All That You Are Thank You Card

Thanks so much for visiting my blog!  Today I'm participating in a Blog Hop with other Stampin' Up! demonstrators from around the world as part of Kylie Bertucci's Demonstrator Training Group. I hope you are creatively inspired as you hop along with us!

For the last six to seven months, I have been training with a group of people from my church as we launch a new ministry to our church, called Stephen Ministry.  It is a ministry of caring for and walking along side others who are going through situations that can seem very overwhelming.  We had two leaders who have such a vision of what this ministry will do to meet the needs of hurting people and poured their hearts and souls into training us.  Our group wanted to give a gift to thank them and let them know how much we appreciate all that they are and have done.  I offered to make cards to go along with the gifts for each leader, and the "All That You Are" stamp set from the 2019 Occasions Catalog was the perfect choice to use for the cards.

I used a technique for the flower that involves embossing in white on a light colored cardstock, such as the Crumb Cake cardstock I used here, then using watercolor pencils and blenders to add a watercolor look.  I have seen several demonstrators use this technique, and I really wanted to try it myself.  The flower stamp really worked well for this.

Since my message was two-fold, I put a flip-up card on the front with my initial thank you sentiment from the "All That You Are" set.  Since I wanted our leaders to know that those of us who have gone through the initial training are committed to praying for our leaders as they continue to develop the ministry, encourage and support us as we meet with people, and train others to do the same, on the inside of the card I added a "praying for you" message.  All of us in the group were able to sign the card and add our own individual messages.

I'll describe my process first and then list the products used.  

I had a long piece of the Crumb Cake cardstock that looked like it fit the flower stamp very well, so I used that for my flip-up piece.  I folded the long piece in half and made a nice crease using my bone folder.  After swiping over the front of the folded cardstock with the Embossing Buddy and making sure that my flower fit with room to spare, I stamped my image on the front of the folded piece with the Versamark Pad and applied white embossing powder to the stamped image.  Using the Heat Tool, I heated up the imaged until I saw that the powder melted together to form a beautiful outline of the flower on my cardstock.  I used our Watercolor Pencils to color in the image and finished with Blender Pens to give a sheer watercolor look.

Using the Dark Lovely Lipstick Stampin' Blend, I applied a bit of color to my Whisper White ribbon so that it would match the larger cardstock base. wrapped it fully around the front portion of the flip-up piece, and used a bit of Snail Adhesive to ahold the ends together.   I used another piece to tie a knot around the wrapped ribbon and adhered both to the cardstock.  

I finished the flip-up portion of the card by stamping my sentiment and a stamped flower with Lovely Lipstick ink on a piece of Whisper White cardstock, which I then trimmed to fit inside my flip-up card.  I adhered the white piece to the inside of the flip up card with Snail Adhesive.

I used a piece of Lovely Lipstick cardstock from the All My Love Cardstock pack that was already trimmed to size for my larger card base. I folded it and adhered a trimmed piece of Designer Series Paper from the "All My Love" paper collection.  Again using Snail Adhesive, I adhered my flip-up card to the front of my larger cardstock base.  I adhered a piece of Whisper White to the inside of the larger card base for my "praying for you" message, and my card was ready for the group to sign.

The supplies and tools I used for the card are as follows:

All My Love Cardstock Pack (148578) (Lovely Lipstick and Crumb Cake)
Whisper White card stock (100730)
All My Love Designer Series Paper (148576)
Versamark Pad (102283)
White Stampin' Emboss Powder (109132)
Lovely Lipstick ink pad (147140)
Lovely Lipstick Dark Stampin' Blend (147028)
1/8" Whisper White Sheer Ribbon (144172)
Watercolor Pencils (141709) (Melon Mambo, Daffodil Delight, Bermuda Bay, Old Olive)
Blender Pens (102845) 
Stamparatus (146276)
Snail Adhesive (140332)
Stampin' Trimmer (126889)
Embossing Buddy (103083)
Heat Tool (129053)
Bone Folder (102300)
Simply Shammy (147042)

Thanks so much for visiting my blog today.  Don't forget to check out the links below which will connect you with the blogs of all my demonstrator friends participating in this blog hop!

Tea Together Simple Stamping

For our January simple stamping challenge, I used products from the new Stampin' Up! Occasions catalog. I again used just one stamp set, one ink pad, and a coordinating card base and Designer Series Paper (DSP). For the January challenge we could also use a punch this time. I chose the Tea Together stamp set to use for this challenge. I loved the sentiments in the set, and tea cups and pots always bring to mind some special memories of times spent together with my sister Karen. The enjoyment and relaxation Karen finds in the whole process is very visible as she boils the water, chooses a kind of tea, inhales the aroma as the tea steeps, feels the warmth of the cup in her hands, and tastes the flavor as she takes each sip. When we go on family vacations, she always looks for a tea shop in the area and several of us join her for tea and scones. She has passed that enjoyment of tea on to her granddaughters, and they love nothing better than to enjoy a cup of tea with their grandmother.

In addition to the Tea Together stamp set (Item No. 148779), I used the following supplies specifically for this card:
 All My Love DSP (148576)
All My Love Cardstock Pack (148578)
Whisper White Cardstock (100730)
Lovely Lipstick Ink Pad (147140)
Pretty Label Punch (143715)

Of course I also used my normal tools as follows:
Stampin' Trimmer (126889)
Snail Adhesive (104332)
Stampin' Dimensionals (104430)
Bone Folder (102300)
Stamparatus (146276) (You could also use one of the clear blocks, but I love my Stamparatus!) Simple Shammy (147042) (You could also use a Stampin' Scrub and Stampin' Mist Stamp Cleaner to clean your stamps after you're finished.)

