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!

Creative Convention--Day 7!

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Yay! A whole week of fun and inspiration! I have had an amazing time at Backstage being inspired myself so I wanted to inspire you as well! I hope you have enjoyed all of my posts so far and I have gotten you excited for the upcoming Holiday catalogue!

My last project had to be a scrapbook page, there was no way I could not share one as that is actually my passion. While I do enjoy making cards, I really LOVE making scrapbook pages!

I really wanted to use the new Festive Tags —kits are on sale this month, and I love how SU released a new kit and put it on sale for us! Isn’t that amazing? I always love our tag kits as I find them to be extremely valuable in content and a total time saver when the holidays get busy!

I thought these tags would look awesome as a banner on a scrapbook page and I was right! I was so easily able to bring my vision to life with this tag kit. I love the color palette of the kit—Lost Lagoon, Pool Party, Sweet Sorbet, Flirty Flamingo with gold accents!

I also printed my christmas picture in black & white—the reason is that I find holiday photos almost overwhelming with all the color and it sometimes competes with the colors in your scrapbook page, so this is an easy solve—print in black & white so it is a neutral canvas!

There is only one things stamped on this page because I could not resist this sentiment. I was absolutely perfect for this page! You can find ‘Christmas is better Together’ in the Beary Cute stamp set. I love it so much!

I also decided that my Pool Party background needed a little something and since I had already added polka dot Pool Party DSP (from the 6x6 Subtles paper collection) to my page I decided to continue that theme. The easiest way to add polka dots is with a finger dauber! It is the ideal size as the scale works perfectly on scrapbook pages and cards.

Not only does this kit have adorable tags but it also has cut things like snowmen, trees, ornaments and a whole bunch of holiday words that are STICKERS! Yes, this actually a stamp free kit!

I miss these little kids—this was christmas eve 2012! They say the days are long but the years are fast and it is so true!

I really hope this scrapbook page encourages you to look at our Kits as a whole in a new way. I often find I can use the elements to create completely different projects than intended!

Thank you so much for being a part of my “Creative Convention”—please feel free to shop with me if you do not have a demonstrator. I love what I do and your support allows me to keep doing it!

And if you missed yesterday’s post, please go back and take a look and consider joining me and Tricia for the Joy of Christmas Stamp Camp on October 21st on Zoom! We would love to spend the day stamping with you!

Creative Convention--Day 6!

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Welcome back friends! I hope you are enjoying everything I am sharing so far! I have had some much fun preparing all of these “Creative Convention” project ideas for you in anticipation of the new upcoming Holiday Catalogue! We are getting so close to the happiest time of year (which is my world is Sept-Dec!)

My project for today is a card with a fun fold that I make EVERY SINGLE YEAR! Its just one of my go to favorites as its a great way to give a gift card inside or hide some money or even a flat little chocolate.

This project is a combo one that uses both of the stamp sets from the Joy of Christmas Suite collection!

I love how these bundles work together so that you can build off of each one of them and I do appreciate the traditional aspect of this suite. I knew I wanted to add the Shaded Spruce gingham pattern from the Joy of Christmas 12x12 paper so I decided to make the card base the same color.

This is a standard card that is scored at 4 1/4, and then you score one side at 1 1/4 to make the flap that folds down creating the ‘pocket’. I also rounded the pocket on the flap and base for a little extra touch.

I added a 2 1/4 x 5 1/4 layer of Shaded Spruce that I ran through the Exposed Brick 3D folder in the annual catalogue—if you do not have this folder you need #addtocart now as its awesome and works with SO MANY things!

Both the Joy of Noel and the Christmas Classics stamp sets are a part of a bundle and the Christmas Classics dies have all the labels and some greenery, while the Joy of Noel dies of the word ‘Noel’ and some larger greenery. I am going to say that you will just need them both, hahaha!

The fun part of this card for me is the greenery that you see emerging from the top and bottom of this fold. I die cut this shape, which is really designed to be a label with the greenery and I cut it in half!

 

I then tucked this greenery under the DSP on the right and under the flap more in the middle leftish.

