I Just Love You

Morning all, I have actually managed to sneak downstairs undetected by my little (and not so little..) ones this morning so I am enjoying an undisturbed cup of coffee while writing this post. I know this peace and quiet won't last so I am making the most of it.

I am a big fan of the word CASE, in the crafting community it means Copy and Share Everything and I always get a big thrill if someone asks if they can CASE my cards. I am more than happy for anyone to CASE anything of mine they see on my blog, Facebook or Instagram, I'd like it if they mentioned that they'd been inspired by my card but it is not essential. Where I can I will also link back to the original persons work as I feel they deserve the recognition of having inspired someone to create. With that in mind today's card has been CASEd from a card that Jacque Williams created for a colour challenge.

With Valentines Day round the corner I wanted to make a card for Craig that wasn't too girly so when I saw this one on Pinterest I just had to give it a go. I just love this colour combination for masculine cards so I might be making some more using these two colours. I didn't have all of the materials that Jacque used on her card but what I did have was some white glitter washi, some white organza ribbon and my Night of Navy Stampin' Blend. Did you know you could use your blends to colour in washi tape, rhinestones and ribbon? Now you can get your favourite embellishments to coordinate without having to own one in every colour!

One of the things I love about CASEing other peoples cards is that often you learn something along the way, while I knew about colouring washi tape with Stampin' Blends, I didn't know about 'kissing' stamps together. While admiring Jacques card I was wondering how she had produced the small Night of Navy heart, was it a stamp I didn't recognise, had she used white craft ink? I couldn't tell until I read her blog post and realised it was a simple technique that I hadn't heard of before. For the heart on this card you take the small heart in the stamp set, ink it up with Night of Navy ink and then lightly 'kiss' this stamp with the large floral heart. This then picks up some of the floral pattern so that when you stamp it onto card you get a gorgeous patterned heart.

The base card in Night of Navy was not folded into equal halves, this is so that when the right hand side of the inner card has been embossed it can be seen when you close the card. I always forget about my embossing folders, I buy them because I think they achieve lovely results but then they are hidden in my cupboard and I forget about them. I must make more of an effort to use them! Another great reason for CASEing cards, it reminds you of forgotten products.

The smaller background hearts were stamped onto Whisper White card and while you can get matching dies to go with this stamp set, I haven't purchased these (yet!), so I used my trusty paper snips to fussy cut my two hearts which were then popped on using dimensionals. I finished off the outside by adding the embellishments I had coloured and some Lemon Lime Twist self adhesive sequins. I really hope Stampin' Up! bring out more self adhesive sequins, these are so much easier to use!

 Well my coffee is finished and I can hear my little monsters thumping about upstairs which means my short spell of peace and quiet it about to vanish, I hope you like the finished card, please feel free to CASE this or any of my other cards and I'd love to see what you come up with. All of the supplies used to make today's card are shown below and all links will take you directly to my online shop. Happy crafting.

Supplies:

Heart Happiness Photopolymer Stamp Set

[145769]

£15.00

Petal Palette Clear-Mount Stamp Set

[145788]

£32.00

Night Of Navy A4 Card Stock

[106577]

£7.25

Whisper White A4 Card Stock

[106549]

£8.25

Night Of Navy Classic Stampin' Pad

[126970]

£6.00

Lemon Lime Twist Classic Stampin' Pad

[144086]

£6.00

Night Of Navy Dark Stampin' Blends Marker

[144039]

£4.00

Myths & Magic Specialty Washi Tape

[145602]

£5.50

Whisper White 1/4" (6.4 Mm) Organza Ribbon

[145590]

£5.50

Tutti-Frutti Adhesive-Backed Sequins

[145609]

£6.25

Seaside Textured Impressions Embossing Folder

[141481]

£7.75

Paper Snips Scissors

[103579]

£9.00

Stampin' Dimensionals

[104430]

£3.75

Fast Fuse Adhesive

[129026]

£9.00

Back to Basics

Morning all, well I'm pleased to say I've made it back for a second time this week! I actually woke up at half 4 this morning as little cub was crying out and once I'd settled him back down I thought I'd jump into my craft room as I know I'd only be grumpy if I tried to go back to sleep!

I found the challenge Back to Basics over at Daring Cardmakers earlier in the week and I kept trying to come up with ideas, I made one card that I might share at some point but I wasn't really happy with how it turned out, the colours didn't really work for the card. I think I was trying to over complicate things but couldn't think of anything else I could do until this morning. This card just popped into my head and wouldn't go away until I'd made it!

