Stampin' Up

Octopus’ Garden

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Monday Montage Blog Hop – Week 122!!!!

Hello friends! Welcome back to the Monday Montage Blog Hop!  You won’t want to miss the amazing prettiness that I know you will find at all the stops along the way!

My camper project is finished…finally!!  My paper crafting has sorely suffered the last few weeks while I focused on camper renovations.  It’s a good thing I worked so hard to get those done though, whatever neighbor of mine was annoyed by the camper was calling the HOA several times a day!  Seriously, some people have too much time on their hands!

I was really sad that my holiday pre-order isn’t here yet when I sat down to stamp today!  I’ve been seeing everyone’s cute holiday projects & I really wanted to make something with new goodies from the Holiday Catty 🙂  So I was feeling a little dejected when I was picking a stamp set to play with…then I saw Sea of Textures and I got so excited!  I haven’t used this one yet (I know, I know, ridiculous!  This one is so fun too!) so I pulled it out and started playing.  I love how this came out and I can’t wait to create some more fun projects with this beauty!

Sea of Textures Stampin' Up

Sea of Textures Stampin' Up

Sea of Textures Stampin' Up

Make sure you go “back” if you missed Bree’s wonderful creation or you can loop on around by hitting the “next” button to get to Dani’s gorgeous work and the rest of the hop!  Links to all of our fabulous hoppers are listed below 🙂

  1. Amy O’Neill
  2. Breelin Renwick
  3. Cathy Casey – you are here!
  4. Dani Dziama
  5. Elizabeth Price
  6. Julie Warnick
  7. Kaitlyn Zumbach
  8. Melissa Stout
  9. Wendy Weixler
Brusho · Stampin' Up

Let’s get pasty!

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Monday Montage Blog Hop – Week 121!!!!

Hello friends! Welcome back to the Monday Montage Blog Hop!  You won’t want to miss the amazing prettiness that I know you will find at all the stops along the way!

I’ve had a crazy summer this summer!  I have a giant craft project in my driveway right now that is taking all my free time.  My mom & I bought an old pop-up camper and I have been renovating it.  It has been sooooo much fun but a serious amount of work!  My HOA has been less than friendly about the trailer so I am trying to get everything done before they send me another letter or threaten a fine!  Ugh, they are so picky lol!  I’ll post pics as soon as it’s done, it is coming out so cute!

The camper project has cut into my paper crafting the last few weeks though!  I have a cute, summery card to share today that features embossing paste AND Brusho!  Oh my!  Brusho color crystals provide such saturated color, they are a natural for adding color to embossing paste.  You can control the depth of color with the amount of color crystals you add, so you can go subtle or very intense!

On this project I used Gamboge and Brilliant Red together, I love the color I got!

Fabulous Flamingo Stampin' Up

Fabulous Flamingo Stampin' Up

Make sure you go “back” if you missed Bree’s wonderful creation or you can loop on around by hitting the “next” button to get to Dani’s gorgeous work and the rest of the hop!  Links to all of our fabulous hoppers are listed below 🙂

  1. Amy O’Neill
  2. Breelin Renwick
  3. Cathy Casey – you are here!
  4. Dani Dziama
  5. Elizabeth Price
  6. Julie Warnick
  7. Kaitlyn Zumbach
  8. Melissa Stout
  9. Wendy Weixler
Stampin' Up

Tropical Chic So Sweet!

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Monday Montage Blog Hop – Week 119!!!!

Hello friends! Welcome back to the Monday Montage Blog Hop!  You won’t want to miss the amazing prettiness that I know you will find at all the stops along the way!

I had decided I wanted to make a 3×3 card today and I just couldn’t stop at one!  The Tropical Escape Suite is so much fun to make a cute pile of cards with 🙂  This suite features a super cute stamp set, a great die set and the Tropical Escape 6″ x 6″ paper stack plus some cute embellishments!

Tropical Chic Stampin' Up

Tropical Chic Stampin' Up

Tropical Chic Stampin' Up

Tropical Chic Stampin' Up

Tropical Chic Stampin' Up

Tropical Chic Stampin' Up

Tropical Chic Stampin' Up

Creative Tips:

  1. I let the stamps and dies work for me in these creations!  They all go together so well.  I took my color queues from the Tropical Escape paper even though I only added the paper to one card and I ultimately added some other colors into the mix.

