Winter Meadow projects inspired by November mood board

 

Kickstart your Christmas creativity with my November mood board. There’s enough inspiration on this board to help you create all kinds of projects, and I used it as my starting point for several Stampin’ Up!® projects using Grassy Grove, the Christmas Classics bundle and Winter Meadow Designer Series Paper. 

 

But first, how to use a mood board. It’s simple: just take inspiration from any or some of the photos and colours. 

 

In this board, the colours are Soft Sea Foam, Lost Lagoon, Pecan Pie, Crumb Cake and Lemon Lolly. 

 

There are no hard and fast rules so you can add extra colours, use the nearest you have, or ignore the colours and simply be inspired by one or more of the images. 

 

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. 
 

Incredible Like You Week - celebration cards

I’m ending my Incredible Like You Week with two similar cards I made to celebrate some amazing team members.

I’ve combined the stamp set with some greetings from Stamp Your Way to the Yop, a demonstrator-exclusive stamp set which helps us honour our teams.

On the left is a welcome card for Karen, my latest recruit, who couldn’t resist the fantastic Sale-a-Bration offer and the beautiful craft tote...

From my newest team member to my oldest (in the terms of longest serving, that is!)... the second card celebrates an incredible sales milestone by Tracey, who joined me nearly 11 years ago and has worked consistently hard ever since.

The colour combination is well away from my usual palette but I really like it. Flowers, pastel shades and fussy cutting? What on earth is happening to me?

Incredible Like You - Crafty Friday projects

Today is Crafty Friday and the first day of a new organised me! With an increasing number of events planned, I have decided to focus on one stamp set per month ... for most of my events at least. This means that this month, at least three of my events will be using this lovely stamp set called Incredible Like You.

I have owned this stamp set since last November, when I was given it at OnStage Local in Telford. However, I dismissed it as “not really me” until last month when I was inspired by Mikaela at The Crafty oINK Pen to start using it. And, I have to say (U-turn alert!), I’ve really enjoyed it.

These are the projects we will be making at this morning’s Crafty Friday event. I love how you can make the stripes really evenly spaced using the Stamparatus, or just wing it by doing it freehand, because the stamps are photopolymer, which means you can see where you’re stamping.

We’ll start with the #simplestamping project above, then move on to the slightly more complicated card below, which uses Soft Sea Foam for the background spots (love this polka dot effect).

The flowers are stamped in Lovely Lipstick, to match the Sale-a-Bration foil (still available in the UK but low inventory!). What is incredible about this stamp set is that you can stamp the background to the flowers and the foreground petals using the same ink pad, without having to stamp off – the stamps are VERY cleverly designed. The same goes for the two-tone leaves.

Hope you like them!

Tropical Chic with a brayered background

I thought it was high time I tried the sponge brayers so gave them a whirl for this card. I’ve always loved playing with background techniques and enjoyed creating this graduated look with Pool Party, Bermuda Bay and Pacific Point.

It’s a six-colour combo, but I think it works... and sometimes you need two or three shades to really make the most of a brayered background. 

I topped it off with some Tropical Chic flowers and some beautiful leaves from the Delightfully Detailed Laser-cut Designer Series Paper, which is a total must-have as it will add a real “wow” to your projects. This special paper is Very Vanilla on one side and Whisper White on the other, which is perfect for sponging as I’ve done here with Soft Sea Foam and a hint of Old Olive. 

Catalogue launch projects - sneak peek

It’s another sunny Bank Holiday here in Derbyshire and today I have the some of the projects from my catalogue launch party to show you.

We used the hostess stamp set, Hand Delivered to make one of these two projects...

The above card uses the new colours Highland Heather (a lovely, delicate lilac), Gorgeous Grape (a perfectly co-ordinating purple) and the barely-there Soft Sea Foam.

The alternative uses new colours, too; Poppy Parade (U-turn alert! This is becoming a firm favourite), Granny Apple Green (my favourite new colour) and, again the delicate Soft Sea Foam.

The second card was a variation on the OnStage Make & Take using the absolute must-have Delightfully Detailed laser-cut Designer Series Paper...

Please do put this paper on your first new catalogue order as it’s really gorgeous and so versatile. Here we’ve just used a panel on top of the perfectly sized new note cards - which come with beautiful watercoloured effects in returning colours Mint Macaron and Blackberry Bliss.

But there’s so much more you can do with this paper, too, and I will be exploring some of the options in future projects.

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