by Jackie Bultje | Jul 23, 2019 | Birthday, dinoroar, kids cards |
Hello stampers. Sometimes you have bigger plans than you have energy for and you need to be able to accept that with grace and not fight it. I really wanted to make some fun things today but my energy levels were down so I decided that rather than make cards I would share a bit of the creative process with you and go from there. I wanted to use Dinoroar because it is a fun and energetic set. When you see the actual stamp set it is not quite what you get inside. Do you know why? If you look carefully it will say in small letters, images at 90%. You would be surprised at how much bigger that 10% is! I took a picture so you could see for yourself.
I find that it really helps to lay everything out on the table that you hope to use in the creation of your cards. I only had the stamp set, the framelits and the coordinating paper laid out so far. There is also coordinating ribbon and very fun epoxy shapes. When you see it all displayed, especially with the catalog also open to the suite of products, it is much easier to be inspired. If you are feeling tired like I am today, then you can start by copying or “casing” the catalog samples. That will really jump start your creativity! I will try it and let you know how it goes ok?
You can really see all the possibilities with this paper. Some of it just screams dinosaur, but others could be used with different stamps and occasions as well. I grouped the paper so that each group of two is both sides of one paper. I find that if I don’t like the one side either because of the colour or the pattern, then I do like the other side. Don’t forget that even if you don’t like a piece of patterned paper when it is uncut, it can look totally different as a narrow strip on coordinating solid cardstock. #loveitchopit and then you will be much more likely to use it rather than hoard it.
I took a few pictures of some of the samples in the catalog that I plan to use for inspiration. I will either copy them exactly or use them as a starting point. My results will be in tomorrow’s blog post.
I love, love, love the cracked egg framelit in the Dino Dies. There is lots of layering and texture in this card with the vellum and frayed denim ribbon. Using dimensionals also really makes a difference by creating a 3D effect.
Here is the last shot I took of the catalog samples, but there are more, just check it out yourself on page 98 and 99 of the annual catalog.
That’s all for today. I think I have shown you that you can use the catalogue for inspiration as well! Thanks so much for dropping by today, I really appreciate it. Just a reminder that you can always find the current host code in the sidebar of my blog. When you place an online order it is so very helpful to me if you use this code. What it does is that it puts all the orders together on one so that at the end of them month I can add on to the order with things that I need for my classes and then I can redeem host rewards. With those host rewards I can keep my class costs down as well as offer some fun prizes on the Facebook page or here on this blog. It also helps me keep my class costs down and lets me spend more money on postage to send thank you cards. I just hate to see these rewards unused.
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by Jackie Bultje | May 18, 2019 | baby cards, Birthday, Blends |
Hello stampers. Do you like colouring? Do you hate colouring? Beautiful Blends are the answer. If you love colouring then you will love it even more when you colour with Blends. Do you hate colouring? You just might be very pleasantly surprised if you try the Blends. How do I know this? I think I have now had around 50 Blends club members as well as people at my coffee and a card classes say that they hated colouring until they tried the Blends. That just makes me so happy. Did you know that when I was in grade 2 I won second prize in a colouring contest run by the Guelph Daily Mercury? I was so happy! My prize was a dozen tulip bulbs and this was a kids colouring contest. How silly is that? Anyways, even with that legacy, colouring can still stress me out sometimes especially if it is a really detailed line image stamp. But Blends are different. Try out a few and you will see what I mean. I would like to show you two cards we made at our last Blends Club. Both of them are using stamp sets that will soon retire, so if you love them, be sure to add them to your collection before they are gone and sell for an astronomical price on Ebay.
Now doesn’t this card just make you smile? Two by Two is great for baby cards but also for birthday cards or get well cards for kids. It is also perfect for colouring therapy. I used flirty flamingo, balmy blue, soft suede, smoky slate, daffodil delight, pumpkin pie, basic black, real red, crumb cake, old olive and pool party to colour this card. I think it is a winner. I used the stamparatus to make sure my sentiment was a beautiful, deep black.
Bubbles and Bubbly just recently made its way to my house. This bathtub looks a lot like mine, and with a saying like that, don’t you think The Pampered Stamper needed to own this set? I thought so too and just in time too since it is retiring at the end of May. I layered vellum over top of the pool party circles to soften it up a bit but you could also use our sequins for a fun look. I am sure there are not too many rich razzleberry bathtubs in the world but I like the funky look of it.
Thanks so much for stopping by and get ready for six more Blends colours coming in the new annual catalog: so saffron, gray granite, pretty peacock, seaside spray, rococo rose and purple posy. Have a super day.
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by Jackie Bultje | May 16, 2019 | anniversary, Birthday, Paper Pumpkin |
Hello stampers. Yesterday I had two sympathy card classes and the base for these was Paper Pumpkin. I wanted to show the versatility of Paper Pumpkin. At the end of the class I unpacked my least favourite Paper Pumpkin of the year. It had been moldering in my basement for six months!! I wanted to show that you could still use a Paper Pumpkin that you really disliked and then totally change your mind by using it in a different way. Why am I telling you this? It is because I think Paper Pumpkin is awesome and the price is going up in June by three dollars per month so I am encouraging everyone to sign up now for a 12 month prepaid subscription. If you do that you get one month for free based on what you would pay if you were just paying month by month. You also get $27.50 in host credits which you can use not only on our beautiful, exclusive host sets but on any product in the catalogue or on the clearance rack. We are going to revisit Paper Pumpkin!
The original Paper Pumpkin kit was for a 24 month calendar in a cute box. Now some people might find something like this super cute and useful but I wasn’t of that mindset. I do however love the saying in the stamp set “Every day is a fresh start” so I thought it would be perfect for a birthday, for the start of a new job, graduation or even after some life-changing event. The ribbon in the kit is sumptuous, so that was another bonus. This kit also came with two ink spots, grapefruit grove and pool party. Let’s take a look at the kit.
Do you see the stamp set? Lots of geometric shapes. That is not my forté. Some people look at stamps like this and see all kinds of possibilities, but for me it is more of a challenge. What is a girl to do? Well, ink up those stamps and start playing on some grid paper and see what happens. I was really pleased with how my card turned out and it totally changed my mind about the kit. There were also ten cute gift tags in the kit which would have been very handy in December!
Here are my two cards side by side. You could also do a pool party card base to give yourself another alternative. These were literally a five minute card, only because I had to run some cardstock through the Big Shot with the stitched rectangle framelits. I think it is a great idea to get a personalized card with the significant date circled. The circle is also one of the stamps in the kit. You could use the sturdy box to hold your extra cards that you could give away as a thoughtful gift. I am so happy that I rescued this kit from my basement and turned into fun cards.
Why would I want to subscribe to Paper Pumpkin? I have a room full of stamps! I will tell you a story. You probably know that I really like to cook and bake, but sometimes it is still a real treat to order takeout and have some delicious food dropped off at my house. Paper Pumpkin is a monthly crafting surprise of instant gratification. No fuss, no muss, everything included! It is also nice that it is a surprise. I have found that it can be a lot fun to not look at the kit right away. The stamp set is always sitting on top of the kit so I take that out right away and play with it. If you run stuck for ideas there is a great online community for Paper Pumpkin on Facebook but also on Pinterest. Remember, Google is your friend. Paper Pumpkin is also compact and portable, so you can take it with you anywhere and surprise and delight your friends and family members with a great rainy day activity or to help you get through a lengthy wait in a doctor’s office or other waiting room. You can also skip a month whenever you want so that is a great feature that most craft box subscriptions do not offer. Crafting together is a great way to spend meaningful time with your children or aging parents. Creativity is therapeutic!
If you live in Canada, I would love for you to subscribe to Paper Pumpkin through me. Here is the link, or click on the image below.
Thanks for stopping by and have a super day!
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by Jackie Bultje | May 7, 2019 | Birthday, Birthday Banners, kids cards |
Hello stampers. Life got in the way this morning so I am posting in the afternoon. The good news is that I most likely have my space above my garage rented out and that will be such a relief. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with that space, but the purpose of it was to provide me with some much needed regular income. God is so good and always provides what we need in His time. Back to Birthday Banners and Balloons. I had such fun playing with this stamp set. It is one that lends itself very well to using different colours and getting a totally different effect. I thought it would be fun to show two cards side by side, not only so you could see the different colour schemes, but also that you could see the candle flames stamped properly!
Now that you see the cards side by side the upside down flames on the first card are SOOOO noticeable. I ask myself, how did I not see this in the first place? Too funny for words.
I just love the fresh colours of this card. The enamel dots were from my stash and I am pretty sure they are retired, but we always have a lot of cute colours in the catalog and on the clearance rack. I used melon mambo, pool party and pineapple punch on this card as well as night of navy for the stitched banner stamp.
Here is the inside of the card I shared with you yesterday. If you missed it, you can see it here. You can see how easy it is to add some string and tie the balloons together. I just put a glue dot on the back of the balloons near the bases and then left the string long enough that I could loop them together in a knot at the bottom. It’s all in the little details. The banner is just stamped right on the paper so no need to cut it out with the framelits. If you wanted to make it extra special you could, but I didn’t think it was necessary.
For this card I punched out three different balloons, real red, daffodil delight and night of navy. They make a nice pop of colour on a lemon lime twist base which I ran through with the Gently Falling embossing folder. Do you see how the pattern on the balloons is repeated in the banner? It makes it such fun to play with different colour combinations. The tiny candle was embossed with the soon to be retiring in colour embossing powder collection.
Here you can see some more cute sayings from Birthday Banners. I love stamping them in different colours, it adds to the birthday fun. Birthdays should be fun, exciting and colourful and these cards exude that happy feeling. Have I mentioned that this adorable set is retiring? We will be making these cards next week at coffee and a card class but they are also very easy to copy at home. If you live in Canada and want any of these products, just click on the link below and you will be taken directly to my online store. Happy shopping! Use my current host code and I will send you a happy card in the mail. Thanks for stopping by and have a super day.
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by Jackie Bultje | May 6, 2019 | Birthday, Birthday Banners, Emboss Resist technique, embossing, Framelits |
Hello stampers! I bought the Birthday Banners stamps set on a whim about two months ago and it is finally time to use it. I bought it because it coordinated with some banner framelits that I already have. I am going outside of my usual style and that is a good thing to do once in a while. You don’t want to get predictable, that’s boring! I don’t make enough cards suitable for kids, and these fit the bill for any age.
Now is a good time to take inventory of your stamping stash. You want to get the most use out of what you already have especially with your framelits and punches. Framelits will go on the clearance rack every now and then, but NEVER bundles. So you want to be sure that you have as many stamps as possible that coordinate with the framelits you already have because then you will use them more often. Is there a retiring colour that you really love? Make sure you have not only the card stock and the reinker, but also ribbon, twine and patterned paper that has that colour in it. On these cards I decided to use up my lemon lime twist. I love that colour, but as a demonstrator I will not be using it after May 31. No sense having someone fall in love with something they can’t buy!
I purposely took the picture of this card so that you could see the inside with the bright balloons. I even put string on them and tied them together to make it extra special. These balloons are in the Birthday Banners stamp set and they coordinate with our balloon punch to make it super simple to make a balloon bouquet. I cased this card from Michelle Zindorf, the queen of brayering. I didn’t brayer though, I sponged the background with blueberry bushel after embossing the swoosh from Star of Light in white. Michelle was a genius to think of the swoosh to make the candles look like they are being blown out! I embossed the candles in that gorgeous in colour embossing powder collection that is retiring. Here I used the lovely lipstick and pineapple punch embossing powders, great for the emboss resist technique.
Emboss resist simply means that you emboss your image first. That means that you stamp the image in versamark which is a sticky watermark ink. If you don’t add embossing powder you will just get a great tone on tone effect which is great for backgrounds. If you choose to emboss, then you sprinkle embossing powder on to your versamark stamped image, tap off the excess on to a clean coffee filter and then heat with the heat tool (which I call an embossing gun) After you have embossed your image you can sponge on ink or use a brayer and it will not stick to the embossed image. Do you see the blue on my one candle? That happened because the white part of the candle is not embossed. Next time I think I will cut out the candles and pop them up so that doesn’t happen. I could also have embossed the happy birthday but since this card is for my coffee and a card class I didn’t want to add too many steps. Do you see the fine detail in the swoosh from Star of Light? I love that you can use a Christmas stamp set for a birthday card. A lot of people have also used this swoosh as a Disney element (aka fairy dust) on cards or scrapbook pages. This stamp set is retiring as are the coordinating framelits.
I simply had to include this card even though it contains a glaring error that will have you laughing at me. Do you see what I did wrong on this card? I love the cute enamel dots, the raised banner with the two colours and the bright and cheerful candles. That banner cuts out with a framelit of course and there are two stamps so you don’t have to colour your stamp with a marker, also makes you look like a rock star. But when you stamp your candle flames upside down, well, that’s not such a bright idea is it?!! I really hope that maybe a few of you would have done the same thing.
I am going to stop this blog post now since I really, really want to go to pickleball, and it was canceled all of last week so I am in withdrawal. I also think my girth may be expanding due to lack of exercise! I will continue this post tomorrow including a new and improved version of this card in a different colour scheme of course as well as the last card in the trio. Thanks so much for stopping by, remember if you need to purchase anything and you live in Canada and are looking for a demonstrator, just click on the images below and you will end up at my online store. How easy is that?
