Secret Garden background

What do you do when you don't have just the right patterned paper for the card you're making?

Easy, stamp your own!

Why not choose some of your favourite colours : Melon Mambo, Tangerine Tango, Coastal Cabana, Wisteria Wonder, Island Indigo And stamp random flowers over apiece of cardstock?

A bright and busy card like this needs little decoration.

Enter the tag topper punch and Label Love stamp!

Add some gold bakers twine, a Rhinestone jewel and dimensionals.

Recipe: 

Stamp sets: Secret Garden, p.94 AC. Label Love p.33 AC.

Ink: Melon Mambo, Tangerine Tango, Coastal Cabana, Wisteria Wonder, Island Indigo.

Cardstock: whisper white, pool party, Coastal cabana

Tools: Scallop tag topper punch (Seasonal catalogue page 35) $39.95

Artisan label punch (Annual catalogue page 181) $27.95

Gold Baker's twine, sponge dauber, rhinestone jewels an dimensional adhesive.

Primrose Petals in the secret garden... PPA160 colour challenge

I joined Pals Paper Arts PPA160 Colour challenge this week and the colours are:

Gumball Green, Primrose Petals and Whisper White.

I stamped a posie of Secret Garden flowers and watercoloured the petals for a bit of pretty!

Then to add something special I painted parts of the flower with champagne shimmer paint.

In the light it is all gold and shimmery... painted direct from the shimmer paint bottle with an aquapainter.

I stamped the largest flower first then masked it with paper while I stamped the smaller white flower over it.

The masking looks as if the white flower is behind.

Finally I stamped the centre flower and cut it out with the matching framelits.

I do like the champagne shimmer (retiring end of June and I bet its already out of stock).

If there is something you are wanting from the 2012-13 retiring products list you can click on my online store (up on the right hand side of this blog)

 Make sure that you select me as your demonstrator, to get your discounted prices, I am the only Nerida in NSW.

It means you can shop 24/7 (at 3am if you wish) and the products will be delivered direct to your door.  Any problems call my mobile 0468 877 125.  Enjoy!!!

My Convention swap cards

 

 This year I only made ten cards to swap at Convention. With 700 women who are potential friends to swap with I swapped mostly with people I know. I used a design I'd come up with using my favourite technique at the moment called thumping with markers.

 No two of my cards ever turn out the same especially with the thumping marker technique, I love how the colours flicker on the Swallowtail butterfly stamp.
Then I stepped it up by creating a 3D effect with layering a second butterfly wing on top. Time consuming but worth it! Really love these colours together: Elegant eggplant, Island Indigo and Gumball Green with a touch of Wisteria Wonder.

Here are some of the swap cards I received - I am so pleased to share these with you. I always enjoy the personal touch stampers have when they share how they made their card and what they feel about it.

 Karen Pinkerton - How gorgeous is this red glimmer paper dress contrasting with the black Stippled blossoms? And the scallopped edgelit behind is just a lovely touch.

 Michelle Walker - I love the Everything Eleanor blossoms in Soft Suede against the patterned Poetry paper. And the sentiment is also one of my favourites.

 Vanessa Webb has created a hybrid card using My digital studio - Isnt it professional and effective?

And on the other side is the handmade hand stamped tag with a bottle top embellishment.

I might prefer the handmade side, but if you were making invitations or thank you cards in large numbers the My digital studio is definitely a contender ... I am going to try these out, perhaps for business cards and Thank you cards!

Tanya Mulhall - using Secret Garden and the Curly label punches works so well with the delicate lace design at the bottom, so pretty!

 Michelle Johnstone silver heat embossed her swallowtail and used a Designer builder brad from page 12 of the Season Catalogue. (retires on 30 June!!!)

 Anne Farrar shared this great colour chart showing the different effects you can get with two step stamping the Stipple Rose.

Cheere Robinson - Take a close look the Lattice die cut in Timeless Portrait Fabric. This really looks stunnning against the Pretty in Pink Cardstock. (The fabric and Pretty in Pink are retiring at the end of June).

More to show you tomorrow!

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.

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.

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

***

24. Angie Jones

www.angiescraftfusion.blogspot.com.au

Thats the ticket

***

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.