Around the World on Wednesday--Fun with Basics!

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This month our team is focusing on BASICS—-this can be items with ‘basic’ in the title or crafting basics that are a must have for us. My project, a scrapbook page, combines Basic White as its my go to neutral and a focus on DIES because its very rare that I can make a project of ANY kind without using my Stamp Cut & Emboss Machine.

I also recently just hit a couple of fun milestones—15 years and 500,000 CSV in sales (which is Canadian dollars is over 600,000!) so I wanted to scrapbook a picture of my first meeting/photo with Shelli Gardner at Convention. Remember Convention? Were you ever lucky enough to go? I was blessed enough to go a few times and have such amazing memories!

I am absolutely in LOVE with how this page turned out. It is definitely going on display in my craft room so I can look at it all the time!

The base of my page is Basic White and I also used that for the 5x7 photo mat and all of the clouds. The various clouds came from the Give it a Whirl Dies and the Basic Borders Dies. Both are MUST HAVES if you love the Rainbow of Happiness Bundle. They support this bundle perfectly!

This page might be full of Basic White elements but it is anything but basic if you ask me!

It think it was destiny that my outfit in this page just happened to match the Sunshine & Rainbows DSP, haha! It was actually perfect and the little piece of colored strips on the left is what influenced the colors in the rainbows.

The sentiment “So Happy to Know You” is truly perfect. Over the years I have had the pleasure to meet and visit with Shelli on several occasions. She even came to one of my events in Calgary and we had a lovely phone call when she called to congratulate me on my recent achievements. Her call really affirmed to me the Stampin’ Up! value of “We Care About People First”.

You would never know by her megawatt smile that this picture was taken at the end of a very long day at Convention, there was barely anyone left when I nervously asked her to pose for this picture with me! Of course she said yes with her gorgeous smile!

The sentiment is stamped in Magenta Madness ink and is die cut with the Sweet Hearts Dies (I love when SU adds a great label die into a set) and has my favorite white twine (in truth I rarely make anything without twine. I LOVE IT) and Crinkled Seam Binding Ribbon. Also a craft room must have. Any ribbon in Basic White has unlimited potential because we can color it to match our projects.

I love these Amazing Thanks Dies…add them to cart NOW! Haha! I loved how fresh they looked cut in Basic Black and Vellum. They are a great size for card making and paper crafting! And the phrase is perfect for this page!

I love how the Brilliant Rainbow dies bring this whole page to life with the accent clouds. I love the little rainbow tag above the stamped sentiment and how the pop of color in the bigger rainbow jumps off of the Basic White background. I hope this page inspires you to start your canvas with Basic White and layer in a bit of color. Let your photo guide you with what colors too add onto your project.

Please visit Tricia Butts from the United States who is next on the hop! Thanks so much for joining in with us!

See you next month! We always have unique and fun themes for our hop! And if my page layout inspired you, please click on any images or the Shop with Me tab on the side. Thank you in advance for helping me love what I do!

Color Fusers January 2022

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Hello friends and welcome to another year of the Color Fusers Blog Hop! I really love participating in the Hop because it forces me to look at my SU colors in a new way and experiment with new color combos! The color combos are all submitted by the Hop Team Members. To kick off the new Year, Happy 2022 everyone!, we are playing with Night of Navy, Mint Macaron, Blushing Bride and Soft Suede.

As soon as I saw these colors I knew that I wanted to make a scrapbook page —a January winter theme page. Making this in advance will also hopefully ensure that I get outside in January to do something fun, so I have a couple of cute pictures to add to my page! This might sound ridiculous, but when its -30, trust me, you don’t really want to be outside!

This layout also works perfectly to support a monthly class that I offer, Year in Memories, where we scrapbook each month of the year. At the end you have a complete album of 2022!

I started with a base of Mint Macaron because I felt that it was the color that linked the other 3 together. Soft Suede works perfectly as an accent color, along with Blushing Bride. Night of Navy gets a bit more attention as I chose it for the photo mats. I also decided on vertical pictures, because let’s face it, we take alot of selfies.

Fun Fact: I have over 4,000 selfies on my camera roll. Guess you could say I like myselfie. Hahaha!

 

This page is a mix of recently retired, really retired and new products! Sometimes past products are the perfect fit for our projects so I try not to stress out too much about using them, but I always make sure there is something NEW and CURRENT on my pages too. This way I can discuss all sorts of things during my classes.

