Bing Crosby Challenge

In the spirit of the holidays, my demonstrators group decided to look to a Christmas CD album cover for our inspiration. We chose to use his Merry Christmas CD, which has a retro feel, a centered focal point, lots of white space and a red, green, and black color scheme. I decided to mimic the centered, circular focal point and use the red, green and black colors as a jumping point. I was a bit intimidated about using black on a Christmas card. I know, Iknow...it's classic, it can be elegant, and it goes with a lot. But it also somehow seems morbid. But I was determined to get over it, and since I absolutely love our Love Letter designer series paper, to turned to it as my jumping off point. I opted for Very Vanilla over white Very Vanilla was used in the patterned paper, and then I opted to tone down the bright Christmassy red and green to the more sublte Cherry Cobbler and Garden Green. I wanted the black to be a bigger proportion of color, and I wanted to center the focal image just as they did on the CD. I used my Two-Step Bird Extra-Large punch to punch out the leaves for the wreath and then trimmed down the stems as I laid it out in a circle. I topped it off with some Cherry Cobbler brads for some cute berries, and voila! What do you think of when you see this CD cover? How does it inspire you? I'd love to see your work, please leave a comment with a link if you are inspired to do so!

More Fun with the Color Challenge

Wanna see more great ideas using this color combo? Check out my friends at the following links:

Ann Truenow

Dawn Olchefske

Jan Carlson

Lori Zoellmer

Paula Curtis

Color Challenege - Poppy Parade, Old Olive, and Concord Crush

My demonstrator's group has been participating in challenges these past few weeks, and today our challenge was to use Poppy Parade, Concord Crush and Old Olive. This was a fun chance to use two of this year's In Colors, with one of my "go to" classics!

I thought the colors lent themselves well to a Christmas theme...the richness of the Concord Crush makes me think of royalty or special occasions and the Poppy Parade paired with the Old Olive create a modern twist of the standard red and green for this time of year.

The card base was embossed with our Petals-a-Plenty embossing folder and the poinsettia stamp is retired from last year's holiday mini (Berry Christmas)...this is still one of my favorite sets! I topped it off with our In Color Ribbon and our new adhesive pearls.

Happy stamping!!!

Punch Circle Christmas Tree

The last card I posted was inspired by a card I received from another Stampin' Up! demonstrator. Tonight's card is inspired by a commercially produced card I received from a co-worker a few years ago. It was a tree made of gold, silver and gold foil dots and then accented with shiny snowflake a a script font. I chose Cherry Cobbler, Garden Green and Soft Suede as my color combo.

I decided to try my hand a homemade version using various sizes of punched circles. A lot of SU!'s smaller circle punches will work for this...I also used the circles from owl punch to get a good assortment of sizes. The tree trunk is half of punched piece from the modern label punch. I accented it with SU!'s brilliant rhinestone brads and holiday sentiment from the Four the Holidays stamp set!

This would be a great card for mass production...especially for those of you with eager children at home...they will have fun making all these punches for you!

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Card Inspiration Challenge

Ahhh....it's Thanksgiving Day! There's nothing like waking to the smell of turkey in the oven with the promise of a fire in the fireplace, good times with family, amazing food & relaxation. It's also the official start to the holiday season which, for many of us, is the busiest time all year...friends & family to visit, church, work & other social obligations, shopping, baking, wrapping, mailing holiday cards, etc. And if you're like me, you love the coziness & sentimentality of handmade touches.

This holiday, make things easier on yourself, and enjoy your hobbies while still crossing things off that long to-do list. This week, I challenge you to create a holiday card (or card for any other upcoming event) that is inspired by a card you have received from someone else this year. Perhaps you like the layout of the card, or the color combination they used...go for it! Copy it...don't spend time reinventing the wheel...just take it and run with it.

This year, I was lucky enough to receive this pretty pink and brown birthday card from my friend Jan, which was the inspiration for my blue and white holiday card above. The layout, dry embossing, and punched & stamped image are the same, but with a wintery twist! Thanks, Jan, for a great piece of inspiration.

Some Serious Swapping: Home for Christmas

This is the other Christmas card I did for the swap I mentioned in my post yesterday. The requirements were to use three embellishments, so this card has the 5/8" satin ribbon in basic black, embossing powder, and a clip from our Clips Assortment. I have fallen in love (no pun intended) with our Love Letters designer series paper, so I was looking for a way to incorporate that into my card. That drove the color scheme of Very Vanilla, Basic Black and Cherry Cobbler. Multiple layers and the ticket corners (made with our ticket corner punch) add some detail to this card, which was pretty easy to make! I like to stamp the insides, too...for a little extra surprise.

Happy stamping!

Some Serious Swapping: Season of Friendship

I've been doing some serious swapping this fall and having a blast. It has been fun to create cards & also fun to get some beautiful and inspiring cards back! Thanks to everyone who participated in the same swaps as me...you did great work.

This card is one that I created for a Christmas swap. I stamped the tree (from the Season of Friendship stamp set) in Early Espresso ink onto Early Espresso cardstock and then cut it out by hand with my Paper Snips.

Next I cut a rectangle of Whisper White cardstock, and stamped the snowflakes (also from Season of Friendship) on it with VersaMark ink, sprinkled with Iridescent Ice embossing powder and heat set it. Then I mounted that rectangle on a slightly larger rectangle of Cherry Cobbler cardstock and accented with two Cherry Cobbler brads from the Regals brad assortment pack.

That was all mounted on the card, which I had made by mounting a large rectangle of our Candy Cane Christmas designer series paper adorned with Early Espresso ribbon onto a card made from Early Espresso cardstock. Then I adhered down the tree, stamped the cheery red bird (also from the Season of Friendship set) and called it done. I think it turned out pretty cute. I'm going to try one using fall colors, be sure to check back and look for that!


Also, check back tomorrow to see the other card I did for this Christmas swap! Happy Stamping.