Paper Adventures Team Blog Hop – Prize Patrol Swaps

Hello and welcome to your last stop on the Paper Adventures team blog hop for today.

I’m lucky enough to be a part of a truly awesome team of Stampin Up! demonstrators and fellow paper craft nerds, led by the wonderful Kelly Kent. Kelly and I go way back to our school days but in recent years we have reconnected and really bonded (or so I like to think) over our love of creating in general and paper craft in particular. She introduced me to Stampin Up! and has been not just a source of constant inspiration but also

A few weeks ago some of our team attended On Stage Local, the bi-annual gathering of Stampin Up demonstrators where we get to see the new catalogue and it’s goodies and even get our hands on some of them. It was a fantastic day, full of inspiring ideas, and we all walked away with at least three brand new stamps sets (it was like Christmas came early!). My ‘Prize Patrol’ set (different groups are given different sets throughout the day) was “Special Celebrations”, a brand new set that features a range of sentiments for different occasions.

I like the idea of being able to stamp sentiments on or in cards – I often struggle to come up with something poetic to say inside a card and my handwriting isn’t the prettiest. At On Stage we were told there has been a definite demand from demonstrators and customers for longer sentiments for the insides of cards so I think this will be quite a popular set.

For this team challenge I found it a little difficult to get started with – my current love is for watercoloring and for quite detailed stamped images, so it was a little bit of a challenge to come up with something that showcased the lovely sentiments. In the end I settled on a square easel card (4 x 4″ front) with the long sentiment stamped on the front.

The sentiments cover a variety of card giving occasions and pair up with a shorter sentiment (“Happy Birthday”, “Welcome Baby”, “For My Friend” etc) which I stamped and embossed on a short panel which provides a little stopper for the easel to sit against.

One of my favourite techniques is to stamp an image in Versamark and coloured ink together (you apply Versamark to the stamp first then ink) then to emboss in clear powder. This means you can essentially emboss in any colour you want, and the embossing has a wonderful richness to it.

The little easel cards can sit up so you can see the sentiment clearly. I found several of the sentiments actually mix and match quite well.

Notice anything else about my little collection? Yep, that’s the new In Colours for 2017-18. I have a feeling that bright Lemon-Lime Twist is going to be a bit of a favourite of mine.

And of course I still managed to sneak a little watercoloring in by hand brushing on the fronts. Just take a damp brush, pick up a little ink straight from the pad, and away you go.

Well that’s the last stop on our team blog hop and my first blog post showcasing my handmade cards! I hope you’ve all found plenty of inspiring ideas along the way and are even more excited about the new Annual Catalogue from Stampin Up! and all the many new lovelies it contains. I’ve been pouring over my copy every day since we were lucky enough to receive a copy at On Stage.

Thanks for stopping by!

S.

Paper Adventures Team Blog Hop

Kelly Kent – My Paper Craft Journey

Sheila Pybus – Dalyellup Designs

Corona Bother – Tall Journeys

Kristel Rimmer – Secretly Scrapbooking

Mandy Depiazzi – My Paper Trail

Melissa Gifford – Melissa Gifford, Independent Stampin Up! Demonstrator

Siobhan Fitzsimmons – HighTrees House Living   <——- You are here!!