Happy New Year 2022!

Hello everyone! Welcome to another amazing fantastic year! Yes, 2021 was a challenge. It was hard. I cried a lot, I worried about my kids and felt sad for what I thought they were missing out on but I have given up trying to make sense of things. I am however so blessed to have a fun supportive group of friends and a job/hobby that I truly love that helped give me purpose and direction!

I look forward to new creative direction and opportunity in 2022. I promise to always try something once! And maybe again if I find out I like it! You never know until you try (I am hearing my moms voice in my head at the moment, hahaha!).

So HAPPY NEW YEAR FRIENDS, let’s have some fun together this year!

Happy New Year friends! Blessing abound for you in 2022!

I created this card to mail out to some special friends and I thought it was a fun one to share! I have been loving my Blending Brushes lately and this is a fun technique that you can try with them—its known as the Bokeh Technique. In photography, Bokeh, is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in ‘out of focus’ parts of an image. So we can imagine these ‘dots' or ‘circles’ as being out of focus on this card project. Fun right?

Here are the supplies you will need to create this card but keep in mind you can reproduce this Bokeh look with any colors! I just went for a color palette that felt like night time, when the clocks would turn over into a new year!

I used my trusty finger Daubers for the smaller circles and the Blending Brushes for the larger circles. You could always make yourself a stencil, but I didn’t feel the need because the Picture This Dies were so perfect! The die is easy to wipe off and move around the front of your card stock.

I started with Misty Moonlight card stock and use the die and Whisper White Craft Ink for the first layer. It is important to start with white dots and then build from there. I like to layer white over white too and have lots of overlap with the colors and dots. The other colors used were Misty Moonlight and Gorgeous Grape. It also looks more natural if you have a few dots off of the edge of the card stock too.

This is a really fun technique that gets you messy fingers and each card front will be unique!

Happy is die cut from the Christmas Cheer Dies and is from the Mother of Pearl 12 x 12 Specialty Paper. It is AMAZING! You can’t see the awesomeness of it in this photo, but trust me! It has a really solid texture and is so beautiful when it catches the light. I paired it up with ‘New Years’ which is from a set called A Wish for Everything, I tend to hang onto these sets that have more unique sentiments that we don’t see as often. I added a few random sequins from the Subtle Shimmer Sequins collection. They were the perfect touch!

I hope you will give this fun Bokeh technique a try and I wish you all the blessings of a year new. Lets go forward with the spirit of positivity and keep ourselves open to experiences new things!

Happy New Year!

If anything caught your eye please feel free to shop my online store by clicking any of the images below! Thank you in advance for letting me continue to love what I do!

Here are the items I used for this card! Product List

Misty Moonlight Classic Stampin' Pad

Uninked Stampin’ Craft Pad & Whisper White Refill

Gorgeous Grape Classic Stampin' Pad

Misty Moonlight 8-1/2" X 11" Cardstock

Subtle Shimmer Sequins

Christmas Cheer Dies  

Basic White 8 1/2" X 11" Cardstock

Tombstone Treat Boxes

Have you seen these amazing Tombstone Treat Boxes yet? They are so fantastic! They are easy to assemble as they have areas with adhesive strips already built in! So you do not need to add in any of your own adhesive! YAY! And they actually fit a decent amount of stuff inside! I decided that I could add some treats AND a little mini card!

I wanted the feeling of a halloween spooky sky to anchor the little black tree so I die cut a Pumpkin Pie circle with the Layering Circles Dies. I added it to the box and then snipped off the edge. I took my Rich Razzleberry Stampin’ Write Marker and flicked it across the circle and box.

The trees are cut from Basic Black cardstock using the Frightful Tags Dies. I added one on the circle and one poking out from the top. I then tied a length of the Bumblebee Gingham Ribbon around the box.

Over top I added the sentiment, Happy Haunting, on Highland Heather cardstock, stamped with Momento Black Ink. I added a marker spray with my Highland Heather marker over top and added this circle with a Dimensional.

The happy bat is from the Banner Year stamp set and is stamped with Momento Black Ink on Bumblebee cardstock. You will need to hand trim this little bat and add it with a mini Black Dimensional to the tree.

Lastly some Cute Stars Adhesive-Backed Sequins were added to the box! Voila! A fun Tombstone Treat Box!

I measured the dimensions of the inside of the Tombstone Treat Box to create the little mini card. I thought it was a neat way to add a little message on top of your treats!

The base of the mini card is Basic Black and I added a layer of Basic White over top. I used my Blending Brush with Bumblebee ink to create a little halo for my tree to rest on. The little bats are from the Little Delights stamp set and are stamped using Momento Black Ink.

The sentiment, Batty for You, is from the Frightfully Cute stamp set on Highland Heather cardstock. And this time for the inside, I stamped the happy bat on Pumpkin Pie cardstock to add to the tree!

If you are loving this Tombstone Treat box—stayed tuned! I have some other projects designed to share with you this month! However, I definitely encourage you to order them sooner than later! You don’t want to miss out on these!

Create with Connie and Mary--Love is in the Air!

Can you believe it is the end of January already? Happy that this month is done as it hopefully it means we are another month closer to ‘normal’ life! Where I live, things are still pretty strict and we are in the middle of a cold snap, so its a bit of a rough patch. Luckily I have my stamping hobby to keep me occupied!

This week our theme is Love is in the Air so I wanted to make a card that has a ‘love’ theme but feels airy and light. I hope you enjoy what I designed!

For my project this week I decided to experiment again with the new Blending Brushes. Playing around is honestly the best way to learn about a new product. The Blending Brushes are actually so user friendly, I am seriously impressed!

