Welcome back, stamping friend!
Wow – can you believe that we’re here – the last day of 2016?! For a lot of people, it felt like the year that would never end. There has been so much turmoil around the world, with wars, elections, deaths and sickness, that sometimes it is hard to think of the good things. But we must focus on that, for focusing on the good, and being a force for good in the world, is how we continue, and make the world a better place, even if it’s just in our little piece of it.
In our little stamping world, we do have good things to look forward to; in just a few days we have the start of the new Occasions catalogue, and Sale-A-Bration! I’m sure you’ve been hearing about it for weeks now, but for a good reason – they really are worth getting excited about! I know that you will find something – or a lot of somethings! – that you will be adding to your shopping cart, and wish list 🙂
In November, we demonstrators had a chance to attend a local ‘mini-convention’ put on by Stampin’ Up!, called On Stage. There, we heard about the good things that happened over the past Stampin’ Up! year, and what we’re looking forward to for 2017. We also had a chance to do some hands-on stamping with some of the new products, as well as do a special pre-pre-order of some of the new products.
Yesterday I shared a picture of my pre-order products; today I thought I’d share with you some pictures of the projects we made at On Stage.
This first card uses the gorgeous Falling in Love Designer Series Paper, the So in Love stamp set and the So Detailed Thinlits Dies:
Oh. My. Word. Can you say ‘breathtaking’?! You know, we work so hard to achieve the Bokeh effect using templates, inks and sponges – and here it is, in print, on this beautiful paper! This DSP has Blushing Bride, Sahara Sand, Soft Sky, Sweet Sugarplum and Very Vanilla as it’s colour palette – everything is soft, soft, soft!
This card starts with a base of Soft Sky cardstock, measuring 4 1/4″ x 11″, scored at 5 1/2″. The panel of Falling in Love DSP is glued directly to the card front.
Across the centre is a belly band, created using the So Detailed Thinlits Dies and Very Vanilla cardstock. The great part is that you can either do what we did, and create a belly band, or you can die cut just the front piece, and attach it directly to the card. Once we die cut the pieces, we stamped the sentiment from the So in Love stamp set in Sahara Sand ink in the centre, then tied a piece of the new Very Vanilla 1/4″ Satin Ribbon into a bow, and attached it to the front using a Glue Dot. The Falling in Love Embellishment – a beautiful heavy weight metal powder coated in Vanilla, with jewel accents – was tied to the ribbon using a bit of Gold Thread.
Here’s a picture of the belly band:
The Falling in Love Suite of products, as described in the catalogue, is a “marriage of romance and shabby chic”; you’re going to want to purchase the entire suite, including the stamp sets (Falling For You and So in Love), the DSP, coordinating cardstock pack, ribbon, lace doilies and Falling Petals embossing folder. And you don’t have to stop there – you can also get coordinating stamp sets Love Sparkles for various celebrations, and the Swan Lake stamp set; they all coordinate beautifully together.
A new product that brought a cheer from everyone in the audience is the new Watercolour Pencils! (yes, I’m Canadian – I spell it with a ‘u’ – get used to it! 😉 ) . We were all thrilled to have a chance to used them, especially on the Inside The Lines Designer Series Paper that you can earn for FREE in the Sale-A-Bration brochure.
With the current craze of ‘adult’ colouring books, you are going to LOVE this designer series paper, as well as several of the new stamp sets, that just scream out for colouring!
Now, when we first saw the supplies we were going to use for this card, we were all swooning, thinking that we were going to be creating a beautiful dragonfly, as the Dragonfly Dreams stamp set was in the supplies! Alas – it was only one of the sentiments we used from that stamp set – but when you see the Dragonfly Dreams Bundle (the Dragonfly Dreams stamp set plus the Detailed Dragonfly Thinlits Dies) alongside this Inside The Lines DSP, you’ll see how well they go together 🙂
For this card, we started with our card base of Calypso Coral cardstock, and randomly stamped the sentiment from Dragonfly Dreams in Calypso Coral ink, for that tone-on-tone look. We then took the 3 cut pieces of Inside The Lines DSP, and coloured just certain areas – the flower with the Calypso Coral pencil, the leaf with the Old Olive pencil. After colouring in the areas, you take the Blender Pen and blend & smooth the colours where you want them; you don’t have to apply a total coverage with the pencils to start, as you can ‘pull’ the colours across the image. Then, you can go back and add more colour, to add depth and shading, as you want. These pencils blend beautifully! (keep in mind, this was my first time using them, so it’s not perfect!).
To finish off the card front, we used the Basic Black Stampin’ Write Marker to colour in just the word ‘thanks’ from another of the sentiments, and stamped it onto a piece of Whisper White cardstock. We used the Paper Snips to cut a banner tail, and layered it on top of a piece of Burlap Ribbon. We used the (retired) hand held stapler to attach a little bow tied of Basic Black Baker’s Twine.
I just couldn’t put away the stamp set without using that large dragonfly image – so I stamped it in Sahara Sand, on the inside of the card! 🙂 I did get this Bundle as part of my pre-order, so you will be seeing a lot more projects with it in use!
There are some more projects to share, but I don’t want to overload this posting! If you want to see more, check out my blog post from yesterday – I took part in a blog hop that you’ll want to check out – it features a lot of great projects using new and current products – just to get you dreaming & making your wish list! 🙂 Of course, on January 4th you’ll be able to order all of the new products through my online store – you can click on the images below once they go ‘live’ to order online.
Be sure to come back again tomorrow morning – I’m taking part in another blog hop, with another group, where again, we’ll be celebrating the new products, so you’ll see tons more ideas!
Until tomorrow – happy stamping!
Happy New Year, Deborah! I hope 2017 is awesome for you!
I hope 2017 is a great year for you too, Susan! (for all of us, in fact!). Thanks for visiting 🙂