Butterfly Thinlits Bokeh Card

by Joanne James28. February 2015 22:26

Good evening blog readers! A busy couple of days so a later blog post today. Just time to share with you another card using the Butterfly Thinlits, this time including the largest of the trio: 

This is a larger than usual card at 6" x 6", as I wanted to allow enough cardstock to frame this rather large butterfly and set if off to true effect. The base of my card is Crumb Cake cardstock, onto which I added a raised mat panel consisting of a piece of the current Sale-A-Bration 'Best Year Ever' Designer Series Paper onto a piece of Coastal Cabana cardstock. I love this bokeh-inspired patterned paper - it saves the time of creating your own and makes for a lovely background effect. |Even better still, it can be yours free with an order of £45! I then added a piece of Strawberry Slush cardstock, and wrapped some linen thread around the panel before adhering to my card. I then added my layered butterfly - the largest butterfly cut from Crumb Cake and the smallest butterfly cut from Coastal Cabana - and finished with a bow of Strawberry Slush thick baker's twine. A no-stamping card, that really shows these delicate butterflies off to great effect.

I'm linking today's card with the sketch challenge over at Fab Friday (I turned the sketch through 90 degrees and used my linen thread in place of the flagged banner in the sketch).

Back tomorrow with my card for this week's new challenge over at The Paper Players and news of some new Sale-A-Bration goodies that you can earn during the month of March. Until then, happy stampin'!

 

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used:

Table built using Product Table Builder by The Crafty Owl - Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator.

 

Bermuda Bay Butterfly Basics

by Joanne James26. February 2015 20:35

Thank you for all the lovely comments I've received on my 'Guy Greetings' cards these past couple of days - I'm so glad you are enjoying them. I have more of these to share, some of which I made with my lovely stamp-a-stack ladies at our class earlier today, but instead I'm having a break to share one of the cards I designed for my recent technique class featuring the Butterfly Basics stamp set and co-ordinating framelits:

 

I stamped the lacy butterfly onto my Very Vanilla base in Bermuda Bay ink, then used the co-ordinating framelit to cut the shape out of the top mat layer. I then added some Crumb Cake, sponged through a stencil made with my Hexagon Hive thinlit, the border stamp, a simple sentiment and some linen thread and a scattering of pearls as a final simple embellishment. I love the versatility of thinlits and how they can be used in so many ways; using the negative space gives a different look to simply using the thinlit to cut out the butterfly and attach on top. 

I'm linking today's card up with this week's challenge over at Less Is More where the theme is 'wings', which suits my butterfly perfectly.

Back tomorrow with another project; until then, happy stampin'!

 

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used:

Table built using Product Table Builder by The Crafty Owl - Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator.

 

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Cards | Stamping

Up, Up And Away with The Paper Players!

by Joanne James22. February 2015 10:00

It's Sunday and time for another challenge over at The Paper Players. Thank you to everyone who played along with my CAS bird challenge last week - there were some fabulous entries. This week the lovely Sandy is hosting and she has a sketch challenge for us - my favourite! Here is her sketch:

       

I decided to use the colour palette over at Colour Me for my card today - I haven't had the opportunity to play along with these lovely ladies since I finished my Design Team post over there at the start of the year, so time to say 'hello ladies!' to Hayley, Tara and the team. I just so happen to be using another stamp in the 'Time To Celebrate' hostess set that I used on my Paper Players card last week - take a look:

The temptation to use a feather in my design as per the sketch was high, however there are some wonderful examples using feathers by other members of the Design Team, so I decided to look at what else I could use and settled on the hot air balloon instead. My top mat layer is a piece of 'Flashback' DSP, the circle pattern perfect to echo the central circle of the sketch. I embossed a piece of Very Vanilla cardstock with the now retired 'Cloudy Day' embossing folder and sponged the sky in Pool Party around the clouds and framed this with a Real Red circular frame cut with my Big Shot and Circle Framelits. I added a simple sentiment banner with a little fussy cutting around the 'y' in 'you', then mounted the hot air balloon with dimensionals for a little lift. I stamped the balloon on very Vanilla and coloured it with my So Saffron Stampin' Write marker and the lightest of my Cherry Cobbler Blendabilities. I also added a little Crystal Effects to my stars for some additional dimension, although that's quite difficult to see in the photo below: 

That's my card done and I hope you like it. I love the stamps in the 'Time To Celebrate' hostess set - if they are your thing too, please get in touch if you would like to host a party to lay your hands on your very own set. Before you reach for your ink pads, do visit the other design team members to see what interesting ideas they've had this week:

The Paper Players Design Team
 
Here's a quick recap of our challenge rules:
 
1.  Create a new paper project
2.  Upload your creation to your blog with a link back to us and provide a direct link to the post featuring your challenge submission.
3.  Please link your card to no more than three challenges, TOTAL.
4.  Have FUN! 

