Fragrant Forest and Grassy Grove in a gorgeous autumnal colour combination

 I have a colour combination for you today, and a card which blends the brand new Fragrant Forest background stamp with a Stampin’ Up!® old favourite, Grassy Grove.

Sponged trees with the Evergreen Forest 3D Embossing Folder

This Evergreen Forest 3D Embossing Folder delivers SO much more than it seems to at first glance. Yes, it looks great when used on green cardstock, and super-classy when used on crisp white cardstock but stop! Why not have a bit of fun with it?

I saw these beautiful designs by Barry and Jay at Mitosu Crafts and couldn’t resist having a go myself. It’s just a simple case of embossing then sponging on some colour. 

For the blue card, I used Seaside Spray, Misty Moonlight and just a hint of Night of Navy in the corners.

For the purple version, I used Highland Heather, Gorgeous Grape and just a hint of Blackberry Bliss in the corners and at the base. 

Next I took some diluted Whisper White Craft Ink (about 1:1) and, using a small paintbrush, spattered it across the sponged sections. And they’re finished off with some Adhesive-Backed Snowflakes which I absolutely adore.

 

For the base of the cards, I used the Pine Woods Dies, which I LOVE, obviously, and I have two great tips for these dies, in case you decide to add them to your stash (which I highly recommend, obviously). 

The Foam Adhesive Sheets are ideal when die-cutting this tree. It may feel a bit fiddly to press out but that’s because the die may not have gone all the way through to the backing sheet, but if you peel the tree out carefully it will be perfectly fine. And it looks so much more professional without all those fiddly little bits of cut-up Stampin’ Dimensional on the back.

When I was cutting the snowy hill using these dies, I kept getting an unsightly embossed line where the edge of the die had been. Then I had a light-bulb moment and realised I was using them upside-down. Use them as I have done in the pic on the right, and the embossed line will be on the piece you discard (unless you wish to trim it off and have a smaller hill for another project).

So what do you think? Are you going to have a go at sponging this gorgeous embossing folder? Which colours do you prefer?

10 simple cards using the Whale of a Time Suite

How fabulous is the Whale of a Time Suite? I bought the whole suite collection, which is not something I’d done until this year. Now I’m all over it as a concept as it’s so easy!

Public service announcement

 If you’re shopping online and the suite is showing as unavailable or on backorder, do check the individual items. It may be that just one item is temporarily out of stock which puts the whole suite on backorder. But you can still order the individual items separately.

Ok, onto the projects! Above are all of the projects were are currently making in this month’s remote workshops. Guests have had the choice of attending every Tuesday at 1pm, or coming to the Saturday morning class which was this past weekend. They could even attend both if they wished – and one lady turned up “just to watch and heckle”. 😂

Each week the ladies make two simple cards using the Whale of a Time Designer Series Paper, adding their own greeting stamps or using the Whale Done stamp set if they chose it as an optional extra. For eight of the cards we used Whisper White Notecards and Envelopes, with two shaker cards on a standard Pool Party card base.

We began with a double whale week and, thanks Stampin’ Up!®'s fabulous co-ordination, you can punch out the large whales from the DSP. Those who hadn’t upgraded to include the Whale Punch could fussy cut them instead. We set aside one of the whale patterned pieces to use just for this purpose. 

I love this Pool Party Sheer Ribbon, too – it’s so soft and shimmery.

 Onto Week 2... which was turtle week and another opportunity to show off the gorgeous DSP...

To provide a cute focal point for the projects, we fussy cut the turtles from the DSP. Again, we set aside the piece with the turtles on to use for this. 

The Whale of a Time Sequins make great accents when stuck down with a Glue Dot. I love these tiny translucent shells. 

I had die-cut a series of labels using the Tasteful Labels Dies and Stitched Rectangles Dies. All different, so I could cut them all for each person in one go.

I did throw in a couple of shaker cards to mix things up a little, which meant some preparation time using the Snow Globes Scenes Dies but worth it I think as they look so fab with the sequins behind.

This was the first one; it’s hard to photograph a shaker card but you may just be able to see a cut-out turtle within the Snow Globe Shaker Dome.

This was accompanied by another turtle card; both show off the absolutely gorgeous Whale of a Time Designer Series Paper. 

This Tuesday we will be making another shaker card, this time with a sponged and embossed surround. Yes, more work for me die-cutting and embossing in advance but I really wanted to show off this gorgeous Seabed 3D Embossing Folder. 

We’ll also be making this fab little notecard. I LOVE this piece of Designer Series Paper, it's so lovely. Guests at this series of classes received a quarter of a pack of the DSP; of course, if you have a whole pack, you get four pieces of this, so can make lots of lovely projects. 

To finish off, we will be making these cards – I left these to the end because they can be adapted to suit any leftover scraps. This is a great way of using up scraps of any Designer Series paper.

So are you inspired by this Suite? My customers have been loving it. If you’re inspired enough to buy it and are in the UK, you can shop the Suite here. 

