Tag Archives: Paper Pumpkin

Paper Pumpkin November 2015

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I was really excited to get home and play with this month’s Paper Pumpkin; I left my brother to do the cooking and broke out the box! I pretty much had a card designed by the time our friend came over for dinner. I’ll share it with you tomorrow. But for today, here’s the video showing this month’s kit, Mistletoe and Holly. I think I’ll be making these cards up later today – unless I save them to make with some friends.

If you didn’t sign up to get this box of fun, you can sign up today and hope that this kit becomes available for purchase by subscribers. But at least you wouldn’t be missing next month’s box.

In case you’re new to Paper Pumpkin and aren’t entirely sure of the details, here’s what the monthly kit in a box subscription is all about:

  • Each month you receive a unique, surprise kit with a project. It’s colour-coordinated and everything is cut for you
  • Each kit includes stamps, ink, paper, and accessories – everything but adhesive.
  • Each kit gives you about a 30 minute creativity escape.
  • Your Paper Pumpkin ships around the 15th of the month.
  • You need to sign up for a kit by the 10th of the month to get that month’s kit. If you sign up on the 11th of the month, your first kit will come the next month.
  • A Paper Pumpkin membership is $19.95 per month (and shipping is included!) There’s no commitment, you can cancel your monthly Paper Pumpkin at anytime. You can also skip a month if you want.
  • Just click on the Paper Pumpkin button on the left to sign up.
  • The fun of it is that you never know what you’re going to get, but there’s always a stamp set. Once you’re an active subscriber you can also buy old kits and refills where available.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Paper Pumpkin October 2015 Alternative 7

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I found a piece of mossy meadow cardstock that I’d stamped with the leaves from Blissful Bouquet, the Paper Pumpkin October 2015 set. The plan had been to make some kind of DSP with it but other card had been put on top of it and it disappeared. Until last night.

Stampin' Up! Blissful Bouquet and Expressions Natural Elements

I took my gold marker (Stampin’ Up! have retired theirs but sharpies work) and coloured in a few of the leaves at random and I really liked the effect. Unusually I decided to mat it in black and glue that all to a mossy meadow card base before I’d figured out the rest of the card. Even more unusually – and in direct contradiction to what I said yesterday – after trying a few things to add to the front of the card, I settled on my unused pack of Expressions Natural Elements. Everything else covered up too much of my home made DSP.  The natural wood colour didn’t work so I pressed the wooden piece into my versamark and then sprinkled it with gold embossing powder. Apparently I wasn’t thinking ahead too much because this is when I went looking for what to put it on in order to heat it. I was going to use a punch since they’re metal, but my brother objected since there’s a plastic covering. Good call. Because when I got a metal lid and used that, the heat gun blew the word all over the place so the lip of the lid is what saved my piece. Martin suggested, once I was finished, that he has some fine sandpaper in the basement which I could use next time to hold the wooden word in place. Good idea. I’m really pleased with how this came out and even more happy that I have used a previously “hard to use” element. Should I try a wooden snowflake or Rudolph paper clip next?

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Gift Bag punch board

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I’m still packaging the gifts for my secret pal – my sister has been awesome helping me whilst I’m at work. I come home and things have been packaged. Sweet! Today though I used the gift bag punch board (truth be told, Caro punched and scored the larger one) to construct some bags for the last two gifts.

Stampin' Up! Gift bag punch board and Paper Pumpkin Blissful Bouquet - Alternative - Watercolor Words

I made the largest bag possible out of a regular 8.5 by 11 inch piece of card stock and it wasn’t big enough for the largest present. Still, I had something to put in it. The bag was made out of a piece of mint macaron which I stamped in gold using the October 2015 Paper Pumpkin kit, Blissful Bouquet. This is definitely my most used Paper Pumpkin kit! Whilst I constructed the bag, Caro made me a bow out of the gold foil and the bow builder punch and then cut out the word jolly with the Christmas Greetings thinlits dies, also from the foil. I added the word and the bow using a glue dot. Since I didn’t use ribbon, I closed the bag with velco dots.

The other gift bag used a piece of 12 by 12 lost lagoon and made a large bag rather than a medium. I started stamping silver stars, using the stamp from Watercolor Words and then decided to add some colour. I grabbed rich razzleberry and added a few stars. Then I finished off the cardstock with silver. I constructed the box and found that happily the gift fits. For this bag I decided to use ribbon as the closure but the rich razzleberry didn’t work so I got out the blackberry bliss which was perfect.  I wanted to add a touch of bling since this is the last gift and thought that last year’s snowflake embellishments worked perfectly. I attached it using the silver cording trim. Now all I have to do is decorate my cookie recipe and bake the cookies. Oh and go to work. Easy peasy!

See you tomorrow,

Liz

October 2015 Paper Pumpkin Alternative 6

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This week it’s a double challenge at CAS Colours and Sketches – both a sketch and a colour palette. Sketches are definitely more of a stretch. My Paper Pumpkin set for October, Blissful Bouquet, was still out on my desk so I decided to try to use some of the stamps that haven’t been inked up yet.

Stampin' Up! Paper Pumpkin October 2015 - Blissful Bouquet

Here’s the banner of the challenge that was my inspiration

I started off by sponging the three colours onto a piece of cardstock, but I didn’t like how it looked and decided instead to drop ink onto a clear block, spray it with water and then press it onto card. My first attempt created a very dark – and wet – result and I then wondered how it would work on water colour paper. This was rather interesting too and the texture of the paper added interest. My next experiment was to wet the water colour paper rather than the block, this left the block still covered in ink and so I stamped the block onto ordinary card stock. And it’s this last experiment that made it onto this card. I really liked some of the earlier ones too, but they were very slow to dry and I wanted to get on with my card.

I decided to flip the sketch and, because the DSP that I’d created was going to dominate the card, I went with clear embossing on the tiny flowers so that they wouldn’t try to compete. The sentiment is from the Paper Pumpkin kit and it’s stamped in rose red.  As I was about to glue everything down, I decided that the DSP panel was a little too wide and trimmed it slightly on both sides. I loved the coloured thin strips that were left over and quickly realized that adding one of them to the base of the card really improved it. It wasn’t on the sketch but, as my sister who is visiting pointed out, my card was very much inspired by the sketch.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

October 2015 Paper Pumpkin Alternative 5

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Firstly I’d like to thank the team at CAS Colours and Sketches for selecting my card this week as one of the winners. It’s a thrill to go to the challenge site and see my card amongst the winners. I hope that you follow the link to check out the rest of the cards.

Here’s another card that I made using this month’s Paper Pumpkin stamp set, Blissful Bouquet. I was so pleased with the multi coloured leaves that I did a few days ago that I decided to make my own DSP in the same way.

Stampin' Up! October 2015 Paper Pumpkin Alternative Blissful Bouquet

I mounted the two leaf stamps onto a single block and started stamping them in columns in the archival basic black ink onto very vanilla paper. Then, I used four different greens at varying strengths to colour in the leaves – mossy meadow, old olive, pear pizzazz and always artichoke. I decided to echo the black of the stamped image with a skinny basic black mat around my DSP and then mounted it on a mossy meadow card base. After that I went looking for the right sentiment. I realized that lately I seem to mostly make thank you cards (not a bad thing) and I’m a bit short of birthday cards. This sentiment comes from Birthday Blossoms and is stamped in mossy meadow and cut out with an oval framelit. I cut out the next largest framelit in mossy meadow but that made a border that was too wide for this card. So I used a sponge to lightly add a little mossy meadow to the edge of the very vanilla oval to give it a little definition. I lined the outside of the envelope flap for a change – just cut a 6″ by 2 1/4″ piece, glue it down and trim the edges with your paper snips. Easy.

I’m rather enjoying myself reusing this stamp set – I think I’ll pick another set sometime and do another series of cards. When I’ve made a couple more with Blissful Bouquet since I have some ideas at the back of my mind.

See you tomorrow,

Liz