Early Espresso Perched in a Tree Christmas Card

Early Espresso Perched in a Tree Christmas Card

Welcome to week twenty two of our Art With Heart 2023-24 Colour Creations blog hop! This week we are showcasing Early Espresso, a a rich dark brown from the neutrals family.

Early Espresso is a wonderful neutral that really makes other colours pop. It’s also fabulous for wood and nature themed cards, like the Christmas card I’ve made for this week’s hop.

The bird and the branch stamp are from the “Perched in a Tree” stamp set, stamped in Early Espresso ink as is the “Let Heaven and Nature Sing ” sentiment. With this sentiment I just had to use the Merry Melody embossing folder too!

The bird and tree trunk were then die cut using the coordinating Aspen Tree Dies.

I coloured the bird and the tree branch using watercolour pencils, then blended the colouring in with a blender pen to make the colours smooth.

The Old Olive cardstock foliage is created using one section of the Christmas Pinecone Dies and the final touches are a bow of linen thread and a few music notes from the Loose Holly Gems & Sequins.

Now it’s time to hop on over to our next participant, the lovely Kate Morgan – I can’t wait to see what Kate has made this week!

If at any time you find a broken link, you can find the complete list of all participants below.

Kate Morgan   

Andrea Sargent  

Rachel Palmieri

Di Furniss

Christine Blain

Theresa Gerrard

Sharon Davern

Catherine Proctor – you are here!

Next Wednesday, 5th October, we’ll be back showcasing Flirty Flamingo or you can join us on Monday night for some Christmas inspiration.

I hope you can join us then.



Early Espresso Christmas Pines Card – Week 18 AWH Colour Creations

Early Espresso Christmas Pines Card – Week 18 AWH Colour Creations

Welcome to week eighteen of our Art With Heart 2022-23 Colour Creations blog hop!

This is a weekly blog hop where we showcase the stunning range of Stampin’ Up! colours in alphabetical order over 12 months and this week we are featuring Early Espresso, the darkest of our neutrals family.

Early Espresso is such a dark colour I normally only use a little of it to make trees, wood and branches, however, for this card I decided to totally embrace this deep rich brown colour, using it with the darkest of the Brushed Metallic Cardstock to create a plethora of pine cones for my monochromatic card.

I seem to be permanently on a default button that is set to using Basic White and I always forget to use Very Vanilla, but not this week!

This card was super quick to make because the Early Espresso layer and the Brushed Metallic Cardstock layer are each cut using these two enormous dies in the Christmas Pinecones dies.

The Early Espresso faux suede trim is threaded through a Seasonal Label Dies stamped with the “Merry Christmas” sentiment from Christmas to Remember Stamp Set and embellished with a Natural Woven Ribbon bow.

Although it doesn’t say it on the Stampin’ Up! website, this ribbon is actually Very Vanilla.

With all the foil and the dark colours this was a super hard card to photograph, however, if you look closely you can see the Very Vanilla Classic Matte Dots that finish my Early Espresso card off.

Now it’s time to hop on over to our next participant, the lovely Michele Taylor – I can’t wait to see what Michele has made this week!

If at any time you find a broken link, you can find the complete list of all participants below.

Michele Taylor

Andrea Sargent

Rachel Palmieri  

Tina Gillespie  

Kate Morgan  

Rosa Leyden

Theresa Gerrard

Di Furniss

Kathryn Ruddick

Christine Blain

Catherine Proctor – you are here!

If you live in Australia, you can find and purchase these products in my Stampin’ Up! Online Store or by clicking on the images below.

Next Wednesday we will be showcasing one of the 2021-23 InColors, Evening Evergreen.

Wherever you are in the world, stay safe, stay calm … and keep on crafting xxx

Cath xx



Art With Heart Colour Creations Showcase: Week 15 Early Espresso

Art With Heart Colour Creations Showcase: Week 15 Early Espresso

Welcome to week fifteen of our 2020-2021 Art With Heart Colour Creations Showcase.

Each week various members of our Art With Heart Colour Creations team will be bringing you weekly colour inspiration as we showcase our range of over 50 beautiful Stampin’ Up! colours in alphabetical order.

Week 15 – Early Espresso

I actually made this special card in July for my brother’s 50th birthday but I waited until tonight to share it with you because it features the rich dark chocolate brown of Early Espresso…a colour that is just perfect for male cards.

I love using Early Espresso with other neutral colours and especially with foils – Early Espresso really makes foils pop. For my card today I’ve paired Early Espresso with Crumb Cake, Brass Foil, Whisper White and just a touch of Misty Moonlight.

I wanted to make a birthday card that moved for my brother because he used to be an engineer but I couldn’t find a pattern for a combined spinner and triple cube card so I designed one myself.

This 30 second video shows you how my double spinner triple cube pop-up card goes from lying flat in an envelope to popping up with spinning globes – it’s such a cool card to make if you love cards that move, like I do!

Here’s a close up of what the double spinner triple cube pop-up card looks like lying flat to slip inside an envelope.

And here’s how to make the card.

Triple Cube Instructions

Use your trimmer to score an A4 piece of Crumb Cake card stock at 7cm, 14cm, 21cm and 28cm and then cut across the A4 sheet at 7cm along the 21cm side as shown in photo above.

Trim another A4 piece of Crumb Cake card stock at 7cm x 29.7cm and score at 7cm, 14cm, 21cm and 28cm (this piece is identical to the smaller rectangle in the photo above).

