Welcome to A Spot of Stamping

Secret door birthday card

Yesterday was our youngest daughter's birthday and I made her a 'secret door' card.  Her favourite colour is yellow so I started by colouring the cheetah paper (another favourite) with an ombre look - darkest at the top down to lightest at the bottom.

From the outside it looks like a standard gate fold card...

When you open it up you get a hint of what is to come.  I left a blank space on the left side where I wrote my message.

 

Open the gate to go through the secret door.  Here's how it looks inside the secret spot.  This is where I added a sentiment to the card.

Did you spot the trick?  Can you see how the secret door opens? (spoiler alert below)

 

 

 

Keep reading to see how it opens.

When you're ready to close the secret door, you simple grab hold of the front flaps of the card (the parts that are decorated on the outside with the girl and balloons) and pull gently to the sides.  The secret door will flip closed and you will have returned to the inside of the card.  Clever huh?

Designer Series Paper Sale.

All this month Stampin' Up! are offering a Designer Series Paper sale on selected papers.  Stampin' Up! paper is good quality double sided pattern paper and this is a great chance to stock up.

These are the papers that are included in the sale:

 Contact me to order yours today.

Wow its been such a long time since I've posted here.  I do regularly post on my Facebook page so if you're on Facebook be sure to follow and like my page.

 

Sara Douglas our CEO shared a brilliant live video today all about the adhesives we carry.  She showed each of the adhesives, how they work and which use they are best for.  I know it will be super helpful for those of you who are new as well as those of you who aren't - even I learned something new and that was about the foam adhesive sheets.  

 

Check it out here:

https://www.facebook.com/asarathing/videos/781450679092951 

 

If you have any further questions about any of the adhesives we carry, feel free to ask me.  I'll be happy to answer them for you.  I use a range of these adhesives every day myself and also in my craft classes. 

Poppy Moments Lipstick Box

Here's a small box I designed for a prize that I'll be giving away at my class tomorrow.  I don't usually have prizes but this one is different - we're so excited to be able to be back crafting together that I feel a celebration is called for.

The top is separate from the base with a window to show the goodies inside.  I used the Stitched Nested Labels dies and a piece of window sheet to create the window.

Because you could see the piece of window sheet on the inside of the lid, and also see the adhesive which it's glued on with, I cut an extra piece of the Peaceful Poppies Designer Series Paper and covered the inside of the lid. 
 

It was tricky to get the die cut lined up perfectly as I had cut the paper to size first.  Next time I'll die cut the middle and then cut the paper to size afterwards to give me some wiggle room. 

I decorated the sides of the box with strips of the paper as well and cut a poppy from the Poppy Moments dies to decorate it with. The box itself is made from Lovely Lipstick cardstock which is retiring in a couple of days.  Whilst Lovely Lipstick is not one of the colours in the Peaceful Poppies DSP I found it still matches well to the paper I chose. 

Yesterday I took part in an online project with Shannon West from the Stampin' Up! home office and Emma Parkin-Wilson our NZ National Manager.

We were asked to gather together:

• 2 sheets DSP from the same pack
• 7 sheets of coordinating cardstock (with at least 1 being white or vanilla)
• A stamp set with greetings
• Ink pad
• Punch for greetings
• Spool of ribbon
• Adhesive & cutting tools

so I chose

• Parisian Blossoms Speciality Designer Series Paper, 
• Pool Party, Petal Pink, Cherry Cobbler & Whisper White cardstock
• Pool Party, Petal Pink, Cherry Cobbler ink 
• Tailored Tag Punch
• Petal Pink Metallic Edge ribbon from the Parisian Suite 

It turns out we were making a One-Sheet Wonder project and here are my  cards.

 

Part of the challenge for us as Demonstrators, was the order that it was presented. We were told to fold six sheets of the cardstock into card bases, then we were told to cut the white into particular sizes and punch out 7 shapes.  

After that we had to stamp sentiments onto the shapes we punched (yes ideally stamping first would give us better results but we needed to get 7 from what we had left).  

We weren't shown what all the cards would look like beforehand which also added to the challenge, as we had to choose from our card bases and sentiments as we went.  Not knowing what was coming next you didn't know if you were choosing things which might go better with another card further on.  But it all added to the fun of it as well.  

In the end I added some embossing to some of my cards as well.  We were told to choose 2 papers from the same pack of Designer Series Paper but it turned out three of my sides were quite similar, two in particular were very close, so it left me with less choices.  Some of them I felt were lacking a little something and I put those aside as I was going and later I decided to emboss them.  

Overall I'm really happy with how these turned out.  Shannon shared with us some others she'd done with other papers.  She'd used the golf paper (Country Club DSP) for one set and they worked really well as masculine cards.  I will be using this template again to make more cards.

 

Sapphire Wedding Anniversary

A few days ago was my parents' 45th (Sapphire) Wedding Anniversary.  I saw a beautiful card made by mamaninadesign using the Peaceful Poppies Suite and this is the card I made based on her design

On her card mamaninadesign used the Peaceful Poppies Elements.  Until I figured out what the circular element was on her card, I thought that it was a Basic Grey colour, however the colours of the elements are Basic Black, Old Olive and Poppy Parade.  I particularly liked the decoration on the circular element she used but I wasn't able to recreate it with what I had.

I therefore had to adapt my design to substitute that element.  I liked the idea of a Basic Grey colour, so I went with that and cut a circle from the Layering Circles Dies.  I then embossed it with the Stylish Scroll Embossing Folder.  

For the words I used three different images from three different stamp sets.  The sets were Tropical Chic, Happy Tails and A Wish For Everything.  

 

I stamped each of the three images in Versamark ink and heat embossed them with White Emboss Powder.  I was then able to cut the words that I wanted to use out of each one and combine them on my card. 

The trick to making this work, in my opinion, was to find words across sets that had the same or very similar fonts.  

Thank you for visiting my post today.  I hope you enjoyed your visit.

Supplies:

Cardstock: Whisper White, Shimmery White, Very Vanilla, Soft Sea Foam, Basic Grey, Mossy Meadow, Old Olive, Peaceful Poppies Designer Series Paper, Vellum

Stamps:  Painted Poppies, Tropical Chic, Happy Tails, A Wish for Everything.

Ink: Pool Party, Versamark, Mango Melody

Die Cutting & Embossing: Poppy Moments Dies, Painted Labels Dies, Stylish Scroll Embossing Folder

Other: Basic Rhinestones, Aqua Painter (to colour centre of stamens)