Beautiful Bears

You can have so much fun with Bear Hug stamps and framelits. The first card has a turquoise Sunburst layed on top of the soft sky base.  The bear was stamped on one side of the card, before cutting out with the framelit, and stamping again on the back. This is so her arms can be folded to hold onto the four, from Number of Years. Yes, there was a lot of die cutting on this card, but once it was done, it was quite easy to put it all together. These balloons are from Balloon Builders, and they are actually punched out with the Balloon Bouquet Punch.

The bear painting his self-portrait also uses the easel from Painters Palette, a tree from Sheltering Tree and clouds and grass are also from Painters Palette. It is just a fun idea I had, and I haven't added a sentiment or posted it off to anyone yet.

Don't forget, if you're making an order through my online shop, it will ask for the HOSTESS Code before you check out. August 21st - Spetember 20th it is P2KYFUU9

Cheers, Rachel

Botanical Art

I'm going to be absent on holiday for just a little while but have left a few posts preloaded to give you something pretty and new to look at if you happen to pop by. Maybe this card, using Painters Palette and the glorious Botanical Blooms might give you a tiny hint of where I've headed to, with my guy.

It is warm.....and tropical.......with palm trees......and hibiscus.....

I did love the way this card came together, using the rather bright new InColors along with an old fave, Rose Red. A strip of Playful Palette designer series paper stack helps to tie many of the colours together.

Even though I'm away, my online shop is open any time of the day or night. Stampin' Up! do a great job of updating the website with current specials, so check in any time. When you place an order and use the current HOSTESS code, P2KYFUU9 you will receive a small gift in the post from me.

Cheers, Rachel

Stampin' Up! Catalogue Launch

This post might be a little bit picture heavy, but I'm so glad that I remembered to pick up my camera 10 minutes before the guests arrived and grabbed some photos of the display. It ended up being too busy during my party and I didn't remember later.
A few weeks before, I sent an invitation to my Catty Launch. It was mainly printed on the computer using a colour similar to Melon Mambo, then stamped with 'Time To Party' from Confetti Celebration. I stamped my name and address at the bottom. On the reverse I used DSP from It's My Party paper stack. Next I added a Botanicals leaf, a strip of the gold glitter washi tape from SALE-A-Bration, and a hand cut flamingo from Pop Of Paradise. At the Catty Launch I showed them how to turn their invitation into a birthday card.

Swirly Bird and the Swirly Scribbles Framelits were the first things on my pre-order. There have been so many brilliant cards made using this particular bundle, so I had a lot of different samples to share. It is perfect for all sorts of things, I'd made kites, yachts, owls and flowers. Pinterest is a great source of inspiration.

The other stamp set I featured was Pop Of Paradise, and I was lucky enough to find this giant paper pineapple in a party store, to tie in with the pineapples I'd embossed in copper or stamped. A little disappointing that my blow-up pink flamingo is still in transit and missed the party!

The make & take was a combination of Swirly Scribbles Framelits and Pop Of Paradise with Timeless Textures in the background. Most of the ladies used my choice of Dapper Denim and Peekaboo Peach, but one guest used Emerald Envy and Flirty Flamingo which was gorgeous too. They loved the leaves from Pop Of Paradise and found it hard to believe they weren't cut out.

The second make & take was a card of their choice from the Oh Happy Day card kit. We opened it together, and I love the bright colours. I know that this kit is on a couple of wish lists.

The Swirly Bird theme continued with the goodie bag and tag and I managed to use all the new InColors. Inside there was a card from each of the 5 new colours, a thank you card (blank for them to use for someone else) and some die cut pieces from various sets, some pieces of DSP, and they could add their make & take cards.

This is the nicest combination of In Colors we have had. I usually have reservations about one or two of the colours but I love the whole lot here. We were given pieces of card at Onstage and punched the hearts out for our Colour Chart, but I couldn't throw out these pieces! Seemed a good idea to thread the ribbon through so everyone could see how nicely they match.

