CASEing the Catty - #CTC166 Painted With Love

From the Occasions Catalogue - pages 18-21 - Painted With Love - I'm sure there will be plenty to take your fancy this week as you hop around

I've chosen the picture on the bottom left of page 20:

Out with the hearts (most of them anyway) and in with the birds!  Oh my, if you haven't seen the Painted With Love Specialty DSP in real life - you should!  It is soo lush!  One side has gold foil accents and the other brushstroke imagery. The only downfall - it is one of those DSPs that you really find hard to cut into.  Read on for how I managed to get around that!

I have used a thick Whisper White base and added a layer of Pear Pizzazz textured with the Layered Leaves 3D TIEF. I cut four birds with the Birds & Blooms framelits, and the tiny bird out of Gold Foil.  I used the greeting from Best Birds and Gold heat embossed it then cut it with my every popular Stitched Shapes Framelits. The wooden hearts (from Hearts and Stars elements) are also Gold heat embossed. 

The metallic thread adds a nice fine bit of shimmer to finish.

Close up - the bird on the right has been raised with dimensionals.

Above I mentioned that I found this scrumptious DSP really hard to cut into, so by planning ahead - I've used the negative and the positive image and maximised my usage - think I might have to try this with some other punches as well!

Sentiment to be added, but these may be going to some customers this month - if I can part with them! The notecards are 3" square, you can get 8 cards from one sheet of 12" Whisper White cardstock. I cut the DSP to 3" square and did my die cutting, then trimmed the negative before adding to the card. Some of the little Gold Glitter Flakes have been added with Fine Tip Glue. 

Time now to head over and see what Rose has created for you. Don't forget to play along - link over on the right.

CASEing the Catty - #CTC156 Christmas Twist

The brief is actually "Case any project from the annual catalogue and give it a Christmas Twist"... why don't you play along?  Make your card and link using the badge on the right...

 

This week, my inspiration came from the card top right of page 98

The base is thick Whisper White with Be Merry DSP. I wanted to see more of the DSP than above and opted to lose the middle layer with the embossing. My oval is Whisper white cut with the Layering Ovals framelits.  Attached to that is a Pretty Pines Thinlits branch, along with the Cherry Cobbler bow from the same set.  I sponged some whisper white cardstock with Soft Suede and then cut the birds using Birds & Blooms thinlits. This colourway reminded me of one of  my favourite garden birds, the thrush. I am especially grateful for the assistance they give me in eliminating snails from my garden! I added a bit more Christmas twist with the santa hat from Santa's Suit - as you can see I had to do a bit of reverse stamping to get it facing the way I wanted, and it may be a size too big but it will hopefully brighten the receiver's face! The greeting I used fit the purpose, as they live in a different country, so Holly Berry Happiness was used and mounted onto a Garden Green banner.

Thanks for stopping by and you must hop over to check out the amazing set Julia Quinn has created!

Significant Age Birthday Card

Sitting there chatting with my husband and mentioned the next day being his Mother's birthday, when he dropped in "and she's 75"! My panic-meter went off and I knew the birthday card I had thought I would use wasn't going to cut the mustard. I got up yesterday morning and decided to grab out the challenge colours from Colour INKspiration #CI05 (Blushing Bride, Soft Sky and Sahara Sand), and as she has a little bird, I also grabbed the Best Birds stamp set and told myself that was it - not to go getting any other ideas!

And here is the card I came up.  I took a piece of Whisper White card stock, slapped my 3 challenge ink pads directly onto the cardstock and then spritzed until the harsh edges started to soften and the colour moved. I had to speed up the drying with the heat gun. Next I diecut 75 from the Large Numbers framelits, and one of the Birds and Blooms thinlits for the main image.  The card is 6x6" and the base is Blushing Bride, then a mat of Sahara Sand with Soft Sky as the top layer. To soften the top layer, I stamped with Sahara Sand images from the Best Birds.  The mesh in the middle was stamped off to give more depth to the edge images. Leaves were stamped in Sahara Sand onto same colour cardstock and diecut, along with a circle frame from Stitched Shapes framelits.  I then cut flowers from scraps of the coloured piece of Whisper White, Soft Sky and Blushing Bride using the Bloomin' Heart thinlits. Finished with pearls, linen thread bow and Wink of Stella, although it didn't show up in the photo - which I apologise for, the day turned a bit hectic and my distraction meant a rushed picture before it was given away.

I used the new Reverse Words from the Sale-a-bration set for the inside in Soft Sky, and the greeting from Best Birds, along with another little Birds & Blooms image in Soft Sky...

Sweet Sixteen Pop Up Twist Card

Decided to make a card for my daughter's friend - and you know it's a hit when she thanks me and claims it! As I usually get the story about how they don't give each other cards - (sigh, hard for me to handle when it's what I do!!), I was making it from me, however looks like I'll have to do another one now.

The paper I used is retired and called It's My Party.  With the recent update to the Clearance Rack you can find this at a crazy price (only available within NZ) while stocks last. The cover is using the Large Numbers Framelits and Number of Years stamp.  So far, fairly unassuming, but when you open it up...

It is a little hard to fathom from the photo, but the inside pops up and opens like a little book. I have seen a trend in these cards lately and they do pack a bit of a WOW. I think you'll be seeing me make more before too long. There are a number of tutorials on You Tube and I looked at a couple and then did a bit of tweaking, so I'm sorry I haven't got a particular credit, and the ones I did follow credited someone else as well, so please accept that this is a combined effort.  

The card base is Basic Black. I have used retired Party Pants set on the balloons.  The little bird is from Birds & Blooms Thinlits.  The Happy Birthday is from Confetti Celebration.  

A Learning Curve

Today is the first official post from my new blog!  Fingers crossed it all works.  I have copied over all my posts from my Demonstrator Web blog so you should be able to see all my posts on either site now. 

Recently NZ Demonstrators were invited to submit content to decorate the walls of the Auckland Stampin' Up office.  I opted for one of my go-to projects for a little bit of Wow, and incorporated the Canterbury colours of Red and Black (my go-to being a Tri-Shutter card). I have also used a technique called Inlaid Embossing, where you adhere your layers together and then emboss.  I used the Rose Garden Thinlits to cut some flowers and stems from Whisper White, and glued these to Real Red, then ran them through my Big Shot with the Petal Burst folder. I also cut a Real Red Rose image for the front of the card and added it to the oval cut using the Layering Ovals framelits.  Another oval to compliment it had the greeting from Rose Wonder - "For some things there are no words".  The bird in Basic Black is from Birds & Blooms Thinlits and I added a little Real Red behind it.

For The Birds

This bundle definitely jumped out of the catalogue when I first saw it! (the stamps are called Best Birds, and the matching thinlits are Birds & Blooms). As I hadn't posted for a while I thought it was time to get cracking. I chose Crushed Curry, Crumb Cake and Strawberry Slush for my colouring and stamped the bird itself in Tip Top Taupe.  These were also my choices of cardstock along with Whisper White. The branches were Old Olive stamped with Tip Top Taupe.  I actually stamped the bird and blossoms first and then added the die cut branches - I cut around the tail and lifted it over my branch to make it look more realistic. Thanks for stopping by...