Five cards with the Thankful Garden bundle

How did I overlook the Lovely Garden Suite?

This beautiful product suite from Stampin’ Up!® features big floral stamps, coordinating dies, paper, embellishments and ribbon... plus a set of five Thankful Garden Decorative Masks (AKA stencils) for really easy and effective colouring.

I ordered this Suite as part of the June Stampin’ Up!® promotion. I purchased the Lovely Garden Suite at full price, then a second suite at half price.

Top tip for the June 2025 Suite promotion: ordering two items at similar prices will give you the best deal. If you want four or more items from suites at mixed prices, in many cases it will pay you to place multiple orders.

Today I have five cards using the Thankful Garden bundle from the Lovely Garden Suite from Stampin’ Up!® Some of them use Lovely Garden Designer Series Paper, while others use paper from my stash.

Three fun stencil projects using Stampin Up’ Frosted Forest bundle with masks

 

Combining Stampin’ Up!® stamps and Frosted Forest masks (they’re stencils!) – opens up a world of creative possibilities.

I love the brand new range of Stampin’ Up!® Online exclusives and the stamp set which jumped straight out at me was of course Frosted Forest as I cannot resist any tree-themed craft products.

I love that the Frosted Forest bundle comes not just with a photopolymer stamp set and coordinating dies, but with a set of six fabulous masks, which I personally would call stencils.

I had a fun craft session creating projects with this gorgeous Frosted Forest bundle. Take a look at the three very different cards I made, then check out the rest of the Stampin’ Up!® Online Exclusives here:

Stampin’ Up!® Online Exclusives

Enduring Beauty masks – floral card idea

One of the things I love about the new Stampin’ Up!® Annual Catalogue is the techniques pages.

These are perfect for building up your own craft skills and also lend themselves perfectly to classes. I recently held a Masterful Masking class, taking inspiration from pages 124 and 125 of the catalogue.

All-Day Craftathon projects: Butterfly journal

Phew, what a day Saturday was! It was a totally crafty, fun day, with lots of laughs, cake and creativity. It was lovely to see everyone, including some brand new people, and I hope everybody had a good time. 

This was our first project of the day; an A4 journal which we decorated in an uncharacteristically girly manner, using some fun techniques. The Irresistibly Yours DSP is a joy to work with and you can colour it in many ways. I settled on sponging for practicality and speed… plus it gives you a lovely soft effect, allowing the colours to blend into each other. 

On top of this, we stencilled some textured hearts, using homemade texture paste (two parts cornflour, one part cheap white glue, one part cheap white paint). 

The binding is created using strips of cotton tape, slightly overlapping. This covers the rather drab grey of the original journal. 

Not a quick project - by the end, we were already running an hour behind! - but a pretty one nonetheless. 

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Links by TheseAreMyStamps.com

Die-cut butterfly on watercoloured texture paste background

First things first: when using these fabulously intricate butterfly dies, always sandwich a piece of wax paper (or greaseproof if you can't find it) between your die and cardstock. It will make a world of difference when it comes to popping out the shape! You may or may not be able to see that I inked the edges of the butterfly slightly with the Silver Encore ink pad, to pick up the vague hint of silver on the background. 

For this project I was having a play with texture paste, in readiness for my upcoming All-Day Craftathon (now fully booked). We’re not taking on anything this complicated but it was fun having a go. I used the stencil from the Build a Banner Simply Created Kit (p2013 of the main catty). Here’s how to get the same effect:

• Create your own texture paste using 1 part cheap white glue, 1 part cheap white paint, 2 parts cornflour.
• Make a spreader from a piece of thick cardstock or chipboard and stencil the paste onto your cardstock (watercolour paper would have been better than Whisper White but it worked ok)
• Allow to dry thoroughly.
• Using a lot of water and the ink from the lids of your ink pads, paint a graduated background, allowing the colours to spread into each other. I went slightly darker around the edges but didn't worry too much about a pattern. 
• Allow to dry thoroughly and then lightly brush with Silver Encore ink pad
• Finally, it's ready to use as your card background. 

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Links by TheseAreMyStamps.com