Heartfelt Hugs combos

   One of my must-haves from the new catalogue is the beautiful distInktive stamp set Healing Hugs. This set  is so gorgeous and unique in that they produce photo-realistic stamped images without having to do three (or more) steps. The stamps have a special texture, giving lots of depth and dimension. How cool is that?! 

Today I decided to play with this set and just experiment with all the possible color combinations I can create with the beautiful flower. You can stamp it with a single color, or have lots of fun and mix-and-match two or more colors for more depth. Well I played today with a few colors, and here are the combinations that I got. Top color is the base and the bottom is the layering color.

I made a few, as you can see. At first I was using the sponge daubers to add my second color, but I wasn't getting very vibrant colors and I was losing the details of the image. And so I tried a different approach. 

For this method I used my Stamparatus. I first stamped my flower in the base color, inked up my stamp again with my layering color and wiped off the center before stamping again. This is a bit messier for sure, but it gave me better results in my opinion.

      Here's a side-by-side comparison of a sponged flower (left) and my wiping method flower (right), using the same colors:

I like them both, but I think I prefer the more vibrant colors the wiping method gives me. After doing this almost forty times though, my hands looked like this in the end:

Haha owell, as my grade school Art teacher once told me...an artist's hand is always dirty!!! Well today I feel like a true artist for sure! LOL.

So anyway, what is your favorite combination? I can't make up my mind which one is my favorite...they're all so pretty! Well thank you for stopping by and I hope you all have a lovely day. See you next time and happy crafting!  :)

Dandelion Wishes meet Brusho

 I can't believe I waited this long to finally play with the Brusho crystals!!! I was unsure of it at first, skeptical whether I'd even like it. And so I waited. But then I kept seeing all these wonderful watercolor projects using Brusho, and now I'm regretting waiting this long! Now I can't stop playing with these watercolor crystals.

I started by experimenting with them. It is very different from other watercolor mediums that I have ever used being that they are in powder form and are activated by water. These are extremely vibrant! Just a little of it goes a long way...which is great considering I've been playing with them alot!

For my card today I decided to create a simple background using Brusho. Nothing fancy, I wanted it to be easy and simple. I started my card by sponging randomly all over my Whisper White cardstock (4 1/4 x 5 1/2") in Coastal Cabana and Mango Melody. I'm just creating a base color for my card. Then I taped my cardstock onto my mat, sprinkled Brusho all over (I used a little bit of Moss Green, Prussian Blue and Yellow), and then sprayed it with water (hence the taping to prevent my paper from curling). A quick zap of my heat gun and my background piece is done. I then trimmed this piece down to 3 3/4 x 5".

Once my cardstock is completely dry, I stamped my beautiful dandelions from Dandelion Wishes using Versamark and covered it with white embossing powder. Another zap of my heat gun and my card is just about done! 

I punched out a piece of Whisper White cardstock using the Tailored Tag punch and stamped my sentiment on it from the same stamp set. I sponged the edges with Mango Melody for additional effect, wrapped a piece of Silver metallic-edged ribbon around my art piece, before adhering my sentiment onto my card using dimensionals. This whole piece was then layered on top of a piece of Mango Melody cardstock (4 x 5 1/4"), before adhering it to a Whisper White A2 sized card base. 

And that is my finished card. It turned out better than I expected it to be, especially since this was my first play with Brusho! I am loving this product...so vibrant and versatile, I've got a whole lot of experimenting to do for sure! Well thank you for visiting and hope to see you next time! Happy crafting!!! :)

Memories & More

I am in love with our new Memories & More card packs! I just spent an hour and a half playing with my Big Plans card pack, prepping for a planned card class in July, and boy did I have lots of fun. I made all of these cards in less than two hours...how sweet is that?!

If you're not familiar with the Memories & More card packs, let me give you the simple low-down. It is a pack of 50 double-sided cards (kinda like little Designer Series Papers in 3x4" and 4x6"), 6 single-sided specialty cards (can be foiled, acetate, laser cut, etc.), and 4 sticker sheets (sentiments & embellishments). So as you can see, you have everything you'll ever need to make your projects, be it cards, scrapbooking or other papercrafting! The packs are super affordable and gorgeous, an absolute must-have!

Here are the current Memories & More card packs in our catalogue:

Big Plans

Best Route

Delightfully Detailed

Tea Room

How fun are they?!

As I have previously mentioned, I am planning a card class in July, and so what better product to use than these card packs right? For my sample cards, I challenged myself to use very minimal products to make it easy for my class. I took out my Itty Bitty Greetings stamp set, my adhesive-backed sequins, the SAB shimmer ribbons in Calypso Coral & Basic Gray (I know they're retired, but I have them in abundance so why not use them?), and then gave myself a 3x12" piece of silver foil sheet. These items, plus my adhesive and Basic Black ink pad is all I used, and I'm quite happy with the cards I made! There's very minimal stamping, and they're super easy to do. Hopefully my class attendees will be happy with them too! 

Summer lovin’

         Hello and welcome to another Ink & Share Blog Hop episode. This month, we are celebrating Summer!!! At long last, it has finally arrived! It has definitely been a long wait, with Old Man Winter hangin' around for as long as he did, but now we can finally enjoy the warmth and beauty that summer brings. Picnics, swimming in the lake, the great outdoors...what's not to love?!

