Pinkies Blog Hop for the new Autumn/Winter Stampin' Up! catalogue 2015: I can't "resist" trying an old favourite technique with some (holly) jolly new products!

Thank you for joining us on another Pinkies Blog Hop! We're showcasing lots of gorgeous projects using products from the new Stampin' Up!® Autumn/Winter Seasonal Catalogue. 

Simply use the buttons at the end of each post to keep hopping!

Welcome, especially if you have hopped directly from Angélique's blog,
what fab ideas she has - I think my wishlist has just grown... again!! 

I am SO excited by this new Autumn/Winter Catalogue - I LOVE this time of year and the build up to Christmas and boy, does this catalogue deliver! There are SO many gorgeous products in it -  I had a really hard time deciding which items to buy first and then I remembered you don't actually have to buy it ALL at once...hard not to though!! I'm looking forward to my second order already! Us "demos" are lucky to be able to get our mitts on the new goodies early, via a demo pre-order and we get sneak peeks at it all before our customers. Let me know if you'd like to join my team and get that privilege before the next catalogue comes out! ;)

Anyway... I have chosen to show you a few items I have made using the fabulous new Holly Jolly Greetings stamp set and Christmas Greetings Thinlits Dies bundle:

I fell in love with this stamp set and the lovely word thinlits as soon as Ii saw it. (It reminds me of the Crazy About You set that is in the Annual Catalogue - one of my favourite "go to" sets!) I was inspired by one of the ideas that the A/W catalogue shows. Here is the card in a bit more detail:

I used the emboss resist technique for the snowflake background. To do this I swiped my embossing buddy all over a 9.5x13.8cm piece of Whisper White cardstock,  then stamped the lovely snowflake stamp several times in Versamark ink over the card. I then added Stampin' Up!'s clear embossing powder and heated it with my Heat Tool. Then I took a Stampin' Sponge and rubbed Pool Party ink just in the centres of the snowflakes, using a circular motion, making it darker nearer the centres and lighter towards the edges. A quick rub with a piece of kitchen towel and I was ready for the next stage - stamping the dots and stars stamp randomly over the card in Pool Party ink. I then rubbed the embossing buddy over the card again and applied small dots of the amazing brand new Fine Tip Glue Pen in precise, tiny dots, then spooned Dazzling Diamonds glitter over it and tapped the excess off! Oh my gosh, that Fine Tip Glue is AWESOME!! Swoon! You MUST get some! Trust me, it is fantastic!

The next step was to wrap a 4cm strip of Vellum Cardstock across the bottom third of the now sparkly snowflake background piece. I cut the vellum about 2cm wider than the piece of card and stuck the overlap excess on the back of the piece of card using Fast Fuse. Now for the greeting - the "Have a" and "Christmas" words were stamped with Pool Party ink on scraps of whisper white cardstock and trimmed to size, then stuck to the vellum with cut up pieces of Stampin' dimensionals to give them a bit of depth. The gorgeous "merry" is one of the Christmas Greetings Thinlits Dies (there is also a "jolly" and a "peace" in the set too). I cut it from a scrap of Bermuda Bay cardstock with my Bigshot and used teeny tiny dots of the Fine Tip Glue to stick it at a jaunty angle onto the vellum - it is so easy to be very precise with this special glue - the tip of the applicator really is tiny! The final stage was to glue this all onto an A6-sized, Bermuda Bay card base. I really hope that you can see just how glossy the snowflakes are and how sparkly and glittery the dots are?

I decorated the inside of the card  with a Pool Party stamped snowflake with added Fine Tip glued-on glitter and then, whilst I had the inks and stamp set still out on my desk, I decided to make some Christmas gift tags in the same vein:

On the tags I stamped the large snowflakes in Pool Party ink and the dots and stars in Smoky Slate ink. The Fine Tip ink is precise enough to add glittery detail to the small teardrop shapes and centres of the snowflakes. The words are from the Holly Jolly stamp set too, and are in Bermuda Bay ink. I decided to just have a play when I made these tags and tried out various ways of tying on the ribbons/twine. The tags on the above photograph are sitting on an A4 piece of cardstock, to give you an idea of their sizes. The white ribbon is the Whisper White seam-binding ribbon and the thick bakers' twine and sequin trim are Bermuda Bay. There is also a little bit of the fine silver metallic thread on one of them too - I think that the thicker Cording Trim from the new A/W catalogue would probably look much better though, so I shall be adding that to my next order! I think these would make great card-toppers too, don't you?

