Category Archives: General

Day at the Beach

For the last few days, I’ve sat down at my table to relax by making a card and I’ve been too tired to come up with anything. This is especially amazing because I have a pile of unused products that I’ve been desperate to use! So between starting the watercolouring on Day of the Beach last night and a hair cut this morning, I’ve finally managed to finish a card. It’s quite apposite since after the hair cut, my friend Julia and I went for pedicures. It wasn’t planned in advance so we ended up with those paper flip flops that the shop provides and mine were bright pink. Somehow I must’ve known!

Liz Bailey Stampin' Up! Demonstrator - Day at the Beach - Paper Pumpkin January 2017 - Adoring Arrows

The Day at the Beach stamp set just cries out for watercoloring. I used the pencils and a blender pen on whisper white but it wasn’t giving me the look I wanted so I switched to watercolor paper and an aquapainter. Kept the pencils. If you haven’t tried these, you really must. They are wonderful to use. Here I was using daffodil delights, bermuda bay and melon mambo with a little basic black to add more color to the straps. I changed up my usual layout where the border of the main layer is even and had the watercolor paper extending the length of the card. I knew that I wanted to use a banner and this was a perfect time to use the awesome sentiment from this month’s paper pumpkin, Adoring Arrows.I used the triple banner punch to get my flag ends on the watercolor paper and also on my bermuda bay mat. I popped that up with dimensionals. And I can’t see that there’s anyone who should receive this card other than my amazing friend Julia.

I hope you enjoyed today’s project. Please use the hostess code to get free handmade cards; the current one is PNF6CKRH (if your order is over $150, don’t use the code, you get the rewards, but you still get the free cards from me). Click here to go to my online shop or here to join my team. To sign up for Paper Pumpkin, click here.

And don’t forget that during Sale-a-bration, for every $50 you spend (before taxes and shipping) you get to select a FREE product from the Sale-a-bration catalogue. Don’t have paper copies of the catalogs? Drop me an email and I’ll put one in the mail.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Beautiful You Trio

It’s time to share another card made with one of my favourite stamp sets from the Occasions catalogue and this time it’s showcasing all of the Beautiful You trio of ladies. It took a little juggling to get them all onto a regular sized card along with a sentiment, but I’m really pleased with how this came out. I like the way that the sentiment fits so well with images of one lady living with passion and doing many things and having many looks. It also reminds me of the images on the front of a paper pattern and I went to sewing shops many times with my mother to peruse the pattern books.

Liz Bailey Stampin' Up! Demonstrator - Beautiful You - Blooms & Bliss DSP

So here I stamped the Beautiful You trio onto a piece of watercolor paper along with the sentiment using my favourite archival black. I actually made about 8 different cards with this stamp set at the same time but I’m spacing out sharing them. I’d done a sweet sugarplum one and decided to use that on this one too along with some dapper denim which I’d chosen as a card base. Then I decided to add a different darker shade and the very stylish lady in the middle is actually wearing a rich razzleberry dress. But with the water in my aquapainter, the colours look almost identical. I think I’ll experiment with a sweet sugarplum wash and add rich razzleberry colour with the new watercolor pencils for contrast. I suspect that they will work beautifully together.

I cut a piece of Blooms & Bliss DSP to line the envelope flap – it matches perfectly with both rich razzleberry and sweet sugarplum.

My paper pumpkin finally arrived yesterday but after another late night at the office, by the time I had cooked dinner and we’d eaten it was about 10pm and I had no energy to play. There seems to be a state of energy where crafting gives energy but there’s also a lower state where you can’t think creatively at all. Here’s hoping that I get home earlier and can just relax with my kit.

I hope you enjoyed today’s project. Please use the hostess code to get free handmade cards; the current one is PNF6CKRH (if your order is over $150, don’t use the code, you get the rewards, but you still get the free cards from me). Click here to go to my online shop or here to join my team. To sign up for Paper Pumpkin, click here.

And don’t forget that during Sale-a-bration, for every $50 you spend (before taxes and shipping) you get to select a FREE product from the Sale-a-bration catalogue. Don’t have paper copies of the catalogs? Drop me an email and I’ll put one in the mail.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Cool Treats bundled with Frozen Treats

Now although it’s still winter and cold out there, the Cool Treats feel summery. This was a set that we all got for free at the Onstage Local that I went to back in November but this is the first time I’ve inked it up. Somehow ice creams in November and December felt a little weird, but it’s perfectly okay in January. Maybe it’s because it was 60 degrees here in New Jersey yesterday. Go figure!

