Monthly Archives: December 2015

Pretty Petals DSP stack

Today’s card features products that you can actually order today rather than those that are in the upcoming catalogue! A surprise I know. It’s so easy to get caught up in what’s coming that the current items get neglected.

Stampin' Up! Pretty Petals DSP stack and Birthday Blossoms

This card started when I was flicking through the Pretty Petals DSP stack and deciding that this paper is so pretty it just has to be used. I then looked at the front of the stack to get which colours are included – in this case, it’s very vanilla, calypso coral and old olive. So I carefully cut a mat out of the green and it just didn’t look quite right. This is when I realised that I’d grabbed pear pizzazz instead of old olive – my boxes of paper aren’t in the usual place after the Christmas festivities. Once I’d corrected the colours, I really liked how the green framed the DSP and went with the calypso coral card stock.

The sentiment comes from Birthday Blossoms – I love the typeface; I’ve used this one a lot. It’s stamped in old olive on very vanilla and I just cut the very vanilla down to where it felt right and matted it in more old olive. I had some scraps since it didn’t seem to be my day yesterday – I managed to cut the mat for the DSP a little too small the first time. I popped this up with stampin’ dimensionals.

So there you have it. A very clean and simple card showcasing the Pretty Petals DSP stack. When I really like the DSP, I don’t want to cover much of it up. I have another 3 pieces of this print so I should come up with another few cards using it in another way. I definitely have too much DSP, I’m going to try to use it more in 2016.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Helping Me Grow Again

Here’s another use of the Helping Me Grow stamp set, this one a bit more sunny as I promised yesterday. These flowers definitely wanted to be sunny.

Stampin' Up! Helping Me Grow

Learning from yesterday’s card, I went straight for the stazon black to stamp the image on the water color paper. At least, I meant to. Somehow I ended up using the memento black instead but still cleaned the stamp with the stazon cleaner. I’m not sure what I was thinking!

I started with the centres – in crushed curry. Next were the watermelon wonder flowers – these were done in a fairly pale shade of watermelon wonder to start with with some extra colour layered on afterwards. The sepals are in a fairly strong mint macaron with the stalks just having a pale wash of the same colour. There is also a very faint wash of mint macaron around the flower heads which make them pop more without getting in the way.

I like to use fast fuse to keep the water color paper under control. I miss the wiggle room that the multi purpose glue gives but maybe that was making me lazy. I like to line up two corners and that means (assuming that the paper is cut correctly) that the layer will be right. It’s better to line up the longer side since there’s more distance to highlight any lining up issues.

It’s less than a week now until everyone can order the new goodies, including the Helping Me Grow stamp set, from the Occasions catalogue.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Helping me Grow

No – the title isn’t some  deep dark comment on life, it’s the name of the stamp set that I used today. Helping Me Grow is a new stamp set in the upcoming Occasions catalogue which is live on January 5th. I tried looking at DSP but nothing was leaping out at me today so I went simple. Just some watercolour paper and ink.

Stampin' Up! Helping Me Grow

The first attempt wasn’t so great – I’d take a picture but I wrecked it trying to save it. There was a little bleeding of the black ink (I used the new archival black) but the real disaster was the fast fuse that I put on the back of the watercolour paper grabbing onto the basic black mat before I was ready. I tried to trim and fix it. I even ripped the black off the back but when I tried to trim the watercolour paper a little, my trimmer mangled the paper – probably because the glue was there. So, I started over. This time I used stazon black. I used perfect plum for my watercolouring again and actually I prefer my second attempt. It’s more watercolour like  and less perfect.

As you can see in the close up, I have layered the colour and left white gaps here and there. My original attempt was a bit monotone.

Stampin' Up! Helping Me Grow

I added a narrow black mat and then put this onto the perfect plum card base. My sister asked if it’s a sympathy card. I suppose it could be. I wasn’t planning it, I just picked the colour that felt right. Maybe tomorrow I’ll try the happier flower!

And a very warm welcome to my new blog follower. I’m so glad you joined in.

 

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Plans change

Apologies for the lack of creative posting today, but this morning I received some bad news about my friend Chris and I just couldn’t muster the energy or enthusiasm to create anything. I didn’t know Chris long but he was my favourite person at my new job. He made it fun, we agreed on everything, we got a lot of things done together. And he liked to say that he had no filter. I guess that’s why we got on. And he was really really funny. I’m going to miss him.

Packaging cards

I needed a secret pal gift to give and as luck would have it, I got Myra, who frequently likes my cards on Facebook. I decided to give her a box of cards but then decided to try to improve dress up the packaging. The details for the card that you can see on top are here.

Stampin' up! botanical builder framelits dies packaging

Each card was put in a cellophane envelope which has a top to glue down (that’s the stripe you can see on the right hand side), but I left them open. Then, using the colour scheme from the top card, I cut out a large topper using the retired labels collections die (the lots of labels collection would work too) and folded it in half and stapled it together trapping the tops of the cellophane envelopes in the middle. This means that it’s easy for Myra to flip through the cards and extract the one that she wants from it’s sleeve without having to take anything apart.

Botanicals Builder framelits dies

Then I used the new Botanical Builder framelits dies (only ten days until everyone can order them) to cut out various flowers and leaves. The advantage here was that not only did it dress it up, it covered the staples. I had wondered if getting the Botanical Builder dies was a mistake since they allow serious dimension – something that my cards don’t tend to have – but I’ve used them twice already and am really pleased with them. And happily, Myra was really pleased with her gift. So, a win-win.

I hope that you all had a happy and fun filled day yesterday and that you’re enjoying the rest of the weekend.

See you tomorrow,

Liz