I look forward to seeing how you interpret Sandy's sketch this week - so many possibilities! 

Back tomorrow with another project; until then, happy stampin'!

 

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used:

Table built using Product Table Builder by The Crafty Owl - Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator.

 

Love, Hugs and Kisses Valentines Card

by Joanne James11. February 2015 09:15

I still have a couple more Valentine's cards to share with you this week, all of them quick and easy to execute though if you are making a last-minute card for your loved one! Today's card has been made using this week's sketch over at CAS(E) This Sketch and I am also entering it into the 'Hugs and Kisses' challenge over at Addicted to CAS and the colour challenge at Can You CASE IT:

 

         

This is one of those 'go to' sketch layouts for clean and simple cards and is also great for showcasing designer series paper, as I've done here with the hugs & kisses pattern from the 'Stacked With Love' DSP stack. Take a look: 

For the other half of my base layer, I used another of the black and white patterns in the stack, and used a heart framelit to create a die cut in my top red layer that allowed an element of the paper design to show through. I finished my card with a 'vintage' love die cut with my now retired Expressions thinlits - these are still available on the clearance rack and can be picked up for a bargain £13.79 and lastly rounded the bottom right corner of my card. Not a stamp in sight either - no risk of inky fingers with this one!

Simple but effective I hope you will agree! Back tomorrow with another Valentine's card to share with you; until then, happy stampin'!

 

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used:

Table built using Product Table Builder by The Crafty Owl - Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator.

 

Roses are Pink...Two-for-One Valentine's Cards

by Joanne James10. February 2015 08:00

Today I have not one but two cards for you! Both cards fit this week's colour challenge over at Pals Paper Arts, where there is a gorgeous colour palette to work with this week:

I absolutely love this colour combination and couldn't wait to create something pink and pretty with it. Here is my first card:

I layered the colours in two sections and in the central section used one of the lovely rose die cut panels from the Artisan Embellishment kit as a stencil and stencilled the roses in the two shades of pink, adding in touches of Basic Grey for the flower leaves. These die cuts are so beautiful - it's a shame there are only two in the kit! Here's a close up of the sponged area:

 

The form of the roses is just so pretty I think and looks really beautiful. I added a bow in luxurious silver satin ribbon and stamped my sentiment on the wide mat layer of Pink Pirouette, stamped in Versamark and heat embossed in pewter. This card is full of romance, but I think it would work equally well as a birthday card.

My second card today uses exactly the same colour palette, but is altogether a more clean and simple affair. This week the team over at Less is More is celebrating its 4th birthday and have a colour challenge of 'pink and grey'. Here is my card for this week's challenge:

My card started out as a two-tone pink and grey affair, with an inlaid split sentiment - I die cut the word 'love' using my Little Letters thinlits, then did the same with the cardstock the other way around top and bottom in order that I could paper-piece the reverse colours into the negative space. The more I looked at it though, the more it needed a little something else - I toyed with a scrap of Rose Red that sat on my desk leftover from the first card and the addition of the tiny heart with a tiny sparkle was just what it needed. You can see the detail of the die cut and inlaid letters below:

Congratulations to Chrissie and the team on their 4th birthday - you are an awesome bunch who run a most successful weekly challenge and are truly an inspiration. 

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

 

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used:

Card 1: 

Table built using Product Table Builder by The Crafty Owl - Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator.
 
Card 2:
 
Table built using Product Table Builder by The Crafty Owl - Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator.

