The idea for my card today was to create a summer scene. It’s the middle of a cold winter here in Australia, and I needed a reminder that summer will be here before we know it, and with that, time at the beach and swimming in our beautiful ocean. Does anyone else love swimming in the ocean? It’s something I love to do, it makes me feel so energised and refreshed.
The truck with the surf board in the back, and the palm trees are from the Trucking Along bundle, which is an Online Exclusive from a while back but still available here in Australia.
I’ve made a Winter themed card for this challenge, and since I am in Australia, we are in the middle of winter now. Winter is not aligned with Christmas for us here, so I wanted to make a winter card that is not also a Christmas card.
I have used some of the retired One Horse Open Sleigh Designer Series Papers along with a piece of Die Cut fence from something else that retired some time ago – sorry, I can’t remember what the name of that one was. Sometimes it’s good to use up those random bits and pieces that are around.
We love to see your creations, so come and share your projects with us. Craftin’ Round the World is a Facebook group that is closed, so is a safe place for you to share your projects. Come and join in the fun. The link to the group is here.
Happy stamping! Chris
Don’t forget the Earn and Redeem promotion that is happening for the rest of July – simply spend $90 and receive a $9 coupon to spend in August,. Scan the QR Code below or click here to go to my online store.
I have some exciting news to share with you today, I am honoured to have been accepted as a member of the Design Team for the Sketch Saturday Challenges, and today is my first post as a member of the Design Team. This week’s challenge is to choose a previously used sketch, and I have chosen the one below, Sketch 555 from 2019.
The butterfly has been coloured with Stampin’ Blends, in various pinks and purples.
I hope you will come and visit us at Sketch Saturday Challenges, and share your own version of the sketch, we love to see what you have come up with. Happy stamping! Chris
Hi and welcome back. For those who have been following along with my blog posts for a while, you will know just how much I enjoy taking part in challenges, and I do particularly enjoy a Sketch challenge. So I decided to use the current Just Add Ink challenge to inspire my card today. Here is the sketch:
My card features the mushroom image from the Inspirational Sketches stamp set. I was a little sad when the new Catalogue first came out, I thought that this gorgeous stamp set had retired, but you will find it sneaks in with some images on pages 110 and 111. I am very glad it’s a current stamp set, it’s a lot of fun to use.
I have used some Grey Granite cardstock as my base, and the background layer has been embossed with the Timber Embossing Folder, and then I have run the Grey Granite ink pad over it to highlight the embossed parts. I have taken one of the large die cut circles from the Spotlight on Nature Dies, cut it in half, and then stamped the image in Grey Granite. The red mushrooms were stamped in Black Memento ink, which I stamped off on scrap paper before stamping onto the cardstock, just to make the outline a little lighter. The image as been coloured with Stampin’ Blends in Crumb Cake for the stems, Ivory for the underneath of the mushroom caps, and Dark and Light Real Red. And yes, the image was fussy cut (I love fussy cutting!). The white dots….. there are several ways to achieve the white dots on the mushroom caps, which do make them look more realistic. If you have White Craft Ink, you can use a stylus, dip that into the ink on the ink pad, and dab it onto the image. You may have to do this several times to give a good coverage. Alternatively, you can use a white gel pen or similar and that is much easier to do. Did you know that Stampin’ Up! used to sell these? I’m talking way, way, way long ago in the deep dark past, not long after I first joined as a demonstrator. And believe it or not, I still had one that I bought from Stampin’ Up!. It doesn’t work any more, not surprising, since they do dry out after a while. Perhaps it’s time to do a very big clean out.
The Beatles Song “And Your Bird Can Sing” is the inspiration for my Design Team project for Craftin’ Round The World Challenges today, and I had so much fun creating this card.
I have used the new Basic Beige cardstock for the card base and also the next layer, which has been stamped tone on tone with Basic Beige ink and the Stippled Roses stamp set. I have taken a piece of old sheet music – I’ve been a musician since I was very young, so there’s plenty of it lying around – and I have scrunched it up before sponging some Crumb Cake ink around the edges and on the raised areas.
I’ve used some of the Country Woods Designer Series Paper and the Country Birdhouse Dies to create the bird house. For those cute little birds I have used the reverse image technique, of stamping the image from the Country Birdhouse bundle onto a Silicone Craft Sheet in Memento Black ink, and then pressing a piece of white cardstock over the image, which in effect, reverses the image when it goes onto the cardstock. Perhaps this is a good time for me to get back into doing Facebook Live and YouTube videos to demonstrate that one.
If you are on Facebook (or even if you are not), come and share your projects with us at Craftin’ Round the World Challenges, we love to see what you have been creating.
And don’t forget that the Country Birdhouse Bundle, and all the Bundles are an extra 10% off the already discounted price until the end of June, and you can find them in my online store. Happy stamping! Chris
I do love a card challenge. I’ve been on many Design Teams over the years of papercrafting, and still am now, and I love using different challenges to give me a way to challenge myself and create something different. I guess that’s why they are called a challenge, right? I have three cards to share with you today, all of them made with the same set of colours which are the current Global Design Project Challenge (#GDP449). The colours are Peach Pie, Shy Shamrock and Petunia Pop, all from the new In Color range (2024-2026). They are all gorgeous colours, but not ones I would normally put together. To add to the challenge, I created three different style of cards, and I’ll explain why shortly. Here’s the first card.
I was recently listening to a recorded interview between two of our wonderful Australian Stampin’ Up! Demonstrators, Kylie Bertucci and Maheswari Rajaguru, and part of the discussion was around what style of papercrafter they were. That discussion has given me a lot to think about, and so I used this challenge to play with some different styles. This first card is not one that I like very much, not one that I am at all happy with. However I wanted to use the rather neglected Planted Paradise stamp set in a different way along with using the challenge colours. I don’t think the card showcases my style, however I am sure the person who I send it to in the mail will enjoy receiving it.