The sentiment “Celebrating another year” is actually masked from a larger phrase and is from the stamp set Well Said. This set is retired but I have hung onto it because it has some more unique phrases such as “Time for a New Adventure” which is at the bottom of my page. I thought they were both rather fitting for a January, new year, page.

The Soft Suede half circle is embossed with a retired folder too. Behind the sentiment you see some twine and a snowflake, cut from the Gingerbread dies. All 3 of the Mint Macaron snowflakes were die cut from Basic White card stock and then I ran my Blending Brush across with some Mint Macaron ink. I added my favorite new embellishment, the Iridescent Rhinestone Jewels, to the side.

The top left corner of my page features the Merry Snowflakes stamp set in the background. I mounted the 3 snowflakes from the set onto a block and used it with Mint Macaron ink to stamp across the background of my page.

The Blushing Bride die cut snowflake is from the So Many Snowflakes Dies which are in the Annual Catalogue. Paired up with some new stamps, this is a fun little area of interest! The Brilliant Rainbow Dies supplied the Soft Suede scallop border along my photo mat and I isolated “Happy” from a stamp in the Slim Sayings set, which is a new JJ catalogue release. January can be found in the set Days to Remember which was one of the best new sets in the Annual Catalogue for memory keepers! It isn’t too often that date sets come around!

The bottom little section is my favorite though because I love how “Time for a New Adventure” and 2022 work together! In the spirit of a new year, I would agree! And I am choosing to enter this new year with a positive heart and mind. The date is mounted on a circle from the Sunshine & Rainbows paper which is a free Sale-a-bration choice.

Overall I really love this color combo and I think it completely suites this page design! I can’t wait to add some photos to it! Thank you for joining us on our first Hop of 2022! I hope you will leave a comment and join us for the whole year!

Next up on the Hop is the amazing Bonnie O’Neill—I can’t wait to see what she makes with this color combo! You can also hit the Previous Tab to see Tami’s creation. We are a small group this month so make sure you give us all some love.

Holly Jolly Santa

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I was recently asked to be a guest designer for a super exciting Instagram account that I follow and many of you know and love! This is actually my OUTTAKE project as when they approached me and gave me a list of stamp sets to chose from, I choose this set—or so I thought! haha! Turns out I had my stamp sets mixed up! So this project is now going to be inspiration for you!

The best part is I spent quite a bit of time thinking about this card and the design, so I cannot let it go to waste! This was actually the first time I broke the seal on the Picture This Dies even though I have had them since June! Does that ever happen to you? You buy something and then get distracted from using it?

Well I do LOVE how this project came out in the end. I tried to create 3 little panels that felt unique. The base of the card is my favorite color Coastal Cabana. The first layer is black and then a layer of Basic White was added in after another layer of Coastal Cabana was die cut with the Picture This Die.

In the first panel I stamped the little star from the Be Jolly stamp set on the Basic White layer using Smoky Slate ink. My first Santa is stamped with Momento Ink and colored with the Stampin’ Blends markers in Real Red, Ivory, Basic Black and Petal Pink. I use the Petal Pink chubby tip to add a dot too each of Santa’s cheeks for a hit of rosy. I also use the light Smoky Slate Stampin’ Blend to add detail to his beard and hat pom pom.

I love how the Picture This Dies leave a stitched detail behind. And do throw away all the little bits that get cut out, those can definitely be used on a new project!

I like to add details to my sentiments so for this project I added a little bitty scalloped detail underneath the “A Merry Hello” by using a die from the Stitched So Sweetly Dies and a bit of white twine from the Bakers Twine Essentials Pack!

You can see just a hint of the bottom panel—I ran it though the Star-Crossed Embossing Folder, focusing just on the star half of the folder. I added a ton of Coastal Cabana Playing with Patterns Resin Dots to my card to play up the fun and whimsy feel! This Santa is colored with the same Stampin’ Blends and both are hand trimmed with paper snips to tuck into the little panels.

So even though this card is my OUTTAKE I think its pretty damn cute! And I am wondering why the heck it took me so long to use the Picture This Die set! You will definitely be seeing it in the future! I hope everyone has a merry day and if you are inspired to create your own project, please consider shopping my store if you live in Canada!


Comments are always welcome and appreciated!

Happy 50th Anniversary!

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Did you know that can make Custom Cards? It is a service that I offer if you do need an extra special project! I have experience designing custom wedding invites, baby shower invites and even anniversary cards like this extra special one I made for my friends parents!