Well, I hope that I have inspired you with my projects today, do click on the button below to click onto Lea's blog and continue looking at all the other hop stops along the way!

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog today. If you have any questions about what I have made, then please leave me a comment below and I shall be very happy to help answer them if I can! I would love to know what is on the top of your wishlist. If you would like me to send you a paper copy of the catalogue before you decide, then please do contact me and I will happily send one out to you.

Until next time, happy crafting (and shopping) everyone!

Lucy x

Watercolor Wings decorated notebooks for another Pinkies Blog Hop!

Thank you for joining us on another Pinkies Blog Hop! We're showcasing lots of gorgeous projects using products from the new Stampin' Up!® Annual Catalogue. Simply use the buttons at the end of each post to keep hopping!

Thank you if you have joined me from Sarah's blog - what lovely ideas!

I have totally fallen head over heels with the Watercolor Wings stamp set - I am a huge fan of butterflies and the two-step layered butterflies in this set are just beautiful. I love their slightly sketchy, textured look and have discovered that there are endless ways of combining ink colours to produce a myriad of designs.

Today, however, I am keeping it simple and using just two colours in my projects: Perfect Plum and the new Mint Macaron. I adore how these two colours go so beautifully together. Come and see what I have done with them:

I decided to decorate two hardback notebooks by covering them with some of the Mint Macaron Envelope Paper, stuck down with Fast Fuse (so quick and easy to do!). I then stamped a large butterfly directly onto the larger book's cover with the larger butterfly layer pieces from the stamp set. I cut out a filigree butterfly from Perfect Plum cardstock with the Butterfly Thinlits using my trusty Bigshot (and a bit of wax paper to release it easily) and applied tiny dots of Tombow glue to the back of it to stick it down securely:

For the smaller notebook I used my Chalk Talk Framelits to make a double-layered label, wrapped a little of the gorgeous Mint Macaron 1" (2.5cm) Dotted Lace Trim around it, overlapping two pieces ever so slightly to make it appear wider. I then stamped one of the smaller butterflies from Watercolor Wings onto Whisper White cardstock, cut it out with the Butterflies Thinlits' smallest butterfly shape and then adhered it to the ribbon with Stampin' Dimensionals:

I think it looks really pretty, don't you? A good mix of vintage and feminine whilst still being clean and simple.

This last photograph shows the inside of the larger notebook. I decided to stamp the inside cover with the words "There is nothing in the caterpillar that tells you it is going to be a butterfly" taken from the Butterfly Basics Stamp Set. I also stamped some of the stylised flowers from that set onto the first page of the book and the front cover too, to keep it from being too plain! I love how these two stamp sets and the two butterfly thinlits sets coordinate so beautifully. Even better is that they are available in bundles with a 15% saving - thank you Stampin' Up! for that!

That's it for today, don't forget that you can get two FREE stamp sets if you join my team before the end of June 2015, I welcome both hobbyists and business-minded stampers and am happy to help answer any questions you may have about how to join and what to expect. If you join my team you will also come under the umbrella of the Pinkies team and together we offer a huge pool of knowledge, experience, inspiration, ideas  and friendship. I love being a demo and being a Pinkie too is the cherry on top of that!

Thank you for taking the time to view my post today, please click on the images below to hop onwards to the next person, Christa's, blog, or, back towards Sarah's.

Hope you come back to see me again soon:  next week I will have another project to show you, using the same colours and stamps that I have used today' to make a pretty gift set of cards which would make an ideal teacher thank you present! 

Until next time, happy crafting everyone!

Lucy x

Thinking outside the box with the Curvy Keepsake Thinlets for the Pinkies Autumn/Winter Catalogue Blog Hop!

Thank you for joining us on another Pinkies Blog Hop! We are showcasing lots of gorgeous projects from the new Stampin' Up! ® Autumn/Winter Seasonal Catalogue. Simply use the buttons at the end of each post to keep hopping!

A very warm welcome to you, especially if you have hopped to me from the lovely Tracy's blog - I do love seeing how creative other people are, don't you? :O)

There are soooo many yummy things in the new Autumn/Winter Catalogue - I think that it is one of the best yet! So many fantastic ideas for packaging, gifts and decorations..I love it all!

