Pastel Love

Sometimes I really struggle for inspiration and sometimes inspiration comes at the craziest of times. My daughter Mia is currently studying Art as part of the option set she chose for GCSE and their current material of choice is watercolour. It was one of her recent pieces of work that inspired this card and the colour choices.

Copyright: Mia Pickard

Whilst I didn’t do watercolour myself, I went with three similar colours to blend a background going for the more subtle pastel type shades. These were applied using the blending brushes from the Mini Catalogue, which allow you to blend onto card much more evenly that daubers or sponges do.

Mia decided to use a black outline for each focal point – the eye. However, I felt I didn’t need that due to the muted shades that I chose for my background. So simply punched out a Basic White heart and popped it up on dimensionals with a die cut sentiment.

My final touch was a few of the pearls from the Hydrangea Suite – gorgeous!

Where do you go when you need inspiration?

Best Wishes,
Suzanne

Colours Used:

Supplies:

Hydrangea Happy Pouch

Stampin’ Up! really do design and make some absolutely gorgeous suites and thanks to the colour families they have, the embellishments and ribbon etc are always the most divine colour ways. The Hydrangea Heaven suite has to be one of the best examples for this in my opinion – I’m a purple fan, so this really floats my boat!

The papers are beautiful designs featuring Hydrangeas, with this pattern in particular grabbing my attention for a more subtle project. Of course, I also included the Clever Clasps which if you don’t look carefully in the Mini Catalogue you may miss entirely!

Isn’t the paper just divine? And I’m so happy about Stampin’ Up! bringing a clasp / clip back into the catalogue. I miss the pegs / clips from previous years as they’re such an easy and quick way to close a bag without struggling to tie a bow.

Did you spot the Clever Clasps in the catalogue?

Best Wishes,
Suzanne

Colours Used:

Measurements:

  • Designer Series Paper = 91/2 x 63/4 inches
  • Basic White scrap

Scoring:

  • Long side = 11/2, 41/2, 6, 9 inches
  • Short side = 11/2 inches

Supplies:

Butterfly Wishes

There are times when I sit in my craft room and I have absolutely no idea what I want to make or have any plan behind the projects I finish up with. This card is a great example of that! When I made this card, all I wanted to do was stamp the gorgeous images from Touch of Ink stamp set and see how I can play with the blending of them and different colour ways.

On a separate thought pattern, I wanted to use the paper from Fine Art as a background on a card but didn’t know where to progress from there. So far, I had two separate ideas and no way forward – or so I thought.

As you can see, in the end I pulled the two ideas together (after my daughter suggested it – credit goes to Mia) and I really happy with the end result. Perhaps I should just let my daughter do the crafting next time?

What do you think?

Best Wishes,
Suzanne

Colours Used:

Supplies:

Come back for these after the 5th January and they will be live!

Halloween Magic

HalloweenMagic_Pic

This year’s Halloween paper is absolutely gorgeous and whilst Halloween is still almost two months away, I find myself using it again and again (you’ll see it make an appearance in my Birthday Party Live Week). For this project, I wanted to showcase the gorgeous bats and the giant label you get as part of the stamps and dies, so a large box was the perfect solution.

The large bat on this project was the first item I used when I received my Mini Catalogue pre-order, the fact that the dies fit around the Designer Series Paper (DSP) patterns is a great added bonus and I love how these bats look when they’re cut out.

I went quite simple with the box design so that the paper and the decoration could take centre stage. The Metallic Mesh ribbon is perfect for this project with its almost spiderweb appearance – but could be a great addition on Christmas projects too.

Finally, a bit of blends colouring on the label brings it all together. The box is large enough to fit numerous treats – perhaps to give to children out trick treating? Or as a table gift at a Halloween party? What do you think? I hope you like it. #

Best Wishes,
Suzanne

Colours Used:

Measurements:

  • Cardstock = 8 x 11 inches.
  • Designer Series Paper = 6 x 9 inches.

Scoring:

  • Base (Cardstock): 2 inches on all four sides.
  • Lid (Designer Series Paper): 1 inch on all four sides.

Supply List: