Monthly Archives: January 2016

My Favourite Things

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I’m jumping on the bandwagon – I’ve read a number of blogs enumerating their favourite things in the new Occasions catalogue which was released yesterday. I thought I’d try to narrow it down to my top half dozen. I like a challenge – although I’m not going crazy. They aren’t ranked, they are just in the order that they appear in the catalogue.

#1 Birthday Bouquet DSP – $11 for 12 sheets of this paper. I love the watercoloured look and it’s so easy to whip up a quick card when you need one.

SU BB dsp

#2 Balloon Celebration bundle – $37.25. What can I say? Lots of fun and really versatile.

#3 Rose wonder bundle – $49.25. I think this is going to be the top seller in the catalogue, it creates beautiful cards – especially if you have the big shot die brush ($11) to help get all the pieces out. And if you get it and add the die brush, you can select a free item from the Sale-a-bration catalogue which helps with the price point on this one!

#4 Helping Me Grow – $26 I’ve already watercoloured both of the main images and expect to use this set a lot.

#5 Botanical Gardens Bundles – $51.75 Yes, this is expensive but it’s THREE products bundled together – the dies, stamp set and a pack of coordinating DSP. You could buy these individually but why would you when you can save on a bundle.

#6 Going Places DSP. $8 for 48 sheets of 6″ by 6″ paper. And the designs are beautiful – I especially love the ones that look like they would be at home as the end papers of a hardback book. Also a great buy if you need just a small something to push your total to where you get another Sale-a-bration freebie.

going places dsp stack

So there you have it – the things that I absolutely had to have from the Occasions catalogue.

Come back tomorrow for my very first card for a design team.

Liz

The new Occasions catalogue is here!

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Finally!! You’ve been seeing all the sneak peeks over the last month and FINALLY it’s the day when you can order! Click here to download the new Occasions catalogue

Occasions catalogue

And don’t forget the Sale-a-bration brochure

SAB brochure

I’ve also added the catalogues to the side bar on the left for easy reference. Please don’t click on the “no contact” box when you order or I won’t be able to send you a thank you.

In case this is your first Sale-a-bration or if you just want a recap, here’s the scoop. For every $50 that you spend in product (not including taxes and shipping) from today until March 31st, you get to pick a free item from the Sale-a-bration catalogue. In fact, you can’t even buy the Sale-a-bration items, you can only get them for free. Pretty good deal, right? Three of the items (pages 16-19) are only available from today until February 15th and they include two of my favourites – the Perfectly Artistic DSP and the Hello stamp set both of which I used in the last couple of days.

If you host a party or just order yourself and your order gets to $250 or more, not only will you earn free Sale-a-bration items, your Stampin’ Rewards (read – more free items) are increased by an extra $25. So at exactly $250, you’d get 5 Sale-a-bration items and $50 of Stampin’ Rewards. At $300, you’d get 6 sale-a-bration items and $61 in Stampin’ Rewards. It’s too good a deal to miss.

But it I were spending that kind of money, it would make more sense to join up as a demonstrator. Joining during Sale-a-bration gets you more product in your totally customisable starter kit. For just $99 you get to choose $155 in product and it ships for free. So that’s saving you $71 right there. And if you never want to buy another thing, that’s totally fine, there’s no penalty. But if you continue and sell/buy $300 per quarter you get at least a 20% discount on all your supplies, the chance to order new things a month early, access to the Stampin’ Up! demonstrator web site, an exclusive magazine, the chance to go to Stampin’ Up! events and more. You might even find that you remove a lifelong belief that you’re not creative. I know I did!

And here’s an easy way to earn a free Sale-A-Bration item – order Paper Pumpkin. And it’s on sale during Sale-a-bration!

3-Month Prepaid Subscription (137859) $59.85 $55
Save on a 3-month prepaid subscription and instantly qualify for a FREE Sale-A-Bration item!

12-Month Prepaid Subscription (137861) $215.40
Take it to the next level with a 12-month prepaid subscription. Save $24 a year with the everyday awesome price, earn Stampin’ Rewards, and instantly qualify for 4 FREE Sale-A-Bration items!

So grab a (large) mug of coffee and browse through the catalogues.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Botanical Gardens DSP

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Here’s another birthday card and it’s showcasing a new paper, the Botanical Gardens DSP which you can order starting tomorrow. The birds of paradise on this paper are so striking that, once again, I don’t want to cover them up too much.