Some Bunny Loves You Valentine's Card

by Joanne James1. February 2015 07:30

It's Sunday and time for a new challenge over at The Paper Players, where this week Claire has the following challenge for us:

    

I also used Rita's sketch layout over at Freshly Made Sketches for my card this week. Now this week's card caused me some mild consternation, as anyone who knows me knows that I've never really had a pet and so I have been known to get myself into all kinds of trouble with friends for under-estimating the depth of their feelings towards their two-and four-legged friends. I am not intentionally insensitive, it's just that I don't 'get it' - so the idea of creating a Valentine's card for or from a pet sent me into quite a spin! Both James Juniors have had goldfish as pets previously, but since I used fish on my card last week I thought today's card needed an alternative, altogether more fluffy friend - so this is what I came up with:

I created a custom sentiment using my 'Back to Basics' alphabet stamps and added a selection of banners using patterns from the 'Stacked with Love' DSP stack. For the heart-shaped centrepiece, I stamped a pair of adorable bunnies and coloured them in with my Smoky Slate Blendabilities. Do you recognise the bunnies, or should I say, bunny? The bunny on the right is from the 'Baby We've Grown' stamp set. I stamped him once, then having masked him off with a post-it note, I then stamped him again onto a piece of window sheet and using the reflection technique transferred this image onto my cardstock, overlapping the legs slightly. The tiniest drag line on the ear resulted in a cute fold-over look, so I left it, as it made the bunnies a little less symmetrical. Don't they make such a cute pair? I finished this centre piece by framing the bunnies in a Real Red heart-shaped frame cut using my Big Shot and Hearts Framelits and added a tiny punched heart with a rhinestone to the centre. If I had a bunny rabbit, I would be happy to send him this Valentine - job done! I'm also linking up with SUO Challenges today too, where the theme is 'Valentine's Wishes' - very appropriate.

Before you reach for your ink pads, do visit the other design team members to see what interesting ideas they've had this week:

The Paper Players Design Team
 
Here's a quick recap of our challenge rules:
 
1.  Create a new paper project
2.  Upload your creation to your blog with a link back to us and provide a direct link to the post featuring your challenge submission.
3.  Please link your card to no more than three challenges, TOTAL.
4.  Have FUN! 

I look forward to seeing your projects in the gallery this week.

I'm looking forward to a quiet day today: the hockey pitch is frozen as a result of the sub-zero temperatures we've been having this past week and poor Ben is struggling to shake his cough and cold that he's had for weeks now, so he is going to have a rugby-free week too, as running around a freezing pitch for a couple of hours is certainly not going to improve things. Rebecca and I will be completing the masterpiece that is her ancient Greek theatrical mask, the result of two weeks of paper mache and modelling clay - all being well it should be dry enough to paint. We may even manage to squeeze in another family movie afternoon; last week we watched Malificent for the first time, which was hugely enjoyable and an interesting alternative take on a classic.

Back tomorrow with another project; until then, happy stampin'!

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used: 

Table built using Product Table Builder by The Crafty Owl - Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator.

Retro Fresh Sweet Baby Card

by Joanne James26. January 2015 09:00

Today its Monday and I have a card for this week's Freshly Made Sketches challenge; I am also linking up with the Friday Mashup, where the challenge is to create a baby card, a card in brown aqua and tangerine - or as in my case, a mashup of both:

    

I decided that the 'any shape' allowed in the sketch was a great opportunity for me to use probably the only stamp that has never been inked up in my 'Something for Baby' stamp set - the pram. Here is my card:

 

I chose to use some retired 'Retro Fresh' DSP for my card, as it featured the mashup colours. Once I'd decided on my layers, this card came together surprisingly quickly, even leaving time to stamp the inside and decorate the envelope. I've not used this pram stamp previously as it's quite large - this type of sketch layout is just perfect for it though. I finished my pram wheels with a couple of candy dots for added interest and done! 

Back tomorrow with another project; until then, happy stampin'!

 

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used:

Table built using Product Table Builder by The Crafty Owl - Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator.

