Tag Archives: Garden in Bloom

Garden in Bloom for CAS C&S

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Happy Thursday! And being Thursday it means it’s time for a new challenge at CAS Colours & Sketches. It’s also the start of a new month which means it’s time for a change in hostess, and this month it’s Bev’s turn to come up with the challenges. She’s starting us off with a nice summery mix of colours – I think in the hope of coaxing summer along!

Stampin' Up! Garden in Bloom and All About Everything

Here’s the banner for the challenge:

As often seems to be the case when I’m making cards for the Design Team, my first card didn’t make me happy. It definitely didn’t please my current Critique Board made up of my brother and father. They thought the card was fine, but not Design Team-worthy. I’ll share that one soon so you can weigh in too. Martin suggested using my “favourite stamp” which he believes is the bee. I really do like it’s very cute. Martin’s concerned I’m going to wear it out and should get a spare one just in case! It’s from Garden in Bloom.

I wanted the bower of flowers to really feel as if the bee had masses and masses of flowers to visit. So I decided on a one layer card with the flowers off the edge of the card. First of all I stamped on a piece of scrap and cut out my mask. On my test piece (it became the test after I got an extra ink splodge), I did all the outlines first but then it was hard to match the insides because I’d made a point of turning the stamp in various directions so that the flowers didn’t all look uniform. Oops. On my real piece, I stamped the whole flower at one time. Much easier! The sentiment is from the bonus set from Paper Pumpkin in April, All About Everything. It’s quickly become one of my favourite Happy Birthday sentiments. It’s hard to say what my favourite stamp really is, regardless of what Martin says, but the Garden in Bloom stamp set is definitely one of my favourite sets.

I hope that you’ll go over to the challenge blog to check out the rest of the Design Team’s cards and to have a go yourself. It would be great to see your card in the gallery.

Don’t forget that I’m offering blog candy. Just comment on this post before Saturday and tell me why you like making cards for a chance to win.

Also, although I ordered today, if there’s sufficient interest in another product share, I’ll order again. Just email me to let me know if you’re interested and if so, which shares you’re interested in.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Garden in Bloom

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Challenges are good – they stretch you and lead you in a completely different direction. The challenge this week at CASology (actually I’m sliding in under the wire here) is MOVE and I decided to use the bee stamp from Garden in Bloom.

Stampin' Up! Garden in bloom

Here’s the banner which inspired my card

I decided that the bees were busily buzzing in a circle and thus moving. I stamped them first opposite each other and then filled in the gaps. Originally I had just four bees until Martin commented that he thought that bees were usually hexagonal. This worked much better. After stamping the bees from Garden in Bloom with the archival basic black, I coloured the stripes with my Stampin’ Write hello honey marker. I then cut out a piece of basic black about 1/16 inch larger than the whisper white piece and glued it on to give a narrow border.

To give the bees something to buzz about, I took a piece of hello honey and dry embossed it with the retired spring flowers embossing folder. I glued this to a hello honey card base and then popped up the bees with dimensionals.

To jazz up the envelope, I cut out a liner using the retired backgrounds DSP in hello honey and the envelope liners framelits. I love that it’s so easy to coordinate but  I can’t believe that the envelope liners framelits are retiring.

Just a reminder that tomorrow is the deadline to sign up in order to receive this month’s Paper Pumpkin and, unusually, this month we got a sneak peek. Check out my post from last week showing it.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Garden in Bloom for CAS on Sunday

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Last week when making my Design Team card for CAS Colours & Sketches, I started playing with the bee from Garden in Bloom. He didn’t make it onto that card, but I loved him and this is now the second card in a week to have at least one bee. Happily, the Garden in Bloom set is not on the retiring list so I don’t have to cram as many bees as possible into the next month! This week’s challenge as CAS on Sunday is a tic tac toe.

Stampin' Up! Garden in Bloom and Watercolor Wishes

What this means is that you choose the elements on a line in the grid and incorporate them into your card

I’d pulled out buttons and other embellishments in an attempt to try to use them up so the ribbon and button were easy and I just needed to add dry embossing. The ribbon is a piece of retired hello honey baker’s twine. I first worked on threading the thick twine through the vintage faceted designer button (40% off on the retiring list!), using tape to make a smaller stiffened end. Once I’d achieved this slightly fiddly task, I realised that the button with the twine through it was now a little wobbly. It worked much better to pull the twine out of the button and just use a glue dot to add the bow to the button! You live and learn, right?

I dry embossed a piece of very vanilla using the spring flowers folder and stamped the bees onto that. The stamping didn’t need to be perfect (and wasn’t due to the embossing) because I was going to mostly cover it. I also stamped three bees on scrap paper in archival basic black and cut out their bodies which I coloured using the hello honey stampin’ write marker. I attached the new bodies using a glue dot in the centre which allows the wings to be curled up a little – and showing the wings stamped onto the embossed layer. All that was left was a sentiment, which is from Watercolor Wishes (this hasn’t retired – phew!).

Stampin' Up! Garden in Bloom and Watercolor Wishes

The product which is on the retiring list which confuses me, is the envelope liners framelits. I use these on a high proportion of my envelopes and there isn’t a replacement. I’m not sure what’s happening there. I would encourage you to grab it as soon as possible if you don’t already have it – it’s lovely being able to easily line envelopes. Don’t forget to use the hostess code of RJ6V9VRQ (and don’t check the no contact) so that I can send you your freebies if you spend more than $50.

I have to say that there’s some really great stuff in the new catalogue – I can’t wait for the preorder to start (on May 3).

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Paper Pumpkin April 2016 Alternate 2

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I finally finished my taxes yesterday – last minute but it had been quite frustrating trying to get it done – and so was able to reward myself with some crafting time. I had made a card using leftovers from the Paper Pumpkin April 2016 set, Lovely Little Wreath for yesterday’s post and that left a smaller strip of the leaves. Well, not wanting to waste that, I designed another card. I have no idea if bees tend to frequent cactus flowers, but I’m okay with that!

Stampin' Up! Paper Pumpkin April 2016 Lovely Little Wreath

This time I decided to use whisper white as my layer and first stamped the sentiment in mossy meadow. I coloured in the flowers and leaves with the Stampin’ Up! markers in mossy meadow and daffodil delight. Next I stamped the bee from Garden in Bloom using archival black ink. If you don’t have the bee (which is a shame, because I think he’s adorable and I am expecting him to appear on quite a few cards in the near future!) either click on Shop Now on the left and get him or a butterfly would work equally well. Although it wouldn’t be as adorable! I also used the daffodil delight marker to colour in the bee. Then I added the leaf strip from the Paper Pumpkin kit and the remaining spare flower. You get 15 in the kit and need 11 for the wreath. I’m still trying to design a card using the leftover from where the leaves are punched out! So don’t throw anything from the kit away!! I glued my whisper white layer to a mossy meadow card base.

I heard from my sister yesterday and she had had a fabulous time at the local onstage in the UK. And then I found out that one of the next locations for a local event in November is in Secaucus, NJ which is only about 45 minutes from me. She’s already talking about coming over to visit when it’s happening, and Julia’s keen too. So that’s three of us already within 12 hours of the announcement. If you want to come with us, just go to the “Become a Stampin’ Up! demonstrator” tab on the left and join the team.

Sometime this week I’m planning to share the gifts that I made for Julia who became a SU demonstrator a couple of weeks ago. But first, I have to play some more with my Paper Pumpkin kit!

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Garden in Bloom challenge card

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I made this card for a challenge at TGIF Challenges last month but missed the deadline. For some reason it took me a bit of effort to combine pool party, crushed curry and calypso coral, but here’s what my entry would have been.

Stampin' Up! Garden in Bloom and Greetings Thinlits dies

This is the first card that I’ve made with the set Garden in Bloom but not quite the first using the greetings framelits dies – I seem to have overused the thanks rather. Not that it’s a bad thing to want to thank people, but perhaps I should let the die cool off a bit! The Garden in Bloom contains two step stamps; here I stamped the outline in calypso coral and, although it looks as if I did something clever with the crushed curry, the second stamp is designed not to give total coverage but more of a watercolour look.

The thanks is of course cut out in pool party and I used the same colour to create a skinny mat around the piece of very vanilla. This was then mounted on a very vanilla card base. The envelope is lined using the now retired backgrounds DSP in the subtles collection but of course the Designer Series Paper stacks in subtles would be an excellent replacement – I have those too but I had an already cut out liner in pool party.

See you tomorrow,

Liz