Stampin' With Michelle Pepper

I have been AWOL in participating in challenges just when I was just getting started...well, I am so glad to be into it again, hopefully. Today's project is inspired by Case Study Challenge #158 : My take was inspired by the different card shape. The big flower also reminded me of the snowflake shape because I am on the snowflake bend of late (be warned, nay, advised: more blog posts featuring snowflakes to come). Combining the two, we have a Snowflake card!  What a novelty card, don't you think? It is cut out from the largest snowflake from Stampin' Up!'s Festive Flurry Framelits set. I used the Silver Dazzling Details glue to highlight the dimensional snowflake piece. It is small enough to be a beautifully ornated placecard for a special dinner party or a breakfast event. It can also double up as an ornament for the Christmas tree, or Gratitude tree. What about making these in different colours? Hmm, I might just try it in pinks and purples, too. Than

A birthday card to go with the handmade gift box set for Carrie . The flower is from the Blossom punch, minus one petal. It didn't end up being used in a previous project but found its home here :-) I am loving the colour combination: Baja Breeze, Chocolate Chip and Calypso Coral. The button on the flower is actually made from the Simply Pressed Clay. I didn't stamp on the inside of this card as I needed all the room I can get to write in a special message :-) but I did use the same DSP pattern on the envelope so I tick off the box for co-ordination.  Thanks for stopping by, bless you all!

It's my friend Carrie's birthday and since we haven't got a car at the moment, I haven't been able to go shopping for a present. So what do you do the night before? Well, you make a handmade gift! My inspiration came from SU! Demo Tania Bell who had shared in July a  video tutorial  on how to make a lidded box from a single 12" x 12" sheet without cutting.  Problem was, there was no instructions for the smaller boxes so imagine the mental gymnastics that I was doing late at night (as I got too engrossed in watching Iron Man 3 to multi-task as I originally planned, so I got to working on these close to midnight, lol).  I am quite proud of myself, so these measurements are available at the bottom of this post, for your convenience :-) The smallest box in this set had room for only one Ferrero Chocolate. I managed to squeeze in 2 treat size of Picnic bars in the middle box, and the largest box is good for 3" x 3" cards (I made a set of 6 card

Ombre, the French word for colour that is shaded or graduated in tone, is a popular trend in fashion, and we've seen it in the paper craft industry for a while now too. Today's project was inspired by a card I saw on Diane Dimich's blog. I used the bitty butterflies from the Papillon Potpourri stamp set (click  here for the bundle promotion that is on until the end of this month). The colours I used are Blushing Bride, Crisp Cantaloupe, Calypso Coral and Strawberry Slush. Instead of a card, I framed it with my favourite sentiment from the Loving Thoughts set: For that is indeed something close to my heart. I think for many of us, we have not permitted ourselves to dream - big dreams ("that's just impossible!"), fun dreams ("that's so selfish!") or small dreams ("anyone can do that!") If you feel that is true for you, the time to change that is Now! There are many who will walk this journey with you if you dare to dream an

The inspiration for today's card was from page 22 of the current Annual catalogue . What a fun way to use embossing folders! Brayer the ink onto the raised side of the embossing folder (Chevron folder, in this case), lay the Whisper White card stock in, close the folder and run it through the Big Shot - that's it! That's how you get the colour in the recessive areas of the card. The big sentiment from Oh, Hello stamp set, stamped over the chevron oval from the same set, is all that is needed to finish this card off nicely. I love it when I only use one stamp set to complete a card, and the Oh, Hello stamp set is simply versatile enough to be that set for me. Well, hope you give this technique a go if you haven't already tried it. Bless you heaps, and thanks for stopping by. ps: wondering how you'd clean the emboss folder? Easy, just run it through running water.

  photo from Stampin'! Up Blog 2013 Stampin' Up! just released the next instalment of single stamps. These are LIMITED TIME offer only, available until 31 January 2014. Now since it's just been released today, I haven't got any of the stamp to demonstrate with but I didn't want this blog post to have no photo so I have uploaded the above sample from a recent Stampin' Up!'s blog post . (I hope this is ok to do... I am trying to find out and when I do, and if it's not ok, then I'll be taking it off here promptly!) The Christmas Star is the first stamp from this collection that caught my eye, and look at that simple yet so effective card that SU! Concept Artist Melody H made - wow! It is so uncomplicated and fast enough to make even for a busy person, and to make lots of them to send out for Christmas this year. So have a look at the new collection of single stamps below, and email me peppertime123@gmail.com if you want to place an order.

A good friend and customer suggested awhile ago that I make a card with the 2013-14 In Colours so that it would be handy to give to customers to see what these colours look like in card stock, not just from the catalogue pages. Time passes, there's always a growing list of things to do...you know how it goes... Then one day, since a lot of stamping tools were already out, and I remember a card I saw in the  blogworld that fellow SU! demo Emily Campbell had made, I set to work to cross this off the list. Well, I got one card made, so now I just have to make a bunch of these to give to customers.  Thanks for stopping by today. Bless you heaps. Now if you haven't already seen it on my Promotions page, this month Stampin' Up! has a special Butterfly Bundle offer that I'd like to bring your attention to:

As promised , today's card features the second card we made at my monthly class this week. We used the stamp set, Wetlands, but this time we used two other techniques to achieve the look we got. The first is called "sponging" technique, because you sponge the ink onto the cardstock with a sponge, starting with a light pressure and increasing pressure to achieve the shade you want. You can also layer colours on. You can create similar effect with a brayer, but I can't get the hang of brayering, so sponging it is, and I love it! Isn't it amazing the kind of scene you can create with a humble sponge and some ink? The second technique used is "Masking", where you use or create a template using copy paper to mask off a section of your card so that it doesn't get inked up with the colour you're sponging (or stamping or brayering) with. In this card, our template is the shore line, which we created by tearing a copy paper, and also the horizon line

This is the first of two cards we made at my monthly class this week. We were all done by 9pm, isn't that fab? It shows how quick and easy these were to make, and we all need that because not everyone has time to make elaborate cards, and certainly even if you do, there are times you just need to be productive in a short craft session. There is a name for this technique and it is called Colour Wash which I learned from Tami White, one of the few US demos I consider my mentor. Since she has already done a video tutorial of it, I won't need to re-invent the wheel so just click here to view her excellent video and the original card that we CASEd from. The aquapainter is the tool for this technique - it is a brush with a reservoir to hold water in, so you just have to squeeze to get the brush wet. I think these would be a great alternative for little toddlers - no more spilling of water container at the painting table! As you can see, with this technique, n