Today I'm sharing a special baby card for a very special person!  The wonderfully talented and amazing Lesley Croghan, designer and creator of many popular online papercraft challenges, and her husband Corey, are expecting their first child, a little girl. To this end the lovely Lori Turner of Caffeinated Creativity has organised a fabulous blog hop to celebrate the forthcoming new arrival into the Croghan family.

I have participated in many of Lesley's challenges, am a regular reader of her blog, Always Playing With Paper and I am privileged to be a designer with The Paper Players, a challenge that Lesley founded some years ago that is still going strong. I have a lot to thank her for and am thrilled to be participating in this hop to celebrate the arrival of Little Miss Croghan.

I knew immediately what kind of card I wanted to create - it had to feature one of the cuties from the Moon Baby stamp set:

As my card was going to have to travel from the UK to Canada to reach Lesley, I decided I was best to stick to my clean and simple style. Here's the low-down on today's card:

Sugar and Spice and All Things Nice - I just had to go with 'Moon Baby' for my baby card this week - this is such a perfect baby set! You know how I am a fan of partial die cutting and today decided to use my sweet umbrella baby to overhang the top layer of my card for added visual interest. I watercoloured my baby and umbrella in Melon Mambo using my aquapainter to add a pop of colour to my pale pink card.

Hello, Hello, Hello - I decided to use one of the sentiments in the 'Moon Baby' set to create a repeat 'Hello Baby' background panel - a great way to combine the sentiments in the set. I used my stamp-a-ma-jig to get everything nicely lined up and staggered the words on each row to create a uniform pattern. 

A Shower of Hearts - I felt like my baby needed a shower of something to warrant the umbrella, so decided to use the hearts framelit from the Umbrella Weather set to create my shower. With the pink layer beneath, the little hearts against the beautiful lustre of the Shimmery White top layer look so pretty: 

Here is the visual summary of the key products used on today's project for you to pin for easy reference:

You can see all of my 'How To' summaries on my 'How To - Tips and Techniques' Pinterest board in case you've missed any. 

There are a huge number of people participating in today's blog hop; you can see the full collection of cards on Lori's blog here and it would be great if you could visit as many of these as possible and leave the owners some love. We have also sent our cards to Lesley for her to open today en masse, so you will get a sense of the wonderful shower of love we sent to the Croghan family this morning!

Enjoy the rest of your day and I'll be back tomorrow with another project for this week's challenge over at The Paper Players. Until then, happy stampin'!

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used:

Moon Baby Clear-Mount Stamp Set	Umbrella Weather Framelits Dies	Shimmery White A4 Cardstock	Pink Pirouette A4 Cardstock
Melon Mambo Classic Stampin' Pad	Basic Black Archival Stampin’ Pad	Pink Pirouette Classic Stampin' Pad

It's Sunday and time for this week's new challenge over at The Paper Players! It's my turn to host again this week and I have a clean and simple challenge for us to work with:

I've had the need for a few baby cards recently - all girls, funnily enough, whereas the last time I had a run on baby cards it was all boys, funny how that happens! So I decided that this week's challenge would be a great opportunity to replenish my stock, especially as we have some great new Stampin' Up! baby sets in the Spring-Summer Catalogue. I decided to create two cards today, identical in design but one each in a boy and girl colour scheme, using this week's sketch over at CAS Colours and Sketches - I'm also linking up with the team over at TGIF Challenges where their challenge this week is also all things baby:

I couldn't wait to ink up my 'Moon Baby' stamp set again for my cards today - take a look, here's the baby boy card:

And here is the baby girl card:

Here's the low-down on today's cards:

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star - I stamped the moon baby onto Shimmery White cardstock and watercoloured them using my inks and aquapainters. I used my Stitched Shape Framelits to cut out my circle and added a layer of Clear Wink of Stella for added sparkle to my moon. I also added a gold metallic shape star to each of my cards for a fun detail.

Tone on Tone - To add interest to my background, I stamped the trio of stars randomly in the same colour ink as my cardstock base. This is a great way to add extra detail and interest whilst still keep your card clean and simple.

Blue For A Boy, Pink For A Girl - I used a duo of light and dark colours for each of my cards, with the darker colour for my card base and the lighter colour picked up in the banner. Here is my colour combination if you would like to save it:

Here is the visual summary of the key products used on today's project for you to pin for easy reference:

You can see all of my Product and 'How To' summaries on my 'How To - Tips and Techniques' Pinterest board in case you've missed any. 

I just love the images in the 'Moon Baby' stamp set - it makes for such cute baby cards! I can't decide which of these colour combinations I like the most - if you have a preference, why not let me know in the comments below - I love to hear your thoughts!

Before you reach for your ink and papers, check out what our amazing team has created to inspire you this week:

I look forward to seeing your clean and simple creations in the gallery this week. Enjoy the rest of your weekend - the James household is busy today with one of the James Juniors playing in a hockey tournament, whilst the other is attending a skills day in connection with school which will see him learning shooting and fencing (I think I'll be taking cover!!)

I'll be back tomorrow with another project; until then, happy stampin'!

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used: 

Moon Baby Clear-Mount Stamp Set	Stitched Shapes Framelits Dies	Basic Black Archival Stampin’ Pad	Shimmery White A4 Cardstock	Metallic Enamel Shapes
Rose Red Classic Stampin' Pad	Rose Red A4 Cardstock	Pink Pirouette A4 Cardstock	Pink Pirouette Classic Stampin' Pad	So Saffron Classic Stampin' Pad
Daffodil Delight Classic Stampin' Pad	Dapper Denim A4 Cardstock	Dapper Denim Classic Stampin' Pad	Soft Sky A4 Cardstock	Soft Sky Classic Stampin' Pad
Soft Suede Classic Stampin' Pad	Clear Wink Of Stella Glitter Brush