Kelly's Stamping Friends - Birthday Blog Hop

Back for another year of celebrating the birthday of my lovely Western Australia stamping friend - Kelly Kent and her Birthday Blog Hop!  Happy Birthday for tomorrow Kelly - hope you have a wonderful day x.

For my card I decided to break out some of my new catalogue goodies! 

I've used the large flower from Floral Essence to stamp my own background, masking as required and using Flirty Flamingo ink. I've made a banner of Whisper White and cut the top edge with the Stitched Rectangles for my faux stitching. I've then added a greeting from Forever Lovely - a great flowing font, again in Memento Black to tie in with the critter and mat. 

I'm really going to miss the cute puppies (Bella and Friends) and kittens (Pretty Kitty), so when I saw Over the Moon I knew it would have to fill the void! I've stamped Ms Cow in Black Memento ink, coloured with Stampin' Blends, then fussy cut her out. She has been popped up with Stampin' Dimensionals with added bling being a few metallic sequins and some Wink of Stella on the flower. (After referring to her, I am now wondering as it doesn't have an udder like one of the other images?? - oh well, never mind!)

Such fun images and greetings in this set.

I fell for this lovely sketched flower image when first introduced to it at Onstage with one of our make and takes. I chose to fussy cut mine and mat the DSP with Whisper, White, but this is roughly what we all went home with. There are four different flower images and the next one used here has three petals and a matching punch, so you punch two and layer them. Check out those fluffy little flower centres, and the coloured vellum. Hope you enjoy these little sneak peeks while you wait to get your hands on the new catalogue.

Thanks for stopping by, please continue on your journey to visit Sharon:

Participant List:

1 Kelly Kent 
2 Shannon Kissane 
3 Tina Gillespie 
4 Monique Fielder 
5 Leonie Stuart 
6 Michelle Strazds 
7 Mandy Depiazzi 
8 Rochelle Blok 
9 Narelle Simm 
10 Catherine Creer 
11 Lou Kitzelman 
12 Sandra Collett 
13 Sharon Dalton 
14 Denise Buetler 
15 Siobhan Fitzsimmons 
16 Jan McQueen 
17 Cathy Pinchbeck 
18 Richelle Fletcher 
19 Melissa Gifford 
20 Rachael Lewsley 
21 Nicole Wilson 
22 Julia Quinn 
23 Sheila Pybus 
24 Leonie Schroder

Kelly's Stamping Friends Birthday Blog Hop

Happy Birthday to the amazing and inspiring Kelly Kent from Western Australia! What a fabulous way to celebrate a birthday - with a global blog hop (actually this is the first of two hops) with friends of Kelly who share the mutual interest of papercraft and/or Stampin' Up!.  Hope you have plenty of reasons to smile today Kelly - hugs and best wishes xx

This is the birthday card I created for the occasion:

Unfortunately the lovely Sweet Soiree Specialty DSP will not be available for much longer, but it suited what I was looking for, bright, vibrant and fun! The greeting (Label Me Pretty) is not retiring as I thought it was, (I must have been looking at the bundle which of course, will retire as a bundle but the separate items are still available - thanks Tina for the correction). and it worked well with my DSP. I inked it in Old Olive and coloured with Stampin' Blends then punched with the Pretty Label punch and adhered it over Silver Foil rose embossed leaves, (a sneak peek of a new set with co-ordinating dies), and an Old Olive Petals and More Thinlit diecut. 

I couldn't resist thinking of the two lovely young ladies in the Kent house, surely they are critter lovers so there are some fun aspects for them to enjoy inside - with credit to  the Hedgehugs stamp set. First up, a little Rich Razzleberry hedgehog masked off to look like she's standing on the tree stump.

And next the bird and branch are direct to stamp colouring with Stampin' markers. The greeting also in Rich Razzleberry; "Today is special - just like You!", how appropriate. 

This is known as a Four Fold card. I know you will find a lot of tutorials online if you are looking to create something like this. I taught this to a group of ladies late last year, and when researching a pattern, the versions I saw weren't quite what I was after, so I adapted my card to get two from one sheet of 12x12, plus an A5 sheet of card to provide the add on pieces for the front.  

I actually made two of these cards, and the other was turned into a special Mother's Day card for my lovely Mum xx.

Please continue your hopping journey with a visit to another of our CASEing the Catty team members - Monique:

If you get lost along the way, here's a full list of Participants for Hop A:

1. Kelly Kent
2. Lou Kitzelman
3. Jenny Hall
4. Denita Wright-Smee
5. Jackie Aitken
6. Narelle Simm
7. Sandra Collett
8. Monique Fielder
9. Nicole Wilson
10. Siobhan Fitzsimmons
11. Jenny Hayward
12. Kathryn Mangelsdorf
13. Josie Dean
14. Peta Stephen
15. Kristel Rimmer
16. Kim Oliver
17. Denise Buetler
18. Jacqui Crouch
19. Tina Gillespie
20. Jan McQueen

If you want even more inspiration, check out Hop B, starting with Kelly Kent.