Paper Blooms | TGIF Challenge 304 Its All About Sale-A-Bration

 

Hello and welcome. It's Friday again so time for another TGIF Challenge and this week its all about Sale-A-Bration. With only a little over a week left to pick up some exclusive Sale-A-Bration freebies its the perfect time for you to get some inspiration and put in that last minute SAB order.

Every year when the Sale-A-Bration catalogue is released the very first thing I look for is what Designer Series Paper is on offer and this years offerings did not disappoint. However the Paper Blooms DSP pack was my hands down fav so it's no surprise that its the SAB product I chose to feature today.

If you weren't already aware, I absolutely love fussy cutting and while we were away camping last month I took a couple of sheets of this gorgeous DSP and spent a bit of time fussy cutting flowers. It was so relaxing and a great way to still be a little crafty without lugging my whole craft room away with us. These particular flowers are from one of the patterned pages, but if you see below there are a several pages of flowers that are great for fussy cutting.

Well I'm off to make a few more cards with my fussy cut flowers, but if you are looking for more Sale-A-Bration inspiration be sure to pop over to the TGIF Challenge blog to see what my fellow designers have created and don't forget to share your creations if you are inspired by this challenge.

- Tan

Step It Up or Scale It Back | Let's Get Hopping #34

Welcome everyone. It's time for another Let's Get Hopping blog hop and I have really been looking forward to this one. This month's challenge encouraged us to think about the type of crafter we were, an avid crafter who loves to add lots of layers, textures and embellishments or someone who prefers to keep it simple. Whatever our style, the challenge was to create a card and then create a second card that was either a "Stepped Up" or "Scaled Back" of the original. I'm sure it's no surprise to you all that I am more of an avid crafter, in fact creating a scaled back version of my card was a challenge, however it was a challenge I enjoyed. So here are my cards.

When creating my original project I was inspired by an incredibly talented friend, Cindy Schuster. Cindy is part of The Crafty Carrot Collective and during this month's program Cindy shared two stunning cards with the Beautiful World Stamp Set, her tutorial project was the inspiration for the layout of my card while the colour scheme was drawn from the sneak peek Cindy shared in the lead up to this month. (You can see both projects here).

Rather than using the Beautiful World stamp set I chose to go with the Tasteful Touches stamp set and In Good Taste DSP and I have used a number of different techniques to create the card. The flowers have been stamped and coloured with blends, the branches of leaves have been heat embossed in copper on vellum and both images have been fussy cut. I've also added some detail in the background by adding strips of the DSP rather than one full panel.

For my "Scaled Back" version I opted for a simple panel of DSP for the background and rather than stamping on and fussy cutting vellum, I stamped and embossed the branches of leaves directly on the DSP. The flowers have still be fussy cut by have been stamped in Petal Pink and Bumble Bee rather than coloured. Lastly I kept the sentiment panel as a simple rectangle of Very Vanilla.

Next up in the hop is my talented friend Shelly Wadge. I can't wait to see how she has tackled this challenge

 

Breathtaking Bouquet Meets The Annual Catalogue | Stamping Sunday Blog Hop

Hello everyone and welcome back to another Stamping Sunday blog hop. This months hop is a little different as we have all chosen a stamp set from the January - June Stampin' Up! Mini Catalogue and are using it with products from the 2019-2020 Annual Catalogue. Sounds simple enough but given that I have just received my order of new goodies from the Mini Catalogue it was really tough to choose just one stamp set!! I got there in the end and actually enjoyed reconnecting with my supply of Annual Catalogue products.

So in case you hadn't already guessed the stamp set I chose was the Breathtaking Bouquet Stamp. This gorgeous floral stamp has so many uses. You can make a feature of the image by colouring with blends or water colouring, the flowers can be fussy cut out to create your own beautiful bouquet, or the image also makes a stunning background for a project.

I chose to use the image to create a background but instead of stamping on plain cardstock or colouring the images I stamped and embossed the image on a piece of Perennial Essence Designer Series Paper which added extra texture and a variation of colour to the background. 

Because there was already a lot of subtle detail in the background I didn't want the focal point of the card to be too busy so I fussy cut some birds from the Bird Ballad DSP and mounted them over a Sahara Sand and Vellum Stitched Nested Label Die cut and some White Flax Ribbon. Layering Vellum over Sahara Sand cardstock is my favourite way of softening the neutral coloured cardstock.  The sentiment comes from the Free as a Bird stamp set and the card was finished off with some Linen Thread and Pearl Basic Jewels. 

This particular card is a special thank you card for someone and I wanted to give them a little thank you gift as well so I decided to make a coordinating gift box using a Mini Pizza Box. For the gift box I stuck to the same layout and products, just using a different bird image and sentiment and the White Flax Ribbon wraps all the way around the box and secures at the side of the box with a bow.

That's all for from me today. I can't wait to see what stamp set the rest of the design team chose to feature. To follow along the hop click the links below

Crafty hugs, Tan xxx

Stamping Sunday Blog Roll

Bird Ballad Designer Series Paper - a Fussy Cutter's Dream

Hello and welcome. Well the new Stampin' Up! Annual Catalogue is finally live and we can now all get our hands on the beautiful new products. One of my favourites from the new catalogue is the Bird Ballad Suite, particularly the Bird Ballad Designer Series Paper. As paper crafters we all have a bit of a tendency to hoard our beautiful patterned papers and not want to cut into them but for me that wasn't the case with these papers. The minute I opened my packet I couldn't wait to start fussing cutting the gorgeous bird images.

The layout for this card was inspired by this gorgeous creation by Charlet Mallet which is the focus for this week's Global Design Project CASE the Designer challenge.

When CASEing Charlet's card I was inspired to combine both the dry embossed background and the offset banner element and tryout a partial dry embossing technique with the Lace 3D Embossing Folder. This technique is great for embossing a portion of your background and makes your embossing folders more versatile. My beautiful friend (and fellow Artisan) Mikaela Titheridge shared this technique on the Stampin' Up! Corporate Instagram page earlier this year. Follow this link to see  her instructions on how to achieve this partial embossed effect - https://www.instagram.com/p/BsJkzxnlpvC/?igshid=dlk3hl38bdkr

I hope you like my project and that I have inspired you to try out some partial dry embossing or to get out and cut up your DSP

Happy crafting

- Tan xx