Irresistibly Yours - Two Sale-A-Bration Top Picks!

by Joanne James25. January 2015 20:32

I'm just popping in to share with you a card that I made for this week's Mojo Monday challenge; I was going to share this yesterday, but was so tired when I got in from taking the James Juniors to their swimming gala I just wasn't awake enough to type! So here is this week's challenge sketch:

 

This is a great sketch for a feature sentiment; I built up my layers and took the opportunity to showcase not one but two of the great free gifts that you can earn with a £45 order during Sale-A-Bration: the stamp set 'Simply Wonderful', and the 'Irresistibly Yours' Speciality Designer Series Paper. Here is my card:

I stamped my sentiment in Island Indigo then added the flower stamp from the same set and a punched Itty Bitty flower finished with a candy dot centre. I layered this central circle to echo the colours and layers on the base of my card and used the central section of the base layer to feature the beautiful 'Irresistibly Yours' Specialty DSP. This white paper with its pre-embossed glossy white patterns could easily be overlooked in the Sale-A-Bration catalogue, yet when you colour it, it really brings it to life. For my card today, I chose to sponge mine with Crisp Cantaloupe ink to show the embossed flowers - isn't it pretty? the stamp set or the DSP could be yours with an order of £45 - or since you get to choose one free gift for each £45 spend, why not splash out and treat yourself to both? Sale-A-Bration runs until 31st March, so you have plenty of time to take advantage. 

Back tomorrow with another project; until then, happy stampin'!

 

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used:

Table built using Product Table Builder by The Crafty Owl - Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator.

 

You're My Number One Valentine

by Joanne James22. January 2015 09:00

Past the mid-way point - we are nearly at the end of the 'working week'! Today I'm sharing a cute little card that I made using the sketch over at Retrosketches this week, with a certain young man in mind:

 

 I turned the sketch clockwise through 90 degrees for my card, which is a cute little Valentine's card for someone foxy! Take a look:

I bought this little Valentine's set called 'Hey, Valentine' because it has some great little stamps in it, many of which can be stamped without their Valentine-themed sentiment and would work really well on a children's birthday card (especially the little pirate and the fish!) Today's card is my Valentine offering for my youngest James junior - I think he will love the adorable fox and the bright colours of today's card. I coloured the fox with my Pumpkin Pie Blendabilities and used a Pumpkin Pie card base to tie in the colour, highlighting around the edges with one of the lighter skin tone Blendabilities. I punched the tag out with my Note Tag punch and mounted it onto a piece of Real Red cut out with one of the Chalk Talk framelits and trimmed across the bottom to give a straight edge. I sponged hearts onto the corner of my Whisper White layer using Real Red ink and my hearts stencilling mask, to add to the Valentine's feel. A leftover piece of red satin ribbon (the current red cotton ribbon would work just as well) finishes my tag. Cute, eh? Plus the Chalk Talk Framelits and Skin Tone Blendabilties are both available on weekly deals this week so can be picked up at a fraction of their usual price. Why not treat yourself? You know you want to :-)

Back tomorrow with another project; until then, happy stampin'!

 

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used:

Table built using Product Table Builder by The Crafty Owl - Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator.

 

You Brighten my Day Love You Card

by Joanne James21. January 2015 09:00

Today's card is for this week's sketch over at CAS(E) This Sketch, where Chrissy has this rather intriguing sketch for us to work with this week:

Whilst musing the best way to create a pattern with diagonals that had a readable sentiment and used a design that was different from the designers' inspiration (some lovely plaid patterns there), I remembered this lovely card by Heather Klump that I saw on Pinterest the other week and I decided to combine both inspirations to come up with my card today. Here it is:

Using my stamp-a-ma-jig, I carefully stamped rows of love hearts from the 'You Brighten My Day' Sale-A-Bration set in Strawberry Slush, Pink Pirouette and Pool Party, aligning them to re-create the diagonal pattern of the sketch. I used a silver foil 'you' cut with my Big Shot and my 'Hello You' thinlits, popped up on rolled glue dots, for the final piece of my sentiment. 

I love this card - another pink and pretty affair this week! Looking forward to my first Project Life class of the year this morning and catching up with some of my lovely ladies who I haven't seen since before Christmas. Back with you tomorrow with another project; until then, happy stampin'!

 

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used:

Table built using Product Table Builder by The Crafty Owl - Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator.

 

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Hi I'm Joanne and live in Northampton and when I'm not looking after my husband and two beautiful children, am an avid crafter with a passion for all things Stampin' Up!

I must confess that I have never been a big rubber stamper - until I discovered Stampin' Up! that is. I love the fact that I can get such great results with co-ordinating stamps, inks, papers and punches - the possibilities are endless! Join me on my stamping journey as I share the things I love and be inspired to create amazing things yourself!

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