 The Affectionately Yours Suite on page 44  mainly features the In Colors from last year, so I punched the card the same as this year's. I don't have any current ribbon, the lace from last year has officially retired, and has been replaced with a striped ribbon, which should be delivered to me next week.

My first shaker card. This is so much easier now that Stampin' Up! have Foam adhesive strips #141825 on page 182 of the catalogue along with all the other adhesives. Painter's Palette is ideal for this, as the blackboard fits the Layering Squares Framelits to make it extra-easy to punch out the window.


You can shop anytime in my online store and if you remember to use the HOSTESS Code ZGGAABEE you will earn a small gift from me.


If you have your catalogue, and you love everything and want it all, you might be interested in the attractive joining offer that Stampin' Up!® are offering for June 1st -30th. It will be slightly different in the different markets, but for those of us in Australia it is the usual, choose $235.00 of products of your choice, pay $169.00, no strings attached, no shipping to pay. BUT, the extra special thing for June is you also get to choose 2 extra stamp sets, up to a value of $178.00, and no extra to pay. Isn't that huge? It certainly is the way to afford those big sets with lots of sentiments like Better Together on page 83 or Flourishing Phrases on page 49, both $85.00 in wood mount. Guy Greetings is another quite expensive, but useful set you might want to add to your collection instead, just saying....

I'd love you to join my team, if you live in Australia and I will support and encourage you in your Stampin' Up!® journey, whichever way you want to do it. Most of my current team are hobby demonstrators. Some of them join me for events like today, and get a buzz out of helping the other guests, and others are quite happy to enjoy Stampin' Up!® products, meeting their minimums and not socialising. You might want to earn extra money from your hobby, and I can advise you on how to do that too.
Have a think about it, email me if you need extra information.

Cheers, Rachel

Going Global Playfully CTC#77

Hello again, so glad you've dropped by to check out what's happening at CASE-ing The Catty. This week the assignment is to CASE Going Global, pages 38-39. It was exciting to see this great suite of products introduced to us by Stampin' Up!®, but unfortunately this masculine set is NOT carrying over into the Annual Catty. If you have men to make cards for, it might be a good idea to take one last look at pages 38-39 to see if you need the stamp set, paper stack or embossing folder.

I decided to share some of the NEW papers coming in the Annual Catalogue (1st June is the big day), but use the Going Global stamps. The design is based on the Black card on the left, above. The paper  I've used is from a Designer Series Paper Stack, 6 inches square, called Playful Palette. It co-ordinates with four of the New InColors, and goes really well with a stamp set called Painter's Palette. I've been having so much fun with these unusual colours & patterns, I've nearly used half the pack already!! 

My friend Kathryn Mangelsdorf was one of the designers who used Painter's Palette for display items at Stampin' Up!® Sydney Onstage last month, and she inspired me so much, I ordered the stamp set straight away. Her name will link you to the blog where Kathryn shares her projects. No doubt you'll meet her as you proceed around this blog hop too. For my Going Global card, I cased a very similar one on page 38, and changed the paper, the ink colour is the NEW Emerald Envy. Instead of ribbon, I used a silver foil banner.

Not content with that, I busted open another 12" X 12" pack of DSP, this one is Affectionately Yours, and it is bright and fresh, in new InColors plus some of last years like Watermelon Wonder and Cucumber Crush. I took two sheets, and cut 2 pieces 5 inches by 3½ inches from each, flipped one and used coordinating card for the sentiment strip, and behind the DSP. There's the two colours I mentioned earlier, and NEW Flirty Flamingo, plus So Saffron for the last one. That piece had so many possible accents, so I just chose something that matched the other shades. I've embossed a piece of Crumb Cake with one of a pair of folders which is part of that range also. I love this folder because there is space for stamping of a banner between the two sprays of flowers. The other embossing folder is very cute too, a couple of flowers and leaves, and the embossing is not at all subtle.

Don't forget to hop around to see what magic Monique has to share with us, or pop back to Rebecca

Cheers, Rachel

May Hostess Code - ZGGAABEE