Monthly Archives: March 2016

Celebrate Today for a Special Birthday

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On this wet and very windy day I abandoned plans to go out for a walk and stayed inside to craft…. I know, any excuse……

So, having made a special birthday card for my mother to give her sister in law, see post (Number of Years) I decided to make my own 70th birthday for her.

I looked through my stamp sets for inspiration and was attracted by the set, Celebrate Today. I used this set a lot when it first came out but haven’t used it for a while. I thought it might make a fab special birthday card.

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Stampin Up! Celebrate Today and Number of Years

I used a panel of Whisper White and stamped along the edge with the spotty stamp using Pink Pirouette ink. This stamp is designed to add spots to the balloons, but thinking outside the box, it made a great border. I stamped the solid balloon in Pool Party ink using a Stampin Pierce Mat under the cardstock; I find this gives me a better stamped image when using a Photopolymer set. I love the sentiment on the balloon string from the Balloon Celebration stamp set and stamped it in Rose Red.  The Happy Birthday was stamped using the Rose Red and Pool Party ink.

I love the Tombow Multipurpose Glue and used it to adhere a strip of the gorgeous Pool Party Glitter Ribbon to the left side of the stamped panel. I decided to round the upper right corner of the stamped panel and the piece of Silver Foil cardstock I used as a mat, before adhering them together leaving a small border.

I then stamped the numbers from the Number of Years stamp set using Rose Red ink onto a scrap Whisper White cardstock and die cut them using the BigShot and the Large Number dies.

My Aunt is a lover of pink and I used a card base of Rose Red. I rounded the upper right corner, mimicking the stamped panel and mounted the panel using Dimensionals. I decided to tilt the stamped panel on the card front for a more modern look. I finished by adding the die cut numbers onto the balloon with dimensionals and adding some co-ordinating candy dots.

I absolutely love this card and will be using this set again for some other special occasion cards I need to make, so watch this space…….

Don’t forget Sale-A-Bration ends on the 31St March, so check out my online shop at http://www.stampinup.net/esuite/home/crafty-rootes and hit the ‘shop now’ button. You can pick one free item for every £45 you spend, don’t miss out.

Looking forward to seeing you again.

Mo x

Birthday Blooms – Tiled

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Earlier this week I saw an amazing technique video on Youtube. It was posted by Tami White of stampwithtami.com. In the video Tami uses the What I Love stamp set, which is one of the Sale-A-Bration sets available for free with a £45 order in my online store until the 31stMarch. She stamps these lovely flowers onto a sheet of small stickers to give a tiled effect. The card she made looked amazing and I couldn’t wait to try the technique for myself.

I chose to use the beautiful Birthday Blooms stamp set for my card. I stamped the large rose image using Archival Black Ink onto a panel of stickers. I learnt the hard way that you need to leave this for at least 15 minutes to dry otherwise it will smear. Even then I tried hard not to touch the mage with my hands whilst colouring as the moisture on the skin can cause smudging.

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Stampin Up! Birthday Blooms stamp set

I coloured in my images using the retired Stampin Up! Blendabilities but you could use Stampin Write Markers or a Blender pen and inkpads. I would not advise using an aqua painter as the label sticker backing sheet holds the water and everything runs …… trust me, I tried it and the result was not attractive.

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Stampin Up! Birthday Blooms

I coloured the first image using the Pink Pirouette and Wild Wasabi Blendabilities and mounted the tiled panel onto a piece of Pink Pirouette cardstock, then onto a card base of Thick Whisper White cardstock. The sentiment comes from the Teeny Tiny Wishes stamp set.

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Stampin Up! Birthday Blooms

The second image is coloured using the Soft Sky and Wild Wasabi Blendabilities and mounted the tiled panel onto a piece of Marina Mist cardstock, then onto a card base of Thick Whisper White cardstock. The sentiment again, comes from the Teeny Tiny Wishes stamp set.