Stampin' Up! Botanical Gardens DSP

It’s a very straight forward card, once you have your DSP. I cut the paper to 4″ by 5 1/4″ so you could make 6 cards from one piece of DSP – as long as you don’t use as much as I did decorating the envelope. But running out of DSP is not something that’s ever happened to me – or ever likely to so I don’t worry about using DSP to decorate the envelopes.

The colours on this piece of paper are basic black, mint macaron, old olive and cajun craze – I chose the last two for the mat and card although I wavered over which to make the mat and which the card. In the end though, an old olive mat mimicked the vertical stripes too much. The sentiment is from my current favourite set for birthday sentiments, Birthday Blossoms and stamped in the basic black archival ink. The placement of the sentiment and its mat took a little thought. Luckily I hadn’t glued it together when my brother commented that I really shouldn’t hide one of the flowers (the one to the left of the sentiment was half covered) so I was able to trim the two cardstocks a little. Having the sentiment “fall” off the right hand side of the DSP somehow balanced everything nicely and meant that the old olive vertical stripe was lined up with the left hand edge of the old olive sentiment layer.

I made this card whilst deliberating over my first card for the design team over at CAS Colours & Sketches which will debut on Thursday. It’s a colour challenge and I am finding it a challenge. So far I’ve made two cards inspired by the colours although they did not both end up following the rules. So I’ll be sharing those later in the week.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Perfectly Artistic DSP

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As I’ve mentioned, I started a new job back in June and GAF is a really nice place to work. People actually care about people. Not only do we still have a Christmas party and a summer picnic, but every month the CFO and CIO get their departments together to celebrate the month’s birthdays with singing and goodies to eat. So I got the list of birthdays and thought that this is a good place to start working on giving out more cards. So now I’m focused on making birthday cards although it’s not as if I don’t have a fairly major stash already. However, I work in IT so I’ll need far more cards for males than females so I think that may need to be my focus for a while. Which brings me to today’s card.

Stampin' Up! Perfectly Artistic DSP and Hello You and Endless Birthday Wishes

I know that you have to love this paper. I do and I really do not like grey – it’s smoky slate to be specific. It’s one of the pieces in a limited time offer for Sale-a-bration. It’s called Perfectly Artistic DSP and it’s available only from this Tuesday until February 15th for free with a $50 product order. I think I’ll be ordering myself at least one more pack of this. The good news is that there are only two grey pieces in a pack. 😉

I wanted to let the paper really sing here as well as making a masculine birthday card. I think that the real red “happy” works rather well. That’s from the Hello You dies and the “birthday” is from that incredibly versatile set, Endless Birthday Wishes. As you can see, I’m being good and still using up my retired backgrounds DSP paper for lining the envelope flap. It’s easy to line the outside – just cut a 6 by 2 1/4 inch piece of DSP, put the multipurpose glue onto the envelope flap, add the paper and then cut around with paper snips. Simple and effective.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Love Blossoms DSP stack

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I was looking at the rather vast amount of patterned paper that I possess, secure in the knowledge that I’m about to order more in a couple of days and thought that perhaps I need to use more of it. There are some gorgeous patterns and there’s a reluctance to use it but it’s much better to create cards with it and have other people see it – as long as you’re not keeping your cards in shoe boxes of course! So out came a new stack – the Love Blossoms DSP stack which you’ll be able to order on Tuesday. Or today if you sign up as a demonstrator.

Stampin' Up! Love Blossoms DSP and Hello

I really like this pattern but it’s a touch busy for me so I needed a lot of white space to calm it down. I also wanted to play with a new set called Hello, which is one of the sets that you can earn for free during Sale-a-bration (starts January 5th). Every time you spend a multiple of $50 on product, you select a free item. That’s a pretty great deal.

So I stamped the big hello in rose red on whisper white card and decided on garden green as the contrasting colour. The real reason for the garden green is that it’s one of the colours in the stack, although not on this particular paper. I’ve got far more layers than usual but everything seemed to need a little border. I’d definitely say it makes it easier if you decide exactly where the banner is going before you take the paper off the dimensionals. It almost ended up in a skewed and odd position!

See you tomorrow,

Liz