The only request my friend had was that I used some gold on this special card for her parents. I incorporated it on the 50 using Gold Foil paper and on the inside layer with the Shimmery Gold Vellum. Because the rest was left to me I decided to use brand new upcoming products with a bunch of favorites and retired products.

The star of this card though is the flower from the Blessings of Home stamp set. This set will be released in the upcoming January-June catalogue and I know you will love it as much as I have already! I colored this in using ink pads and a Water Painter and my lazy watercoloring technique. The stamp was stamped using Basic Grey ink in place of traditional black to give it a bit of a softer touch.

The sentiment is from a favorite retired stamp set of mine, Many Mates and is punched using the Label Me Fancy punch. I added a little bit of gold thread behind the sentiment. The card is a “fun fold” and is elegantly tied together with some of the White Crinkled Seam Binding Ribbon.

I added an extra panel of Basic White card stock to the front panel of the card. The fun flap is in Soft Seafoam card stock and the flap part was run through the Timeworn Type 3D Embossing folder to a add a subtle bit of textrure.

When you open the card you see a gorgeous panel of Shimmery Gold Vellum which I just love. You can see a tiny bit of a scalloped edge along the fun fold panel. I cut this with a die from the Peony Dies.

I stamped another floral image from the Blessings of Home stamp set and colored it with the same technique as the front. “Congratulations” is from the stamp set Inspired Thoughts in the Annual Catalogue. I added a few retired little pearls from the Share What You Love collection to complete this project.

I was told my friends parents absolutely loved their card and I was so happy to create it for them!

If you are ever in need of something extra special, please reach out to me, I would love to design and create something for you too!

Color Fusers November 2021

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Hello friends! Wow, did October ever go by quickly! Its now November 1st and officially Christmas season. Fall and halloween are dead, bring on the holiday! Although that is NOT what I am sharing with you today! Our color combo this month could be viewed as a tricky one as the 4 tones are all quick dark, however I had the best pictures to work with this color theme!

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This month our crafty group is creating projects with Merry Merlot, Misty Moonlight, Cinnamon Cider and Early Espresso. Back in July I had a Besties Photo shoot with two of my long time friends and we did a little picnic afterwards. The picnic set up totally reminded me of Misty Moonlight and a pattern from the In Good Taste Designer Series stack so I used that as my inspiration to design this page.

These are two of my besties I met while in University! We hit things off working at a restaurant together. We have actually not all lived in the same city for over 20 years but despite the distance I know they would have my back always and no matter what #friendsforever

These are two of my besties I met while in University! We hit things off working at a restaurant together. We have actually not all lived in the same city for over 20 years but despite the distance I know they would have my back always and no matter what #friendsforever

I started with a 12x12 in Misty Moonlight and on the top half of the page I stamped the large flowers from the Blossoms in Bloom stamp set. I actually love this stamp set as I love a good image that can fill in space. I stamped it in the same ink color for a tone on tone look.

The bottom of my page features the In Good Taste DSP with a couple of strips of Cinnamon Cider DSP from the retired In Color 6x6 stacks (last years design). Adding this strip felt like a natural way to incorporate this color and create division between the two sections of my page.

Are you an F Bomb kind of mom? Hahaha, we are and my friend had these cups designed especially for us!

Are you an F Bomb kind of mom? Hahaha, we are and my friend had these cups designed especially for us!

 

I used Early Espresso card stock as my photo mats and I ran them both through the Timber 3D Embossing Folder for a subtle effect.

It was easy to add in Merry Merlot by die cutting some flowers from the Pierced Blooms Dies. This is one of my favorite die sets in the Annual Catalogue!

I added some retired In Color Enamel Dots and the sentiment is from the Blossoms in Bloom stamp set.

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You can find the sentiment “Friends Forever” in the Lighthearted Lines stamp set. NOTE: Friends Forever is part of a phrase and l used my Paper Snips to do some Stampin’ surgery on this rubber stamp as I really wanted to use this part of the phrase all on its own.

The label is also a die from the Pierced Blooms Dies and I added a bit of retired Cinnamon Cider ribbon behind and some gold thread.

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I am so pleased with how this page turned out using this color combination! I cannot wait to see what the other girls create this month! Please visit everyone’s blogs and share some love and comments! And if you don’t follow me on Instagram you can find me @stampwithbrenda

You can go backwards to see what Melissa has created and forwards to see what Melanie has designed! I know they will both wow you with their creativity!

Have an awesome November and see you next month! If you live in Canada and are looking for some creative inspiration I would love you to stamp with me! Please reach out at any time!