It is always a thrill when your card is picked amongst the best on a challenge blog, so it was a little bit exciting to see my card picked at Friday Mashup. Bree was very kind with her comments, but I'd like to thank Friday Mashup for hosting such great challenges, which keep us all creating.

The original post was just a week ago, and you can check it out here. The new Botanical Gardens Suite in the next Stampin' Up!® Occasions Catalogue was the winner here, the flowers are GORGEOUS! You can request the catalogue now, and buying commences January 3rd, 2016.

Cheers, Rachel

Tropical Flowers FM235

An advantage of going to Stampin' Up!® OnStage is getting to try out new stamps and dies, and even getting to use them. I popped the Botanicals Gardens Suite onto my pre-order, purely for these flowers. Since I tidied up my cardstock last weekend, I've had lots of small scraps in a rainbow of colours to die cut the various flowers leaves and stamen from.There are six different leaves, six flowers and three types of stamen, so there's heaps of scope for creativity. There will be a bundle with stamps, framelit dies and Design Series Paper at 15% off. It takes up the middle page of the NEW Holiday Catalogue.




This sketch at Friday Mashup was perfect for what I had in mind, although the circle might have ended up a little larger than I'd planned! There is an absolute riot of colours in the blooms to match the tropical leafy background.

The sentiment is a new one too from a stamp that was given to everyone at OnStage. You'll be able to get your hands on Enjoy The Little Things in early January. It fits within the Washi Label Punch dimensions, a fun way to highlight it. Let me know if you'd like to receive a copy of the New Stampin' Up!® Holiday Catalogue, I'll be ordering my supplies soon.

It has been fun to have a little time out this evening,
Cheers, Rachel

Woo Hoo! Cake FM119

What a great challenge from Heidi at Friday Mash-up! A lovely sketch and "use your favourite NEW stamp set" - too easy! Well, that's not to say I'll be one of the picks, but I had a lovely relaxing time putting together two favourites. I have also entered the Seize the Birthday Anything Goes challenge which runs for a WHOLE MONTH and Sunny Challenges & Creations, which also runs for a while.

I discovered the other day how nicely Rich Razzleberry and Island Indigo go together, and when I saw the strip across the bottom, I wanted to use one of the stamps from Six-sided Sampler with my Stamp-a-ma-jig. I made up the templates before my class last Friday night, and the ladies had a lot of success, despite one of them never having used the Stamp-a-ma-jig before. I decided to stick to one stamp only, and thought the diagonal stripe could be very effective. What do you think?

Another favourite that I seem to be using such a lot at the moment is the single stamp Woo Hoo! I love scribbling a little of the Stampin' Write Marker onto a plastic lid and then choosing what I'll colour - a little or a lot? The Aqua Painter makes this fun and so easy, I don't even use Stazon, just the regular black stamp pad.

I used the two colours to mount the Woo Hoo! stamp and just the Rich Razzleberry for the main panel because it was going to be on an Island Indigo base. I think it has turned out to be quite masculine.
Don't forget that the Six-sided Sampler comes with a matching punch, making crafting with it even better.

Back to work tomorrow but I still have a few more cards ready to share so look out for more posts....

Rachel