Liz Bailey Stampin' Up! Demonstrator - Cool Treats - Frozen Treats

The Cool Treats stamp set is a 2 step and a photopolymer set so lining them up is a breeze. I used blushing bride and rose red stamped off once for the ice cream. For the adorable cone, I used delightful dijon stamped off once and I topped it with this awesome die cut (also in delightful dijon) from Frozen Treats. The sentiment (also from Cool Treats) is full strength rose red. I felt that there was a little something missing and that’s when I noticed the strawberry die cuts. Now these are really fun. I had three of them cut out quickly and then used the sponge dauber and multipurpose glue and silicone mat trick to glue them up without any excess splurging. A rose red card base finished the card off perfectly.

Happy Birthday to my sister, Caro. Could you pop over to her blog and say hello? Thanks.

I hope you enjoyed today’s project. Please use the hostess code to get free handmade cards; the current one is PNF6CKRH (if your order is over $150, don’t use the code, you get the rewards, but you still get the free cards from me). Click here to go to my online shop or here to join my team. To sign up for Paper Pumpkin, click here.

I still have some covered notebooks available which I’ll add to the thank you package and handmade cards as supplies last. Need a reminder of them?

Liz Bailey Stampin' Up! Demonstrator - Falling in Love - Designer Tee

And don’t forget that during Sale-a-bration, for every $50 you spend (before taxes and shipping) you get to select a FREE product from the Sale-a-bration catalogue. Don’t have paper copies of the catalogs? Drop me an email and I’ll put one in the mail.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Beautiful You meets Paper Piecing

I did mention I think that I really love the Beautiful You stamp set? It lends itself to colouring with blender pens, the aquapainter, the new pencils and is also perfect for paper piecing.

Liz Bailey Stampin' Up! Demonstrator - Beautiful You

I stamped my image onto a piece of whisper white card stock with archival basic black – I’ve given up using any other black these days – and also onto a scrap from the Subtles DSP stack in so saffron. I thought that the little flowers were perfect for a dress. Then I used my aquapainter and the matching so saffron ink to add colour to the hat; with that successfully accomplished, I snipped out the dress in the DSP. A little bit of liquid glue and my Beautiful You lady was now attired in a gorgeous flowery dress.

I cut down the whisper white piece of card until it felt right and then cut a mat in basic black to make the image really pop. Next I took a card base of so saffron added the wonderful sentiment in black and again, once that was successfully accomplished, glued my image to the card base. I always like to be ultra safe and ensure that my stamping is perfect before adding the image or the hat for example is painted properly before adding my snipped out image. It takes but a moment to stamp or colour but longer to cut out the image so I don’t want to waste it. And indeed, if I’d glued on the image before stamping the sentiment, the extra height of the image could have impacted my stamping.

Liz Bailey Stampin' Up! Demonstrator - Beautiful You

To finish off the project, I cut a piece of the same DSP to 6 by 2 1/4 inches and glued it onto the envelope flap. A quick snip with the paper snips and it matched perfectly.

I hope you enjoyed today’s project. Please use the hostess code to get free handmade cards; the current one is PNF6CKRH (if your order is over $150, don’t use the code, you get the rewards, but you still get the free cards from me). Click here to go to my online shop or here to join my team. To sign up for Paper Pumpkin, click here.

And don’t forget that during Sale-a-bration, for every $50 you spend (before taxes and shipping) you get to select a FREE product from the Sale-a-bration catalogue. Don’t have paper copies of the catalogs? Drop me an email and I’ll put one in the mail.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Mediterranean Moments with Watercolor Pencils

On Tuesday night I held a launch party; you should have been there, we had loads of fun! One of the make and takes used watercolor pencils and I enjoyed playing with them so much, I decided to pull out other stamp sets to colour. This time, it’s Mediterranean Moments.

 Liz Bailey Stampin' Up! Demonstrator - Mediterranean Moments

I stamped the image using the archival basic black and then walked away for a short time to be sure that the black was really dry. Next I took a number of the pencils – real red, old olive, pacific point, daffodil delight, early espresso and a little calypso coral and roughly laid down some colour. You don’t have to be at all precise at this point. Then I used a blender pen to move the colour where I wanted it. I left about half of the image uncoloured so as to keep the sketch look rather than trying to make a painting. All that remained was to choose a card base – I often use a skinny basic black mat around watercolouring and this time I decided to use the black for the card base. I really like how it left all of the attention on the image.

I hope you enjoyed today’s project. Please use the hostess code to get free handmade cards; the current one is PNF6CKRH (if your order is over $150, don’t use the code, you get the rewards, but you still get the free cards from me). Click here to go to my online shop or here to join my team. To sign up for Paper Pumpkin, click here.

And don’t forget that during Sale-a-bration, for every $50 you spend (before taxes and shipping) you get to select a FREE product from the Sale-a-bration catalogue. Don’t have paper copies of the catalogs? Drop me an email and I’ll put one in the mail.

See you tomorrow,

Liz