You will now have one larger 14cm x 29.7cm rectangle and two smaller 7cm x 29.7cm pieces. Bevel the side flap of all three rectangle pieces and adhere Tear & Tape to the beveled edges.

Double Spinner Instructions

Create the holes for the two spinner mechanisms by cutting two 7x7cm squares of Crumb Cake card stock and laying them over the top of the two centre panels of the largest rectangle. Use a layering circle die in the centre of the 7cm square pieces to cut through both layers of card stock.

Stamp four globes in Early Espresso onto Whisper White card stock – two of each side of the world. Die cut these four globe pieces with the matching circle die. Use a sponge dauber to gently shade some Misty Moonlight ink onto the globes.

Carefully lay a strip of Tear & Tape from the north pole to the south pole on two of the globes and lay a piece of gold trim (from the Forever Greenery trim pack) along the Tear & Tape. Glue the other side of the globe together – you will now have two complete double-sided globes.

Align the globes onto the card base and glue the 7x7cm square of Crumb Cake to the inside of the card base to hold the spinner globes in place as shown in the photo below. Cut off the excess gold trim.

Double Spinner Triple Cube Pop-up Card Assembly and Decoration

Fold the large cube card base and the two smaller cube bases, closing them into cube shapes by removing the Tear & Tape to adhere the sides of the cubes together.

Use multipurpose glue or Tear & Tape to attach the two smaller cubes to the bottom front of the larger spinner cube base as shown below.

Die cut six 6.5 x 6.5cm squares of Early Espresso card stock and attach to the outer squares of the two smaller cubes. Decorate with sentiments of your choice – I’ve stamped my sentiments in Early Espresso onto Whisper White card stock.

Other decorations on the spinner cube include brass foil circles die cut using the layering circle dies, squares of the World of Good DSP and “Happy 50th birthday” greeting die cut from brass foil with the Well Written dies and the Playful Alphabet Dies.

The back side of my card has Whisper White panels to write a message on and more globes die cut using the World Map dies.

Finally, I used another sheet of the World of Good DSP to make a simple co-ordinating envelope.

I can’t wait to see what the rest of the Art With Heart team have created with Early Espresso today. Click on the links below to see what they’ve made.

  1. Kate Morgan
  2. Vicki Boucher
  3. Sujatha Harding
  4. Kathryn Ruddick
  5. Michele Taylor
  6. Ros Davidson
  7. Rachel Woollard
  8. Tina Gillespie
  9. Judy May
  10. Christine Blain
  11. Theresa Gerrard
  12. Caroline Manwaring
  13. Diane Furniss
  14. Sharon Davern
  15. Andrea Sargent

Next Wednesday we’ll be showcasing one of the Brights family: Flirty Flamingo. We hope you can join us all then.

To purchase any of the products featured in today’s post, simply contact your Stampin’ Up! demonstrator, any of the ladies in the AWH Colour Creations Showcase or click on the product links below.

Product List

If you’d like me to post you your very own copy of the August – December 2020 Mini Catalogue, the 2020-21 Stampin Up! Annual Catalogue, the 2020-21 Beginners Brochure, or to simply find out about more about Stampin’ Up! contact me.

In the meantime, wherever you are in the world, stay safe, stay calm…and keep on crafting xxx

Art With Heart Colour Creations Blog Hop: Week 16 Early Espresso

Art With Heart Colour Creations Blog Hop: Week 16 Early Espresso

Welcome to week 16 of the Art With Heart Colour Creations Blog Hop!

This week we are showcasing one of the neutrals: Early Espresso.

Early Espresso is a colour I don’t use a lot because it is so strong, but it is perfectly suited to one of my favourite stamp set bundles from the annual catalogue, the Rooted in Nature bundle.

For my project today I didn’t use any of the framelits, I just used the stamp set, and my card was made using two other colours that work beautifully with Early Espresso: Crumb Cake and Very Vanilla.

I was inspired to make this card after seeing a similar one on Pinterest, but I didn’t save the image and I can’t find it now to credit the original designer of the card on which I’ve based my design.

The card base is Very Vanilla cardstock onto which I’ve mounted some Early Espresso cardstock. The tree and sentiment are both from Rooted in Nature, stamped in Early Espresso ink onto Very Vanilla cardstock, but can you guess how I stamped the Crumb Cake ink square that the tree sits inside?

It’s simply one of the Stampin’ Up! acrylic blocks dipped directly onto the Crumb Cake ink pad…I love the cool textured effect this gives to the card. This is definitely a technique I’m going to be using again!

My final touch is some linen thread wrapped around the card and tied into a bow. I deliberately didn’t add any more embellishments because I wanted to keep this card very masculine, simple and clean.

To see what the rest of the team have made click on the links below. 

Ros Davidson

Kate Morgan

Diane Furniss

Caroline Manwarring

Sue Madex

Tina Gillespie

Claire Daly

Catherine Proctor ⇐you are here

Thanks for hopping along with us today. To purchase any of the products I used in this project you can shop with me here. Or if you’d like me to post you your very own copy of the 2018-2019 annual catalogue or find out about more about Stampin’ Up! contact me.

Next Tuesday we’ll be showcasing a gorgeous bright colour: Flirty Flamingo!

We hope you can hop along with us all then!

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial