Welcome to week 2 of the Art With Heart “Heart Of Christmas” blog hop.
Claire Daly began this weekly Christmas blog hop for the first time last year, and it was so inspiring for everyone involved she’s decided to do it again this year. Thank you, Claire!
Boy oh boy, I love twinkling lights and lanterns at any time of the year, but especially at Christmas time.
So when I saw this new punch bundle in the upcoming the Holiday Catalogue it went straight to the top of my wishlist!
The Making Christmas Bright bundle has so much possibility and versatility…I just know I’ll be making a lot of cards with this set.
I’m particularly excited about the card I’ve made today because it uses a technique I’ve been wanting to try for a long time, but I have to confess i don’t actually know the name of this technique, LOL!
So, I’ll just call it the fine tip glue technique for want of a better term.
This is such an easy technique and so perfect for this bundle because it really makes the Christmas lights look shiny like glass. Here’s a close-up side angle to give you a better look.
After stamping the light bulbs in assorted colours and punching them out with the Christmas Bulb builder punch I simply covered the images with a thin layer of Stampin’ Up! fine-tipped glue and left them to dry.
The base of the light bulbs were punched out of gold foil, and the pine needles were die cut from Garden Green cardstock using the Christmas Staircase dies. There are three of these pine needle branches in the set, which makes die cutting them out so quick and easy.
Crumb Cake cardstock was the ideal neutral card base to make all of these colours pop, and I heat embossed the gold strand the lights are hanging from (there’s a stamp for this in the Making Christmas Bright stamp set but it’s hard to see on my card under the pine needles and bulbs) as well as the “Making Spirits Bright” sentiment.
The final touch was to use mini dimensionals to adhere my light bulbs and make them really pop.
To see what the rest of the AWH team have made head back to the lovely Claire Daly’s blog.
To purchase any of the products I used in this project from the annual catalogue you can shop with me here.
You can order the new products from the holiday catalogue from September 5, or if you join as a demonstrator you can order them now…contact me if you’d like to find out more or receive a free copy of the holiday catalogue.
Welcome to week 12 of the Art With Heart Colour Creations Blog Hop!
This week we are showcasing one of the beautiful brights: Coastal Cabana.
Coastal Cabana looks gorgeous with so many different colours but one of my favourite combinations is to use it with a vibrant red or pink. For this week’s blog, I decided to pair it with a gorgeous new red: Poppy Parade with just a touch of the delicious Granny Apple Green.
And no, I haven’t accidentally used Bermuda Bay instead of Coastal Cabana…Coastal Cabana can look a lot like Bermuda Bay depending on the light and the angle from which you take your photo.
The layout and colour scheme for my “Up and Away” card was CASED from a card I saw on Facebook, made by a very talented USA Stampin’ Up! demonstrator called Sara Flemming, however, I’ve changed a lot of the elements on this card to add more layers of texture and to give me a chance to play with my embossing paste again.
I began this card by using the cloud mask from the Party Pattern masks and my white embossing paste to make some fluffy clouds on my base layering piece of Coastal Cabana card stock. Once the paste was dry I I thought they looked too stark so used my aqua painter to tone down the whiteness of the clouds by colouring them with Coastal Cabana ink from my ink pad.
Can you see the other tiny white clouds stamped on the Coastal Cabana? These are stamped on using Whisper White craft ink using the one of the smallest cloud stamps from the gorgeous Lift Me Up stamp set.
The medium clouds and the balloons were also stamped with the Lift Me Up stamp set and then cut out using the co-ordinating Up and Away thinlits. The largest balloon has several different dies to create a multicoloured ballon and I used these dies to cut out my 3 different card stock colours: Coastal Cabana, Poppy Parade, and Granny Apple Green.
I used the largest cloud from this thinlit set to stamp my Happy birthday sentiment on by using the masking technique. This is so simple to do by using washi tape to cover the part of the sentiment you don’t want to stamp…just don’t forget to remove the washi tape from the stamp AFTER you’ve inked up the stamp and BEFORE you stamp the sentiment!
After adhering all of the elements to the card using Mini Stampin’ Dimensionals, my final touch of texture was to add a little piece of the gorgeous new Poppy Parade Textured Weave Ribbon to the top of the Balloon basket. This ribbon is coming out in the new Holiday Catalogue…contact me if you’d like me to send you a copy of this catalogue.
To see what the rest of the team have made click on the links below.
Anyone who’s ever been to my home knows I love copper.
My kitchen and pantry splashback, as well as my island bench all feature panels of pressed tin in a deep copper colour. I intended to paint these splashbacks with silver paint once they were installed (the copper colour is actually a byproduct of the priming process in the factory) but 5 years on since we finished our renovation I still can’t bring myself to cover the copper in silver.
So what better place to photograph my copper Christmas card for this week’s AWH Heart of Christmas blog hop than on my kitchen bench in front of my splashback!
Because the copper elements on this card are so rich I deliberately kept the rest of the elements quite neutral, using Very Vanilla Cardstock, and a sheet of a gorgeous new Crumb Cake coloured designer series paper from the holiday catalogue called All Is Bright DSP. Here’s a sneak peek of this DSP.
The other copper elements in this card include the copper star (part of the Snowflakes and Stars Wire Elements) and the copper washi tape (part of the Suite Season Washi Tape) both from the upcoming holiday catalogue. If you’d like me to post you your very own copy of the brand new holiday catalogue or the 2018-2019 annual cataloguecontact me.
Products used from the annual catalogue include copper foil, copper metallic thread, copper embossing powder, copper trim, stitched framelits, and the Mistletoe Season Photopolymer Stamp Set.
This copper trim frays beautifully…and was just the perfect size to thread through the loop of the copper star.
I can’t wait to see what the rest of the team have made. To hop along our blog hop visit the gorgeous Clare Daly’s page here as she will be hosting the AWH Heart of Christmas blog hop each week.
Thanks for hopping along with the AWH today. To purchase any of the products I used in this project from the annual catalogue you can shop with me here.
You can order the new products from the holiday catalogue from September 5, or if you join as a demonstrator you can order them now…contact me if you’d like to find out more.
Welcome to week 11 of the Art With Heart Colour Creations Blog Hop!
This week we are showcasing one of the regals colours: Cherry Cobbler.
This gorgeous rich colour is one of my favourite colours to use for Christmas, so I just couldn’t resist making a Christmas card this year using some of the beautiful new products from upcoming holiday catalogue, which I’m able to order early as a demonstrator.
Here’s the designer series paper that inspired me to make this card. It’s called Festive Farmhouse DSP and I love this colour combination of Basic Black, Cherry Cobbler, Very Vanilla, Mossy Meadow, Gray Granite and Whisper White… it’s so classic!
As so often happens when I make a card, the card I ended up making is totally different to the card I thought I was going to create!
As soon as I saw the DSP with the Chery Cobbler writing on it I was smitten, and I knew I was going to use that DSP as the background paper for my card. But when I was trimming it to size, I saw there was an even better way to showcase all of the lovely Christmas sentiments on it, by using all of the little strips to make a tree.
There are some other lovely products from the new holiday catalogue featured in this card, such as the piece of striped burlap trim I used to make the pot the tree sits in, and the Festive Farmhouse cotton twine that sits above the little pot.
And on top of the tree sits the cutest star, which is one of two gold embellishments (the other one is a tree) in the All is Bright paper clips.
Here’s a closer look at the all of the lovely new products from the holiday catalogue used on this card.
If you wanted to mass produce this design for Christmas (and it’s very quick and easy to make using your Stampin’ Up! paper trimmer to cut precisely between the lines of text) you’d get dozens and dozens of cards from each sheet of this DSP.
To see what the rest of the team have made click on the links below.
Welcome to week 10 of the Art With Heart Colour Creations Blog Hop!
This week we are showcasing one of the subtles colours: Calypso Coral.
The timing of this colour couldn’t have been more perfect as I needed to use Calypso Coral this week to make a caravan themed card (and matching quilt) for the birthday of someone very special in my life: my crafting partner in crime, Jen Boffey!
So why the caravan theme?
Well, I’d like you to meet Sylvia, Jen’s vintage caravan that we craft in. Here’s a photo of Sylvia in all her glory…she’s even been featured in a book called She Sheds!
Jen, her dog Nige (he’s photobombing the photo above!) and my mum and I have an annual crafting weekend in the Blue Mountains and we always stop for lunch at Glenbrook on our way to Blackheath.
Here we are on our way up there this year…Nige, would you stop photobombing our photos, please!!!
There’s a lovely patchwork shop at Glenbrook that we visit after lunch. In the past, I’ve bought fabric from here to make bunting and cushions for Sylvia…and you can see from the photo of the bunting I made that Calypso Coral, Flirty Flamingo, Daffodil Delight, Coastal Cabana and Bermuda Bay are all part of the retro colour scheme in Sylvia.
This year we found the most incredible vintage caravan fabric in the patchwork shop, so I decided to make a “quilt as you go” strip quilt with matching caravan card to accompany it for Jen’s birthday. How lovely do all of these beautiful bright colours look together!
