cards

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.

I have had fun making some #simplestamping cards with the retiring In Colours. Today my card combines my two favourite retiring In Colours, Lemon Lime Twist and Fresh Fig, along with one of my favourite fun stamp sets, This Little Piggy. I’m so happy that this stamp set will still be available when the new annual catalogue comes out. It makes great happy and fun cards.

If you follow my blog, you have seen that I am celebrating some of the soon to retire In Colours. Today I have another #simplestamping card for you in Lemon Lime Twist. This is one of my favourite In Colours, and I will be sad to see it go. The blow has been softened a little though, with the new Granny Apple Green that Stampin’ Up! introduced in last year in the colour refresh!

We are moving close to the end of the Stampin’ Up! catalogue year, and that means the 2017 - 2019 In Colours will be retiring soon. I wanted to celebrate some of these colours, starting with Fresh Fig, and some simple stamping. Anyone can make beautiful hand made cards, using very few products, creating quick cards to send to friends and family.

Today I am celebrating another In Colour that will be retiring soon, Berry Burst. I had the perfect opportunity to really showcase this colour for the Global Design Project challenge this week.

In my post on Thursday I mentioned that I was using up bits and pieces of card parts at my Girls Get Away Weekend (GGAW). Some of the bits I gathered had been waiting for a while to be turned into beautiful cards, and have actually retired!! No worries though, they still make lovely cards.

I hosted a Girls Get Away weekend in March, and we had a blast! It is a great time for socializing, crafting, girl fun, and just general de-stressing from our busy lives. Everyone brings whatever craft they want to work on, and we share ideas and inspiration. We have lots of scrap bookers, card makers, those that knit, crochet, read, do flower arrangements, and we had our first quilter at the event in March! It was a wonderful crafting weekend, and I’m already looking forward to the next one.

I’m off to the Spring Stamp-a-Stack, and I’m totally excited!! We will enjoy a great afternoon of crafting and socializing as everyone makes 16 beautiful hand made cards.

There are dog people, and there are cat people, and there are those that love both. I like dogs, but I am definitely a cat person. I have owned cats for most of my life, and love their unique personalities. My cat Pogo is a beautiful Siamese cat who turned 18 last month. He certainly has a personality, and for the most part he is the boss in our house! He gets pampered and catered to, because after all, he is old!!!

Did you love to colour when you were young? Do you still love to colour? Maybe you haven’t done it in a long time, but it is really very relaxing and therapeutic. Stampin’ Up! has lots of different ways we can colour, each giving some different results, and different kinds of fun.

As a Stampin’ Up! Demonstrator I get to hang out with some pretty awesome people. One of the demonstrator groups I belong to shares creative ideas as well as business tips, and we like to challenge each other in our crafting.

The Global Design Project has a sketch challenge this week that I am wild about!! I love the layout and decided to be wild with it. Okay, changing from landscape to portrait may not be all that wild, but I wanted tall trees for my jungle so decided to switch it up a bit.

Have you collected all the SAB goodies you want? There are only a few days left to get all the great stamps, papers and embellishments being offered for free with any $60 order. Here is a card I made with the beautiful By The Bay stamp set I got Free with my order.

That’s right, it’s spring . . . well at least on the calendar!! This is the time of year where we do get some lovely sunshine and warmer days, letting us know we are past most of the winter, and warmer days are coming. Where I live we will still get some more snow, but I do love those warmer days we are treated to. My card today has a real spring feel to it with butterflies and flowers.

It’s almost Spring, and soon (we hope) the weather will be warm enough for the motorcycles to come out of winter storage. I don’t ride, but MSH (my sweet husband) does, and I know he has a buddy at work that wants the snow to go away and the nice weather to start so they can ride together. It is those thoughts that inspired today’s card.

It is always nice to have some extra birthday cards on hand, because let’s face it, sometimes we forget someone’s birthday until the last minute. It is then that you really appreciate the fact that you made a few extras a while ago, and have a beautiful handmade card ready to send!

I love when I find the perfect sentiment already in a stamp. It makes card making simple, and helps create a card that is just right for the person I want to send it to. This masculine card has just the right amount of teasing fun!

The Stampin’ Up! Only Challenge #SUOC218 right now is a colour challenge, and includes some beautiful bright colours, Granny Apple Green, Pool Party, and Lovely Lipstick. You could also use Mango Melody, but for this card I did not.

A girlfriend of mine has a lot of family stuff on her plate right now, and I wanted to let her know that I’m thinking of her as she works through these tough times. I made this card to send her.