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Stampin Up! Birthday Blooms

For the third card I changed the orientation to portrait and used the darker, Rich Razzleberry Blendabilities along with the previously used Wild Wasabi Blendabilities. I mounted the tiled panel onto Rich Razzleberry cardstock and added two strips of the Gold Glitter Tape which is another Sale-A-Bration item.

I love this technique; it looks amazing but is actually quite simple to do. I hope you like the projects.

Don’t forget Sale-A-Bration ends on the 31St March, so if you would like the what I Love stamp set or the Glitter tape, or indeed any of the other items go to my online shop at http://www.stampinup.net/esuite/home/crafty-rootes and hit the ‘shop now’ button. You can pick one free item for every £45 you spend.

Looking forward to seeing you again.

Mo x

Unused Colour Challenge

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So, yesterday I was at my upline Mikaela Titheridge’s (http://thecraftyoinkpen.blogspot.co.uk/) house with fellow team member Susan Merrey (http://craftyduckydoodah.blogspot.co.uk/) and the conversation got around to what are our least used Stampin Up! colours. It turns out we all had 3 or 4 colours that we rarely, if ever use. It is just so easy to reach for your favourite colours and colour combinations when designing a project.

The upshot of the conversation is that Mikaela has challenged the team to name our 4 least used colours and to design a project using at least 3 of them. Got to say I love a challenge…….. so, here goes….

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Stampin Up! inkpads

My least used colours are Chocolate Chip (there were cries of horror from Susan when I announced this one), Always Artichoke, Rich Razzleberry, I like the colour but can never seem to combine it successfully with anything else.  And lastly, Pumpkin Pie, I struggle with oranges in general and could just as easily have picked Tangerine Tango or Tangelo Twist, except, I don’t have either of those … says it all really.

My first thought was to use the Gorgeous Grunge stamp set, but on reflection I thought this was a bit of a cop out. I decided I would up the anti by also choosing to use Very Vanilla cardstock and the Happy Patterns stencil pack. I have used both the cardstock and the stencils twice since I bought them and I thought they might work with this colour combo. I also decided to use all 4 of the colours I had selected for the challenge.

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I got out some sponge daubers, chose the dotted line stencil pattern and set too. I decided to use a sentiment from the Perfect Pairings stamp set, one of the Sale-A-Bration options which I have not yet used and the Lots of Labels dies, again, I bought these a while ago and haven’t used them. I was so happy with the result; bizarrely the colours seemed to work well together and gave the card quite a masculine look. I added a small amount of the Metallic Gold Thread and some Candy Dots to give the card a bit of texture and called it done.

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I decided to try another stencil from the same pack, there are 4 altogether. The sentiment is from Perfect Pairings and I added a small piece of Gold Glitter Tape, another Sale-A-Bration option and used the Banner triple Punch to flag the end of the sentiment.

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I have to say, I really like both of the cards and all of the colours I used. What a revelation. I also loved the stencils which were so quick and easy to use.

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Hope you like the projects and maybe you could try the challenge for yourself. Let me know how you get on.

Don’t forget Sale-A-Bration ends on the 31St March, so if you would like the Perfect Pairings stamp set or the Glitter tape, or indeed any of the other items go to my online shop at http://www.stampinup.net/esuite/home/crafty-rootes and hit the ‘shop now’ button. You can pick one free item for every £45 you spend.

Looking forward to seeing you again.

Mo x

Rose Garden another way …… Notecards

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I made the cutest set of notelets today using the lovely Rose Garden framelit dies. I have used these dies before to die cut the fantastic, huge rose and smaller rose. I have also used the pretty little sentiment frame from the set but the little leafy branch has, until now, passed me by. No longer…….

I saw a Youtube video earlier this week by Mary Fish – www.stampinpretty.com – using the leafy branch die. So I got out the Rose garden Framelits and set about CASEing the card.

I started by die cutting the leafy branch from a panels of Rose Red cardstock and Pink Pirouette cardstock. I then inserted the Rose Red die cut into the negative space cut in the Pink Pirouette panel and the Pink Pirouette die cut into the negative space in the Rose Red panel. I backed both pieces onto Whisper White cardstock. I love the way white shows through, so pretty. This panel was mounted onto a piece of either Rose Red or Pink Pirouette cardstock and added to a Whisper White Notecard. Prior to matting and layering I decided to corner round opposite corners of all the pieces to add some interest.

