The Wacky Watercooler New Catalog(ue) Blog Hop

How exciting!  Our very first blog hop!  It's fun chatting around the virtual watercooler on the Stampin' Connection, but expanding into a blog hop is an incredible feeling.  By now you will have been to the very talented Terri Antoniw's blog.  She's a tough act to follow, but I'll  do my best.

This blog hop is all about the new Annual Catalogue which was released on June 1st, 2013.  It's a fantastic catalogue, full of great new products, a surprising number of discounted bundles and, of course, new colours, papers and other surprises.  I love this catalogue!

My first project is a card that showcases the Six-Sided Sampler stamp set, available in wood or clear.  Hexagons are such fun to play with and this is certainly a playful card.  I love that Stampin' Up! bundled the stamp set with the brand new Hexagon Punch.  Saving 15% by getting the two together in either wood or clear is a sweet deal.  I wanted to use primarily warm colours for this card and so I used a base of the new In-Color, Baked Brown Sugar, and found a yellow and white pattern in the Quatrefancy Specialty Designer Paper.  To those colours I added my old friend and upgraded-from-retired-In-Color-to-permanent Subtle Color, Calypso Coral.

I used the Baked Brown Sugar ink and the Calypso Coral ink to stamp several of the patterns from the Six-Sided Sampler stamp set.  Then I layered the piece of Specialty Designer Paper onto a piece of Calypso Coral cardstock and then adhered the punched out hexagons onto that.  I liked the effect but decided to give it a real quilted look by running it through my Big Shot using the Square Lattice embossing folder.  Then I adhered it to my Baked Brown Sugar base using Stampin' Dimensionals.

To finish it off, I punched a 3/4" circle out of a piece of Champagne Glimmer Paper and then centred the circle in my Hexagon Punch and punched that out.  That circle hole allowed me to arrange my banner greeting, which I stamped in Baked Brown Sugar ink onto a piece of Daffodil Delight cardstock, through the hexagon shape.  I adhered those  with Stampin' Dimensionals as well and then, just for the fun of it, added three Champagne Glimmer rings which I punched out using my 1/2" circle punch and 3/4" circle punch.

One of the products which jumped out at me when I went through the catalogue was the new Modern Medley Designer Series Paper.  The colours are very simple: Very Vanilla and Basic Black.  Simple, yes; boring, no.

My next project, therefore, is a masculine card that not only highlights the Modern Medley DSP, but also puts the spotlight on that wonderful new stamp set, Wetlands, clear or wood mount.   For this card I used the Naturals Ivory cardstock as my base and layered it with Basic Black and  the Modern Medley DSP.  I think the flying birds printed on the Designer Paper makes the perfect background for the Canada Goose and rushes.  It's hard to tell from the photo, but I've heat embossed the goose and "Thinking of You" in black.  That helps it to "pop" behind the Window Sheet onto which I stamped the rushes using Black StazOn ink.

My final project also uses the Modern Medley DSP but aside from that is completely different.  This time I made an elegant Pillow Box using a pattern from Stampin' Up!'s famous Pattern Library.  It was a hard choice with so many striking designs to choose from, but I finally settled on the baroque design with the faint stripes in the background.  By adding Vellum flowers using that wonderful bundle: the Flower Shop stamp set (wood or clear) and the matching Pansy Punch as well as some Vellum leaves cut with the Secret Garden framelit, I added a bit of whimsy to the black girdle which I adhered around the centre of the Pillow Box.  A few touches of gold heat embossing on the flower and in the sentiment, a little black Simply Pressed clay flower, and it was done.  If you want to try your hand at making one of these pillow boxes, I have provided the template here for you to print out and use.

Of course if you really like the Flower Shop stamp set and matching Pansy Punch, your best buy is to go for the bundle in wood or clear, which saves you 15%.  Just look at the flower close up---this is a wonderful bundle to own and use.

Well, that's about it.  I hope you've enjoyed my projects as much as I enjoyed making them.  Your next stop on this Blog Hop tour  is the terrific stamper, Deborah Smart.  I'm sure you'll love seeing her creations.

Terri's Blog

Deborah's Blog

Blog Hop Home Site