Inkspiration for Stamping and Scrapbooking

Happy Valentine's Day!

Stampin' Up! recently shared this bit of Valentine's Day-related information and validation with us on the demonstrator website. I thought it was interesting, so I'm sharing it with you, and then I'll share a few Valentine's ideas!

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.
--Victor Hugo

This week, millions of romantics--and even some who aren't--will celebrate Valentine's Day, a special holiday set aside to express love for special people in our lives. While the history of this holiday is uncertain (it is named after at least one of several different St. Valentines), current traditions are certainly not! We send an estimated 1 billion cards on this holiday, to remind those around us that they are loved.

Special days such as Valentine's Day are a reminder of one of the central reasons Stampin' Up! exists--we believe in caring for others, and sharing that concern through heartfelt and handmade expressions of our love. With the flood of commercialism that has overtaken our society, handmade valentines are becoming the exception rather than the rule. This only means that hand-stamped cards become even more treasured by those who receive them.

This Valentine's Day we express our appreciation for you. We care deeply for you and strive every day to show that concern in the decisions we make. We want you to feel important, and we want you to know that you are a valuable part of our Stampin' Up! family.

In addition, we want to emphasize the importance of what we are doing. Together, we are showing and sharing with other people different ways they can discover and express their own creativity, while strengthening their relationships. Nothing matters more in our lives than relationships, and we encourage you to take a moment this week and send Valentine's greetings to those you love.

Happy Valentine's Day!

And, my dear stampin' friends, I want you to know that I appreciate you!

Without further blah, blah, blah, here are some Valentine's cards for you to check out:

This is the card Brian and I are giving to Sarah when she gets home from school. No, I didn't make it today - got it done last night actually, but Brian wanted to be here when she opens it. I don't think I've gotten the idea for it anywhere. What I mean by that is, very often I decide what set I want to use, and then browse some of my favourite galleries and blogs for ideas. This one is, I believe, entirely an Ann original - who knew I could have an original idea or any creative mojo of my own - ha ha ha ha!

I stamped the mouse stamp from Happy Heart Day on white cardstock, coloured it in with markers, and cut just the mouse out. I stamped the mouse stamp a second time on Pretty in Pink Designer Series paper and cut it out. The coloured one is layered over the patterned paper one and adhered to Whisper White cardstock. I used the Sahara Sand marker to create a shadow beneath the heart and mouse. The flower on the heart is accentuated with the new cosmo glitter in rose pink.

Here's the rest of the recipe:

Cardstock: Whisper White, Basic Black

Ink: Basic Black

Other: Black grosgrain, tag and small tag punches, horizontal punch, cosmo glitter, designer series prints: pretty in pink and real red, white gel pen, non-SU heart-shaped brad

The next one I'm going to show you is one Sarah made for her teacher. She saw the peppermint patty holders I made before Christmas for the advent swap. If you missed it, you can see them here. We decided to make one with a chocolate heart instead of the peppermint patty. I helped her a bit, but Sarah did a lot of the creative work herself.

Here's her card/candy holder closed.

Here she is, proudly displaying it opened.

Here's a close-up of the front:

Acck - that's more blurry than it looked in editing, sorry!

Anyway, the polka dot heart is created using the Pick a Petal set. Get out - it's true! She stamped one petal with Real Red on Whisper White, inked up again and stamped the second  petal overlapping the first at the point. Neat, eh? 2 way glue and dazzling diamonds add lots of sparkle to this card.

We used a marker to just get the sentiment from the tag stamp in the Happy Heart Day set and she used the white gel pen to colur in the hearts.

Didn't she do a fabulous job? Leave her a comment and let her know what you think!

OK - I've got one more to show you today. It's the masculine Valentine's card for, you guessed it! My dear wonderful husband of almost 9 and a half years - can't believe he's put up with me that long!

I saw a card sort of similar to this on Split Coast by LoveStamping!!!!!!! But I changed it and did my thing to make this my own. The card is 5 x 5. I am really enjoying working on a square instead of the usual 4.25 x 5.5 rectangle - it's a nice change and it offers some different creative choices.

This starts with a Creamy Caramel base, with Chocolate Chip and Real Red to accent. Lots of dtp with Chocolate Chip ink help to make this look masculine. Both the Creamy Caramel base and the Real Red square are stamped with the Canvas background stamp for visual texture. The Chocolate Chip and Real Red square layers have their corners nicked off with the Ticket Corner punch. The zigzag stitching on the outside edge is faux, created with the All in a Row stamp set - me, sew?! Ha Ha Ha. The focal piece is 2 Round Tag punchouts layered on top of each other, a Scallop circle punchout layered on top and stamped with stamps from the Priceless set - because he is Priceless, in the best possible way! Chocolate chip narrow grosgrain (retired) and a sentiment he'll appreciate finish off the card. No glitter, no bling - just masculine.

