A new trifold card - Artistic Etchings

At crafters anonymous class on Monday night we created with a great new card fold.
I decorated mine with Artistic Etchings stamps and Fan Fair patterned paper.
Here is the front all decorated with stamps, punched butterflies, die cut sentiment, doilies and fussy cut  Eiffel tower (with pearls).

I felt so artisitic decorating the blank canvas with my favourite stamps and patterned paper.
It is made with just one piece of double sided patterned paper. Eight inches by 12 inches and cut diagonally in half. This card will be going to a very special friend... I think.

Card Recipe:
Stampset: Artistic Etchings, Memorable Moments.
Designer series paper: Fan Fair
Paper Doilies
Cardstock: Very Vanilla.
Ink: Basic Grey, Crumb cake, Versamark.
Embossing powder: Pool Party. Heat tool, Big shot, Labels collection framelit Die,
Elegant Butterfly and Itty butterfly punches, Pearls, Stampin' Trimmer, dimensionals.

And here it is from the back, showing the very vanilla stamped panel to write your message on the back. Here I added some scallop circles and an embossed Eiffel tower (avec pearl).

Have you tried My Digital Studio?

This is my first Digital scrapbook page.

It is very simple and very easy to do on MDS - the Stampin' Up! digital scrapbooking program.

Have you heard of MDS? (My digital Studio).

Would you like to try it for FREE?

You can download a free copy of the program ( and use it for 30 days) with no obligation.

 *    *    *    *

How simple is scrapbooking when you don't even have to print the photos, or cut any cardstock,  ribbon, or open a box of buttons. Just click the colours, stamps, background papers, ribbon, embellisments that you like. Layer them onto a page with your photos and admire your work all on the desk top of your computer.

For your FREE download of MDS click on this link: http://www3.stampinup.com/home/au

call Nerida on 0468 877 125 if you have any questions.

Enjoy!!!

A whitish Wedding card and Challenge 3 of the cyber stamp!

 The third challenge in the weekend's cyber-stamp on Angela's forum was to design a card inspired by a photo. The picture showed cakes with ribbon, roses, pearls and flowers for a wedding.

Perfect! I have just made a card that features almost all those things.

Jess' Teacher is getting married over the school holidays so together we made this lovely card for her.

 It features the Secret garden flower stamped in Elegant Eggplant and layered onto a couple of crunched Blossom punches. All on naturals white cardstock.

Did you notice the musical notes in the background?

This is a fabulous Specialty paper called... Naturals.

The crumb cake pattern is raised with glossy embossing and the backing paper can be sponged, stamped or brayered with any ink you choose.

For a wedding card I sponged and wiped it over with my white ink pad.

Then cut out an oval from another piece and sponged that in white too.

Well it is a wedding card... white and off white are very shabby chic.

Add some organza ribbon and flower trim, Pearls and another scrunched flower - It all says wedding to me.

 ....And then we had to decorate the inside, so, 

We used a new stampset (with matching Framelits) called "Hearts a flutter" and over stamped it with last season's "Affection collection" stamps.

And then,

we added this pop up wedding dress - tad dah!!!

 The lace dress is fashioned with a piece of lace from the Embellishment Kit,

on the dress dummy from the "Established Elegance" stamp set.

It may be a little over the top but we know Jess' teacher just loved it!

And since she likes a bit of purple we thought it was just right.

Cyber stamp Challenge 2

My second challenge attempt is the colour challenge.
The challenge is to use Raspberry Ripple, Pool Party, Sahara Sand and very Vanilla.
Plus use texture, texture, texture!
My card uses the "thinking of you" stamp inked up with markers in the challenge colours.
For texture - cloudy day embossing folder, sponged with pool party ink, and a piece of Sahara card stock embossed with the fancy fan folder.
I've added Stitched Raspberry ribbon and pool party Satin ribbon, a button and punched butterflies with pearls for more textures to touch and feel.
Lastly, I sprayed it with champagne shimmer mist. I think you can see the glitter in one of the photos where I asked jess to shine a torch on it while I took the photo.

Cyber-stamp-crop at Elite Stampers!

