Birthdays Begin With B #3 -Love & Sympathy CTC#133

Welcome back to another blog hop with the crew from CASE-ing The Catty. Do keep on hopping along, to see what else the crew are sharing. Our challenge this week is to CASE from the NEW Annual Stampin' Up!® catalogue, Love & Sympathy section, from page 86-101. I chose to focus on page 98, for a simple sketch and using Best Birds -again! This card falls within the Love & Sympathy pages, and it's for my youngest, who I do love. All along, I've been trying to find the perfect card for my son, who is a bird fancier (and so is his girlfriend!) Each weekend they seem to go out all over Melbourne, visiting locations where they might sight some elusive species. And the title of this post? Well, I noticed that when I began to make my June birthday cards, all the stamp sets, coincidentally began with 'B'. You can see Beautiful You here, and Bella and Friends here.

Originally I made the two birds pictured above, inked them and everything but it felt 'too pretty'. Maybe it will suit Kirsten better when her big day rolls around. I stamped with grey archival ink as its waterproof and watercolored a more realistic bird. There's a die to cut this one too. This picture used the embossing paste too, and I guess it would have been fun to try that too.

When it came to twine, the burlap ribbon was more to my liking, and it sort of goes with the cross-hatched background stamp. There are a couple of branches on my card, they've been lightly water-coloured too.

Five For All was a 'must buy' for my wish list when the catalogue went live. I don't mind a slightly humorous sentiment, but my husband looked it over and immediately saw '25' and informed me our son isn't 25. He's telling the mother this...! In case you can't read it, it says, "You're not old! You're 25 ....plus shipping and handling." That's pretty funny isn't it?

I'm loving the wood grain paper, and I've ordered a second pack so I don't run out unexpectedly. So many different shades and grains are included in these 6 inch square paper pack. I'm hoping that it is masculine enough, because the colours are still quite soft. You will find heaps of inspiration in the Stampin' Up!® Annual catalogue. I've just received another shipment of catalogues, so if you're in Australia and needing one, let me know. Otherwise, it is available online. You can shop online anytime too.

Next stop along on this hop is Krissy Buck and her adorable project

Happy crafting

Rachel

Bye Bye Birdie CI#11

We are a group of Stampin' Up! demonstrators from all over Australia and New Zealand, the South Pacific. We love using colour challenges to inspire our creativity, and yours. This week the colours are Early Espresso, Marina Mist and Soft Suede. We have also been joined this week by the very talented Juana Ambida who has made an amazing project for this blog hop. Don't forget to use the 'next' button at the end of the post to proceed along the hop.

For my first card I constructed a base using strips of card in the three colours. With the two shades of brown it is quite a masculine look, and perhaps if I hadn't added a lace doiley, it might have remained masculine. Best Birds co-ordinates with a matching framelits set, and I wanted to die cut some blue blossoms to add to the stamped image. The textured blue stamp you can see behind the bird is another great stamp in Best Birds, a very handy addition to my stash.

It is almost hard to believe that these two cards were made with the same colour palette and stamps.

A piece of DSP (designer series paper/patterned paper) with soft clouds was used in the background. Only a narrow border and the sentiments in Early Espresso this time, gives a much softer card.

A little mix of stamping, water colouring and stamped and diecut images to finish off this card.

Next stop on this hop is Denita, make sure you check out her project

Happy Crafting!

Rachel

Best Birds

Best Birds stamp set and matching Birds and Blooms Thinlets made its way to my house last week, while I was still able to order it as a bundle at a 10% discount. That will finish on May 31st, the discount that is, not the stamps or Thinlets. I love the way the thinlets cut out these birds with tiny details (hearts) cut out.

Vintage Leaves were already stamped and die cut for another project but these colours look so fine together, don't you think.

It's a good stamp set with some pretty images and useful sentiments in an elegant font. I'm sure you'll see a lot more of this stamp and framelits over the coming year, and not just on my blog.

Happy crafting everyone,

Rachel