What do you think? Did I achieve the masculine look I was going for? Leave a comment for me or for Sarah! And let the ones you love know you love them, not just on Valentine's Day!

Happy Stampin' and Blessings! - Ann

P.S. I heard a radio dj refer to today as Singles Awareness Day. It can be a painful day for those who are discontentedly single, so be sensitive to that today. AND to those  who are single, remember there is Someone whose Love is Perfect and He Loves You! It's a better love than you'll ever find here on earth. God bless.

Scrapbooking Gifts

Happy New Year! I hope you are blessed with health, happiness, prosperity and love this year!

Yesterday you saw the scarves that our female family and friends received for Christmas. The challenge is making nice hand-made gifts for men, I find, and in our family, there are quite a few men to make gifts for! This year, it was a framed scrapbook page. Here they are:

 

Do you notice a common element? I used the same template for all 6. This simplified the process for me a bit. They all use different paper, photos and embellishments, but the placement of the paper is the same. Sometimes, I rotated the layout to suit the photos better.

If you have any questions or comments about the materials used, don't hesitate to ask! Leave me a comment and I'll be happy to get back to you.

Happy stampin', and blessings - Ann

Silk Scarves in Pretty Boxes

Aren't these beautiful???

These are gifts I made for family and friends:

These two were both tea-stained before I stamped. I used the Garden Whimsy and Priceless sets for the scarf on the left. The scarf on the right uses LOTS of stamps from these sets - Enjoy Life, Priceless, Big Pieces, Little Pieces...

These two scarves are stamped on the white silk:

The scarf on the left uses Blossoms Abound. The scarf on the right (inspired by on eI saw on SCS by Diane) uses LOTS of stamps and colours from these sets: Wild Rose, Blossoms Abound, Heartfelt Thanks.

Well I could not just fold these up and put them in a re-usable Christmas bag, like we usually do for gifts - they'd slide around and become a crumpled mess. So I visited Mirkwood Designs and found a template. In retrospect, I wish I had chosen a slightly bigger box yet, or tried to size up this design, but aren't these so cute?

This design is two parts, the lid and the bottom. I prettied up the boxes with ribbon and the stick pins and beads from the Pretties kit and enjoyed using up more of my stash of Dashing patterned paper.

Here's a picture of all of the boxes together - each is a little different:

I'll be back on January 1st or 2nd with some scrapbook pages I gave as gifts. Then on to the new catalogue!

Happy stampin', Happy New Year, and BLESSINGS! - Ann

 

Check Out this month's SU! party cards

I enjoyed another stampin' Up! party late last week with another fabulous hostess and some really great ladies.

Most of these women have stamped before, but because there were three there who hadn't, I included this simple but striking card:

We made this card with Very Vanilla cardstock, and Old Olive  and Purely Pomegranate inks. The flourish stamp is the larger of the two flourishes in Priceless. The focal point is stamped on scraps and punched out with the Five Petal Flower punch, that co-ordinates so nicely with the stamp we used from In the Sjpotlight, a level two hostess set. We added some detail by using the Crop-o-dile and the mat pack to dry emboss the border. Even the experienced stampers were really "wow"ed with this card! I am sure the inspiration for this card came from a SCS gallery.

We also did this card. I am sure I've shown it to you before. This group hadn't seen it, so why not - it's gorgeous and they had fun doing the kissing technique with the flannel background and the small flower from the Pick a Petal stamp set. 

Our final card was this one - it took a little more work, but it was a huge hit. Again, I am sure that a SCS gallery inspired this one - actually I think I took one idea from one card and another idea from another card, and came up with this...

Here's my favourite little snowman again, from Merry & Bright. He's coloured in with blender pens and ink. The card uses lots of masking to set him in this setting - the tree and snowflakes behind him.

The vertical piece is the emboss resist technique using the "snow" wheel and Bashful Blue ink on glossy cardstock. It's mounted on Wasabi paper.

The background paper comes from the Winter Bright Simply Scrappin Kit. AND I have TONS of the kit leftover for more projects!

If you love incorporating patterned paper into your cardmaking and scrapbooking projects, you are going to LOVE the upcoming November special. Stay tuned!!! Meantime, don't forget that this month, Stampin' Up! is trying to help you simplify things by allowing you to create custom kits for your Christmas cardmaking. Click here for more info, or email me. These kits can be shipped anywhere in Canada.

Happy stampin'! - Ann