS: French Foliage, Bring on the Cake
INK: Lucky Limeade (retiring), Always Artichoke, Island Indigo (being shuffled in to colour family)
PAPERS: Very Vanilla, Always Artichoke and Lucky Limeade Cardstock
ACCESSORIES: Square Punches

Happy Stampin'!

Inspiration from the Divas!

What have I gotten myself into? Design team junkie doesn't even BEGIN to describe the insanity! LOL! I am LOVING it though and am ALMOST at a perfect rhythm where I'm ahead of the game and creating at least one, and sometimes TWO, weeks in advance!

So, in this post, I talked about about joining the design team for the colour challenge over at Utah Divas International. Not long after I joined that team, Jill posted on the UDI Facebook page that she was starting up the Inspiration challenge team again. Now, inspiration challenges are truly NOT my forte, but I've been trying to S-T-R-E-T-C-H myself (and my stamping, too!), so I decided to give it a shot!

I was too late to play with the first one and completely forgot about the second one, but now, I'm ready to go!

My card for this week was based on this picture chosen by Jill:

When I first saw it, I knew JUST what I wanted to do! And here's what I came up with:

I used the leaf from French Foliage and inked it up with Regal Rose. Then, I rocked and rolled VERY gently in Always Artichoke.

A word of advice:

• The rock and roll technique using the new firm foam pads is VERY tricky! With the older linen pads, you got the benefit of the texture in the pad. With the firm foam pads, because they are so uniform, you MUST be VERY gentle. When I first did it, I ended up with a strip of pink down the middle with two strips of green on the sides and it looked RIDICULOUS!
• Practice first! If I hadn't stamped onto grid paper first, I'd have wasted a piece of cardstock. Grid paper on my workspace is an invaluable tool!

After stamping the leaf image four times unto the cardstock (which is Naturals Ivory), I stamped the sentiment from A Word for You in Always Artichoke in the bottom right hand corner. I'm loving the simplicity of this card!

What do you think?

STAMPS: French Foliage, A Word for You

INK: Regal Rose, Always Artichoke

PAPERS: Naturals Ivory

ACCESSORIES: Ummm...none! Unless you count grid paper! :)

Happy Stampin'!

A little Word Play for the Creative Crew!

You may remember some of my posts from July where I let you know that I was asked to be part of the Creative Crew. That whole thing still seems a little surreal, but here it is September 2nd and it's my first "official" FULL day on the Creative Crew! I could have posted this yesterday but I would have to wait until noon MT and since I'm more than a little OCD, I couldn't bring myself to schedule it that late. Yeah, I know. I'm a freak. *sigh*

Today's card features one of *my* least favourite colours from the 2012-2014 In Colours. You know what that means? It'll finally start to grow on me a few months before it retires and then I'll fall in love with it. The same thing happened with Concord Crush *sigh* There are some of my friends and demonstrators that just LOVE it! Maybe you'll like it too?

In attempt to TRY and like it, I decided to make my first card of this month using Summer Starfruit. Please let me know what you think:

I started off with a Summer Starfruit base and then added a pierced layer of Designer Series Paper from the Comfort Cafe line. The piercing mimics "stitching" which is our general "theme" for the month.

Have you tried out the new Paper Piercing Pack yet? You're going to LOVE it! There's a basic one in the 2012-2013 Catalogue and a festive one in the Holiday Catalogue. I just KNOW you'll want both!

The next layer is a piece of Very Vanilla Cardstock that I sponged using more Summer Starfruit and then stamped with the sentiment from Word Play using Soft Suede.

For the leaves, I stamped using both my Summer Starfruit and Soft Suede Inks. On the smaller leaves, I used the "rock 'n' roll" technique.

You can see the "rock 'n' roll" effect on the small leaf in the far right of the above picture. This look is achieved by stamping in the lightest colour and then "rocking and rolling" your stamp in the darker colour. The idea is to get darker ink around the outside edge.

I added pearls to the bottom right of the card because I thought they were just the right finishing touch.

And of course, I finished the inside of the card:

What do you think?

STAMPS: French Foliage, Word Play
INK: Summer Starfruit, Soft Suede
PAPERS: Very Vanilla and Summer Starfruit Cardstock; Comfort Cafe DSP
ACCESSORIES: Paper Piercer and Essentials Paper Piercing Pack, Basic Pearls, Stampin' Dimensionals

Happy Stampin'!

Here we go round the blogging bush...

...or maybe not. Never mind - LOL! I was trying to be funny, but maybe it's too early in the day for that?

Anyway...I wasn't going to participate in this blog tour, because having just come back from Leadership and trying to get back into the swing of things, I didn't want to add something MORE to my plate.

However, Patti twisted my arm asked nicely and I just couldn't turn her down! So, I'll be showing you three of the swap cards that I did for Leadership! One is from the Occasions Mini, one is from the Sale-a-Bration brochure and one is from the Idea Book and Catalogue. We're supposed to featuring Occasions/SAB, so I sure hope you don't mind the addition of something from the big catty. You don't, do you?

Here's the first card I did:

It was for general swapping. At most Stampin' UP! events there is general swapping. You make as many cards as you'd like to receive back and walk around saying, "Are you swapping? Are you swapping? Are you swapping?" as many times as you have cards until you've given away all of your and received as many back...or until you're hoarse...whichever happens first. It's great for getting new ideas!

