Share It Sunday Blog hop - Hot Dog!

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How cute is this stamp set? Answer: very. It’s called Hot Dog and is a fun way for me to take part in this Share It Sunday blog hop, with demonstrators from around the world. I hope you enjoy taking a trip through some great blogs and seeing some fabulous projects. 

 

But before we begin, I must remind you that today is the final day of Sale-a-Bration, so if you want to take advantage of any of the SAB freebies, please act extremely fast. 

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The paper I’ve used on these first two projects is called Berry Blessings and is a Sale-a-Bration item so available for just a few more hours!

Thankfully, there is no desperate rush to get your hands on Hot Dog, as this cute stamp set is part of the January-June Mini Catalogue collection. It features three different Dachshunds plus lots of fun accessories and greetings.  However, I decided to keep things simple with some colouring using my Stampin’ Blends and this vibrant Designer Series Paper. 

This DSP features the little-used Pacific Point, and not before time. Why do we neglect Pacific Point so much? It’s a really lovely blue and I remember greeting its arrival with much excitement. 

To stop the dog ‘floating’ in mid air, I stamped onto the circle element using Woven Heirlooms. I love this grungy image, with a bit of pattern showing through, giving it the look of a faced old carpet. The ‘hi’ adds a final touch and makes it ideal to send to a Dachshund-owning friend for no particular reason at all. 

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Here is another card I made using this gorgeous Designer Series Paper and Hot Dog. The greeting is very silly, but seriously, not as silly as the next one which for some reason keeps making me chuckle to myself...

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Bone-jour! 😂 I do love a terrible pun and this one is pretty terrible, all right! I’ve kept this design clean, simple and masculine, using the In Good Taste Designer Series Paper as my background. I really love that paper, especially the wood-effect sheets. 

As I say, my designs are pretty simple, but after two months of intense crafting for Sale-a-Bration, I felt like scaling things back a little. It’s also important to remember that not everybody has the time or resources for big fancy projects – and simple can be just as effective in many cases. 

Please now take a look at the creations made by other Stampin’ Up!® Demonstrators around the world for this Share It Sunday...

Hot Dog is a stamp set which offers a huge amount of potential for many different occasions, and is perfect for the dog-lover. Take a look at all of the stamps here:

Hot Dog is available until the end of June, although bear in mind products will switch to ‘while supplies last’ towards the ened of this period. If you are in the UK and would like to order, please visit my store and, if you use the March host code HYEBNWP3, I’ll send you a thank you gift in April!

To make it easy for you, please shop using this link

Does your wish list come to more than £99? Please get in touch and I will help you get more for your money and unlock discounts all year round.  

 

Please message me via my website

 

Spring-themed blog hop with Dandy Wishes Dies

 

 

What’s your favourite season? Schitts Creek fans may channel their inner Moira Rose and answer ‘awards’ but for me it has to be spring. I love it when the days start to warm up and nature comes back to life, with daffodils and catkins and birds nesting and... you get the idea.

So I jumped at the opportunity to take part in a spring-themed blog hop with Stampin’ Up!® demonstrators around the world. I signed up ages ago but when it came to making the projects, for some reason I struggled.

I think it’s because my desire to play with new stamps clashed wildly with my pedantic nature. That ruled out Sweet Strawberry (late summer), Enjoy the Moment (autumn) and Garden Wishes (summer again).

Eventually I forced myself to cast pedantry aside and play with my Dandy Wishes Dies to create some non-specific flower/seed heads. I cunningly decided to meet the requirements of the theme by adding ‘Hello spring’ using the wonderful Playful Alphabet Dies and by masking off a sentiment stamp from Hey Birthday Chick. 

 

Here I have to give a massive shout out for the Foam Adhesive Sheets which are – and I don’t use these words lightly – a game changer. Use these on your small die-cuts and you won’t have to fiddle around cutting up pieces of Dimensionals and your projects will look neater, too.

Just as I’d reached the ‘it’ll do’ stage of project making, out of the craftermath of another project, this little chick crept onto the project and practically fell into place, fortifying my rather tenuous theme. So I let him stay. 

How I created the background

I created the background for this card using my Granny Apple Green ink pad and some Shimmery White cardstock. 

 

I’ll let you into a secret: I’m a pretty impatient crafter. I know, right? Who knew? 

 

So when I discovered that my Granny Apple Green ink pad needed re-inking but I didn’t have a refill, I lost patience with trying to squeeze the pad to get ink into the lid and simply swiped it across the bottom edge of my paper. This was pretty ugly, so I used a big paintbrush and some water to wash it upwards to create this background. Then I simply cut off the ugly bit! I love its vibrancy and the fact it was so quick!

Chickens now firmly on my mind, I created the second card using Hey Birthday Chick again. I’m so happy to see the return of this crazy-haired chick – and I know my customers are, too! I coloured the chicken using Stampin’ Blends in Pool Party (light and dark), Daffodil Delight (light and dark) and Pumpkin Pie (dark).

 

How I created the background

This time I used my new Blending Brushes to apply Coastal Cabana ink at the top and Granny Apple Green at the bottom. I avoided the sun area at the top, then added some Daffodil Delight in a circular motion, before popping up this ‘sun’ (it’s really part of a flower head from the Dandy Wishes Dies) which I’d die-cut from a rejected watercoloured piece from a few days before. Waste not, want not!