The second card is more like my style….
This card features the Magnolia Mood bundle (don’t forget Bundles are currently on sale!). The Magnolia has been stamped onto watercolour paper and then coloured with inks and water painter. I love colouring, whether that’s with Blends (alcohol markers), pencils or ink, or a combination, I love the process of colouring. And so that is a large part of my style. I also love nature, plants, flowers, birds, butterflies, animals, and these are things that I am more drawn to than anything else.
Card number three also features some colouring:
This card is probably the most indicative of my style of papercrafting, colouring plus lots of layers, texture and interest, such as paper tearing, distressing and sponging. The card features the Inspirational Sketches Stamp set, Perennial Lavender Designer Series Paper, and leaves from the Stippled Roses Dies. While I have used the colours from the challenge, I have also used a lot of Crumb Cake to soften the colour combination. So what would you call my style of crafting? Vintage with a touch of modern. ?? What are your thoughts? Which is your favourite card?
In the end, I feel that one of the things I really do enjoy doing, is creating cards in different styles, sometimes it feels good to make a Clean and Simple card, other times I love to put the time into creating a vintage style card that might take me days to put together.
Thanks for hanging around, as you can tell, there has been a lot of thought and introspection in recent times, and not just about crafting. I hope you are having a crafty weekend. Happy stamping! Chris PS Don’t for to make the most of the extra 10% discount of Bundles for the rest of May. Browse through my online store here.
Hi. If this is your first time visiting, welcome to my crafting blog.
I am honoured to have been asked to do a Guest Design spot with the CASE-ing the Catty crew this week, and we are taking our inspiration from the Bundles on Pages 57 – 73 of the Annual Catalogue.
I have chosen the Happy Birthday card in the centre of Page 60 (see below) as my inspiration.
The stamped images have been inked with Memento Black ink, and then coloured with Stampin’ Blends initially to create base colours. The hummingbird was coloured with Bronze, Crumb Cake and Pool Party Stampin’ Blends, with just a touch of Blueberry Bushel. The flowers and leaves with Old Olive, Flirty Flamingo, Poppy Parade and Daffodil Delight.
After the Stampin’ Blends I have coloured over the top with Stampin’ Up! Watercolour Pencils to increase the intensity and vibrancy of colour.
Good morning and if this is your first time visiting, welcome to my crafting blog.
I was honoured to be asked to become a Design Team member for the Craftin’ Round the World Challenges. This is a monthly challenge held on Facebook, where there are two different themes to choose from, which you can combine, or choose one at a time. And for my card today, I have chosen the Monochromatic Theme.
My card uses heaps of the Stampin’ Up! green colours including Soft Sea Foam, Mossy Meadow, Old Olive, Granny Apple Green, and Lemon Lime Twist. The beautiful Magnolia image has been stamped in Soft Sea Foam on basic white cardstock before being die cut using the matching dies. And the leaves come from the Magnolia Mood Dies and the Stippled Roses Dies.
If you would like to join our challenge you can find us here in the closed Facebook group, where you are very welcome to share your own projects.
You may have noticed that I love, love, love decorative masks, stencils and sponging, I love the look and the amount of different ways they can be used to create and decorate. I also love colouring. So my card today is a mixture of both of these. Cute little birdie, along with the branch and leaves from the Bird’s Eye View stamp set has been coloured with Watercolour Pencils before I used Wink of Stella to blend the colours and add a bit of sparkle. They have all been fussy cut and glued to the front of my card. And the strip of gorgeous Afternoon Azure colour down the left hand side has been masked off with Masking Paper and sponged with Blending Brushes before I added one of the Abundant Beauty Decorative Masks over the top, and sponged a little more, for some tone on tone colour to brighten the card up.
Below is the video of how I made the card.
The gorgeous Abundant Beauty Decorative Masks are new and now available in the Mini Catalogue, along with a stack of other new goodies, including Christmas products.
Make sure you head on over the The Crafty Addicts site to check out what the Design Team have created for this month.
The Crafty Addicts is back again this month with an open challenge, meaning we want to see any and all of your cards, there’s no restriction as to what you can use, just craft away and share with us. My card for this month is one that was a bit of an experiment, I’m not too sure that I am happy with the colours, they are for a colour challenge, and I’m not sure I would normally put them together. But it’s always fun to play with colour.
I have used the Foursquare Decorative Masks and some Masking Paper. Each section has been masked, then coloured with ink and blending brushes. Then the masks removed and replaced to create a new area to sponge in a different colour. The circle mask I left there during that process of colouring the background. I’ve then simply used a ruler and black marker to draw the lines in between each colour. It looks a whole lot more complicated that it really is. Masking is one of my favourite stamping techniques. And just to add to all the masking going on, I decided to mask the sentiment which comes from the Sending Smiles stamp set, they are two different stamps, I’ve masked half of the strip of cardstock and stamped the word birthday, then masked over the stamped word, and stamped the word hugs. The colours used are Azure Afternoon, Granny Apple Green, Lemon Lolly, Crushed Curry, and Flirty Flamingo.
Come on over to The Crafty Addicts challenge site where you can see what the rest of the Design Team have made this month. And do share your creations, we love to see what you’ve been crafting. Happy stamping Chris
You can click on the images below to go to my online store or click here, or if you prefer to use your device with the QR Code, you can find it below. Don’t forget about the amazing joining offer, if you live in Australia I would love to welcome you to my team, feel free to email or leave a comment if you would like more information.
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