Monthly Archives: July 2016

Sweet Cupcake for CAS Colours & Sketches

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Happy Thursday and as you know by now, this means a new challenge at CAS Colours & Sketches.  But first I’d like to give a big THANK YOU so Sam, aka Pootles, for selecting my card as this week’s winner. It’s such fun playing with challenges and winning the challenge is just the icing on the cake. Which brings me to today’s challenge. It’s a colour challenge this week and I took the opportunity to use my bundle, the Sweet Cupcake stamp set and matching Cupcake Cutouts framelits dies. Okay, if the truth be told, I was determined to make a card using them! They are so incredibly lifelike aren’t they? That’s apparently because the artist who was designing them actually baked cupcakes to be sure that she got them just perfect. Now that’s dedication!

Stampin' Up! Sweet Cupcake

Here’s the challenge banner which inspired my card

Both the cupcake liner and the frosting have three stamps to make the image this realistic. On each I used a single colour, crushed curry for the frosting and tip top taupe for the liner. I stamped off the solid image twice onto scrap paper before stamping it on the card, then stamped off the middle image once and in both cases did the most detailed image full strength. It’s amazing how much variation in colour you can get by stamping off. I then used the matching Cupcake Cutouts framelits dies to cut all three pieces out. The liner is glued to a piece of whisper white and both pieces of the frosting are popped up with stampin’ dimensionals. To add in the island indigo, I used it for my sentiment. I added a skinny tip top taupe mat and then went back and fore between a whisper white or an island indigo card base. Both worked equally but the whisper white made the card more CAS. So that’s the way I went.

I liked the ultra CAS look, but eventually the day after I made it, decided that it was a bit too CAS. So the sprinkles were added to the top layer – the Sweet Cupcake includes the sprinkles and I stamped them in tip top taupe and then added some clear wink of Stella to make them glisten. The following day, I added some extra sprinkles next to the sentiment. Sometimes a card takes a few days to complete!

Stampin' Up! Sweet Cupcake

For some fun, I stamped the envelope, adding a candle (stamped and cut out with the same sets) all in island indigo. I can see Sweet Cupcake producing a lot of fun cards although they are so realistic, it may induce perusal of baking books!

I hope that you’ll pop over to the challenge this week and check out the rest of the Design Team’s creations. And then have a go yourself, it’s really fun. I’d love to see you in the gallery. You don’t need a blog to enter, you can link your entry from an online gallery such as at Splitcoaststampers.com or Flickr.

I’d also like to give a big welcome to my new email subscribers – thanks so much for inviting me into your inbox. Feel free to introduce yourselves or ask any questions that you may have. I should add that I’m a member of the Design Team at CAS Colours & Sketches and therefore on Thursdays my post is later than usual. It’s scheduled to coincide with the challenge blog post and therefore goes live at 7:58am EST.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Festive Birthday DSP for a few challenges

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The incredibly bright colours in the Festive Birthday DSP really drew me, far more than I expected. After I’d made a card earlier this week using it (shared yesterday), I was inspired by the challenges at Addicted to CAS and Less is More to make another.

Stampin' Up! Festive Birthday DSP and Hello You thinlits

Less is More’s challenge is REPETITION and Addicted to CAS wants stripes so the Festive Birthday DSP seems to work for both. I cut a strip of the DSP just over the 2 1/4 inches I needed to line the envelope flap – I made the cut at a white line so as not to mess with the pattern. I actually stuck the DSP onto the whisper white card with a teeny border of whisper white showing as if it were part of the DSP. I’d selected this part of the DSP because it didn’t have much melon mambo – I didn’t want my die cut word over it because it would disappear. So I glued the whisper white piece to a melon mambo card base and then adhered the die cut thanks, which is from the Hello You thinlits dies.

A note here about the new big shot platform – I LOVE IT! The extra height in the centre of the platform means that you’re not having to put delicate dies at the edges to get extra pressure nor roll the die back and fore a number of times through the big shot. It’s a huge improvement and I’m really happy. It’s also good not to have to bother with the extra tab that sticks out of the old platform most of the time – it’s always trying to knock things off the table.

I covered the envelope flap with the remaining piece of the DSP strip that I’d cut so that it all matches. I do love coordination!

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Festive Birthday DSP for CAS(E) this Sketch

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As I started to play with the new products that arrived last week, I was rather surprised that the first three cards all used DSP, not a new stamp set in sight! For someone who initially struggled to use any DSP at all, this was surprising and a breakthrough! Festive Birthday DSP is very bright and cheerful, and perfect for birthdays.