This one was a CASE from the Occasions Mini and another demonstrator (whose name escapes me - SORRY!) and it was a LOT of fun to make. I spent the afternoon stamping with my downline (who also went to Leadership) and even though I made FORTY!!! the time seemed to go really fast while I was creating them. I guess that's what happens when you're stamping with friends.

My second card was made using the Bordering on Romance Set from the Occasions Mini:

This one was for an organized swap. This means you get together with other demonstrators at a pre-determined time and place and swap with JUST those demonstrators. Lyssa organized this swap and it was just AMAZING! Not a bad one in the bunch!

I stamped the image with Staz-On and watercoloured it (times 20!). It was time consuming, but the result was definitely worth it! Then...thanks to Ann Schach and the fact that Santa brought me Sharpies this year for Christmas, I added coloured rhinestones - LOVE this effect! I also used my FAVOURITE paper from the Occasions Mini - Twitterpated. It's a REALLY good thing we got more of it at Leadership, because I just LOVE IT!!!

My third card features French Foliage which can be found in the Idea Book and Catalogue:

This was also for an organized swap, again hosted by Lyssa. Have I mentioned that she's AWESOME?

I started off with a piece of Very Vanilla and scored it using the Simply Scored (BTW, there's a new diagonal plate coming out!) and then stamped and sponged my way to the panel you see on the card. Lots of work, but well worth it!

Now...if you'd like to try out SUDSOL where you can learn LOTS of techniques and see ALL kinds of inspiration, you can start with my gallery here. I host the Chat and Challenge once a month, so you'll see a lot of sketches there, but also LOTS of cards! I've been the featured stamper as well as on the SUDSOL design team in the past.

One of my FAVOURITE parts about SUDSOL is the fact that a LOT of the samples are EXCLUSIVE! This means that if you're a demonstrator, your customers won't have seen the same ideas all over the internet. As SUDSOL members, we share freely, but it's just between us! And did you know that as a demonstrator you can try out SUDSOL for FREE for two weeks? Just click on the link in my right hand sidebar.

I do hope you've enjoyed this stop on the tour and that you'll continue along right to the end.

What do you think?

STAMPS: Fresh Vintage, Happiest Birthday Wishes (Hostess Set), Bordering on Romance, French Foliage
INK: Pool Party, Lucky Limeade, Soft Suede, Island Indigo, Blushing Bride, Pear Pizzazz, Cajun Craze, Always Artichoke
PAPERS: Very Vanilla, Pool Party, Lucky Limeade, Island Indigo, Early Espresso, Not Quite Navy and Cajun Craze Cardstock; Everyday Enchantment, Twitterpated and Well Worn DSP; Watercolour Paper
ACCESSORIES: Punches, Basic Pearls, Watercolour Crayons, Aqua Painters, Basic Rhinestones, Simply Scored, Sponges, Mini Library Clips, Stampin' Dimensionals

CONTINUE on the Blog Tour
Elaine de Montmorency	Jane Hignite

*DISCLAIMER*
Yes, I know some of the colours look wonky. Photoshop and I are not getting along right now and I'm having to use an online photo editor. Rest assured that the colours I listed in the supplies are accurate. Sometimes what you see is NOT what you get. *sigh*

Happy Stampin'!

A Design Team? Me? REALLY?

A few weeks ago, my friend Cristena put out a design team call for her "Stampin' Queens". I've never been part of a design team before, so I wasn't sure if I should apply or not. I've always WANTED to be part of a design team (because I think it's pretty cool!), so I emailed Cristena and her response was, "HELLO! Of course!"

So...here is my first card for the Stampin' Queens Sketch Challenge:

The sketch we were given was square and while most of my design teammates opted for a larger square card (at least to me it looks like they did!), I decided to challenge myself even FURTHER and create a 3 x 3 card! I know...crazy, right?  LOL!

Here's the sketch itself:

Anyway, I had some 3 1/2" strips of Early Espresso left over from another project, so I cut it down to six inches and trimmed off the extra 1/2" creating my 3 x 3 card.  Then I cut some strips from the Early Espresso Designer Series Paper which can be found in the Neutrals Designer Paper Series Stack.

For my large circle, I punched out a piece of Very Vanilla Cardstock with my 1 3/4" punch. Then I used my Circle Scissor Plus to cut a circle slightly smaller and used the negative to put over my 1 3/4" punched piece and sponged inside that circle leaving a thin border with no colour. To stamp the leaves inside the circle, I used Soft Suede Ink and stamped off before stamping into the circle (with the mask still in place).

I stamped the sentiment in Soft Suede on Very Vanilla Cardstock and punched it out with my 1" circle punch. It was matted on a piece of 1 1/4" Early Espresso.

The finishing touch was stamping the large leaf from French Foliage on Very Vanilla and cutting it out.  I then covered it in Crystal Effects and let it dry before adhering it to the front of the card using Stampin' Dimensionals.

What do you think?

STAMPS: French Foliage, Teeny Tiny Wishes
INK: Soft Suede
PAPERS: Soft Suede and Very Vanilla Cardstock, Early Espresso DSP
ACCESSORIES: Very Vanilla Ribbon (retired), Punches, Sponges, Circle Scissor Plus, Stampin' Dimensionals

Happy Stampin'!