Paper Meets Ink: July 2017

Sunday, 30 July 2017

CTC 139 - Everyday Occasions

Well here's to another week. It's been a big one at our house with a water pipe bursting in the kitchen and half the house flooding! Yep, needed that....... NOT! Anyway, my craft room got thrown into the garage so it's a bit of a mess, luckily I already had my CASEing the Catty project done. If you have started the hop with me grab a cuppa and settle in as the crew have some awesome projects for you this week or you've just hopped on over from the lovely Mel and her super cute project.

This week we are CASEing the Everyday Occasions section.

I've used the Pick a Pattern Suite again this week, because I can and because I LOVE it! It's a pretty simple card and thankfully doesn't need much explaining as I'm a bit tired from moving things, packing things up etc from The Flood. Also, we have three huge industrial fans going non stop and two dehumidifiers, let's just say it's hard to hear yourself think!!

I have CASEd the card at the very top.

The inside.

Thank you for stopping by and please be sure to hop all the way round and see all the amazing projects the crew have made this week, by clicking the below button you will be taken to Alisa, she has a beautiful festive treat for you!

To join in on all the fun and do your own CASE click the button below.

Well it's a short and sweet post from me this week!

Cheers Megan xx

Saturday, 29 July 2017

Colour INKspiration 14

Hi everyone! Super quick post today as I am on the run but wanted to share the card I did for the Colour INKspiration challenge.

This was the colour palette.

As you can see I had a play with the embossing paste this week however added Dazzling Diamonds Stampin' Glitter on top of the paste while it was wet.... so pretty in real life! The flowers were stamped onto gold foil in Archival Basic Black and then again in Rich Razzleberry and just the actual flowers fussy cut and and adhered on top of the gold ones. All the stamped images are from the Butterfly Basics Stamp Set, if you don't already have this you NEED it. The set is so versatile with background images, butterflies, flowers, greetings and more!

Did you notice my Night of Navy ribbon? You won't find that in the catalogue! I dyed some of the white Classic Weave Ribbon with the Night of Navy reinker, you can make any colour ribbon to match your project. Just grab your silcone mat put a few drops of reinker and a few spritz of water and then grab your ribbon and smoosh it all through the colour until it is completely coloured or not, for a tie-dyed effect! If you don't want to have really inky fingers wear gloves or as I discovered...... if you are quickly getting some creating done before you head to work and don't think to put on gloves and don't have time to scrub your hands and you go to work with very blue tips on your fingers it provides SO many opportunities to explain what you do! I now have a new lady going to be starting card classes with me because she asked me what I had been up to! Let your hands do the advertising!

The inside.

Anyway, as I said flying visit today, as it is a bit crazy in our household this week. I'll explain later, promise!

Cheers Megan xx

Friday, 28 July 2017

WWYS#126 - Label Me Pretty

Hi! So glad you could drop by my blog and have a little look. Today's post is a new challenge entry for me, the challenge is called What Will You Stamp. They are a weekly challenge group, selecting a new stamp each week to focus on. I love blog hops/challenges with a focus on one stamp set as you get a lot of different ideas for the one stamp set!

The Label Me Pretty Stamp Set has a coordinating punch that makes creating projects a cinch. I've chose to use the Happy Birthday image and a very classic and elegant palette of Very Vanilla, Basic Black and Gold. Here is my card....

I haven't coloured the image, just stamped in black and then clear embossed. Oh, how I love the new Shimmer Ribbon in black. It just goes to show you how shimmery it is when my camera actually picks the shimmer up!

For the mat, I have place my Very Vanilla card stock in the Simply Scored Scoring Tool and scored 1 inch diagonally across one way and then the other to give a "quilted" look and at each intersection (where the lines cross) I have adhered a tiny pearl, embossed in gold. To do this I cut out the number of pearls I needed still on their backing sheet and pressed this into my Versamark pad, sprinkled gold embossing powder on and gently heated with an already warmed up Heat Tool, voila gold pearls!

Here is another version, just a bit simplified, using up my leftover bits and bobs (when I am designing a card I often will cut out/stamp something in a couple of different colours and play until I am happy with the look. My leftovers box is overflowing! I have given myself the challenge, to wherever possible create another project with the leftovers!) On this example I have used the back side of a Very Vanilla mat, the embossed side?? Whereas in the first example I used the front side, debossed?? I could have those two mixed up, but you know what I mean! To let you in on a little secret I thought to do this as this piece was cast aside as I went a bit wonky on my scoring and as it turns out if you turn it over the embellishment piece covers it nicely. As they say in the art world, "There are no mistakes, just creative opportunities!"

For the inside of both designs I thought that the beautiful floral image from Wood Words Stamp Set, went really well with the flowers on the front image.

Now, if you would like to play along or just check out all the other amazing creations with the Label Me Pretty Stamp Set, click on the WWYS badge below, the badge also has a picture of all the other great images in this set.