The strip method of quilting is fabulous for fabric designs that feature large-scale prints (such as in my quilt below) and “quilting as you go” makes for a super speedy and easy quiltmaking. Strips of the gorgeous bunting backing fabric were used to divide up the large-scale prints, as well as to make the binding for the quilt.
So how did I make a matching card for the quilt without a caravan stamp set or dies?
Well, the beauty of paper crafting is that you really are only limited by your imagination. I simply searched on Pinterest for a caravan template that I then printed out and customised with my Stampin’ Up! cardstock, DSP and stamps. Too easy!
Because Nige is such an important part of Jen’s life and he sits with us in the caravan when we craft I wanted to include him in this card. The Sitting Here stamp set has a dog stamp that looks just like Nige, so I cut the caravan door on one side so it would open to reveal Nige sleeping inside. The cute little pot plant is also from the Sitting Here stamp set.
I stamped the Happy Birthday in Calypso Coral and Bermuda Bay using the Pick a Pennant bundle…this was just perfect for this card as it references the bunting fabric on the quilt, as well as the bunting I’ve already made for Sylvia.
And the awesome grass stamp is from the Enjoy Life stamp set, stamped in Granny Apple Green…I love this stamp and this colour!
Because I only had a few hours spare to make this quilt and its matching card I very quickly made the caravan card on the morning of Jen’s birthday, but I still hadn’t quite finished binding the quilt.
So I turned up to her birthday drinks and gave her the quilt with the binding still pinned in place…and then sat and sewed the binding down while we enjoyed a glass of champagne with her friends. I’m such a nana!!!!
Here’s Jen and I with the finished quilt…yes, I got it finished just in time before we had to go home!
And finally, here’s the quilt with its matching Calypso Coral caravan card. I love how the spotty 6×6 DSP in Calypso Coral exactly matches the caravan print on the quilt fabric!
To see what the rest of the team have made click on the links below.
Welcome to week 9 of the Art With Heart Colour Creations Blog Hop!
This week we are showcasing one of our new In Colours: Call Me Clover.
One of my favourite products in the Annual catalogue is the gorgeous Call Me Clover leaf ribbon, which I used last week to make a Taronga Zoo birthday card for my niece…and yes, she loved her card. In case you didn’t see my blog last week, here’s a photo of the card and you can see how this gorgeous ribbon adds so much dimension and texture to this card.
I had so much fun playing with this leaf ribbon I decided to use it again for this week’s blog, but this time for a completely different card: my very first Christmas card of the year!
The colour combination of Real Red and Call Me Clover really screams Christmas to me, and the leaf ribbon makes such a quick and easy Christmas wreath. I used the swirly frames stamp set to stamp the larger circle in Call Me Clover and then the inner circle in Real Red. The leaf ribbon was adhered to the larger circle with glue dots and then Red Rhinestone basic jewels add the final touch.
I chopped some of the leaves off the ribbon to make individual holly sprigs to add dimension to the “joy” sentiment, which was stamped by inking up just one part of a stamp from the “Ready for Christmas” stamp set.
While I had my swirly frames stamp set out I decided to also use it to CASE the card from page 137 of the annual catalogue. Here’s the original card from the catalogue stamped in in Old Olive and Lemon Lime Twist.
And here’s my version using Call Me Clover and Soft Sea Foam.
Did you notice the embossed backgrounds on both cards? The original card that I CASED has been embossed with the subtles folder, which I don’t have yet (it’s on my list!!) so instead, I used the climbing vine embossing folder…here’s another angle to show it to you in greater detail.
I love the look of Call Me clover with both Soft Sea Foam and Real Red, and I can’t wait to see what colours the rest of the Art With Heart Team have used on their Call Me Clover projects!
To see what the rest of the team have made click on the links below.
Welcome to week 8 of the Art With Heart Colour Creations Blog Hop!
This week we are showcasing one of the regals family: Cajun Craze.
I need to share a little secret with you…Cajun Craze is a colour I had never used before today, and it was a colour I really struggled to embrace. But the process of making my project for this week not only made me enjoy this colour and see its possibilities…it also made me use some products I’d had for quite a while but had been too scared to use!
That’s right, I had been too scared to use embossing paste but let me tell you it is SOOOOOO much fun to play with, super easy to use and to colour (even without re-inkers) … check out the dimension on my Cajun Craze brick wall below!
I think nature is such a wonderful source of inspiration and as soon as I realised Cajun Craze was the colour of terracotta and house bricks the design of this card fell into place.