I chose Lovely Lipstick as my cardstock base and ink color for this card. My card base was trimmed to measure 5.5" x 8.5" and then folded in half. The patterned paper I chose from the All My Love DSP reminded me of the beautiful patterns of china cups and tea pots. I trimmed my patterned paper to 4" x 5.25" and stamped the tea pot image on it. I also stamped one of the flowers from the set inside the tea cup shape to further imitate the patterns found on china cups.

After adhering the stamped DSP to the card base with my adhesive. I stamped my "Love is a warm cup of tea" sentiment onto a small piece of Whisper White cardstock and punched it out with the Pretty Label punch. Flowers stamped at the sides of the sentiment filled in a bit of white space and framed the sentiment nicely. I found it very helpful to have the Stamparatus to position these within the punched shape. My final step was to use a Stampin' Dimensional to adhere the sentiment to the card.

As I can't seem to stop at simple stamping, I went a bit further with this stamp set. Adding a few more materials and some more tools produced the following card.

This card used a second layer of Flirty Flamingo card stock textured with the Tufted embossing folder run through the Big Shot.  A die cut tea cup, a punched shape from the patterned paper with a die cut circle containing the sentiment, some pearl accents colored with the Dark Lovely Lipstick Blends, and copper threads hoping to imitate steam rising from the cup of tea completed my card.

Both of these cards celebrate the special relationship I have with my sister Karen. Whatever your style, I would encourage you to take the time to celebrate and lift up those you love with a card or word of encouragement!

Butterfly Gala Simple Stamping Card

Thank you for joining us today for Kylie Bertucci's Demonstrator Training Blog Hop.

As Stampin' Up! demonstrators we've been challenged to create cards that are what are referred to as "simple stamping" so that everyone can see how easy it is to make a card that will encourage and uplift the recipient.  Simple stamping seems to mean different things to different people, and I wondered how simple I could make a card so that anyone else who saw it could say "I can totally do that!"

So I decided to try one stamp set, with limited color choices.  I chose the stamp set "Butterfly Gala" from the new Stampin' Up! Occasions catalog and just used the sentiment "Hello Beautiful" in that set.  I chose a patterned paper from the Botanical Butterflies Designer Series Paper, which is a Free with $50 item in the Sale-A-Bration brochure.  I chose Old Olive as my card base color and decided to use the Pretty Label punch to frame my sentiment on the card.  I first stamped my sentiment on a scrap of Old Olive card stock and then punched it out with the punch.  I probably could have made the card even simpler and just stamped the sentiment on the paper that I chose.  But a punch is so easy to use and the sentiment was nicely framed.

Here is the result. Super simple and something that anyone can re-create.

On the inside I glued a strip of the printed paper that I had trimmed off to a piece of Whisper White and stamped the "You've been on my mind sentiment" on it.  Now I had a card of encouragement to send to a friend.

But since I had a specific friend I wanted to send it to, I wanted to add a bit of my own personality or style (which isn't super simple, but still not real complicated) to the card.  I used the 1/8" Whisper White Sheer Ribbon from the current Stampin' Up! Annual Catalog and colored it with one of the Old Olive Stampin' Blends so that it would blend in well with the Old Olive color scheme I had going.  I stamped one of the butterfly stamps from the Butterfly Gala set in Old Olive ink on a piece of Whisper White card stock and colored it with the Old Olive and new Balmy Blue Blends combo sets.  Then I punched out the butterflies with the new Butterfly Duet punch.  I added the ribbon and the colored butterflies to my card and now I had another card, still simple and easily duplicated, but with a bit of my own style and personality.

Both cards carry the same message of encouragement and let the recipient know that I'm thinking of them, but one carries a bit more of me with it.  The message that I personally write inside will add to the encouraging sentiments and will be specifically speaking to my friend's situation.

Thanks for stopping by my blog as you hop along.

If you haven't checked them out already, here is a list of the other demonstrators participating.

January Team Creative Challenge

Our January Team Creative Challenge has a theme of "Love is in the air."  I decided to celebrate the special love we receive from our pets with this scrapbook page layout, complete with pictures of my current kitty love, Titus. My “Love is in the air” inspiration came from the Nine Lives stamp set sentiment that says “True Love has four paws.” I used coordinating paper and ribbon from the All My Love suite.   All of these products are available in the new Stampin' Up! Occasions catalog.

 

December Team Creative Challenge Card

Our December team creative challenge is to create a project using new products from the Occasions catalog or Sale-A-Bration brochure which will be available to customers in January 2019.  I received a sampling of the products at our last meeting and fell in love with the Botanical Butterfly Designer Series Paper pack, which will be available in the Sale-A-Bration brochure as a free-with-$50 purchase item.  It's two-sided paper, and some of the sheets have a black and white side that can be colored in.  

When I saw the black and white side, it seemed to be calling for me to add a bit of color to it.  I decided to use some black cardstock as the background and Calypso Coral to mat a square of the Designer Series Paper and to color in just one of the butterfly images.  I paired it with the Enjoy Life stamp set, as I loved the sentiment about kindness in that set.

As I worked on the card, I though of how many people I know who are struggling with loss of loved ones, depression, or some kind of illness, and are finding it hard to see anything beautiful in life. It reminded me how a simple act of kindness or word of encourgement can brighten someone's day.  Creating the card encouraged me to strive to always speak and act graciously and kindly to everyone I meet, as my words and actions may be the one thing that brightens their day or keeps them from the edge of despair.