This weekend Angela Sergeant, and the Elite stamper's team are having a cyber - stamp - crop!
Angela sets 4 challenges: a Sketch, a colour, a photo inspiration and a product challenge.
We started playing on Sat morning and it goes till Monday pm.
This is my card for challenge one. The sketch challenge.
And then I had a go at scrapbooking using the sketch.
Both use the "Tea for two" patterned papers and lots of product from the Autumn seasonal mini.

Doily dresses

I found this idea on Pinterest yesterday and couldn't wait to try my own doily dress.
You can buy doilies in a pack of 24 from the seasonal catalogue (Autumn mini) for $4.95 it goes wonderfully well with the tea for two designer papers.

Fine Feathers on a postage stamp

 I bought this stampset purely because I like feathers... and I have been looking around the internet looking for ideas. I mean I could have just copied the beautiful card in the catalogue (and perhaps I will ) but in the meantime I have been inspired by a simple card on pinterest.

 It now looks almost nothing like the original card ... as I changed the punched squares to postage stamp punch and put the sentiment "Thank you" into another square of its own.
This is the card by Tamara Bertram that inspired me:

It is a lovely idea, simple yet striking.
Mine could have been a bit simpler ... and I had to add some black ribbon to the edge.

Watercolouring my Secret Garden

 It is such a long time since I watercoloured on  a card. Perhaps a year atleast. But it is one of the easiest ways to step up a line art stamp.
I have been featuring the same stampset "Secret Garden" all this week from the seasonal mini catalogue. It makes me happy to stamp, and cut, and stick a few flowers onto a textured card, so why stop at one?

 The centre of the flower is gently painted with Wisteria wonder ink on an aquapainter brush.
While the outside petals are painted with Rich Razzleberry ink. You can vary the depth of the colour depending how much ink is on your brush. And these stamps make it just a simple task of staying "almost" within the lines.

Keeping the purple theme going I have used some spotted Elegant Eggplant ribbon tied around the card.
And some Rich Razzleberry printed paper on the bottom third of the card.
The top third is filled with Honeycomb textured embossing on Naturals white cardstock which is very nice to watercolour on.

The Secret Garden in Wisteria wonder and Pool party

Today I am showing some more Secret Garden card ideas from the Seasonal catalogue - I just love how easy it is to stamp and cut out these flowers. I have scattered them across the card and stuck them down with dimensional adhesive to pop them out from the background.

Another new product on this card is the set of Oval framelits.
I have stamped the pool party oval, textured the Gumball Green oval and stamped the Happy Birthday on another white oval from this set of framelits. Loving these pretty colours together.

Colour Refresh and Stampin' Up! News

The Stampin' Up! team have made some very exciting decisions ... colour is such a huge part of our crafting experience so it is very important that we have colours that we love,that we want to use, are on trend and in style. I am so excited because we are keeping some of my favourite in-colours that I thought I would never see again after June... I have already been rejigging my colour coach, ink pads and cardstock.

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Several colours are retiring from the colour families with the return of some favourites and three new colours.

Bermuda Bay, Crushed Curry and Smoky Slate.

These colours will be retiring as of today:

Regal Rose

Pretty in Pink

Bashful Blue

Certainly Celery

Baja Breeze

Riding Hood Red

Bravo Burgundy

Not Quite Navy

More Mustard

River Rock

So, beginning immediately all retiring and discontinued colour products (i.e. ink, paper, ribbon, accessories) will only be available while supplies last. So if there is a discontinued colour you want contact me ASAP !!! This is particularly important if you want to get any re-inkers as they are running out fast.

Also I have just found out that our watercolour pencils & crayons are being discontinued due to problems with the supplier.

The following items are only available while supplies last.

101879: Watercolor Pencils

119802: Subtles Collection Watercolor Wonder Crayons

119803: Regals Collection Watercolor Wonder Crayons

119804: Brights Collection Watercolor Wonder Crayons

119805: Neutrals Collection Watercolor Wonder Crayons

ESAD Seasonal Catalogue Blog hop

What is ESAD?