The sentiment comes from the Birthday Blooms stamp set and was punched out using the Large Oval Punch. I added a flower in either Rose Red or Pink Pirouette using the flower punch from the Itty Bitty Accents punch pack. Each flower has a candy dot in the centre.

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I was really happy with the way these cards turned out and decided to try some other colours. The second pair of cards are in Lost Lagoon and Soft Sky. The third set are in Pear Pizzaz and Mossy Meadow and I love them all. I think they look great.

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I want to gift this set to a friend so made a simple box using Thick Whisper White cardstock. The panel on the top is in Pacific Point and Tempting Turquoise, another great colour combo.

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I am really happy with these notecards and box and love all the colour combinations. Hope you do too.

Looking forward to seeing you again.

Mo x

Number of Years

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Mum asked me if I would make a card to celebrate her sister in law’s 70th birthday in May……I know it is only mid-March but Mum does like to be ahead of the game.

I decided to use a card I made at my upline Mikaela Titheridges’ recent stamp-a-stack  (thecraftyoinkpen.blogspot.co.uk) as my base card. The card uses the Number of Years stamp set with the Large Numbers co-ordinating dies and pretty paper from the Birthday Bouquet dsp stack.

1-DSCF7464I stamped the leafy stamp from the Number of Years stamp set twice in Old Olive ink onto a panel of Whisper White cardstock and used Blushing Bride, Watermelon Wonder and Daffodil Delight ink to fill in the sweet little flowers. I then stamped the ‘Happy’ sentiment in Watermelon Wonder ink. I stamped the ‘Birthday’ in Watermelon Wonder and stamped the banner shape around it in Basic Grey ink and die cut the piece using the co-ordinating die.  I stamped the 70 in a couple of different colours before settling on Pool Party and I die cut them using the co-ordinating dies. To give it a bit of sparkle I added the numbers, using dimensionals to a punched circle of the gorgeous Blushing Bride Glimmer Paper, love that stuff, sparkly but not messy. I added a little piece of the shiny Pool Party Glitter ribbon and attached it with the sweet little Bow Paperclips. I added dimensionals to the back of the panel and added it between the 2 pieces of dsp.

Mum loved the card and thinks my Aunt will love it as well. Hope she does.

Thank you for stopping by my blog. Hope to see you again soon.

Mo x

Botanical Builders dies for Mother’s Day

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So, last Sunday was Mothering Sunday in the UK and I used the Botanical Builder Framelits to make a card for my lovely Mum. She has a very plain and simple style and with this in mind I designed a fairly unfussy card for her.

I went for a 5 ½” by 5 ½” card base made using Naturals White cardstock which is sadly now retired. I just love the slightly flecked appearance of this cardstock which goes particularly well with flower and leaf stamps and dies. When the cardstock retired last year I bought a couple of packets which have sadly nearly all gone. The card would however, look just as lovely on Whisper White or Very Vanilla cardstock.

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I chose to die cut a variety of flowers and foliage using the Botanical Builders dies using Island Indigo, Rose Red, Blushing Bride, Soft Sky and Tip Top Taupe cardstock and inked the edges with the co-ordinating inks and sponge daubers. This gives them a lot of dimension and character

I arranged the flowers and foliage at the bottom right hand side of a panel of Naturals White cardstock and stamped ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ from the Teeny Tiny Sentiments stamp set in Rose Red.

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I mounted this piece onto a piece of Rose red cardstock and backed this with a piece of Tip Top Taupe cardstock. I then mounted the whole topper onto the card base using dimensionals.I added some of the gorgeous metal rimmed pearls to the larger flowers and scattered some basic pearls around the other flowers. I then made an envelope for the card from some retired Rose Red dsp.

I really liked the card and luckily, so did Mum. I hope you like it too.

Thanks for stopping by my blog and I hope to see you again

Mo x