As the challenge was to go back to basics and only use the three primary colours I have only used four Stampin' ink pads and only ten products in total but I'm sure you could do this with a few less. In order to get the orange for the sand I mixed together daffodil delight and real red then used my aqua painters (any one else feel like a big kid when they get these out?) to do a wash over the bottom half of the card base. While still wet I added in some extra Daffodil Delight over the top to give it a nice golden effect. For my sun I initially used a stencil made with Whisper White card stock and the 1" circle punch to sponge on the orange I had mixed up. I then used the cut out circle as a mask so that I could do a wash of Marina Mist starting from my sand and working upwards so that it faded towards the top of the card. To then give my sun a hazy look I removed the mask and added a wash of Real Red over the top of the orange sun, 

I absolutely love how my Goose turned out, I have never used aqua painters to colour in a stamp before but because I had mixed my own colours and didn't want his legs to turn out green I thought I'd give it a go. I am very pleased with the watery effect especially on the grass, I feel that if it was a crisp image it just wouldn't have looked the same. The green for the grass was made from Night of Navy and Daffodil Delight. It was really nice to get back to basics and great a simple card with very few supplies. Thank you for stopping by to read my post, I hope you like what you've seen and that I've inspired you to give it a go yourself. Don't forget if you live near me and I run card classes from my home once a month.

Supplies:

Boot Camp - Week 1

Evening everyone, it is very windy again tonight, I'm really hoping we have no more leaking windows as we've already had three! Tonight I wanted to tell you a little about being a Stampin' Up! Demonstrator. I first discovered Stampin' Up! about a year and a half ago when I started going to some local card making classes run by the lovely Lauren La Fey, I had been making cards for a few months at this point and became a little addicted. My first few orders were rather large (well they still are really!) as I just couldn't decide what I wanted to craft with first and it made sense to sign up as a hobby demonstrator which meant that I could get a lovely 20% discount on my craft stash. My idea was that I would just be a demo for a few months to take advantage of the discount and then stop, surely I couldn't need that much stuff! But what I didn't realise is how much fun it is being a demonstrator! Once I signed up I was suddenly part of an extended family called the Stampin' Stars, starting with Natalie at the head and all of her downlines (and all of their downlines and all of their downlines and so on....) underneath. It's a lovely large group of people that are so friendly and ready to help wherever it's needed, I'm just not ready to give that up!

So I thought I'd try and kickstart my business this year with Natalie's Boot Camp. For the next six weeks she will be giving those of us who signed up tasks that we must complete by the following Friday evening which will help boost our business. (One of those tasks is to hold at least one workshop/party each week so if anyone wants to host or attend a workshop let me know!) This week I think we started off gently as it was things like sort out your filing, tidy your craft space and sort through your craft stash to clear out retired items. I think it might step up a bit as the weeks go on! One of the other tasks this week was to choose a card in one of the catalogues and copy it as closely as possible but using a different stamp set and different colours. I chose the card in the top left on page 4 of the Spring/Summer catalogue for my task. I really like the stamp from the Hello Life set as I've decided that's what I will be doing this year! As you can see it's really easy to take inspiration from the catalogues and change it up a bit to make a different card! I tend to forget that I can pull inspiration direct from the catalogues.

If you wanted to become a part of this wonderful extended family either as a hobby demo or to try and start a business now couldn't be a better time. The usual perks of becoming a new demonstrator are: 

• Pay £99 to join then choose £130 worth of items, and it's completely up to you what you choose (It can be made up of anything from the Annual and Spring/Summer catalogues)
• Receive 20% off your orders (not including supply items e.g. catalogues)
• Receive an extra 10% off your first over of over £150 if made within the first 45 days of joining, so that's 30% off!
• If you enrol onto DBWS within the first 21 days of joining you receive 2 months free
• You also have the opportunity to earn some free stamp sets by taking part in Stampin' Start

However if you join during Sale-a-bration you get all of the above AND you get to choose from two extra options! You can choose either a FREE Simply Created Project Kit from the Spring/Summer catalogue or TWO FREE sale-a-bration items.  As a demonstrator you get lots of support because if your upline doesn't know the answer chances are one of the other team members will be able to help and if they don't know there is always demo support to call on.  If you'd like more information just contact me using the details at the top of the page.

Supplies:

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