 

Well, nearly all.... I'm a bit squeamish about (ok, terrified, of) spiders and so I think I may have to give the aptly-named "Frightful Wreath Simply Created Kit" on page 37 a  wide berth - but only because of the beaded spider in the kit! (It seems that the dreaded annual 'Spider-month' has come early to my house this year and the hairy blighters have been both large in numbers and size so far ... eww... so I am extra spooked by them now - bleuuugh!!)   I do, however, like the rest of the wreath though... and I do like Halloween a LOT... so I may just have to bypass the eight-legged beastie and get myself one of the kits afterall...

Anyway, talking of Halloween, that brings me to my blog-hop projects that I would like to share with you today: One of my favourite things to do for Halloween is to make themed treats to give to people. As soon as I saw the Curvy Keepsake Box Thinlits Die and the box ideas in the new Stampin' Up! catalogue, I just knew that they would make great pumpkins due to the lovely curved shape and had to give it a try.... So, here is what I came up with:

 

With my Bigshot and the thinlits, I used Pumpkin Pie cardstock to make the box  and drew lines on it with the brush-tip end of my Pumpkin Pie Write Marker, to look like the ridges of the pumpkin. To make the leaves, I use the ever-useful Autumn Accents Bigz Die (from the Annual Catalogue) to cut out three of the serrated (Beech?) leaves from Old Olive cardstock. To give the leaves some texture I folded them in half - to make the central vein - and then pinched the serrations with my fingers to make more vein-like indentations along both sides of the leaves. Here is a view of the box from above, to show you better:



I made the tendrils by using my paper trimmer to cut long, tapered slivers from a piece of Old Olive cardstock and then rolled them tightly around my trusty Paper-Piercing Tool to produce the curved spirals. I then carefully glued them onto the uppermost box closure flap with Tombow Multipurpose Liquid glue, so that the box can be safely opened, to get  to the sweeties inside it, without damaging the box. I couldn't resist making the cute little punch-art toad to go with it! He is made using the Small Oval Punch and the Owl Builder Punch - his smile comes from the little bit that you cut out using the notch-end of the punch from the fabby new Gift Box Punch Board, that is also in the new catalogue (I LOVE that new punch board, so easy to make fantastic boxes really quickly and easily!).

After I had made the pumpkin, I began to think about what else I could make using the Curvy Keepsake Thinlets for Halloween and gosh, so many ideas sprang into my head! I decided to make a black witch's cat next...  Just after I'd made the cat, I saw, on a facebook group, THE most amazing idea for a witch using the same thinlits. It was made by a lady called Lynn Starzl in America, so,  I just had to CASE her idea and make a witch to complete my Halloween trio. Come and see:

HOW cute is that witch?!! :O) Thank you Lynn!  I love the use of the burlap ribbon strands for her hair and the hat is made from another of my favourite new things from the Autumn/Winter catalogue: the new Tree Punch!! So clever! The witch's hat slots over the box handles, so, it can easily be removed when you want to open the box and get to the treats inside! How clever is that?! I used the Owl Builder Punch for both the cat's and the witch's eyes and nose. The whiskers were hand-drawn with my white uni-ball Signo® Gel Pen. The cats ears are cut down from the Small Oval punch shapes. I DO love Stampin' Up's punches - they are just SO versatile!

 

I have also used the same Curvy Keepsake Box Thinlits to make several Christmas-themed boxes, other animals and even an Easter Chick (a little bit ahead of myself there, I know, but it shows that the catalogue items are not just for Autumn and Christmas!!). I will show you more ideas on future blog posts, so do come back again soon to see them. They are quite addictive once you start making them! :O)

 

Anyway, that's enough from me for today; I hope that I have inspired you to "think outside the box" when looking at the new catalogue products and can see how many other ways you can use them all!

 

Thank you for taking the time to look at my blog-hop post today. Sarah's blog is next, so hop on over using the button below.

Happy hopping everyone!

Lucy x

 

 

 

 

 

You can view all the products showcased above on my online shop by clicking here - if you are in the UK, France, Germany, The Netherlands or Austria, you can order them from me directly or via my online shop. If you order online with me by  the 29th September 2014 and use the hostess code VRSYYZAV when you place your order, I will personally send you a free gift as a thank you for shopping with me!

 

If you would like me to send you a paper copy of the catalogue, please contact me and I shall be happy to post one to you. You can add one to your online order, too, if you prefer. The order code for a single English language catalogue is 138029.  Catalogues are also available in French and German, too. :O) Lucy x