I sealed the card with 2 staples that you don’t see, to make the pocket. The I sealed the flap down with some Dimensionls.

Sometimes to keep the card closed I will use twine or ribbon. However, this time I wanted the Pecan Pie ribbon to be more of an accent in between the layers of my sentiment.

The sentiment is stamped in Cherry Cobbler and then I used one of the large images from the Joy of Noel set to stamp some imagery behind the sentiment. I used Crumb Cake ink that I stamped off on my scratch paper (or grid paper) so that it would be faint. I added the sentiment onto of a 2 1/4 inch circle of DSP to bring in a few color just peeking from the outside ring.

Lastly I added some embellishments, Adhesive-Backed Star Trinkets, from the O Holy Night suite. I thought they were a more unique touch to this project than just a gold sequin or such.

I am really really pleased with how this card turned out and I will no doubt be sharing it at my upcoming ‘Joy of Christmas’ Virtual Stamp Camp/Retreat.

Joy of Christmas Stamp Camp —co hosted with Tricia Schaelow from @stampint—if you are not following her, please do!

When: Saturday, Oct 21 at 10:30 am on Zoom (which is awesome as anyone from Canada can join in the fun with us)

Fun Stuff: The stamp camp is $75 and includes everything you see below —Joy of Noel stamp set, full roll of Black & Very Vanilla ribbon, and half a pkg of the Joy of Christmas 12x12 paper PLUS a special guest demonstration from my friend Julie @thepaperhaven and 6-8 make’n takes! These won’t be your ordinary make’n takes either—they will be a mix of 3D, holiday decor and cards!

Registration closes on Sept 30th for this event and your kit can be shipped anywhere in Canada at your expense! Please reach out if you are interested in registering (one of these days I will figure out how to take payment through Squarespace!)

I have one more project to share with you tomorrow as a part of my ‘Creative Convention’ weeklong extravaganza! I hope you will come back and please feel free to leave any comments!

Creative Convention--Day 5!

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5 awesome days of inspiration! Yippee! I hope you have been following along so far, if this is your first visit, make sure you go back to see what you have missed. I away in Las Vegas this week with some of my Stampin’ friends for Backstage—a leadership conference SO I thought I should have my own little Creative Convention by sharing a full week of projects with you!

I couldn’t resist making another project with the Autumn Leaves Bundle. Fall is beautiful here in Edmonton, but sometimes it doesn’t last that long and winter comes too quick. So I will take all the opportunity to create fall projects while I can!

Earlier this month I had a Team meeting and I have been trying to share fun or unique folds with my team. Now I do not have the brain power to create these folds myself which is why I am so grateful for this amazing Stampin’ community we have. I found this ‘Pull Tab’ card on Instagram by @stampinjill (go give her a follow if you aren’t) and I went to her blog for all of the measurements and instructions on how to make this card. Here are the measurements I shared with my team (I have the pictures so why not share!)

I wanted to use the All About Autumn suite to inspire my team so I stayed really true to the colors found in the All About Autumn 6x6 DSP.

The base of my card is Pretty Peacock and I used Very Vanilla for all of my stamping.

I stamped the large maple leaf in Copper Clay, one of our fabulous new In Colors and did a little spray of ink with the dark Stampin’ Blend marker. Two die cut leaves in Old Olive and Pretty Peacock finished off the front with the sentiment and some of the new Copper ribbon.

NOTE: I repurposed the tag die that was used to cut the pull tab section from the DSP. I don’t like to waste so it was perfect to add under the sentiment

When you pull the tab at the bottom the front panel flips open to this perspective.

I did a little more stamping on the top Very Vanilla piece, this time using the large leaves from the set in Old Olive ink and the smaller leaves in the Copper Clay ink. I did a little more ink spray and added another leaf die cut.

On the bottom panel, I let the DSP shine (along with the base piece of course) by choosing a pattern and simply cutting it with the maple leaf die and adding the sentiment on top w a little Linen Thread.

I hope you head over to Jill’s blog— https://stampingjill.com/ to see her awesome instructions on how to make this Pull Tab card!

Hope to see you back tomorrow! Please feel free to leave me comment too!