cards

The journey of life is best shared with a friend, and I am truly grateful for all the wonderful friends in my life. My sweet husband, my girlfriends, and so many others all play an important role in my journey of life. My card today celebrates all my wonderful friends.

The new annual Stampin’ Up! Catalogue has two new embossing powders; Shimmer Black and Shimmer White. Today I decided to play with the Shimmer White, and it is magnificent. I have never embossed one of our DistINKtive stamps, so decided to give it a try. While some of the unique shading is lost doing this, it gave me the perfect opportunity to add some highlights.

Each year when the annual Stampin’ Up! catalogue is coming to an end I feel a bit sad. All the gorgeous Designer Series Papers that retire will be missed. But then the new catalogue comes and WOW there are is a whole new bunch of gorgeous DSP to play with. Today my card features the Garden Lane Designer Series Paper, and I must say, it is lovely!

Sometimes we all miss a birthday. Life can be hectic and we may not get a card sent or delivered in time for that special day. That doesn’t mean we can’t still send a card to let someone know we were thinking of them and hope their day was special. Here is a card for just such an occasion.

I love combining bits and pieces from different stamp sets and dies, and that is exactly what I have done for today’s card to wish someone a ‘wild birthday!’.

The Floral Essence stamp set has some lovely flower images, and coordinating punches to make card making easy. I used the flower and leaf punches to create this delicate flower card for the Case This Sketch challenge.

Since I declared this Suite Week (see my post from Thursday), I have used the Come Sail Away Suite for my card today. I made this for the Stampin’ Up! Only Challenge, and the theme this week is die cutting. How could I not use some the fun dies from Smooth Sailing for my card?

Okay, I admit I may have a small (or not so small) infatuation with the Come Sail Away Suite right now! Let’s just call this Come Sail Away Suite week, and then it all makes sense. Have I mentioned I can justify anything??

I have a great big Happy Birthday wish for the Case This Sketch challenge. I used bold colours and made my greeting big and filled with good wishes!

One of the best things about a new annual catalogue is the fantastic new InColours we have to play with. Today I’m celebrating a beautiful new InColour, Rococco Rose, and I have used the new Floral Essence stamp set to show it off.

Here is card that features another great new stamp set, Floral Essence. It has some pretty flower images, some lovely sentiments and a coordinating punch. It is a perfect place to start if you are new to stamping, as you get both images and sentiments in one set. There is also some gorgeous Designer Series Paper that goes with this suite that I featured in a couple of sneak peaks.

The Stampin’ Up! Only Challenge is to create a masculine card. I love making masculine cards, as they are very different than the ones we tend to make with flowers. (Although I love those too!!) I like to add a little extra challenge sometimes, and today I have added a twist to my masculine card. Can you find something on my card that may not be considered masculine?

A new catalogue is an exciting time, as we pull out new products, look at wonderful new colours, papers, embellishments and so much more. Today I’m showing off some new Designer Series Paper.

The brand new annual catalogue from Stampin’ Up! is now live, with all the fantastic products inside and available to you! There are so many great new things it is hard to know where to start, but here is a card that showcases a few new items for you.

The FabFriday challenge is a colour challenge, and it is a beautiful combination of soft and bright. I love these colours together to make a beautiful birthday card.

Do you like to walk on the beach and see the birds in the sand and wandering in the water to see what they can find? I live in Wasaga Beach which is on Georgian Bay, so walking the beach and watching the birds is right around the corner for me. It is fun to watch them as they search for bugs and things in the sand and the water.

The annual catalogue from Stampin’ Up! will come to a close very soon. If you don’t have everything you want from the retiring list, you only have until June 3 to get it. While the Geared Up Garage stamp set will be available in the new catalogue, the coordinating Classic Garage DSP will retire. I used some of the DSP for my card today.

It is an exciting time as we move closer to the launch of a brand new Annual Catalogue from Stampin’ Up! And that means lots of new Designer Series Paper (among many other great things), and some new Cut and Create Crafty Cards. #cutandcreatecraftycards

Today it’s time for the SUO challenge, and the theme is Spring. Aren’t we all happy to say hello to Spring and some warmer weather? I know I am!! When I think of Spring, my thoughts turn to early bulbs bursting into bloom and adding some colour to our day. I love to see crocuses opening with their bright purple colour.

It truly is a beautiful day when kindness touches it, and when you get a sneak peak at some gorgeous new Designer Series Paper. My card today is for the Fab Friday challenge that is on right now, and gives you just that.

I recently attended a Stampin’ Up! Canada event. It was a business focused seminar, but any time a bunch of demonstrators gather there is bound to be lots of sharing of ideas, both business and creative. I made some swaps to share, because we all love to swap!

It is an exciting time in the stamping world. The new Stampin’ Up! catalogue will go live in June, but before then we have some goodbyes. Today I am wishing a fond farewell to a stamp set that I love, Artistically Asian. I love the beautiful images and encouraging sentiments in this set.

I am often surprised how inspiration comes to us, and how it evolves as we start to create. That is the case with my card for today. The bonus with this card is that I used something from my Box of Bits - always a good feeling!

The Fab Friday Challenge has FIVE colours for us to play with. WOW! That is like a whole rainbow!!! It doesn’t actually cover all the colours of the rainbow, but it does give us lots of bright spring colours to create pretty cards.

Thank you for stopping by my blog today. This post is part of Kylie Bertucci’s International Blog, and you can vote for my card. The theme for this month is Encouragement. We could all use some encouragement at one time or another, and sending someone a hand made card to give them some support can have an amazing impact and be very meaningful to the recipient.

Any time a card comes in the mail it brings a big smile to my face and warms my heart. That is just one of the reasons I love to make hand made cards. When I give them to friends and family it brings a smile to their face and brightens their day. Sometimes after I have made a card, just looking at it makes me happy.

The Stampin’ Up! Only challenge this week is Celebrations. Such a broad subject, there are so many wonderful things to celebrate, starting with each new day. For today though, my card is for a birthday celebration.

As a crafter of any type, we end up with left over bits, projects half done, and pieces we were going to use in a project, but changed things up and did not. In one of my posts I mentioned I had gathered up all those bits and pieces to make them into cards. While I did use some bits at my last Girls Get Away Weekend, I still have lots of goodies in my box, so I’m going to try to pull some out on a regular basis and make them into something!

The sun is setting on the city, the sky brilliant orange, red and purple as night time starts to descend, leaving the buildings in silhouette. A lone cyclist rides through the streets enjoying the quiet beauty nature provides. Hopefully you see that captured in my card for today.

If you follow my blog, you have seen cards that I post to various challenges, and today I’m playing along with a new one. I have seen cards posted to the Fab Friday Challenge in the past, but this is the first time I decided to play along, and it is a great one. Here is the card I made to share.