The only stamp on this card is from the Always in my Heart stamp set found in the January to June catalogue.

The feature of this card is the box I created with my Blending Brush and stencil I made using two Stitched Rectangular dies to create the box/frame. I used Coastal Cabana for that ‘airy’ bright feel I was wanting. I used the Blending Brush to create the Coastal Cabana box. The sentiment is then stamped on top with Momento Ink.

The flowers on this card are from the True Love Designer Series paper. I cut them by hand and then isolated a second flower on top after coloring it with the Magenta Madness and Old Olive Stampin’ Blends.

I added in a few Opal Rounds as a finishing touch. I love how they are almost translucent but have a bit of flecking to them for interest.

I really really love how this card turned out and think its an awesome way to showcase off the Blending Brushes!

Can’t wait to see what Melissa has shared (you can go BACK) or what Connie has desgined (NEXT). Enjoy the upcoming month!

Create with Connie and Mary--strip it down!

This was actually a really good challenge for me this week as I am not someone who typically does simple stamping or one layer cards! SO I had to get creative to see what I could come up with!

I almost always have a card base with a least one layer of card stock on top. Sometimes there is another layer of Designer Series Paper on top too! So I knew that the first thing to go with my ‘strip it down’ challenge was to stamp direct to my Basic White card base.

I decided to create a fun background using our new Blending Brushes and the Curvy Dies (available in the JJ Catty). I used Coastal Cabana Ink to blend the background and then tapped some water on top with my large Water Painter brush. I was just playing around and am happy with how it turned out. The water acts as an ‘eraser’ and makes the ink disappear. You can see it happen before your eyes!

This is the template I used to create my blended area

Once I had my fun area blended, straight to the card base, I reached for the Snail Mail stamp set. I just love the little mushroom image! I used my Stampin’ Blends in Granny Apple Green, Pool Party, Bermuda Bay and Purple Posey.

Adding in a bit of white twine added a little something, but I still feel like for my stampin’ style this card is pretty stripped down!

I stamped the sentiment, Hello, straight onto the area I blended and I resisted every temptation to add some bling or anything else to this card.

And you know what? I actually love this clean and simple finished card!

I can’t wait to see what the other gals create this week! You can go BACK to see Melissa or NEXT to see Connie!

Please feel free to leave a comment!

Around the World on Wednesday--Favorite Inspiration

This month we are exploring where we get our inspiration from which I think is super interesting. Sometimes I have an idea, or want to use a specific color, but get stuck thinking about what other colors might coordinate. My number one go to tool are the Color Coach cards that Stampin’ Up! has developed. I know everyone who is participating in the Hop this month will have some fantastic tips and inspiration for us to get inspired when we are feeling stuck!

The Color Coach cards are a Demonstrator resource found in the Printing Place. I am sure if you ask your own local demo she/he would be more than happy to share them with you. As a demo myself I have offered this as class project. We organized all of our Color Coach cards into one of our 6 x 8 albums with a card stock sample. I reference this book ALL THE TIME. Sometimes I just need a bit of color inspiration!

So for our project today, I opened up my Color Coach and selected a Calypso Coral Color Coach Card (say that 5x fast!) and used the 3 colors to create my project—Calypso Coral, Petal Pink and Sahara Sand. I used gold as my accent color to add that glitz aspect.

We have so many options to add gold to our projects—we can emboss with gold embossing powder, add gold foil paper to our projects, gold embellishments (so many options) or our brand new gold Gilded Leafing embellishment. The Gilded Leafing has a bit of a different look to it than gold embossing and I wanted to play around with it on this project.

Because I wanted to incorporate all three colors from the Color Coach Card onto my project I reached for my Blending Brushes which are a brand new tool being offered by Stampin’ Up!. I started by blending the Petal Pink color first because I was then able to use the SAME brush to add in the Calypso Coral! These brushes are totally amazing.

The Petal Pink is blended across the mid section of the card. I then added in the Calypso Coral along the bottom left corner and brought the Sahara Sand in from the top right. The Sahara Sand just gives our paper a subtle color but you can see the difference when you add the sentiment which is on Whisper White/Basic White card stock.

The sentiment is from the stamp set Always in my Heart

I continued the gold theme by accenting my sentiment with some Gold Foil paper cut with the scallop die from the Peony die set and some Gold Metallic Pearls.

I stamped both opposite corners using the Sale-a-bration stamp set Corner Bouquet. To apply the Gilded Leafing to my image I started by stamping it with Versamark and then adding Heat’n Stick Powder over top.

HOT TIP: To use your Heat’n Stick Powder successfully only heat it until it starts to glisten. Once this happens it has become sticky and you can add another ingredient on top. If you over heat or cook it too long, it actually loses its stickiness

After heating the powder you can add your Gilded Leafing. I have dumped out my jar (which will explode in volume) into a large container. You can press your card right into the leafing in the bin or you can add it with tweezers. Either method works but I prefer pressing it into the container. Once you have it attached it, it will look like a hot mess (trust me you are going to look at this and think ‘this ain’t pretty'), you need to use either a Stampin’ Sponge or the large Water Painter brush to brush away the excess and bring the detail to life. I was able to apply extra Gilded Leafing to my project in areas where I didn’t feel there was enough. You can use your finger to rub it with some pressure to your project as well.

In the end, I think it turned out pretty spectacular!

I am so curious to see where everyone else gets their inspiration from. I hope you enjoy our hop this month and if you live in Canada you can shop with me anytime by using the hostess code. Gratitude and thanks in advance! Up next on the hop is the amazing Tricia Butts from the United States!