I was wondering how to tint the embossing paste without a re-inker but it is actually so easy to do by using an ink pad and a silicon sheet. You simply open the inkpad and tap some ink onto the silicon sheet, add some embossing paste and mix it all together with a palette knife.
My little terracotta pot is stamped using the Crafting Forever stamp set and then fussy cut and attached to the brick wall with Stampin’ Dimensionals. I wrapped linen thread around the pot, used a glue dot to hold the knot in place and tied a double bow. The old olive leaves are stamped with the Painted Harvest Stamp Set and then punched out with the leaf punch, and the little flowers and skinny leaves are the gorgeous Tropical Elements embellishments, also attached with glue dots.
Here’s a close up of these gorgeous little embellishments!
The final touch is the Happy Birthday sentiment stamped from the Beautiful Bouquet Stamp set…this is my favourite Happy Birthday stamp and I’ve lost track of the number of times I have used it!
To see what the rest of the team have made click on the links below.
Welcome to week 7 of the Art With Heart Colour Creations Blog Hop!
This week we are showcasing one of the subtles family: Blushing Bride.
Originally I had decided to make a card inspired by the stunning colour combination in the Tropical Escapade Designer Series Paper – Blushing Bride, Granny Apple Green and Shaded Spruce – but when I sat down the make this card last weekend, inspiration ended up coming from a far more personal place.
On Sunday morning at 6.30am, a group of us gathered at Freshwater Beach to remember my friend Justine, who was shot dead one year ago by a police officer in the United States. It’s had to believe it’s a year since we last gathered together on this beach in total shock and disbelief, throwing pink flowers into the ocean…and even harder to believe we still don’t understand why she was killed.
This year we once again celebrated Justine’s beautiful, caring and kind nature with pink flowers (her favourite colour), but this time we laid the flowers around a heart made of candles.
Have you ever seen such a beautiful heart?
When I came home to make my card for this week I was so inspired by that heart of pink flowers, which is why I decided to make my card using the stunning Petal Promenade DSP.
I began by layering a piece of the DSP onto a whisper white card and then I laid a piece of vellum over the DSP to allow the elements on the top of the card to stand out against (rather than compete with) such a strong background visual. I love the way vellum softens the DSP but still allows it to shine.
Did you notice that stunning rose on the front of my card? It’s from the “Notes of Kindness” Card Kit, which is incredibly appropriate for this card because Justine really was one of the kindest people you’d ever meet.
In addition to the rose from the “Notes of Kindness” Card Kit, this card uses a lot of my favourite Stampin’ Up! things, including burlap ribbon, linen thread, and that darling little “for you” tag from the Beautiful Bouquet stamp set and its matching Bouquet Bunch Framelits dies.
I die cut the other elements on the front of this card with the Petals and More Thinlits and the Tropical Thinlits. I’m really loving this colour combination of Blushing Bride, Crumb Cake and Mossy Meadow!
To complete the inside of this card I decided to add a stamped and punched out Happy Birthday and some more Petals and More Thinlits in Blushing Bride and Whisper White.
The “Notes of Kindness” Card Kit also comes with the most beautiful envelopes lined with Blushing Bride DSP…LOVE, LOVE, LOVE these envelopes! I specifically made my card to fit in this gorgeous envelope.
The recipient of this card will be another incredibly kind person…my Aunty Rob, who has just turned 82.
Aunty Rob’s late husband, my Uncle Bob, was an amazing gardener who grew the most beautiful roses in their garden, so I’m hoping the roses on this card will bring back fond memories for Aunty Rob when I catch up with her for a belated birthday lunch this week.
Aunty Rob, Uncle Bob and Justine…these beautiful pink roses remind me of just how lucky I’ve been to have such kind and generous people in my life.
To see what the rest of the team have made click on the links below.
Welcome to week 6 of the Art With Heart Colour Creations Blog Hop!
This week we are showcasing one of the 2018 – 2020 In Colours: Blueberry Bushel.
For my project this week I decided to showcase Blueberry Bushel by using products from the Best Route suite, including the Best Route Designer Series Paper, the En Route stamp set, and the new Best Route Memories & More Card Pack.
I love how this Best Route DSP combines Blueberry Bushel with Basic Black, Gray Granite, Mango Melody and Pineapple Punch. Doesn’t this colour combination really pop?
And how amazing are these new Memories & More Card Packs, designed to be used for both cardmaking and scrap booking?
The card I made this week was a very, very special card for a very, very special person in my life: my hubby!
