Royal Love

Over at Stampin' Royalty blog they offered up the following inspirational photo this week ... love the shades of pink and the little heart throw pillow which I thought were perfect for this submission inspired by my upline from a recent class!

Petal Cone heart embossed with the Vintage Wallpaper and embellished with the Fun Flowers die embossed with the Square Lattice ... offers lots of texture and packs a lot of love - I am going to hide my mans Valentine in this little envelope card and tuck it in his lunch box on Tuesday!

If you are looking for inspiration hop on over to the Stampin' Royalty blog and check out what others were inspired to make with this fresh photo!

Happy Stampin'
Margaret

Baby It's Cold Outside - Friday Mash Up ...

This is my Friday Mash Up inspired card .... create a Snowman themed card in the colors Blushing Bride, Baja Breeze and Basic Grey .... LOVED IT!

So I am more in a 'spreading the love' mood than a Christmas card mood so opted for another Winter Valentine themed card using the Stamp from the Build a Cupcake, the Heart Trio punch and a Punch Art Snowman for this card ... not as noticeable in the photo but I had to sneak some Real Red glimmer paper into the card as well!

If you have a moment head on over to the Friday Mash Up and see what the Design Team and other card makers were inspired to create with this sketch idea!

Also sharing this card offering over at There She Goes Clear Stamps

with the color challenge of Blue, Pink and Red so check out the wonderful offerings over there as well and get creative in the craft room!

Happy Stampin'
Margaret

Technique Tuesday - Selective Embossing

Thought I would share the Technique Card we made at our last class ... each participant gets a 6x6 sample with instructions for their Inspiration book to recollect on later....this card showcased the Cottage Garden stamp set with the Square Lattice, Designer Frames and Elegant Bouquet emboss folders.

With the sample we practice a couple of things from negative selective embossing to create the stampable rectangle space on the pink square lattice embossed cardstock for our sentiment to 'double embossing' as seen here with the Designer Frames with the Elegant Bouquet embossed inside it!

Happy Stampin'

A La Card Monkey Challenge 68

Playing along with the A La Card Monkey this week and having some fun showcasing our awesome 'Pocketful of Posies' Designer Series Paper!

So here is my inspired  card using the above sketch ... this DSP is designed to coordinate awesome with the My Friend Stamp set which I used in the middle strip on Baja Breeze cardstock run through the Square Lattice to create an additional piece of my own designer paper!

The sentiment accent features the Perfect Pennants Die in Not Quite Navy cardstock and the Happy Greetings stamp set from the Summer mini on a piece of Whisper White punched with the 1 3/4" circle punch which was than distressed with our Cutter Kit distressing tool and sponges with Not Quite Navy ink and than I choose a lovely piece of Baja Breeze seam binding to tie it all together!

Happy Stampin'

Designer Framed Elegant Bouquet

Yup - yet another Selective Embossing offering - having so much fun playing with this technique - the color combo is Melon Mambo and Pretty in Pink  with a hint of Wild Wasabi!

The back layer of card is stamped with flowers from Cottage Garden stamp set in Melon Mambo on the Pretty in Pink cardstock which is then run through the Square Lattice emboss folder and a strip of Whisper White attached after it was punched with the Scallop Trim punch.

Then the magic happens ... the Whisper White square was run through the Designer Frame to get our frame and than I reran it through the Elegant Bouquet using selective embossing to place the flowers inside the frame and hand cut around the frame to create the floral accent point on the card but before it was popped up on a couple dimensionals I had some fun with the floral frame...

... by playing with the Versamarker ... I heat embossed the various parts of the frame with different embossing powders ... Silver on the frame, Wild Wasabi on the stems and Melon Mambo flowers and than added a little more bling with some Rhinestones!

Happy Stampin'

Playing with Punches!

Playing with Punches is this months 'Team Challenge' with my upline Liz and our upcoming Team swap is going to also feature playing with punches - so I have been having some fun thinking of ways to use our lovely Stampin' Up punches in different ways.

I will admit that I cased the 'Lovely Lady' concept from the Stampin' Connection website, not sure who belonged to the original idea ... but it looked like so much fun I always wanted to try it out .... so figured why not use it for my Challenge card.

Punch art certainly makes use of lots of punches ... this card features:

Whisper White paper which was run through the Square Lattice emboss folder and punched with the Large Oval and a 1 3/4 circle to create the hat with the now retired Triple Flower punch for the accent on the hat ribbon which is a double punched 1 3/4 circle.

The Scallop Oval punch for the Early Espresso Hair.

The Wedding Dress is made with the Butterfly punch and Whisper White paper which was run through the Elegant Lines embossing folder and spritzed with the Vanilla Shimmer smooch spritz.

The neckline and arms are made with the Full Heart punch in the now retired Blush Blossom paper although we still carry the marker so you could create the blush colored using Whisper White and the marker to sponge the color on.

The gorgeous wedding bouquet also features the now retired Triple Flower punch - however the small flower from the Boho Blossom punch would work equally as well, the Build a Blossom punch for the greenery and is accented with Vanilla Shimmer smooch spritz and some basic pearls!

Finally I wanted a sentiment for the front of the card but did not want to take away from the elegance of the bride .... so used the Tiny Tags and Jewelery punch to create a sentiment 'train' from the back of the dress .... too cute!

Truly a gorgeous shimmery sparkly card in person ... so fun to make that I am going to try making some more and find one that is a little quicker for our swap cause we have to be able to make it in less than 5 minutes and while elegant this one took a wee bit longer to punch and put together than 5 minutes - definitely a labor of love for the Bride to Be!

Happy Stampin'

Just Believe in Designer Frames

Today was my Saturday Stamp a Stack and we had an awesome time together with lot of laughter and stories being shared - hardly seems fair to call it 'work' - but shhh do not tell my spouse cause he thinks it is really hard work ;-)

Here is one of the cards we made - new Designer Frames textured embossing folders are too cute and the In Color's for 2011-12 are a lot of fun to showcase!

This color combo for this card is Calypso Coral with Red Ridinghood and Lucky Limeade and Whisper White. The card front was stamped with the Just Believe stamp set using the Calypso Coral and Lucky Limeade Stamp Write Markers on Whisper White paper and than dry embossed with the Square Lattice Textured Impressions Embossing Folder and again with the new Designer Frames Oval folder using the Selective Embossing technique.

The extra large oval punch was used to punch out the sentiment which fits inside the Designer Frame Oval perfectly!

Thanks for stopping by!
Happy Stampin'

St Patricks Day Hybrid

St Patrick's Day is just around the corner and here is a sample of a card we made at last weekends Stamp a Stack to help celebrate the day!

This card had NO stampin' (gasp I know) but packed a lot of punch instead ... it was still loads of fun to make ... it featured the Square Lattice emboss folder for the background in Wild Wasabi, the large Heart punch in Garden Green for the Shamrock and the rainbow is made up of Real Red, Daffodil Delight, Pumpkin Pie, Marina Mist, Certainly Celery and Concord grape punched with the scallop edge punch!

The sentiment was created in My Digital Studio from the Calandar Basics and the Circle Circus stamp sets in Wild Wasabi and Garden Green colours and than printed out and punched with the 1 3/4 circle punch.

( the glitter paper is not Stampin Up - we have some gorgeous Real Red glitter paper and my fingers are crossed that they choose to sell some more colours in the future)

ETA .. a blog I follow participated in the following Blog Challenge on their blog recently - so I went over to check it out and thought this card would be a perfect one for the challenge - so wanted to share it and am looking forward to new challenges to play along with - love the challenge sites they help me think outside the box!

Big Shot Flowers

Got to say I am really loving playing with the Big Shot ... there are so many 3D flower combination's you can make with the various die sets that the one of kind card combos is almost endless.

This simple card used the Square Lattice impressions embossing folder from the Summer mini, the Birds and Blooms die cut and the Little Leaves die cut from the normal catty... adding a little coordinating ink shadowing around the edges of the punched images really helps to give the flowers a popping sensation on the page ... a really simple card to make that just has some nice WOW factor :)

Plus I just love the colour combination of the purple and yellow ... the new Stampin' up Colour Revolution coming out in the 2010-2011 is going to be AWESOME ... this card is done with the Regals Collection Elegant Eggplant and new Subtles collection So Saffron ... I think they look awesome together!