Make sure you go “back” if you missed Bree’s wonderful creation or you can loop on around by hitting the “next” button to get to Dani’s gorgeous work and the rest of the hop!  Links to all of our fabulous hoppers are listed below 🙂

  1. Amy O’Neill
  2. Breelin Renwick
  3. Cathy Casey – you are here!
  4. Dani Dziama
  5. Elizabeth Price
  6. Julie Warnick
  7. Kaitlyn Zumbach
  8. Melissa Stout
  9. Wendy Weixler
Brusho · Cards · Stampin' Up · Techniques

Oh my Brusho!

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I did a fun Brusho technique class a few weeks ago and this is one of the projects we made.  It is stunning visually and it was super easy to make!

Beautiful Day Stampin' Up

The Beautiful Day Stamp Set is perfect for this technique.  We white embossed the big flower image on watercolor paper and then used Brusho to add the color.  This flower features Prussian Blue and Brilliant Red, they create this luscious blueish purple color when they are allowed to activate together with water and not over worked.  So pretty!  After the flower dried, we fussy cut it out and popped it onto the card front.  The rest of the card was fast and easy and showcased the beautifully colored flower 🙂

Beautiful Day Stampin' Up

So gorgeous!

Creative Tips:

  1.  After you have embossed the flower, paint with water first everywhere inside the flower.  Sprinkle on your Brusho, more red towards the top and more blue towards the bottom.  You can always add more of the Brusho crystals if the you don’t like the initial color saturation, it is much harder to pull the color back without it getting muddy.  If your flower is too wet, blot with a paper towel.  Let your flower dry completely before fussy cutting.
  2. The leaf is colored with Moss Green Brusho.  I have also seen posts where demos have added ink color to the green as an underlying tint.  That’s really pretty too.  With this one I just painted the leaf with water first and sprinkled a little Moss Green and then didn’t work it too much with the aqua painter after adding the Brusho.
  3. The added ribbon and bling give the card some pop with the deeply saturated flower.  I love the simple richness.

I hope you have a fabulous, creative day!  Happy Stamping 🙂

3-D · Holiday Decor · Stampin' Up

Summer Sampler Sweetness!

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Monday Montage Blog Hop – Week 118!!!!

Hello friends! Welcome back to the Monday Montage Blog Hop!  You won’t want to miss the amazing prettiness that I know you will find at all the stops along the way!

My favorite projects to share in classes right now are seasonal samplers.  Today we did a Summer Sampler and I could not love it more!  It is so much fun creating little vignettes that make a big, beautiful home decor piece for the season.  The new stamp sets in the new catalog and these gorgeous bright colors combine to for bright, summery fun 🙂

Stay tuned to my blog for a tutorial for this fantastic project coming soon!

Here is the finished project in its frame.  It is hard to get a good photo without reflections off the glass but you can see how pretty it is ready for display.

Summer Sampler Stampin' Up

No frame in this pic:

Summer Sampler Stampin' Up

Busy stampers creating their masterpieces…and enjoying their Starbucks of course!!

Summer Sampler Stampin' Up

Creative Tips:

  1. Pick colors for the season that work well together.  Then mix and match your selected colors among the blocks.  Every color is not in each block except Whisper White.  This helps you create a cohesive piece that pops!  Sometimes I base my color palette on a DSP, then your palette is already set and you know the colors will work together.  Thank you Stampin’ Up!  You make it so easy to create a gorgeous project!
  2. This project is all about dimension!  You want to use a shadow box style frame that has some distance between the glass and your finished project.  Then go crazy with dimensionals to bring your vignettes to life!  So much fun 🙂
  3. Have you tried the Big Shot Embossing Mats yet????  I used it today to use the big die from the Springtime Impressions Thinlits to create an embossed background instead of a die cut.  This is life changing!!  It means all of my dies now have an opportunity for double duty and lots of fun impressions are just waiting to be made!  I LOVE this and you NEED it in your creative arsenal!  Make sure you keep the packaging, it has all the instructions for various sandwiches for different effects.