Sneak Peek: Forever Greenery Suite

Who could fail to love the Forever Greenery Suite? You’ll be seeing a lot of it online at the moment because it was part of the Stampin’ Up!® pre-order, and I’m sure it’s going to be a firm favourite with customers, too, when the new catalogue goes live on 3rd June.

I just love the delicate leaf images in the Forever Fern stamp set and the bold colours of the Forever Greenery Designer Series Paper – and I can’t wait to get my customers crafting with it!

Leaves don’t have to be green. They even look fab stamped in Blackberry Bliss... but let’s face it, Blackberry Bliss looks good on everything – even your fingers!

Painted Poppies Week... starring Blackberry Bliss

I hope you enjoyed Sale-a-Bration week last week. This week it's Painted Poppies Week! In celebration of this beautiful stamp set which is on page 26 of the Spring/Summer catalogue and part of the stunning Peaceful Poppies Suite.

To kick things off, here is one of my Stampy Buffet projects, which uses Blackberry Bliss and Poppy Parade: who would have thought this would be a match made in heaven? But I love how it makes the poppies really pop. 

Colour the poppies using ink pads and blender pens, then stamp some splatters around the heads, making sure to stamp off onto some scrap paper first, so that they are not swamped by bright colour. 

Peaceful Poppies desk calendar

 

We all love a no-waste project, don't we? And this pretty desk calendar gives you two projects in one.

Inspired by Susan Itell, who has detailed instructions here, (https://simplestampin.com/2017/12/super-practical-oh-easy.html), I made this for my purple-loving host, using Peaceful Poppies Designer Series Paper. It's hard to cover the gorgeous flower images but this Blackberry Bliss side is beautiful, too.

Because the project is made from half a sheet of 12"x12' cardstock, from which you cut a 3"x6" piece, you get to make a sweet little 3"x3" card with the leftovers. Very easy, very cute and a great January project.

Colour your leaves from Peaceful Poppies simply by stamping on top with the large splatter stamp from the same set. No faff, and you can do two or more at a time!

Painted Poppies notebooks

 
My team is growing fast this Sale-a-Bration and I decided to welcome the first new members with a handy little notebook so they can write down everything they need to know about being a Stampin' Up!® demonstrator... or perhaps their stamping shopping lists!

These note books have a plastic sleeve front and back which makes them really easy to cover. I’ve had them for a long time but think I bought them in Home Bargains. Seems very probable.

 

The Painted Poppies stamp set is designed so you can colour the black outline of your poppy with just one stamp in red ink. But if you like a really intense colour – or your ink pad is getting ready for a refresh – simply ink and restamp a few times. It doesn’t matter if you go over the lines because you’re cutting out the image and it doesn’t matter if the ink is darker in places... in fact it looks more natural. 

Sneak peek: Peaceful Poppies bundle

It’s Boxing Day here in the UK but I’m ready to move on to 2020, so do you fancy a sneak peek? You'll love the Peaceful Poppies Suite from the new Spring/Summer catalogue, which goes live on 3rd January.

The suite includes the Painted Poppies Bundle which I've used to create the greeting frame and to stamp the inside. But the star of the show here is the Peaceful Poppies Designer Series Paper. This sheet is perfect for the crafter in a hurry as it has this wide floral border down both edges so you can cut it into six 6x4 pieces and then trim them to fit your card fronts.

Mixing and matching allows you to get more from your products. I was still waiting for my coordinating Peaceful Moments stamp set when I made these cards so I stamped the greetings with another new set – Timeless Tropical – instead, which works just as well. The ribbon and twine are from the Magnolia Lane Suite in the Annual Catalogue.

Team rewards slider pen boxes

There’s a big Stampin' Up!® event in Germany this weekend called OnStage Live... but unfortunately none of my team members, including me, were in a position to make the trip. 

Instead, we held our own event – OffStage Derby – with demonstrations, Make & Takes and even our own awards ceremony. I decided to award certain team members with these lovely Stampin’ Up!® pens in a handmade box. It’s simply a tray with a piece of DSP wrapped around it but the black foil cardstock adds a touch of glamour and the sentiment on top is sincerely meant! 

Rewards were not for top sales or recruiting but for making an extra effort – for example, one team member has worked tirelessly to create videos and blog posts and has finally been rewarded with two customers. Effort pays off in the end!

Make any sized box, to suit your gift, by drawing a plan around your gift on some grid paper. 

Read my 10-year-old tutorial here!

Accented Blooms Mother’s Day card

I made this card for my Mum for Mothering Sunday, which was a week or so ago here in the UK. It uses – as do so many of my projects this month – the Accented Blooms stamp set which I’ve coloured in using ink pads and blender pens.

I’ve fussy-cut the image and overlaid it onto two stitched squares in Granny Apple Green and some Nature's Poem DSP. TWO stitched squares? Yep, you read that right.

There’s a really simple way to create stitched squares using the Stitched Rectangle Framelits and I’m sure you’ve already worked it out for yourself; you simply cut each shape twice to make exactly the size and shape of rectangle/square you need. The corners aren’t as perfect as when you just cut once but nobody's going to notice, I promise you!