Stampin' With Michelle Pepper

What's a gal to do when she goes to make Easter Cards and realises she doesn't actually have any Easter stamps? Oh to be sure, I have sentiment stamps that says "Happy Easter" but I don't have any egg or chickadees or cross image stamps! Have you ever thought how the designer of a card came up with the idea of her/his card? Well, here you go...you're about to hear a commentary of my thought process in creating this card :-) In an attempt to think outside the box, I began to consider what Easter means to me, and what is it I wish for my Easter cards to do for the recipients? The phrase, and song , "Unstoppable Love" keeps popping up in my mind. As I contemplate the phrase, the more I felt it truly does sum up for me what Easter means. It is the complete demonstration of God's unstoppable love for us - a love which did not stop when Jesus died on the cross, for He resurrected, and with His resurrection, this love continues to work inside ...

Does this card seem familiar? It is my CASE of one of the projects I got to make at the recent Auckland Party Time event. I haven't (yet) got the Choose Happiness stamp set, so I set about a challenge for myself to CASE the Kraft Grid line Journal cover (see below) with the stamp sets I already have. Original Make & Take from event: Well, I can't stop at just one card, so I also came up with the card below in a softer colour palette. It is also another excuse to use the Good Greetings stamp set, which, until the 31 October,  is the Hostess' when she host a party with the qualifying sales. What do you think?  I hope you found it helpful to see how a card can be CASED, using stamps that you already have. It's no guarantee though, that you will not crave (all the more even) for the very stamp set you don't have that was used in the original project :-) Oh, that was quite a mouthful, lol!

In this card, I have managed to use all of the 5 colours in the 2012-14 In Colour Range. The oval piece is in Basic Gray, and the sentiment is embossed with White Emboss Powder. I felt that the main image was slightly skewed to the right, so I had to think a bit to rectify the imbalance. I have noticed that the scattering of jewel rhinestones has been in trend for some time now, so I gave that a go, and ta-da, I reckon it did the job nicely. Now, when I was deciding on what sentiment to use, I again thought this card is quite versatile - birthday, thank you, hello...but I wondered about whether it's too cheerful a card to be a sympathy card? I decided to play it safe :-) By the way, the Basic Gray Oval piece had to be there because I had to cover up a stamping boo boo, otherwise I might have opted for no sentiment. Oh, oh, I just realised that this card qualifies for this week's CAS(E) this Sketch! Challenge : If you don't know what paper craft challenge...

In just a little under three years since I signed up as a Stampin' Up! demonstrator, I have managed to collect quite a few stamp sets. There are sets that I have hardly used, and you know, about all of them, I would say I haven't used as much as I would like to. It is a little hard as my stamping time is usually restricted to a start time of 10pm. Anyway, the point I want to make is this: I am making an effort to get as much mileage as I can from each stamp set that I own. So that could mean this blog might just be very boring, always showcasing the same stamp sets. Yet it could be inspiring and helpful perhaps to show the versatility of the stamps. On the right side of this blog, there is a section for Labels. It is sorted alphabetically so if you scroll down you'll see the list of Stamp sets and next to each name is a number, which indicates how many blog posts have been tagged with that stamp set. As I write now, I am pondering whether to make the goal quite specif...

This week had been a busy birthday week - so not only did I make three birthday cards this week, but I actually got round to putting two of them in the post! This is quite a feat for me, who has been known to make cards for people, only to forget to mail it, in time, or at all!!! As for the third card (see the next blog post), I gave it the lovely recipient tonight. This one is for Erica (hi lovely, if you are reading this :-) you should have received it by now!) See that flower embellishment? That is SU!'s newest product offering, the Simply Pressed Clay (#130685) used in the Buttons & Blossoms Simply Pressed Clay Molds (#131272) - both products on p167 of the Annual Catalogue just released this month. The clay is so lovely to work with and oh, these are quite possibly the products I am most excited about from this new catalogue. And believe me, there are many products that I am excited about, lol. This one is another variation, and it's for Pippa. I know s...