Have a super day!!
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by Jackie Bultje | Mar 18, 2019 | Birthday, Brusho, butterfly, Framelits |
Hello stampers. Today we are going to do a little exploring of a very fun but easily overlooked product in our Stampin’Up! catalog: Brusho paint crystals. Brusho is the name brand of these gorgeous intensely coloured paint crystals that are activated with water. It is really quite a fine powder. You poke a hole in the lid with a push pin or thumbtack and then tap the powder out where you want it. You then keep the hole sealed with the push pin or thumbtack when you are not using it. Rather than talk about it, I will show you the cards that I made and then explain what I did on each one.
Here is the first card, it was a complete case (copy and share everything) from the catalog. I love the bold colours here. I stamped some images from Beautiful Promenade in versamark on shimmery white cardstock and white embossed with the heat gun. Then I sprinkled on mostly red and gamboge Brusho paint crystals and a little bit of yellow. I then spritzed lightly with water to activate the crystals. You might see a few blue spots, they can appear magically because of some fine powder left on my hands, on the work surface or even in the air!!
The card base is poppy parade, the edge is from Delicate Lace edgelits and the saying was stamped in Poppy Parade on Powder Pink. It comes from Birthday Cheer in the Occasions catalog on page 17. This card is a bit of an odd shape (I think because I messed up!) It is 1/4 inch shorter than normal- 5 1/4″ by 4 1/4″.
This card uses all the Brusho paint crystals. I cased it from the talented Connie Collins. I took a piece of shimmery white cardstock that was 4 1/4″ by 5 1/2″ and I misted it with water. I sprinkled on an angle starting at the top in this order: red, gamboge, yellow, moss green and prussian blue. I then gently misted again just to get the colours to run and blend a little bit. I let it dry naturally (if you use a heat gun that tends to mute the colours a bit) I then cut out the butterflies with the dies from the Beauty Abounds bundle on page 13 of the Occasions catalog. The sentiment is from Well Said and it was embossed in white on basic black cardstock. The butterfly was adhered using glue dots only on the bodies of the biggest butterflies to allow for the feeling of movement.
This Let it Ride card was cased from the internet. I think the original creator was Lynn Dunn but I was not able to find a corresponding blog post. This card is a work in progress. I made this one with shimmery white cardstock but am going to do it again using watercolour paper. I masked the horse using only a mask made with a sticky note which got rather soggy. The blue bled through on his nose making it look like he is wearing a bridle!! The top of the card around the horse was sprinkled with Prussian Blue brusho crystals and then spritzed with water. I used a aqua painter to spread it around close to the horse. The bottom part was simply coloured with Granny Apple Green blends. The sentiment was embossed in white before I applied the Brusho.
This last card is one of my favourite techniques with Brusho. You put a piece of painters tape across your piece of watercolour paper near the top leaving room for your sentiment. You then drop little dabs of Brusho powder along the bottom of the tape. I alternated between Prussian Blue and Yellow. They mingle nicely to add some green in between. You then hold the card at an angle and spritz down, just a little bit so that you still get colour droplets and not a messy trail running all the way down your card. This piece measures 3 3/4″ by 5″. The words are from the Well Said bundle. This is a high ticket item on page 27 of the Occasions catalog- $103.50 for the bundle. I highly recommend that you put it in a starter kit. You save the shipping and taxes which for this bundle alone would be $23.69. You would still have $121.50 that you could choose products with and then pay only $135 for all that amazing stuff!!!
I have done several other posts on Brusho. If you type Brusho into the search box at the top right of the page you will see them all. Here is one to make it easy for you.
Saleabration is winding down, so be sure to get what you want on your wish list so that you can get some freebies as well. A LOT of our beautiful products are selling out, so don’t be disappointed and get what you want in the Occasions catalog today. If your wish list is long, I am telling you once again that the starter kit is THE way to go. No need to feel badly if you think you are only going to be a “kitnapper”. Stampin’Up! is willing to take that chance and I just want you to get the most value for your money. Diva Day is this Saturday from 10am till 4pm and you get to spend a day with me being pampered with food, fun stamping and free products in a goodie bag, but only if you have joined my team during saleabration.
I hope you have a super day! Be sure to pop a card in the mail today and make someone happy, or keep one in your purse to give to someone while you are out and about in your community. It’s little things like that that make the world a better place.
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