Wild Wheat - Monochromatic

 Wild Wheat is such an interesting colour! 

It makes a great substitute for gold if you don't want "shiny" and somehow has a vintage feel to it. 

What's your take? Love or hate?

Here's my submission for the #craftycollaborations Insta Hop:

I've used the Hot Air Balloon bundle from the mini catalogue to stamp the images and words. 

I love the tone-on-tone effect of stamping with Wild Wheat ink onto Wild Wheat card stock. 

The background paper comes from the Softly Stippled Designer Series Paper which is a free gift with purchase during January and February.

For a final touch, some matching gems of course.

I hope you enjoyed seeing this card design!

                                                                           Product List 

Wild Wheat A4 Cardstock $17.50

Wild Wheat Classic Stampin' Pad $15.75

Hot Air Balloon Bundle (English) $79.00

Softly Stippled 12" X 12" (30.5 X 30.5 Cm) Designer Series Paper $21.75

2023–2025 In Color™ Dots $14.00

Simple Birthday Card with Decorative Mask Background

 Hello everyone,

Well, another long break from blogging sorry! Seems to be a pattern with me. Better to do some than none at all I hope? ;-)

Today I want to share a really simple birthday card with you. This was so easy to do but I love the effect. Our decorative masks are so much fun. Just use your sponge brayer and away you go!

I even made a little video for you which is only about 6 minutes long. I hope you enjoy.

                                                                        Product List 

Many Mates Cling Stamp Set (English) $40.00	Basic Pattern Decorative Masks $10.00	Pretty Peacock Classic Stampin’ Pad $13.00
Pretty Peacock A4 Cardstock $15.25	Mint Macaron A4 Cardstock $15.25	Whisper White A4 Card Stock $17.00
Sponge Brayers $14.00	Timeless Label Punch $31.00	Basket Weave & Metallic Ribbon Combo Pack $14.00

Owen's First Birthday

Can you believe my little baby is one already?? One of the funny things at Convention this year were the comments from the other Paper Angels about how I was much bigger I looked at LAST year's Convention! Sure I was, 8 and 1/2 months pregnant!!

Owen is such a little character and had very little interest in the whole birthday party ritual. All he wanted to do was play on the grass!

I thought I would share some pics of him on the day and his cake, along with pics of the card I made for him.


I made a pop-up card! I can't remember the last time I made one of these...
Ooh, and did you notice I used BOLD BRIGHTS??? I know! I hardly ever do the Bold Brights thing but hey, I gave it a go!

Stamps: Crazy for Cupcakes, Polkadot background
Inks: Tempting Turquoise, Staz-on Black
Paper: Watercolour paper, Yo Yo Yellow, Gable Green, Whisper White, Lovely Lilac
Accessories: Tempting Turquoise grosgrain, Linen thread, Bold Brights Brads, Watercolour Wonder Crayons (Bold Brights)
Tools: Wide oval punch, Large oval punch, Aquapainter

Purple 21st

I recently made invitations for a 21st Birthday Party. The birthday girl is my brother's girlfriend Kate.

Kate wanted a purple party so here's what I came up with for her:





When mass-producing invitations I think it's best to keep it as simple as possible. Punches, wheels, backgrounds stamps, printing on the computer all help with this.

For this invitation I used punches and a background stamp. The most time consuming part was using the stamp-a-ma-jig to line up the 21 and the dots around it. Even so, this was still pretty quick to do.

Stamps: Polka Dot Background, Typeset Numbers (retired), Think Happy Thoughts
Ink: Elegant Eggplant, Lavendar Lace
Paper: Elegant Eggplant, Lavendar Lace
Tools: 1 and 1/4" circle punch, 1 and 3/8" circle punch, scallop circle punch

Basic Birthdays

Here are some basic birthday cards I made reently for some of my son's little friends.


This one was for Evie. Her party was a Princess/Pirates dress up theme so I tried to make a Princess card for her. I used the "All in the Family" stamp set and got the crown from the now retired "Unfrogettable" stamp set. If I'd had the accessories set that goes with All in the Family, I would have had a perfect crown stamp, but I think this one turned out ok.

I had to use the Stamp-a-ma-jig for this card to line up all the separate stamps of the body parts and crown. Funny story, every time I stamped the left arm it ended up in the wrong place, even though I was using the stamp-a-ma-jig! I FINALLY figured out (after aout the 3rd time) that I needed to turn the stamp over and have a look - sure enough, the piece of rubber had MOVED on the block! I had previously made up image sheets on vellum but because the rubber had moved, it no longer stamped in the same position as the arm on the image sheet!! Ugh. Anyways, I got it fixed up in the end.



This card was for Ilani. She didn't have a dress up theme but her party invitation did have butterflies on it so I reached for the "Garden Whimsy" set. I used the rock'n'roll technique for the butterflies but used a darker marker around the edges of the flower and snail to get a similar effect to rock'n'roll.

Birthday Cards

Here are a couple of birthday cards I recently made:

This one was for my mother-in-law Betty.

Stamps: Bloomin' with Beauty, Think Happy Thoughts

Inks: Staz-On, Purely Pomegranate, Regal Rose, Always Artichoke, Going Grey

Paper: Purely Pomegranate, Holiday Harmony, Water colour paper, Very Vanilla

Accessories: Dazzling Diamonds glitter and 2-way glue pen

Tools: Aqua Pen, 1&1/4 and 1&3/8 inch circle punches, scallop circle punch

This was for my brother-in-law Nathan.

