Lovely Inside CI#13

Colour INKspiration is a group of Stampin' Up! demonstrators from the South Pacific, all through Australia and New Zealand. We love to get together for these colour challenges, to inspire each other, and you, to create. We love it when you join in with our challenges to share your work and all you need is a Facebook presence. You can link in here on Facebook.

Our colours this week are Sweet Sugarplum, Wild Wasabi, Lemon Lime Twist and Fresh Fig. These seemed a tricky combination for me, so I made two cards, picked one of them and rustled up a matching gift bag with the Gift Bag Punch Board, I know you can buy these little gift bags for about $2 at the discount chains, but do they match with the card? You can even potentionally match the gift to the bag to the card, as my lovely crew mate Kelly Kent does so frequently.

You'll be pleased to know, these two projects are beginners level. Yes, truly they are. After you've followed the instructions printed on the Gift Bag Punch Board to make a couple of these bags, you'll be able to make them from memory. I used a piece of card 11 inches by 6 inches, and a sheet of card costs approximately 58 cents in Australia. Then you stamp and use a small amount of strong adhesive to finish it off. Why wouldn't you want to make your own? You can use pattern paper too, again to totally co-ordinate.

The key to a good-looking card or other paper-crafting project is pecise cutting. That means it needs to be straight. The measurements need to be accurate and you probably need guidelines on your cutting tool to make sure the corners are exactly 90°. A lot of this comes down to practise, but owning a great paper trimmer like this one by Stampin' Up!® will help considerably too. As well as a cutting blade, there is a scoring blade, and you can buy replacement blades and scorers through my online shop as well.

This is a slightly 'stepped-up ' version of the card. The background paper is actually DSP (designer series paper) called Color Theory. The flowers were stamped on thick whisper white card before cutting out, as were the leaves. There are a couple of strips of card. to 'ground' the work. I've used a big and bold srntiment this time, stamped in Wild Wasabi.
Three is a magic number in crafting, so there are three bursts of colour (flowers) and three splodges (leaves). There's a mix of the colours and Fresh Fig stamped twice, one full strength, one was second generation stamping.

I used a die from the Layering Circles Thinlets, so the edge wouldn't be straight, then snipped around with paper snips. I did have thoughts of adding buttons for flower centres, but wasn't keen on the way it looked, plus we don't have any current ones to suit.

Here are both cards and the small gift bag, all grouped together.
Next your visiting Bronwyn Eastley in Tasmania,

Happy crafting

Rachel