Seventy Birthday Wishes CTC #137

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, Artistic Expressions pages 132 - 181. I have a lot of stamps from this section, but so far not this one right at the start of the pages. You may have arrived here from Kelly Kent, do make sure you hop around to see what all the crew are sharing from the Stampin' Up!® Annual Catalogue.

I've CASEd the bottom left card, the one with the Stampin' Up! insignia partly covering it. I've taken artistic liscence with it, as we are inclined to do, but some basic design similarities are echoed. The new Ruffled 3D Dynamic TIEF was my choice for the back ground. The birthday sentiment, from Happiest Of Days was stamped toward the bottom of the white card, which was trimmed to size. I wanted maximum exposure of the gorgeous textured background. The sample also had a smaller panel to show off more background.

Since the sentiment says 'birthday wishes' I could see no reason not to simply place the copper foil '70' above it, and there you have '70 birthday wishes'. If you own a Big Shot, an essential purchase is the Large Number Framelits. The leafy swirl and small flower are all part of the sentiment, and I coloured them lightly with an aqua painter and some ink in the lid of my ink pads. The tiny leaves were coloured with a quick stroke of the Stampin' Writer - so easy! The larger flower stamp is a single stamp, which seemed to balance the composition. Instead of the folded ribbon behind the art piece, a copper foil piece from the Swirly Scribbles Thinlets was cut, again on the Big Shot.

Inside has been finished with a layer of Blackberry Bliss (retired) card, a layer .5cm smaller of Petal Garden DSPS, one of the packs with 48 6" X 6" squares of pattern paper. Then another smaller square of Whisper White with another sentiment from Happiest Of Days.

Another quick look at the inside to see how the Rich Razzleberry flowers tie in with the base of the card. I love the 'pop' of Pool Party, to give it a lift. This card will be needed next weekend, but I'm pretty certain that it is safe to share it here.

Now it's time to hop off to Megan Lenske

Happy crafting, Rachel

Dragonfly Dreaming - New From Stampin' Up!® Occasions Catalogue

It is hard to say how much birthday love you receive when your special day falls after Christmas and before New Year. It is sort of the "Black Hole" of birthdays I'd imagine. That's why I made an effort to go all out to make something special for a lovely lady in that situation.
It just so happens that this card has something old(er), something new, something borrowed and something blue. Old are two of the stamp sets I used, Pop of Paradise  and Gorgeous Grunge. New is the Detailed Dragonfly Thinlet dies, and a little older, but not that much, Swirly Scribbles Thinlets.  Something borrowed, well, my initial inspiration probably has been borrowed from somewhere else, since there aren't really many original ideas floating around these days and the something blue is the little bit of blue appearing on the row of watercoloured dragonflies diecut after the paper dried. Just for fun, there is Wink of Stella, clear and gold splattered about, and some rhinestones as well.

Hope you had a lovely birthday, Deb!
Cheers, Rachel

Project Life & Kits CTC90

At CASE-ing The Catty this week we are CASE-ing either Project Life or Kits. You may have come from our guest designer, Fiona Cobbin, but if not, make sure that you visit her and leave a comment. I'm sharing a kit, because they are good value and easy to use. These cards are from Oh Happy Day featured on page 6 of the Annual catalogue. I ordered the kit with my pre-order, and held off opening it until my catalogue launch on June 4th. I wanted the ladies to experience the joy of unpacking a box filled with nearly everything needed to make 20 cards. There are cards, envelopes embellishments, twine, dimensionals, an ink spot, stamp block and 13 photopolymer stamps! You might need some snips to cut the twine, and perhaps another adhesive such as Snail or Tombow Multi purpose glue. 

It all comes in a lovely box, which helps you keep your project all together. One of the Make and Takes at my Catty Launch was a card of their choice from the box, and when I do something like this for a class, I often sort the pieces out beforehand and pop them in a sellophane bag. Sometimes it can be a little confusing getting the right pieces for each card, but it really doesn't matter too much. Nothing to stop you changing things up a little, or a lot if you like. 

These two from the kit, which I made up, are fairly close to the samples on the instruction sheet. For the one on the left, I stamped 'Happy Birthday' from Happy Happenings because there wasn't a suitable birthday sentiment that fitted the label. 'Party Time' didn't seem all that good when she was having a very low-key celebration. The card on the right has had the direction of the banners changed along with the position of the gold heart. These card kits are reasonably priced for all that you get. Watercolor Wishes is on the next page with the same inclusions and they both retail for $61.00 AU. 

They are a great gift for a crafty friend or for yourself so that you can whip up a card quickly for any event and you can still use the stamps after all the cards have been used up. I used my favourite stamp from  Watercolor Wishes. It really seems to suit the mood of the Swirly Scribbles Framelits and Swirly Bird stamp set, don't you think?

Now it is time to head over to sweet Krissy to see what she has to share this week.

Cheers, Rachel

Stamping and Chatting

The South'n Stampers are a team of delightful women who love to get together for a little bit of stamping. Today they joined me for lunch, a pot of soup on this freezing cold and windy winters day. We'd all made cake. so there were plenty of sweet treats to go with a cuppa, and lots of laughter too. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo to share, but I do have some photos of the cards we made. This is a bit different from a class, for one thing, I get to sit down and stamp too!

I had prepared this card, CASEd from another demonstrator who doesn't blog very often, but shares in our closed FB demonstrator group. We liked the way the scene is surrounded by the Swirly Scribbles Framelit piece, and what's not to love about Wetlands? Gorgeous Grunge provided a vital part of this scene too, and I knew buying the champagne Glass Glitter, only $2.78 on the clearance rack would be a good move. It is perfect inside the shaker, almost a sandy colour.

I pulled out the Foxy Friends bundle and some ink and cards, and let everyone decide which they wanted to make. This is such a cute set, and the animals seem to change personality with a change in the tilt of the head. I thought the SAB stamp set Party Pants had some really cute sentiments, and the girls agreed, not necesarily going with my choice. The little sign with three hearts is from Foxy Friends an is easily hand cut. Again, Word Bubbles Framelits are in the Clearance Rack for $25.79 and you can use a lot of different sentiments inside them. This idea began with some cards I saw by Kelly Kent, in WA.

I've been sorting in my craft room and found a pack I was given at Convention some years ago, using one of the Ronald McDonald stamps, which I've decided to hang onto a little longer. There was twine and banners and labels to stamp on, and I just had to supply more notecards to go around. I hope you can see what fun it is being part of a Stampin' Up!® team, and to top it off, you get all your craft supplies at 20% discount.

Get in touch if you live in Australia, and have thought of joining Stampin' Up!®. If you live close enough, maybe you will be at our next team gathering.

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