Finally, I completed my background effect by spattering some diluted Whisper White Craft Ink onto the top section using a small paintbrush. 

 

Again, I used the Dandy Garden Dies, this time in Basic Black for a silhouette effect.

‘Let’s celebrate spring’ is a mash-up of two sentiment stamps in the Hey Birthday Chick stamp set. I masked off the ‘YOU’ and stamped ‘Let’s celebrate’, then masked off all but ‘spring’ to stamp separately on a scrap of Granny Apple Green cardstock. 

You can get more mileage from your die-cut pieces by cutting them up. Here I’ve trimmed off the outer edges of the lower die-cut seed head to get a different look for contrast. And I’ve trimmed away the cake from the chicken image so it looks like it’s pecking at the words instead.

And now it’s time to see what everyone else has created. Please head to these blogs to see some spring-themed inspiration from around the world...

 

Serene cards with the Dandy Garden Suite

 

Have I mentioned how much I love the Dandy Garden Suite? Thought so. But is that going to stop me telling you again? No way! Here are some of the projects I’ve been making with this Suite lately.

I needed to replenish my stock of ‘Thinking of You’ cards after my Mum totally cleaned out my last batch. She said she needed two cards so I sent her everything I had so she could choose and the box came back empty. 

 

This set is just perfect for simple, understated cards for such an occasion, so I made a handful by stamping the tall flowers image from Dragonfly Garden onto white cardstock and lightly colouring the image using Stampin’ Blends. The greeting on this card comes from Peaceful Moments. 

On most of the cards, I adding some background using our fabulous new Blending Brushes. These are so easy to use and create lovely soft backgrounds. On top of this I flicked some clean water to create a speckled effect, a technique I love for its simplicity.  The greeting on this card some from Field of Flowers. 

 

I mounted them onto some card blanks I’d made previously (I keep a box of these on hand from leftover Make & Takes and projects where I change my mind partway through) and soon rustled up a batch of these landscape cards, finishing off with a greeting from Woven Heirlooms and some Linen Thread.

For something a bit more complex, I used a big chunk of my craft supplies, starting with the Dandy Wishes Dies. These coordinate with the Garden Wishes stamp set and are available as part of a bundle, too.

The image panel is created using Tasteful Labels Dies, which are probably the most-used dies in my craft room since they were released last summer. The greeting here is from Happiest of Birthdays, which is probably my most-used greeting stamp set of the past 12 months, too. The background is one of the Greenery Embossing Folders, another much-loved product in this house. 

Inside I used Happiest of Birthdays again, along with a dandelion image from the
Garden Wishes stamp set. 

  

The entire Dandy Garden Suite is a must-have, in my opinion! If you’d like to order any of the items shown here, or indeed any other Stampin’ Up!® products, please head on over to my store and, if you use the host code YK2NNMYW, I’ll send you a little thank you gift in February! 

To make it easy for you, please shop using this link (opens in new window)

Does your wish list come to more than £99? Please get in touch and I will help you get more for your money and unlock discounts all year round.  Please message me via my website.

 

Best Suite ever? Dandy Garden featuring Dragonfly Garden and Garden Wishes

When I say the Dandy Garden Suite is my favourite of all time, I do not use those words lightly. I have been a Stampin’ Up!® demonstrator for 13 years now and this is honestly the most gorgeous suite I have ever seen. I’ve liked plenty of suites in the past and loved many of them a lot... but none has spoken to me like this one.

Last week I held my annual Twixmas Party, albeit this time on Zoom. In fact, the Zoom format worked so well for this event that I think this one will definitely remain on Zoom in the future, even when we are allowed to meet again. Nobody had to worry about the weather, and guests could celebrate with a glass of fizz if they wished.

We had games, prizes and demonstrations. For this demo I used the Zoom polling feature so the guests could choose what I made. This was the winning design; guests voted for the Dragonfly Garden stamp set, the Blackberry Bliss colourway and finally to embellish with a die-cut bee from the Dandy Wishes Dies set rather than a dragonfly using the new Dragonfly Punch. Of course, I had some variations to show them afterwards, too, so everybody got to see their choices in the end, even if they didn’t cast a winning vote.

I took the opportunity to demonstrate the gorgeous new Blending Brushes which feature in the new January-June Mini Catalogue (p70, £11.25 for three). These are SO luscious and so easy to use. Even my 20-year-old son – who normally shows zero interest in craft supplies – picked one up and said “why are these so nice?”

  

They look like sponges in the catalogue photo but are actually very dense brushes with the softest bristles. You can rinse them under the tap when you’ve finished and because they are synthetic, they dry very quickly, although having three in a pack means you can switch between colours without risking getting water on your project.

It was also the first public outing for my Mini Stampin’ Cut & Emboss Machine, nicknamed Little Roland. This fits the Greenery Embossing Folders perfectly and is more than adequate for the vast majority of our dies, including the Stitched Nested Labels Dies I’ve used here.

Little Roland and the Dandy Garden Suite all go live tomorrow with the launch of the January-June Mini Catalogue, which is when Sale-a-Bration goes live, too!

Here are some tips for shopping wisely:

The Blending Brushes give you a soft, natural-looking background which offsets these images perfectly. The wildflower image requires very little colouring, so giving it a hint of a background allows the image to stand out.