"Wow" card - Beautiful Friendship floral pop-up card

I don't often tackle fancy folds but I loved the idea of making a pop-up card using the Beautiful Friendship stamp set. What's so lovely about pop-up cards is the element of surprise – it looks like a perfectly nice but simple card on the front, then you open it and bam! You're hit by an explosion of flowers.

 Here’s a better picture but I took it before adding the greeting...

For instructions to make this card, please click here

While assembling the inner floral section, keep closing the card to check your flowers don’t spill out over the edges. Not only would this spoil the element of surprise, it would prevent your card from fitting in the envelope! 

Beautiful Friendship swap cards

I’m going to spend this week celebrating Beautiful Friendship, an oft-missed stamp set hiding on page 123 of the catalogue.  I've been using this gorgeous stamp set in all my events this month, so it was the obvious choice to use for a swap, too.

Swapping isn't usually for me but I thought I'd give it a go so I could show my customers a greater variety of project. The brief was to use at least two new In Colors, so I turned once again to Rococo Rose, Seaside Spray and Pretty Peacock and the Beautiful Friendship stamp set. 

When you need to make several of the same card, the Stamparatus really comes into its own. I set it up to stamp the background and the greeting on the stitched ovals, but stamped the foliage on the ovals freehand. 

Simple, Casual, Avid... a Beautiful Friendship card for every type of crafter

One design, three stages of crafting. A single-layer card for the time-strapped crafter, a casual crafter project with the addition of a punch and some embellishments, and one for the avid crafter who is definitely not short of supplies! Which one are you?

The same basic design can be adapted to suit your supplies. If you're just starting out, the #simplestamping project just needs a pack of Note Cards & Envelopes, one stamp set and some ink pads. But #simplestamping projects are just as useful for crafters in a hurry. If you need a big batch of these, you can stamp them using the Stamparatus and get them done in a fraction of the time it would take to stamp them by hand.  
 

Nautical but nice in Mossy Meadow

Lovely Mossy Meadow gives you new options with the Come Sail Away Suite, instead of the predictable Night of Navy. Soft Sea foam provides the perfect contrast. What do you think? Makes a change from the traditional Night of Navy look, doesn’t it?

This card employs the “rule of thirds”, with the Designer Series Paper taking up the bottom third of the main layer. If you imagine a noughts & crosses grid splitting the card into nine, aim to have your major elements falling where the lines cross. This will give you a universally pleasing layout. 
 

Birds of a feather... earn team rewards together

Sometimes I struggle with Designer Series Paper because it’s too pretty to hide. This batch of cards solved that problem - and resolved the issue of needing several cards in a hurry, too.

They were made for those members of my Stampin' Up!® who have gone above and beyond this month; Petal Pink for the ladies, and Pool Party for the gentleman stamper in my team. Yes, men can be demonstrators, too!

Don't be afraid to mix things up. You wouldn’t expect to use a stamp set called Seaside Notions with the Bird Ballad Designer Series Paper... but the greeting and speckled stamp are ideal to finish off these cards. 

Beautiful Friendship with muted Pretty Peacock

The muted, vintage shades of Rococo Rose and Seaside Spray, from our new In Color collection, are perfect for this new stamp set, Beautiful Friendship. Here I've fussy cut flowers stamped in these new colours and overlaid them onto some of our new Pretty Peacock Designer Series Paper. 

Look at that ribbon! Isn’t it gorgeous?

The Pretty Peacock Designer Series Paper was the colour I had in mind but was a bit overpowering in this context, so I muted it by adding a layer of vellum. This is just one of many ways you can use vellum in your projects – and I avoided the potential issue of glue showing through by applying it where I knew the flowers would hide it. 
 

Memories & More cards... not just for scrapbooking

Memories & More Cards are not just for scrapbooking; they are ideal for the crafter in a hurry.

Having said that, I added quite a few extra elements to this card so it's not exactly a Simple Stamping project. I used two cards for this project; yes, the green background is a Memories & More card, cut down to fit on the front of a standard A6 card. 

The wheel is die-cut and the anchor is from the Memories & More stickers which come in the pack of cards. The words are stamped onto a stitched circle and mounted onto another sticker from the Memories & More pack. You really do get loads of elements in these handy packs. 

The lighthouse from the Smooth Sailing dies fits this Memories & More card perfectly, so I could die-cut the lighthouse and pop it up with a Mossy Meadow background to create the popular ‘eclipse’ effect.