Stamps: For a Friend

Inks: Basic Black, More Mustard, Tempting Turquoise

Paper: Kraft, Whisper White, Real Red, East Coast Prep

Accessories: nil

Tools: nil

Googly-eyed Elephant

Just a quick post to show off a card that my friend Kristy and I made for her brother's birthday. This one was a team effort - isn't it cute? We didn't use strictly Stampin' Up! products but we did get the general idea for the card from SplitcoastStampers.

Nathan's birthday card

This is the card I gave to my brother-in-law Nathan recently. I actually made this card quite a while ago as part of a set from a Simply Scrappin' Kit. My lovely upline Liz created a set of instructions on how to make 20 cards from the Simply Scrappin' Kit Party Pieces. I'm happy to give a copy of these instructions to anyone who purchases the kit from me. They are fun and easy to make. The kit coordinates perfectly with the stamp set "Eat Cake" which is what I used to decorate the envelope.

Stamps: Eat Cake & Classic Alphabet (envelope), All Year Cheer
Inks: Old Olive, Pumpkin Pie, Tempting Turquoise
Paper: Simply Scrappin' Kit
Accessories: Hemp Twine, Earth Element Eyelets
Tools: Slit Punch, Eyelet setter

Birthday Bird for Betty

This is the card I made for my lovely mother-in-law Betty. Her birthday is on Halloween and so is my sister's husband Nathan's birthday.
This card is totally CASEd from SplitcoastStampers - I doubt I would ever come up with this on my own!
It turned out quite well but I'd like to have another go at it. I couldn't find my watercolour paper and I had lent my Staz-On to a friend so I used Basic Black ink on Naturals Ivory cardstock. I think it would have been better on the watercolour paper. I definitely need more practice watercolouring. I'm slowly getting the hang of it but I'm not as controlled with the Aquapainter as I would like to be. The good thing about watercolouring is that it looks pretty good anyway even if you're not too good at it!

Stamps: Artfully Asian (branches and sentiment), Natural Beauty (bird)

Inks: Basic Black, Cranberry Crisp, Rose Red, Always Artichoke, Mellow Moss, Bordering Blue, Going Grey, Sahara Sand, Close to Cocoa.

Paper: Naturals Ivory, Always Artichoke, Recollections Designer Paper

Accessories: Hodge Podge Hardware (Antique Brass), Wine Grosgrain Ribbon

Tools: Aquapainter, Cutter Kit (distressing tool)

Ray's birthday

Just a quick post to show you the birthday card I stamped for my brother-in-law's birthday. My hubby Matt actually "designed" the card by telling me what he wanted me to do. Ray's nickname is Hopper so we went with the grasshopper stamp from "Bugs & Kisses" and used the Hoppy Birthday sentiment from ""Unfrogettable". The grass along the bottom is the "Daisy Field" stampin' around wheel.



Stamps: Bugs & Kisses, Unfrogettable, Daisy Field
Inks: Old Olive, Really Rust, Chocolate Chip, Bashful Blue
Papers: Old Olive, Whisper White
Accessories: Sponge

Birthday Card Competition Winners

We have a winner! Here is the fantastic winning card by Kim Shesgreen. Great job Kim! I love the colour combination - WOW!


Kim's prize is a 10% off voucher.




The runner up is Genevieve O'Leary with this gorgeous creation. Beautiful work Gen! Your prize is this card candy.

I'll see you both at tomight's workshop and will give you your prizes then. Thanks ladies, you did a great job. And thanks to everyone else who sent me a birthday card!

By they way, have you noticed that both cards were made with the same stamp set? It's amazing how such different creations can come from the one stamp.

Birthday Cards so far...

Here's a pic of some of the handmade birthday cards I've received so far. So gorgeous! Can't wait to see if I get some more in the mail for our little competition. Remember it finishes at the end of the month so you still have 2 weeks to get it to me if you want to enter.

Favourite Teddy Birthday Card

This card was basically copied from the last Idea Book & Catalogue. I made 10 of these cards as part of a swap with my group the Paper Angels. We all had to make a card that used Versamark in some way. My card used Versamark in a wheel cartridge.
Other cards I received in the swap used Versamark to resist ink or to apply pastels etc. I'll ask the other ladies if they mind me posting pictures of their cards so you can see what I'm talking about.



Stamps: Favourite Teddy, Paw Tracks Wheel
Inks: Versamark, Sahara Sand, Close to Cocoa, Creamy Caramel, Bashful Blue
Papers: Whisper White, Sahara Sand, Bashful Blue
Accessories: Navy Gorsgrain RIbbon, Blender Pens (for watercolouring)

Images © 1990–2007 Stampin’ Up!

Plain and Simple

These two cards are what I demonstrated at the Boyne Island workshop. We then went on to do make and takes which I will post afterwards. The idea was to show how to make cards simply and easily and on a budget! You will notice that they use very little in the way of supplies. Each card cost no more than 30 cents for the cardstock.

Eat Cake




Stamps: Eat Cake
Inks: Versamark
Papers: Pixie Pink, Chocolate Chip, Whisper White
Accessories: Stampin' Pastels (chalks), sponge daubers

---------------------------------------------

Bugs and Kisses

We used the markers on this card only because it saved me bringing up extra ink pads and because the hostess had those markers so I was showing her some colour combos she could do with her current supplies. You could do this card with Lovely Lilac and Gable Green ink pads instead of the markers and versamark.



Stamps: Bugs and Kisses
Inks: Bold Brights Markers, Versamark
Papers: Gable Green, Lovely Lilac, Whisper White
Accessories: None