Thank you again for stopping by! For your information ,below is pictured most of the materials I used to make these cards. If you would like to purchase them, clicking on one of the items will take you to my online shop or if you would rather just purchase ready made cards, made by me or have any questions just use the Contact Me section on the right hand toolbar of this blog.

Cheers Megan xx

Product List

Sunday, 23 July 2017

CASEing the Catty #138 - Holidays

It's Sunday and I am still super excited to be fulfilling my Design Crew commitments with my second post this week. If you haven't started our hop with me you have probably just come from Bronwyn's blog, how beautiful was her project!? Makes you wish it was Christmas now! This week we are CASEing the Holiday section of the Stampin' Up! annual catalogue and you too can join in with the fun by doing your own CASE and uploading it to our Facebook challenge site HERE.

My card this week is a CASE of the card on the very top right of the picture below. I really loved those cute little hills in a frame!

To make the little hills I cut out some stitched oval framelits and embossed one to create visual interest and texture. The next task was to find an image that was the right size for my little scene, the cute little image of the puppy & turtle from Bella & Friends stamp set was as perfect as I could get! I had better show you my card, right?

The little tree is out of the very versatile Sprinkles of Life stamp set and coordinating Tree Builder Punch. It is a carry over from last years catalogue and for good reason. I love that it can be a cloud, tree, cupcake etc.

Here is a piccie of the inside, simple but sweet.

It's going to be a short but sweet post for me this week as I had the weekend shift at work this week and to put it simply am KAPOOPED! One good thing at work this weekend though ( I work at a vet surgery) is I bought this cutie home to foster while he waits for his forever home. He is a Kelpie X but only 9kgs. Our vet surgery does all the vet work for the amazing charity 4Paws Animal Rescue Inc Sunshine Coast.

He has settled in so well with our two dogs and we are all falling in love with him and will be sad to see him go but he will make such a great dog for the lucky family that adopts him.

Ok, time for you to continue hopping along and seeing what else the design crew has created for you. Next stop the lovely Mel who I believe has been inspired by exactly the same card as I, but as you will see has created something totally different and oh so cute!

Sunday, 16 July 2017

CASEing the Catty #137 - FYI You're Fabulous!

Hi everyone! Hope you had a fabulous weekend. It's a pretty special weekend for me as this is my first post as a CASEing the Catty Crew Member! The Crew advertised last month that they would be accepting new Crew Members & if you were interested let them know & participate in the challenges for the month of June. I was one of the lucky ones to be chosen to join a very talented group of ladies who each week take inspiration from our gorgeous catalogue images and CASE (Copy & Selectively Edit or Copy & Share Everything) to create their own masterpieces! If you are not starting with me you have probably hopped over from Rachel, I'm sure you loved what she had to show you!

This week we are CASEing the Artistic Expression section of the catalogue pages 132 -181.

I have chosen to case the card above on the left.

It's quite obvious I've kept with the flamingo's! Instead of the two coloured birds, I've just done the one, fussy cut out & popped up on some dimensionals in front of a some silhouetted flamingos for drama, drama, drama. The semi circular greeting element has also been CASEd.

The steps I took to make this card were:

start with a Basic Black card base (inside I have done a Whisper White (WW) insert with some palm fronds stamped & stamped off in Flirty Flamingo (FF))
then a matt of FF and on top of that a WW matt
the Fabulous Flamingo Stamp Set is a three step stamp set, I've stamped the solid image four times with the Archival Black Stamp Pad onto the WW matt **TIP- have some baby wipes on hand to keep those fingers super clean, it is really easy to get black where you don't want it! Not that I am talking from experience (wink, wink).
on a scrap piece of WW stamp the base layer of the flamingo in Powder Pink (PP) the second layer in FF and the final outline layer in black & fussy cut around. I may have said this before but I have quite a few pairs of scissors & put off buying the Stampin' Up! Paper Snips, when I finally did, it was why did I wait? They are a dream to use, especially for fussy cutting!
pop coloured flamingo up on dimensionals and layer in front of black ones
die cut a large stitched circle with the framelits in FF & a smaller one in PP
emboss the FF circle with the Sparkle Embossing Folder & trim to a semi circle, adhere to front
stamp FYI You're Gorgeous (Tabs for Everthing Stamp Set) in Black onto PP circle & adhere some Rhinestone Basioc Jewels, layer on top popped up on dimensionals.

Want to know something crazy? I made this card 11 times for a recent card swap I participated in, it took all day but I was happy with my swap & hope those that received it were too.

Now that's all from me this week it is time for you to keep on hopping to see all the amazingness that the crew has created for you this week, your next stop on the hop is my fellow crew member Rose who is also new to the Design Team, so make sure you leave her some blog love & leave her a comment (click on the next blog button below or her name). For those of you not so familiar with this "blogging" thing we do, if you are reading our blogs in their entirety on your email program, you need to actually click on the title of our email, this will take you to our actual websites and there is where you can leave a comment!! Go on I dare you!