Be Inspired Blog Hop--Friends & Family!

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Hello friends! I am so happy to be back after taking a little creative break last month! I could not resist this awesome theme of Friends & Family!

Do you ever find that you are using a color or color palette on repeat? For me the past few weeks its been Fresh Freesia—I mean, seriously, the color goes with EVERYTHING! I even found myself buying some Fresh Freesia inspired running shoes!

I decided to make a scrapbook page that features a picture of one of my fav friends who was up in Canada for a visit this past summer. The last time I saw her was when I went to visit right before Covid! I flew home to Canada on a Monday and on Wednesday they made the announcement that if you arrived back that day you would have to quarantine for 2 weeks. Doesn’t this all seem like a million years ago? So its been a LONG TIME coming for a visit and I am happy we got to have one this summer! So of course I had to make a scrapbook page for our Friends & Family themed blog hop this month!

This is my and my buddy Brett enjoying a coffee together and a canadian coffee house!

Was I the only one who stockpiled the Dandy Designs 12x12 paper? I absolutely LOVED the color palette of that paper collection and its perfect for scrapbooking!

I started with a Fresh Freesia pattern and then added a layer of Fresh Freesia card stock over top that is trimmed to 11 1/2 x 11 1/2. I had recently made a different card project with some triangles and that inspired me to cut our 6x6 DSP (here I used 4 colors from the Subtles Family—Highland Heather, Fresh Freesia, Petal Pink and Bubble Bath) into a triangle. Its such a cool way to layer DSP on a page and to think about using this paper size in your scrapbook designs!

I love the flowers in the Darling Details stamp set. I stamped them here with Pebbled Path ink (a nice alternative to Momento) and colored them with coordinating Stampin’ Blend colors. I used the Darling Details dies to cut out some floral images from the set with the Vellum Basics. I love to use vellum on scrapbooking projects. I decided to use Highland Heather as my photo mat as its the color furthest away from where I was placing my photo and it helps to tie in the DSP and the photo mat by anchoring them on each side of the layout.

You can find the sentiment “Fabulous Friend” in the Bold Bouquet stamp set. I trimmed it down from its original format and added a bit of Linen Thread behind. I added a few retired gems as well, because, Why Not? Why am I hoarding things…

One of my favorite dies is the heart from the Radiating Stitches Dies—these are an Online Exclusive. You definitely need #addtocart if you do not have these dies! The little tiny ‘love’ is from the Best Family Ever stamp set. It has such a great collection of descriptive words, it is really a set worth having in your long term collection.

‘Oh, Happy Day!’ can be found in the Kindest Expressions stamp set. This is a fabulous set for memory keeping because the sentiments are oversized which I love. I cut it out with the Stylish Shapes Dies—another craft room must have!

I hope this page encourages you to pull out some of your 6x6 paper in your favorite color combination or give this one a try:

Highland Heather, Fresh Freesia, Petal Pink and Bubble Bath!

I would love to see what you can come up with and I am excited to see what the rest of the team created with our them of Family & Friends. Make sure to ‘hop’ all the way around and please leave me a comment! I really look forward to them. And if I have inspired you to order anything, please consider using this button to shop with me!

Up next on the Hop we have my amazing former Artisan teammate Janneke! I know you will love what they have created!

I hope you visit everyone on our blog hop and please feel free to leave us some encouraging comments! I love to know what you think of my projects! And if you are not following me on Instagram, please do @stampwithbrenda

Backstage Presents for my People

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Hi friends! I really hope you enjoyed my Creative Convention last week while I was in Vegas at Backstage. I had so much fun creating those projects for you!

Backstage was so much fun, my cup and heart are full. I am so excited about this upcoming holiday season and all the fun we are going to have crafting together! I love to have people here in my Home Studio in the YEG area and I host lots of stuff on zoom/facebook! So if you haven’t crafted with me before maybe this will be an opportunity for us!

One of the fun things of getting together at any Stampin’ Up! event, whether is company hosted, or hosted by demonstrators, is the PEOPLE! We know this right? So of course I had to take some gifts to my ‘people’!

 

The absolute HIGHLIGHT of Backstage for me was getting to me some fellow members of the Artisan Design Team, both current and past! My friends Heather @songbirdstamper was coming over from the UK so of course I had to give her a gift of Canadian maple syrup and some maple Sweet Georgia Browns from a Canadian chocolatier company, Purdy’s.

 

I thought this little tin was cute to share with my roomie and best stamping buddy, Tammy Nelson @stampandscraptammy—We met a few years back on the Alaskan incentive trip and have been having fun together ever since. I thought after enjoying all of the maple truffles inside she could pop this tin up in her craft room aa a little reminder of me!

These tags were inspired by a card that my fellow Canadian Teammate Verena @simple_stamper shared a couple weeks back! I thought the design was easy and perfect to convert into tags! The maple leaf is stamped in Real Red ink on coordinating card stock. Once you cut your tag to size, use the maple leaf die cut to create a negative image. You can then pop your stamped image in behind.

For the Starbucks mugs, I wrapped strips of Real Red card stock around the boxes that I stamped with the large maple leaf stamp in the Autumn Leaves stamp set. The sentiments ‘For You Friend’ are from the Best Family Ever stamp set!

I did a MUG SWAP with Kurstan @stampwithkurstan_ which was so much fun! Now I have a San Francisco mug to add to my collection! She also filled it with chocolates which caused my carry-on suitcase to get inspected at security! I guess they looked suspicious in there!

I took an Alberta mug as a surprise to my friend Melanie @melsinkyfingers—you may remember last holiday season we did a 12 Days of Christmas Blog Hop and I am so happy we are going to offer that to you again starting on November 1st! We are working out the details on an event as well, so stay tuned!

Of course I had to pick myself up a Las Vegas mug for my collection and this itty bitty Nevada mini mug! Isn’t it so cute! Its a perfect little decor item for my stamp room!

I will be sharing alot more fun stuff—pictures and reels on my Instagram so make sure you are following me along there!