You see, he finally sold his business of 20 years this week, and selling it was a huge leap of faith into the unknown, both personally and career-wise. This was a business he built from scratch in an industry that wasn’t really his passion…but he has persevered and worked very hard in it for the past 20 years to support our family.
I designed this card as I was making it around the card sizes in the Best Route Memories & More Card Pack, and I also used stamps from the inspirational stamp set, Seize the Day (and the wonderful “just breathe” stamp set from Colourful Seasons). These sets are both great for male cards and they were simply perfect for all of the things I wanted to say to my hubby.
I’m not sure what you call this type of fancy fold card as I made it up as I went along! Maybe it could simply be called multi-fold card? Hopefully, these pictures will explain more clearly how I made it.
I began with the centre section of the card and added flaps to the top, bottom, left and right of the centre section. The centre section is made with one A4 piece of Gray Granite with 2 of the Memories & More smaller sized cards aligned to the right of this piece of cardstock, with fold line scored to the left of these cards. The bottom card I deliberately left blank to write a message on.
To make the right hand flap, I used another piece of A4 Gray Granite cardstock, cutting and folding as per measurements below. There’s about an inch of extra cardstock to the left of the fold line…you just need to leave enough to be able to adhere this piece to the centre piece of the card.
I adhered 2 strips of tear and tape and then attached the right-hand flap to the centre section of the card.
The top flap was made with the leftover piece of cardstock I chopped off from the right-hand flap (see earlier image), and then I cut an identically sized piece for the bottom flap. Both top and bottom flaps were attached using tear and tape, just like the right flap.
And here’s how the entire card looks as you gradually open each flap to unfold the card.
All closed up, with the bottom flap on the front of the card ⇓.
With the top and bottom flap opened ⇓.
With the left and right flap opened ⇓.
And here is the reverse of the card…I cut a piece of Gray Granite cardstock to cover all of the joins where I’ve attached the flaps to the card.
Thanks so much for hopping along with the Art With Heart Team on our weekly Colour Creations Blog Hop.
To see what the rest of the team have made click on the links below.
Welcome to week 5 of the Art With Heart Colour Creations Blog Hop!
This week we are showcasing a returning in colour: Blackberry Bliss.
Blackberry Bliss is such a scrummy rich colour and to showcase this colour I decided to pair it with Rich Razzleberry and Crumb Cake to make a very special card for a very special person…Donna Williams from our Stampin’ Up! home office here in Australia.
So why was I making a card for Donna (aside from the fact she is such a sweetie)…and why have I taken a selfie of both of us?
Well, SOMEBODY went away on their annual crafting weekend with their downline and customer and misread a text message about who was bringing the Bigshot for the weekend.
And then SOMEBODY realised when they arrived at their destination and all the wonderful new Stampin’ Up! products were unpacked that there was not a single Bigshot in the house!
So SOMEBODY put out a call on social media to see if there were any Stampin’ Up! demos who lived nearby who could lend us a Bigshot for the weekend…
…and the lovely Donna Williams came to the rescue!
So when SOMEBODY went to Donna’s place to collect the said Bigshot, they needed to quickly make a card to go with the thank you bunch of flowers…a card that used a punch instead of a Bigshot to cut out the stamped images!
Luckily, SOMEBODY had bought the fantastic new Varied Vases stamp and punch bundle away with them on their crafting weekend!
This beautiful bundle was created to celebrate an American Stampin’ Up! demo called Mary Fish reaching $1 million in Stampin’ up! sales…how cool it that?
Varied Vases is such a great bundle for stampers of all levels…especially stampers who don’t own a Bigshot, or those stampers who do own a Bigshot, but forget to take it away on a craft weekend!!!!!
And just how perfect is that sentiment on the front of the card? Donna really is “simply is the best” for coming to our rescue!
Because Blackberry Bliss is a very dark colour I decided to pair it with lots of clean white space, a touch of Crumb Cake, and the lovely Rich Razzleberry. The middle vase was stamped with Blackberry Bliss that was stamped off once, which makes it look a lot like Rich Razzleberry.
Kate Morgan shared a top tip for using this set…by stamping the vase outlines first in a light colour at the same time as the flowers (before you later mount the stamped and punched vases over the top) you can perfectly align the images. You can see my lightly stamped vase outlines in the photo below, as well as the little bow of linen thread that adds a final touch of texture to the card.
I can’t wait to see what the rest of the Art With Heart team have come up with for their Blackberry Bliss projects for this week’s blog hops!
Just click on the links below to see what they’ve all made.
Thanks for hopping along with us today. To purchase any of the products I used in this project you can shop with me 