Make sure you go “back” if you missed Bree’s wonderful creation or you can loop on around by hitting the “next” button to get to Dani’s gorgeous work and the rest of the hop!  Links to all of our fabulous hoppers are listed below 🙂

  1. Amy O’Neill
  2. Breelin Renwick
  3. Cathy Casey – you are here!
  4. Dani Dziama
  5. Elizabeth Price
  6. Julie Warnick
  7. Kaitlyn Zumbach
  8. Melissa Stout
  9. Wendy Weixler
Cards · Stampin' Up

Lilypad Lake beauty

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Monday Montage Blog Hop – Week 117!!!!

Hello friends! Welcome back to the Monday Montage Blog Hop!  You won’t want to miss the amazing prettiness that I know you will find at all the stops along the way!

It’s new catalog time!!!  I’m so excited about all the new stuff, I wasn’t even sure what to start with today. I haven’t pulled out Lilypad Lake yet and I have been in love with it since the first time I laid eyes on it.  It seemed like the perfect new catalog launch project for me 🙂

Lilypad Lake Stampin' Up

Lilypad Lake Stampin' Up

Creative Tips:

  1. I just can’t even say enough how happy and excited I am that Coastal Cabana is back in the line up as a permanent member of our basic color family.  I think Coastal is my absolute favorite color of all time!!  For this card, I watercolored the water area with Coastal and a new color called Highland Heather.  I love the dreamy look these two colors give to the water.
  2. The new ink pads don’t really work very well to smush ink into the lid of the pad to watercolor with.  They are stiffer than the old style pads so I couldn’t get any ink onto the lid.  To use the pad color to watercolor, I smashed the pad against my silicon mat and then picked up the ink with my aqua painter.  This worked like a dream!

Make sure you go “back” if you missed Bree’s wonderful creation or you can loop on around by hitting the “next” button to get to Dani’s gorgeous work and the rest of the hop!  Links to all of our fabulous hoppers are listed below 🙂

  1. Amy O’Neill
  2. Breelin Renwick
  3. Cathy Casey – you are here!
  4. Dani Dziama
  5. Elizabeth Price
  6. Julie Warnick
  7. Kaitlyn Zumbach
  8. Melissa Stout
  9. Wendy Weixler
Cards · Stampin' Up

Fabulous Brusho!

kate80132Leave a comment

Monday Montage Blog Hop – Week 116!!!!

Hello friends! Welcome back to the Monday Montage Blog Hop!  You won’t want to miss the amazing prettiness that I know you will find at all the stops along the way!

If you haven’t played with Brusho yet you are totes missing out!  It is so vibrant and you can create stunning masterpieces so quickly and easily!  The rich depth of the colors you can build with these color crystals is amazing.  The gorgeous stamp set I used is Remarkable You, it is retiring soon so get it quick if you love it as much as I do!

I had a class today featuring several techniques with Brusho and this is one of the projects we created:

Remarkable You Stampin' Up

Remarkable You Stampin' Up

Remarkable You Stampin' Up

Creative Tips:

  1. There are several ways to use Brusho, this card features sprinkling the color crystals on a dry card and then spritzing with water.  The flowers are white embossed on the watercolor paper first and they capture the watery color.  You can still see crystals that aren’t activated, it’s so pretty with the mix of fully activated colors and splatters of partially activated crystals.
  2. Don’t overwork this technique!  It is a beautiful mess with just a few spritzes of water 🙂  The colors used on this card are Brilliant Red and Gamboge (orange).
  3. You can set the colors with heat embossing before you assemble the card.

Make sure you go “back” if you missed Bree’s wonderful creation or you can loop on around by hitting the “next” button to get to Dani’s gorgeous work and the rest of the hop!  Links to all of our fabulous hoppers are listed below 🙂

  1. Amy O’Neill
  2. Breelin Renwick
  3. Cathy Casey – you are here!
  4. Dani Dziama
  5. Elizabeth Price
  6. Julie Warnick
  7. Kaitlyn Zumbach
  8. Melissa Stout
  9. Wendy Weixler