     For my project, I wanted to create a card with very vibrant colors...colors so warm you can almost feel it! And of course what is summer without gorgeous flowers?! Here's what I came up with...

I started by sponging my background using some of our fabulous new (& returning) colors: Pineapple Punch, Grapefruit Grove, Granny Apple Green, and Coastal Cabana. Once my colors were vivid enough, I was ready to emboss. 

I white heat-embossed my flowers and leaves from the stamp set Beautiful Promenade along the left side of my cardstock. After all the heat embossing was done I taped my cardstock onto my craft mat, sprinkled some Gamboge Brusho on it and sprayed it with water. Taping it just keeps my cardstock nice and flat as it dries.

To turn my vibrant art piece into a card, I trimmed it to 3 1/2 x 5 1/4". I ran a piece of Whisper White cardstock (4 x 5 1/4") thru my Big Shot with one of the Petal Pair embossing folders and adhered my trimmed up art piece on top of it. I wrapped linen thread around the seam a few times before layering this whole piece on top of a Basic Black cardstock (4 1/8 x 5 3/8"). This  whole piece was then adhered to my A2 sized Grapefruit Grove card base.

My sentiment is from the Love What You Do stamp set. I wanted it to be a one-liner sentiment, so I used Post-its to help me achieve this. Ink up your whole stamp, cover the part you want omitted with Post-its, stamp, and repeat. Easy-peasy! Then I just layered this on top of a piece of Grapefruit Grove cardstock and trimmed the end into a banner. Lastly for embellishment I just added a few rhinestone jewels and of course some shimmer on my flowers with my Wink of Stella. 

Thank you again for stopping by and checking out my project, I hope you liked it! Please do continue hopping along with the rest of our talented team and explore our summer projects. I hope you all have a lovely day, and hope to see you next time. Happy crafting and happy summer!!! :) 

Lisa Kmiec

Sandrine Jse

Tricia Butts

Rhonda Waechter

Rebecca-Jo Unwin

Cindy Mitchell-Clark

Shirley Merker

Ginger Rabesa

Linda Handford

Ingrid Heijnen-Hermens

JacquelineBobeldijk-Schilder

***Phoebe Borromeo-Carr***

Camping Crafting

     My husband and I, along with our little doggy, are out on a two-week camping tour of the Okanagan. It has been a great trip so far...lots of beautiful sights to see, places to visit, and things to do. But what do you do when you get a cold and rainy day?! Well...Stampin' Up to the rescue!

     I brought along a little case of miscellaneous crafting stuff with me, you know, 'just in case'. It's minimal supplies, but I'm sure glad they were with me during this trip! Too bad my order didn't come in time for me to play with the other new stuff, but hey, I still had fun playing with what I had.

     My must-bring-along stamp set of course is the beautiful Rooted in Nature. This set is my absolute favorite from the new catalogue. Beautiful images complemented by beautiful sentiments...just perfect! I also brought along my Stamparatus, which came in handy for stamping my multi-colored leaves. Another stamp set I brought was the Prize Patrol set I got at OnStage, Around the Corner. I haven't played with this set yet, and so I thought this would be the perfect time to do so.

     So on a cold rainy day, I got out my supplies and crafted away. These are what I came up with. I'm not going into details on how I made each one because they are pretty basic. I pretty much just stamped a bunch of the leaves and fussy cut them  (I thought bringing my Big Shot for a camping trip would be too much, lol). 

What about you, what supplies do you bring for your 'emergency' kit? Well that is all for today, thanks so much for stopping by! Hope to see you next time. Happy crafting!

Flower Basket Twist & Pop card

     Hello and welcome! Today I re-created the fun-fold card I made for my OnStage display board and swaps. This card looks deceivingly complicated, but it's pretty easy to make...and fun too! The step-by-step tutorial video is at the end of this post. Let's get started.

You will need:

• a piece of vellum (10" x 3")
• Basket panel: Whisper White cardstock (10" x 2"), run it through your Big Shot with the Basket Weave embossing folder. (I'm so happy this embossing folder carried over to the new catalogue!) Sponge this piece using Early Espresso and Black inks.
• Mechanism piece: Whisper White cardstock (7" x 2 3/4"). Score following the diagram below.

• Flowers using the Four Petal Punch and Garden Impressions DSP. Leaves for the flowers are created using the same punch and shades of green cardstock, then cut in half. Center of flower from Jar of Love stamped in black, then sequins added in the middle. I used 10 flowers for the inside of the card and one for the card front.
• Cut out bees from Dragonfly Dreams, covered in Wink of Stella. I used two for the inside and one for the card front. 
• Powder Pink and Daffodil Delight ink pads for creating the front background using the dots from Dragonfly Dreams stamp set. Sentiment is also from this set.
• Gold ribbon to wrap around another basket weave panel for the card front.

Here's the tutorial video on how to make this fun card:

     I hope you enjoyed today's tutorial crafters, and I hope to see you next time! Thank you so much for stopping by! And by the way, have you seen the new catalogue yet?! Click here to get a glimpse of the fabulous new items we have! And if you don't already have a demonstrator in Calgary, I'd be glad to be yours! :)