Tag Archives: All About Everything

Totally Trees

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I think I mentioned that I’ve been making birthday cards for people at work. Of course, working in a big IT department means that eventually I’ll be giving out 250 per year but I think I can manage that. If I plan!  Wednesday is Fred’s birthday – he’s on one of my three teams and his buddy asked for a large card. Or two of them. He’s been working at our company for a decade or so and therefore has a lot of friends. So I took a piece of card stock and folded it in half for the card. And realised that it’s hard making a large card – our stamps are not made expecting there to be such an expanse of card. It was a toss up between cup cakes and trees. And as you can probably guess, taking in mind the title, Totally Trees won out.

Liz Bailey Stampin' Up! Demonstrator - Totally Trees - All About Everything

I started with the ground which I bent a little on the block and then stamped in the middle in old olive. I added more to get to the edges of the card and then used the grass stamp to add a little texture. I then stamped a selection of trees in soft suede and added their splodges in various fall colours. The trees are turning here in New Jersey so it made sense to me to use cherry cobbler, pumpkin pie and crushed curry. My card is “not a patch on New England”, to quote my sister Caro, who coincidentally also used fall colours on her blog today but definitely fall based.

Having stamped my trees the really tough part of the project was looking for the right sized and shaped sentiment. Everything looked too small in the expanse of white space or as if it were trying to take over the card. Hence I’ve used a paper pumpkin stamp from April and nestled it in amongst the trees. The crushed curry enamel dots came about by accident but they improve the card. I had a smudge of ink there and they saved my card!

As I was slightly intimidated by the size of the card, I made my top layer and inch smaller and added a cherry cobbler layer. It makes the card more special, really frames the main part of the card and reduces the available stamping space! A win-win.

This card really started with the envelope size. I checked how large an envelope I could make and realised that by folding a piece of 8 1/2″ by 11″ card stock in half I would need 11″ by 11″ for the envelope. Obviously the DSP is 12 by 12 so I could have gone slightly larger, but that would have meant cutting up a 12 by 12 piece of cardstock for a not much larger card. This is perfect – and uses up a piece of retired designer series paper (Confetti Celebration from 2 years ago if you want the specifics) which happened to be in the right colours.

I hope you enjoyed today’s project. Please use the hostess code to get free product; the current one is GWTDK7RM (if your order is over $150, don’t use the code, you get the rewards, but you still get the free gift from me). Click here to go to my online shop or here to join my team. To sign up for Paper Pumpkin, click here. The “buy 3 get one free” offer for DSP is good for the rest of the month – just a week to go!

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Totally Trees for CAS Colours & Sketches

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Happy Thursday which means it’s time for another challenge at CAS Colours & Sketches and it’s the beginning of a new month which means that it’s time for hostess duties to change – this month it’s Karen setting the challenges. She chose a bright trio of primary colours for us to use and for some reason that meant the Totally Trees stamp set to me!

Stampin' Up! Totally Trees and All About Everything

Here’s the banner which inspired my card:

I started by stamping the sentiment from All About Everything in real red and then added basic black trees from Totally Trees (I really love this set, it’s going to get a lot of use) to surround it. Then I grabbed the other two chosen colours and used them for the splodge – a technical term! – for each tree. I played a bit with mats before determining that island indigo on a real red card base was the most fun.

Since my stamps were inked up, I added a tree to the envelope front. Why not, right?

Stampin' Up! Totally Trees and All About Everything

Totally Trees is one of the brand new sets available in the new Holiday catalogue which is going live for customers today! If you’ve bought from me in the last year, you should already have received your catalogue – if not, just let me know and I’ll send one along. Or, if you don’t already have a Stampin’ Up! demonstrator and would like a catalogue, drop me a note and I’ll send one your way. In the meantime, click on the picture of the catalog on the left, and look at it online.

Once you’ve checked out the new catalog, I hope you’ll go to the challenge site and check out the cards by the rest of the design team and then have a go yourself. It would be great to see you in the gallery.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Swirly Scribbles for CAS Colours & Sketches

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Good morning. Once again we’re up to Thursday in the week which means a new challenge at CAS Colours & Sketches. This week it’s my very first time hosting a challenge as a member of the design team and although I planned to make my card before setting the challenge, in typical “just in time delivery” fashion, I completed my card last night. I’d been trying a different idea but yesterday morning thought that Swirly Scribbles would be the way and last night after work, that’s what I used.

Stampin' Up! Swirly Scribbles and All About Everything

And here’s the banner showing the three blues that I chose:

Challenging? Yes. But I think, definitely fun. I kept wanting to add a pop of a different colour (not allowed) so this took some thought but I’m extra happy that what I ended up with was a masculine birthday card.

It’s a fairly simple card to put together once you’ve cut out your three swirly scribbles in the three colours being careful not to lose any of the cut out pieces. I started by laying it out on scrap paper so that I could decide exactly how I was going to fill in the spaces. It changed between the scrap paper and the final card! Once I had that decided, I placed the night of navy outline onto the card to get the placement right for my sentiment and started by stamping that in night of navy. The sentiment is from the Paper Pumpkin bonus set, All About Everything that just fits so nicely into the curve of the cutout. Only then did I actually glue down the night of navy outline! I used the 2 way glue pen (because there’s no oozing challenge) and then started filling in some of the gaps with dapper denim and marina mist. Of course I have sufficient cut out pieces to make a couple more of these using the other colour ways.

I hope that you’ll pop along to the challenge blog to see what the rest of the design team have made and to have a go yourself. I’d love to see you in the gallery.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

 

Flourish for CAS Colours & Sketches

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Well it’s Thursday again which means it’s time for another challenge at CAS Colours & Sketches. This week it’s a sketch challenge.

Stampin' Up! Flourish Thinlits dies and All About Everything

Here’s the sketch which inspired my card

I really struggled with this one. I’ve been thinking about it for most of the month and I always intend to make my DT card by the Sunday before it’s due. Well, this one was made last night and once I had a hard deadline, the sketch was much easier. I decided to use texture so that I could keep my card nice and clean but using very vanilla for two layers. I’ve used a retired folder, Spring Flowers,  because I wanted flowers in the background since the Flourish thinlits dies were going to be my focal point. Then I layered on a piece of very vanilla on which I’d stamped my greeting which comes from the bonus set that was in April’s Paper Pumpkin. I had planned to use the big die cut from the Flourish die cuts but it took up most of the card front so I took a look at the rest of the set and found these two which work perfectly as the two little banners in the sketch. I then glued everything to the matching Sweet Sugarplum card base. I didn’t immediately fall for this colour until I saw it in person but now it’s clear that I’ll be using it frequently. It looks great with very vanilla but I need to find some other combinations.

I hope that you pop over to the challenge blog to take a look at the cards made by the rest of the Design Team and that you’ll take the challenge this week. You don’t need a blog to enter, you can add the card to any number of places – facebook, public galleries etc – and link to it. I hope to see you in the gallery.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

All About Everything

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Happy Thursday! And Thursday means a new challenge over at CAS Colours & Sketches – this week it’s a sketch.

Stampin' Up! All About Everything

Here’s the banner which inspired my creation.

I don’t tend to put tags on my cards for some reason and I wanted to step outside the box a little by making a rather non traditional tag. As you can see, I’ve done a mirror image of the sketch by having the tag on top of the other shape. The DSP is from Pop of Pink and I made the present box with a 2.5″ by 3″ rectangle and then by trimming off two opposing corners to add a 3D look. To further add to the look of the box, I folder the DSP where the edges of the box would be before gluing it down to my piece of whisper white. The card seemed a little too empty so I added a thin mat of melon mambo to frame the card. The sentiment is from the bonus Paper Pumpkin set from April, All About Everything which I stamped in melon mambo and cropped out with one of the retired oval framelits. As I’ve mentioned before, Paper Pumpkin is a great buy, even if you’re not thrilled with the month’s kit (and that’s rare), it’s worth it for the stamp set. I popped this up with dimensionals to make it look even more like a present tag and added a bow using the also retired cotton ribbon in melon mambo. I tried to use the thick bakers twine but it didn’t have enough oomph or, dare I say, presence, for the present.

Stampin' Up! All About Everything

As I said, Paper Pumpkin is a great deal and starting today (at 5pm MT until 11:50pm MT tomorrow) it’s an even better deal.

PP_One Day Deal_Demo Header

New subscribers can get this month’s kit for just FIVE DOLLARS! That’s the amount of the shipping only. You have nothing to lose – you can put your subscription on hold or cancel at any time, so just go ahead later this evening and click on the Paper Pumpkin button below, use the promo code ONEDAYDEAL and your kit should ship next week.

Paper Pumpkin June deal

See you tomorrow,

Liz