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

 

Coordinating Products | Be Inspired Blog Hop

Hello everyone. It's been a little while since I've shared on my blog, but Wow what a month it has been. The past three weeks have been a bit of a roller-coaster of emotion and uncertainty, which I'm sure has been the case for most of you as well. With a young family all my time and energy has gone into helping my little people navigate through all these "big people" issues and I've not had anything in reserve to be creative. However, yesterday I woke reinvigorated and was able to enjoy sometime at my craft desk and I'm excited to have something to share with you all.

This month the Be Inspired Design Team are sharing projects that feature "Coordinating Products". 

Product coordination is one of my favourite things about Stampin' Up! To start with the colour collections are carried across the whole product line so you always know that your card, ink, embellishments and pattern papers are going to work well together in projects. Secondly, the stamp sets, dies, punches, embellishments and Designer Series Papers are all designed with coordination in mind.

With the project I have created today I've used coordinating products from the Best Dressed Suite. The shoes from the Dressed to Impress stamp set have been coloured with Lovely Lipstick Blends to coordinate with the flowers in the Best Dressed DSP and the sentiment fits perfectly in the label from the All Dressed Up Dies. 

Next up in the hop is my talented friend Janneke Dijkstra de Jong, I can't wait to see what she has come up with. 

- Tan xx

Be Inspired Design Team Blog Roll

Tanya Rees (You are here)

Janneke Dijkstra de Jong

Brian King

Angela Meiritz-Reid

Use Up That DSP | Let's Get Hopping #23

Hello everyone and welcome to another Let's Get Hopping Blog Hop. Okay, now before I get to today's projects it's confession time. Hands up if you have a stash of Retired Designer Series Paper gathering dust you your craft room? Me!! Every year I just can't wait to play with the new Designer Series Paper each time a new catalogue comes out and when it arrives the paper stash I already have gets neglected until eventually it gets moved to the overflowing kids craft cupboard. Sound familiar?? Well after today's Let's Get Hopping Blog Hop this will be a thing of the past as this month we have been challenged to use retired Designer Series Paper with current stamps and tools. Here's what I've come up with. 

As I indicated earlier I have huge stash of retired DSP so I wanted to make the most of the challenge decided to create a bunch of cards. I also wanted to create a supply of cards that I could go to when one of my children get invited to a birthday party so I needed to create something that would work for  both boys and girls as well as a variety of ages. Given the cards were for a birthday, the DSP I chose to use was the Brights 6" x 6" DSP stack from the 2018/2019 Annual Catalogue and I decided to team it with the Broadway Birthday stamp set and coordinating Broadway Lights dies.

To add a little extra background detail I randomly stamped the diamond stamp is Versamark over the DSP panel and then heat embossed them with Silver Stampin' Emboss Powder and I complimented the metallic detail with a couple of candle embellishments. 

Finally I added some clear Wink of Stella to the die cut 'Wish' to add a little extra sparkle. It's a bit tricky to see here in this picture but the shimmery sparkle of Wick of Stella is the perfect finishing touch.

So, what if you don't already have this retired DSP in your stash? Well the beauty of this particular design you could substitute this striped pattern with almost any fun patterned DSP including this new Brights 6" x 6" DSP stack available in the current Stampin' Up! Catalogue.

Next up in the hop is the amazing Nina McMillan. I can't wait to see what she has created to inspire us to use our retired DSP. Make sure you follow the hop all the way around to see everyone's amazing projects.

Thank you for joining me today.

- Tan xx