ESAD stands for "Extra Special Australasian Demonstrators" and it is an on-line group just for Australian and New Zealand Stampin' Up! demonstrators.

We so love what we do and not only do we love to share it with our customers, friends, and wonderful blog visitors, but we share our love for what we do with each other as demonstrators. We run swaps, challenges, tutorials, product know-how, and cyberstamps, and we are always there to help and support each other when it is needed.

So if you are a Stampin' Up! demonstrator located in Australia or New Zealand, then please feel free to click here to join our wonderful group.

"http://www.facebook.com/groups/esadsu"

Let the blog hop begin ....
The Autumn seasonal catalogue has been out since the first of February.

In order to show you a wide selection of ideas, 25 Stampin' Up demonstrators will each feature a product from the Autumn Seasonal mini.

I have chosen to feature the

 "Needlepoint" Embossing folder

 on my bloghop projects.

 This first card is a very simple one. I have placed the embossing folders on the top and bottom of this white card before running it through the Big shot. It gives a crisp clean row of stitches. A trio of butterfly punches and a sentiment. It makes a smart any occasion card with a very taylored look.

 My second card shows that you can put the embossing folder through upside down and get a negative indentation. I have cut out a patterned paper swallow tail butterfly and added the cloud embossing for a little sky textured background.

 Here is the same idea again with a marker coloured butterfly, a few flags of patterned paper and the needlepoint (in negative).

Then I have used the needlebpoint as a border on the card below. It gives a scalloped edge, that is not over powering on this secret garden card.

Here it is in close up.

 The stitched needlepoint looks particularly nice on velum.

On top and bottom of this thinking of you senitment.

Another idea is to edge a framelit tag to give it a stitched, needlepoint edge.

The sentiment thinking of you is from curly cute and it fits perfectly on this Apothecary accent die.

It makes a lovely edging on a small tag, such as these mother's day note cards.

And here is the needlepoint on a vintage card, it just adds that special old worldy touch.

Now pop on over to Kelli's blog, the next hop on the list and see what she has created.

23. Kelli Gordon

www.kelliskards.blogspot.com.au

Parker's Patterns DSP

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24. Angie Jones

www.angiescraftfusion.blogspot.com.au

Thats the ticket

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25. Amity Knight

www.stampinamity.wordpress.com

Make a Wish

Introducing the Secret Garden!

 

In the Autumn Seasonal Catalogue Stampin' Up! have introduced a new bundle that will make the most fabulous cards, Scapbook pages and flower arrangements. It has only just arrived on my door step and I have spent last weekend creating with it.

The bundle is comprised of a stampset and a set of framelits.

You can buy them separately, or if you buy them in the bundle you get 20% off!

There are 5 flowers, a stem and leaves in the set and each can be cut out with the matching framelits.

I took just three of the flowers, a sentiment, some patterned paper and plain cardstock and came up with this bright cheerful card.

 And then created this bouquet using the whole set of stamps.
You can change the look depending on the colours, cardstock and background textures used.

Stampset: Secret Garden p.17 of the Seasonal caty.

Patterned paper: Print Poetry p.16

Cardstock: Whisper white, Confetti White, Gumball Green, Pacific Point.

Inks: Summer starfruit, Primrose Petals, Pacific Point, gumball green.

Tools: Big shot machine, honeycomb, cloudy day and needlepoint embossing folders.

Masking and the embedded emboss.

Take one paper doily and four butterflies...

This technique is very easy but looks really effective.

In the card above I have masked using a paper doily and some punched butterflies. 

 All you need is a paper doily, a bit of tape (to stick it down temporarily - I just use some snail and touch it with my finger a little to make it less tacky) and use that to hold the doily to the page while I sponge around it. Make sure you get into all the little holes.
When you peel it off you may need to rub the glue off with an eraser.
Next punch out 3 or 4 butterflies and lightly stick them to your cardstock.
Sponge again in different colours.
I have chosen to leave the butterflies in place at the top and bottom - just lifting their wings of the page.

 Lastly, because I love textural embossing, I have run the whole sheet of cardstock through the Big shot machine using the Square Lattice embossing folder.

Two techniques on the one card: masking and embedded embossing.