Social Stamping - Celebrate

Welcome back to the Social Stamping Blog Hop hosted by Kelly Kent. This month our theme is "Celebrate". We have plenty of reason to celebrate here as we farewell Winter and welcome Spring! Daffodils, blossom, new lambs and sunshine - long may it last.

I attended a Shoe Box swap today where our theme was to make a Masculine card. Because time management hasn't been my friend of late, I combined the two and this is what I came up with.

The other thing I did was choose items from my box of retired product. I've used Lucky Limeade for the base card with a panel of Wood Textures DSP. Before adhering the panel to the base, I white heat embossed a hot air balloon from Lift Me Up directly onto the wood texture panel. I've added adhesive sheet to the back of Whisper White cardstock and used my new Stampin' Cut and Emboss machine with the large hot air balloon from the Up & Away Thinlits dies. With one pass through the rollers all the intricate little shapes were nicely cut out and as the adhesive cover was removed it was easy to place the coloured panels on the reverse. I've used Tangerine Tango, Dapper Denim and Baked Brown Sugar.

This was stuck over the heat embossed balloon with Stampin' Dimensionals. Next a double layered greeting using the Celebrate You Thinllits dies with Whisper White on the top to keep with the colour theme and either Dapper Denim or Tangerine Tango for the shadow.

Thanks for stopping by. Next on the hop we have Narelle:

 If you get lost at any stage, click here for the link back to the original post.

#CTC183 - Animal Expedition

We are caseing the Animal Expedition section of the catalogue this week - pages 26-37.

Those who know me will be quite surprised that there's not an animal in sight, although it is the perfect opportunity this week! If you want to see what I did do with the cute little zoo animals from this section, you can go and visit my Onstage board post here.

Instead I've chosen to case the card at the bottom right of page 35 as I was looking to make a birthday card for my brother. I've used the same stamp set, but swapped the colours a little.

I've used a thick Whisper White card base with a full size Lemon Lime Twist card front.  Onto this I have added a panel of Wood Textures DSP, with a trim of Lemon Lime Twist Mini Ruffled Ribbon. I initally stamped the clouds from Lift Me Up onto the Wood panel with Whisper White Craft Ink, but it was a little faint, so I grabbed my white embossing powder and heat embossed them instead. Because the Craft ink is a pigment ink, I had a little more time to work than the dye based inks. (Tip: You can achieve the same result by using versamark and then any of your dye-base colours, this will allow you to gain any colour embossing by using Clear embossing powder. Remember to use the Versamark first so that you don't transfer any colour onto your Versamark pad). 

I used Smokey Slate ink on the white clouds, die cut using the Up & Away Thinlits. I've also white embossed the balloon images onto Lemon Lime Twist and Tranquil Tide using the same stamp set and thinlits. The main image has the coloured pieces cut from the 2017-19 In Colour DSP, with a Whisper White balloon and Linen Thread bow. The greeting has been stamped in Tranquil Tide and banner cut. Can you see what I've changed here?  The greeting on the stamp actually says "Sending Smiles Across the Miles" but I've used the Stamparatus and masked off words to create my own greeting "Sending Smiles For A Happy Birthday".

Time now to hop over and check out the 'gorgeous' card Julia has created this week. Then you have a week to create a card yourself and add it using the CASEing the Catty link over on the right.

CASEing the Catty - #CTC152 Painted Autumn/Spooky Nights

This week CASEing pages 48-55 of the Holiday Catalogue.

Not being big on Halloween in our house, thought this may test me a little, however in saying that it was only a couple of weeks ago I did choose another project from this section, so it all depends on the twist you take. Why don't you give this a try as well, and when you've done, click on the button to the right to join the Challenge.

There was one thing I couldn't resist though, (even though I held off for a while) and that was the Cat Punch. I couldn't take to the stamp set - even for the face (something a little creepy about those eyes to me!). So I've gone completely random this week and turned to page 54, to case the gift box in the top right picture. 

I started by using Soft Suede reinker mixed with Embossing paste, along with the brick wall stencil onto Lemon Lime Twist cardstock, which I mounted onto a whisper white thick card base. This was my interpretation for the brick post. I've swapped out each element for a cat punched in the same colour. I like to work in odd numbers so added the Soft Suede cat to the mix, and was much happier. You've heard of 'herding cats', right? Well it was a little like that trying to place them on the card! Happy with where they ended up and know just the lady I'll send this to! Funny how your mind wanders off to people as you are creating, so I think it fitting I let her know I was thinking of her... I then decided to use the greeting (stamped in Soft Suede) from Lift Me Up which seemed appropriate. I used Black Memento ink to colour the doily and a bow from Basic Black Baker's Twine. My helper was not able to stay awake for the photo session but he came in handy all the same...

Time to pop over and see what treat Rebecca has in store for you. Don't forget you are welcome to play along, create your project and click the button over on the right to add your link!

Balloon Birthday card

When this posts, I will be in Melbourne supporting my daughter's volleyball team - Burnside High School -  Go girls!!  While they are away one of the team will be celebrating her birthday, so here's I made this for the team to write in and if you have this set it may give you some inspiration for using it:

This card size is 5 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches.  The strips of colour behind the hot air balloon are easy as there is a die to cut it for you - go figure!  The greeting is from Tin of Cards and was stamped onto Whisper White then cut using the Stitched Shapes Framelits, (hopefully it won't be too long before these are back in the shop), the Rich Razzleberry circle was cut from the same dies. The colour I chose to contrast was Emerald Envy. The large numbers were cut from Silver glimmer paper, 'cos a girl has to have some bling.  You can't see the detail of the background in the top picture, but I used the Fluttering TIEF and will give you a different light and angle to make it easier. Thanks for stopping by.