Stampin' Up! Festive Birthdays DSP and Hello You thinlits

I took the layout from this week’s CAS(E) this Sketch which gives loads of room for interpretation.

I used a strip from the Festive Birthday DSP, which I cut at 2 1/4 inches by 12 so that I had a piece for the card and a matching piece for the envelope flap. I used the raised edge of the Stampin’ Up! trimmer to push my piece of whisper white against as well as the DSP so that I could get them perfectly in line. Then I picked melon mambo as the colour that I wanted to feature and cut out the hello from the Hello You thinlits dies. I then glued my whisper white to my melon mambo card base.

Stampin' Up! Festive Birthdays DSP and Hello You thinlits

For the envelope, I took the remainder of my DSP piece and glued it to the envelope flap using the multipurpose glue. It was pretty easy to snip the excess off with my paper snips to get a perfectly matching envelope.

My paper pumpkin arrived on Saturday and I’m busy working on alternatives to the kit. Stay tuned.

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Don’t forget that for every $50 you spend between July 7 and 31, Stampin’ Up! will send you a $5 Bonus Days coupon that you can use August 2-31. Also, if you spent more than $35 with me and use the code VUME6GSD, I’ll send you the new Emerald Envy Solid Baker’s Twine. For more details see the Customer Loyalty page over on the left.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Vertical Greetings for Pootles’ Colour Challenge

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It’s the third Pootles’ colour challenge already – I missed the second due to my business trip to Texas. This week the colours we have to select from are melon mambo, watermelon wonder, crushed curry and cucumber crush. I elected to use just three of them – watermelon wonder didn’t fit with my card. These colours gave me the chance to play with vertical greetings again – I’m really having fun with this set. In fact, Vertical Greetings was one of the sets that made it onto my “Must Buy Immediately” list!

Stampin' Up! Vertical Greetings and Detailed Floral Thinlits Dies

I carefully inked up the stamp with cucumber crush and crushed curry and then huffed on it before stamping. I then added the greeting in melon mambo. Are you wondering where the flowers came from? They are punched out of the Detailed Floral Thinlits dies and are a perfect size to decorate this tree – as are the crushed curry enamel shapes. Any time that I cut out the detailed floral thinlits dies, I save these little flowers. I then matted my piece of whisper white with a skinny piece of cucumber crush and glued that to a thick whisper white card base.

Stampin' Up! Vertical Greetings and Detailed Floral Thinlits Dies

The festive TIEF seems to mimic the rows of decoration on the flower pot so I used that to dry emboss my envelope flap.

I’d like to wish a  hearty welcome to my two new email subscribers. Thanks so much for inviting me into your inbox! Feel free to comment and introduce yourselves or ask any questions that you may have.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Fruit Stand Designer Series Paper

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On Friday I returned home after a week at one of our plants in Ennis, Texas. It was a really interesting week, I learned a lot, met a large number of really nice people and met up with my friend Rebecca (whom I haven’t seen in 12 years) a couple of times. As you presumably noticed, I had all my posts ready to go so that there was no interruptions but the one thing that was bothering me was that my Stampin’ Up! order was arriving the day after I left, on Tuesday. So yesterday, in between laundry and cooking, I found time to start playing. Usually I jump on the new stamp sets but this time it was the Fruit Stand DSP which insisted on being used first. I fully expected to be using the quieter sides of the the DSP, so this card came as a bit of a surprise to me!

Stampin' Up! Fruit Stand DSP and Watercolor Wishes

The Fruit Stand DSP is absolutely gorgeous and the peach (or is it an apricot?) needed to be the focal point of the card. So I snipped around it with my paper snips which was no big deal. I decided to leave a white border and layer it on white so I didn’t need to be terribly precise. After a fair amount of playing around with the reverse of the paper and various colour of cardstock, I finally decided to use tangerine tango. I cut down my top layer of whisper white to 4 3/4 by 3 1/2 inches and stamped the sentiment from Watercolor Wishes in tangerine tango using the cut out peach to help position it. Then I added a skinny mat of tangerine tango (1/8 inch larger than the whisper white) before gluing that to a thick whisper white card base. I then popped up the peach on a lot of dimensionals – the DSP is pretty sturdy, but I wanted to be sure it wouldn’t sag.

Stampin' Up! Fruit Stand DSP and Watercolor Wishes

I used another of my new products on the envelope – I dry embossed the flap with the petal burst TIEF.

I’m off now to go and play some more. See you tomorrow,

Liz