Stamps & Stretchy Pants

Hello friends! It has been awhile! It isn’t that I haven’t been crafting, trust me I have! I have just been sharing more over on Instagram lately. However, I was very honored to be invited to join this amazing group of Stampin’ Up! demonstrators who make up the Be Inspired Design Team! I am so happy to be participating in this blog hop—this hop runs the last Wednesday of each month, so I hope you will come back again to visit!

The theme for this month Red & Green—pretty easy for Christmas crafting, especially when we have the amazing Sweetest Christmas Designer Series Paper to work with! Sweet Sorbet is my favorite holiday red this year and you simply cannot go wrong with Garden Green. It has been in the SU family of colors for quite some time, the whole 16 years that I have been crafting!

I just love cute candy canes, don’t you?

This is one of my favorite ‘fun folds’ that isn’t too complicated to create or remember how to create! I simply start with your standard card base, 4 1/4 x 5 1/2, and layered two 3/4 x 5 1/2 inch strips of the striped pattern from the DSP along the edges. I like to leave a little bit of the Sweet Sorbet card stock showing on either edge as well.

Next I cut a white layer (or whatever color you choose) for the ‘card’ aspect to open and close. It is 3 1/5 x 11, scored at 5 1/2. Easy peasy! I decided to run the top flap of the card through the Wintery 3D folder for a little textural interest. And if you look close, its actually the indented side of the folder showing on the front for even more of a twist.

I really love to use embossing folders in my designs. It is such an easy way to add interest to the background of your cards.

I decided to pair up 2 of the stamps from Framed & Festive —Falala and Merry Christmas to create one sentiment block and I die cut it using the Seasonal Label Dies.

The candy canes are of course stamped from the Sweet Candy Canes stamp set in Sweet Sorbet. You can add a bit of Wink of Stella to the larger section of the candy canes too if you want a bit of sparkle.

The greenery is die cut from the Candy Cane dies and the Christmas Banner dies and are just tucked in and behind the sentiment. A little bit of Sweet Sorbet twine and In Color Enamel Dots and I felt this card was complete.

The best part of using an embossing folder on the folded card is that when you flip it open you still get to enjoy a bit of design on the inside of the card too!

I am making this card with some of my stampin’ friends in an upcoming class and I am so happy to share it with you here as well. I hope you will give this fun fold a try in your own paper crafting too!

Next up on the hop we have my creative friend Janneke Dijkstra - de Jong! You can click on the button to go directly to her blog!

Hello my lovely friends! Thank you so much for joining us on our ‘color inspiration’ hop—that is what I like to think of our monthly color challenge. And to be frank, this month’s 4 color combo was a challenge for me!

I really wanted to make a scrapbook page of our last family photo—not last as in forever, but for a while as in September we moved my son into Millar College of the Bible— 8 hours away! So this picture of the 5 of us has some special meaning to me.

I also felt like these colors had a bit of a fall vibe and September is the start of fall after all!

This was such an exciting day for my son! He was so happy to be getting settled in to Bible College that his eyes were just sparkling and you could just feel the happiness coming off of him. I am so proud of him for making such a big decision to leave home!

I actually laid my photo out on all 4 of the colors to see which one suited it the best and I landed on Early Espresso. I cut out a photo mat of the same color and then the real hunt began as I wanted to incorporate some current designer series paper into my design. I finally found this fun pattern from the Celebrate Everything DSP stack that you can get as a host reward in the JJ catty! I absolutely LOVE this DSP stack! So I added a nice wide piece of it to my design to brighten up the base of the page!

To add some texture and interest to the base of the page, I decided to stamp one of the splotch images from the Perched in a Tree stamp set in the same color ink, Early Espresso. I stamped this on a diagonal axis as well so that your eye follows a natural path across the page.

I then die cut a bunch of leaves from the Aspen Tree Dies. I love that these dies cut and dry emboss the veining of the leaves! It really makes them feel more realistic!

The sentiment can be found in the Honeybee Home stamp set and I used one of the dies from the Seasonal Labels Dies to cut it out. Then I just trimmed the right edge to be straight instead of decorative. I added some gold and white twine that I had laying around on my desk—I don’t even know where it originated from!

Sometimes when you are working on such a dark canvas it can be hard to make it have interest. So I decided to cut some flowers and sprigs out in Early Espresso to play off the tone on tone look.

The little sprigs are from the Christmas Banner Dies and they look great die cut in Early Espresso, Bermuda Bay and Mango Melody.

The sentiment “Best of Luck” is also from Honeybee Home and I thought it was sort of fitting as we left my son behind! I know he will work hard but I do wish him the best of luck trying to learn time management and new responsibilities—hello laundry!! haha!

Truthfully, once I got going this page didn’t take too long to put together. Not every event you want to capture needs to be a massive process to complete. Otherwise, you will never get those memories scrapbooked! I also think that this is a “Go To” layout design of mine. It incorporates everything, card stock, DSP, background stamping, and die cuts. You could easily swap out the elements for any occasion—flowers for summer, snowflakes for winter, greenery for Christmas and so forth. If you do use this page for inspiration, please let me know, I would love to see what you create!

Please make sure you go all the way around the Hop and see what the other creatives in the group have shared this month!

NEXT on the hop is my amazing friend Melanie! We often share texts and stampin’ inspiration with each other and I always look forward to her designs!

If you would like to go in reverse and go BACK you will be taken to my fellow Artisan Tami Hewlett. Tami is an absolute gem and such a kind and giving soul. She is a true master and creating water color backgrounds and elements and I am always in awe of her creations!

Thank you so much for popping by the Blog today and checking out our Hop! I really look forward to this each month as these color combinations do get me thinking outside of the box. I hope they leave you feeling inspired as well.

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