March Wacky Watercooler Blog Hop--A Smorgasbord of Products

Already March and another blog hop.  Is it just me or is this year moving along at a real clip?

Welcome one and all to our new blog hop.  We're making our March presentation a real smorgasbord of products.  All the current catalogues and current products in the online store are fair game.  Excited?  I sure am.  I can hardly wait to see what the talented members of this blog hop have created to excite our imaginations this time.

You'll have come here from the very talented Marsha Reed's blog.  Aren't her projects terrific?  In the blink of an eye you've virtually travelled from Iowa in the USA to see me here in Alberta, Canada.  It sort of takes your breath away, doesn't it?

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For the first of my projects, I chose to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.  Just a few more days and all things will be green---except for the world around me which seems to be stubbornly staying white.  

What do people think with regards to St. Patrick's Day?  Well, of course one of the first thoughts would be of the shamrock which St. Patrick made famous by comparing its three petals to the trinity when explaining his religion to the Irish.  Next, most likely, someone would mention the pot of gold that the leprechauns apparently hide at the end of the rainbow.  And that, in a nutshell, describes my card.  Add in some rolling green hills and a lazy cloud and my card is complete.

I made the rainbow using a whole slew of round punches and several of the framelits from the Circle Collection.  Chanting Roy G Biv to myself, I made up the rainbow with arcs of Real Red, Calypso Coral, Daffodil Delight, Gumball Green, Marina Mist, Island Indigo, and Elegant Eggplant.  I love that Stampin' Up! has all the colours to make an awesome rainbow.  Then I used the smallest of the Window Framelits to make the pot (with a couple of minor modifications) and punched out several "gold coins" from the Gold Foil sheets and embossed them using my Petals a Plenty embossing folder.

The green hills are torn pieces of Pistachio Pudding and Wild Wasabi while the sky is a piece of Pool Party.  I made the shamrocks using the Small Heart punch and some Gumball Green cardstock.  After pinching each heart in half, I also sponged the tips lightly with some Encore Gold ink.  All those details are mounted on a piece of Gold Foil and that is, in turn, mounted on a base of Naturals White cardstock.

The hardest part of this was making the rainbow.  After that, it all came together really well.  Everything in this card came from the Annual Catalogue except for the Gold Foil which is current in the Occasions Catalogue.

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For my second project, I had fun playing with all sorts of wonderful products from the Occasions Catalogue.  I love the whimsy of the designs in the Life in the Forest stamp set and the Baby, We've Grown stamp set.  The little creatures seem both playful and innocent to me and so were the perfect inhabitants for me little Birthday Card-in-a-box world.  I think you can tell how much fun I really had in designing and making this card.  It makes me smile.

I'm not going to go into details about making the box.  I've provided a free template as well as all the instructions for it here.  The difference is the way I've decorated up the box.  And you can see from the sheer fun of it that this one was made purely for the pleasure of a child.  That little owl at the bottom is actually peeking out from a hole in the box and backed by a Soft Suede circle that is held in place with a Shaker frame.  The little mouse and the mushroom are both standing away from the box by means of some Stampin' Dimensionals.  Yes, all those little creatures are cut out by hand.  That little mouse's tail was a challenge as were the little owl's feet.  And I didn't amputate any little stamped limbs in the making of this box.

Don't you just love the way the Hardwood stamp inked with Smoky Slate makes the White Naturals cardstock look?  I stamped both the inside and the outside of the cardstock because I wanted it to look the same whether it was folded or not.  

Those balloons are simply Whisper White punched out with the Small Oval punch and coloured using a Blender Pen and Strawberry Slush ink and Coastal Cabana ink respectively.  The bottom of the balloon is actually just the foot of the little Owl Builder Punch.  Then I covered each balloon with a generous layer of Crystal Effects and, while they were still tacky, looped some white Baker's Twine around the bottoms.  All the little owls are suspended on Window Sheets as is the Word Bubble.

The lower portion of the box is almost as much fun as the top.  I added characters from the Life in the Forest stamp set as well as some grass which was made very easily using a strip of Wild Wasabi cardstock and those great new Fringe Scissors.

Finally I decorated up  the envelope into which it will fit perfectly.  I used a combination of the Gorgeous Grunge stamp set and the Mosaic Madness stamp set to put together a candle.  Doesn't the combination of Strawberry Slush, Coastal Cabana and Crushed Curry look perfect with the little box?

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My final project combines products from the Annual Catalogue, Occasions Catalogue and also the Online Store.  It's an anniversary card which I decided to make in a 4" x 7" size and therefore required a custom-sized envelope.  Thank goodness for the Envelope Punch Board!

I'm going to begin with the inside and work my way out.  Since I used Basic Black as my base cardstock, I needed some lighter cardstock inside on which to write.  For that I used Very Vanilla which I dipped along the edges in my Versamark and then heat embossed with Gold Embossing powder.  After that cooled and hardened, I used my Embossing Buddy to ensure that I wouldn't get all sorts of embossing powder bits where I didn't want them and then proceeded to heat emboss two butterflies from the Papillon Potpourri stamp set.  Finally, I carefully added the sentiment using my Black StazOn ink and the One in a Million stamp set.

For the front of the card I also used the Papillon Potpourri stamp set but this time I used both the small and the large butterflies.  I decided to heat emboss them in Gold Embossing powder as well and scattered them across the lines of music from that beautiful Modern Medley Designer Series Paper.  For their centres I tried the pearls but didn't like the contrast so I chose to heat emboss the little pearls in Gold Embossing powder as well.

They may not look like much on that sheet, but they look wonderful in the centres of my butterflies.  It was simple enough to get the gold embossing on the pearls.  I just pushed them against the Versamark, sprinkled them with Gold Embossing powder, shook off the excess, and then heated them until the gold melted beautifully around them.  You can do that with brads and buttons, too, but that's another project.

The sentiment also has some little gilded pearls on it.  Doesn't the gold embossing make the words from the Teeny Tiny Wishes stamp set "pop"?  I like the way it looks on the black arrow which I cut using the On Film Framelits die.   The slightly larger Gold Foil arrow underneath was hand-cut.  Between the Modern Medley Designer Series Paper and the Basic Black cardstock, I added a layer of Gold Foil.  The corners were all rounded using the Envelope Punch Board.

The matching envelope was easy to make.  You simply look at the Envelope Punch Board for the size of your card and it gives you the dimensions of paper you will need to make the right size of envelope.  Once I had assembled the envelope, I used my Music Notes Stampin' Wheel, Versamark and more Gold Embossing powder and heat embossed each end of the envelope diagonally.  

I love the finished set, don't you?

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And now you're off to Oregon in the USA.  That's where the fabulous Jean Fitch lives and creates.  You'll love her wonderful projects.

I hope you've enjoyed our blog hop.  No matter whether you go backwards or forwards, we're linked in a circle so it's never-ending.  After the second or third time around you may wish to jump off, catch your breath and have a bite to eat before coming back to go around the circle yet again.  There are so many great ideas in this blog hop, you'll want to take notes.

Our next blog hop is in the second week of April.  Don't worry---I'll give you fair warning.