The Wacky Watercooler February Sale-a-bration Blog Hop

Welcome to another Wacky Watercooler Blog Hop.  What an exciting blog hop this is going to be!  We have our regular members as well as two new "hoppers".  This time we're concentrating on all things Sale-a-bration.  If you haven't heard about Stampin' Up!'s annual Sale-a-bration event, you'll be as excited as I was the first time I heard about it.

With Sale-a-bration, which extends from January 28th until March 31st, you are eligible for a choice of one free item listed in the Sale-a-bration brochure for each $60 that you spend.  There are always great products to choose from but I swear that this year Stampin' Up! has exceeded my expectations.

As usual, our Blog Hop is a circular one.  Each participant is linked to the other and the final participant in the list is linked to the first one---hence the circle.  You could keep "hopping" forever if you just click on the "Next" icon at the end of each post.  Of course, as wonderful as each post is, you might begin to get a feeling of deja vu by the time you have gone around the circle several times.

If you have begun at the beginning, you'll have arrived at my Blog from the very talented Susan Horr's Blog all the way over in New York.  I'm in Blackfalds, Alberta, Canada, so you can imagine, that was quite a trip---thank goodness it all happened instantly thanks to the internet.

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I'm going to be showing some of the different ways that kits from the Sale-a-bration brochure could be used. The first kit that I am going to play with is the Heartfelt Banner Kit.  This kit includes 6 die-cut Designer Series Paper banners, 5 paper doilies, 9 die-cut fabric canvas banners, 7 mini wooden clothespins, 2 pieces of Natural Linen Thread and 1 needle.  The banner that is shown in the Sale-a-bration brochure is really cute and would make a great decoration combined with family photos.  But if you're not the banner type and barely gave the kit a glance in the brochure, let me urge you to have another look at the list of contents in that kit.  There are some awesome products in there that could so easily make their way onto a card or into a 3-D project.

My Valentine's Day card, for example, uses some of the canvas elements, the Natural Linen Thread and clothespins.  I love the way they've added so much extra "pizzazz" to the card and am certain that I'll be using more of the kit pieces in future projects.  Of course the card itself is a bit over the top anyway.  I saw Carol Matthews' birthday card for which she used the Circle Card Thinlits Die at both ends of a piece of 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" piece of cardstock.  The resulting double "flip-flop" was intriguing and I knew I wanted to try it out myself.

              Left side panel                     Centre                      Right side panel

You can see the cute little clothespins holding the Gold Foil banners on each end of the card.  The banners also appear to be attached to the piece of Natural Linen Thread, don't they?  I love those banners and am glad that once Sale-a-bration is over, the Banner punch is going to be headed for the brand new Annual Catalogue.  It's such fun to use.  You can just see a glimpse of the canvas heart on the inside of each circle flip flop.  

Yes, this is the canvas heart but it's had some work done to it.  It may have begun life as a simple piece of canvas, but after some serious sponge daubing using the Crisp Cantaloupe ink and the Tangerine Tango ink, it was no longer a simple piece of canvas.  To get the darker patches, I daubed some Versamark on the heart and then scattered some Gold Embossing powder across it.  Most of the gold melted into the fibre but there are hints of shiny gold that really show up in the light.  It certainly helped to make it compliment the Venetian Romance Designer Paper which I used for this card.  

I've used stamps from four stamp sets for this card:  Fabulous Phrases, Hearts a Flutter, Perfect Pennants and (from the Sale-a-bration brochure) See Ya Later.  I love the way they work together.  And that is the card.  Products from the Annual Catalogue, Occasions Catalogue and the Sale-a-bration brochure work together and seamlessly help to make a perfect Valentine for your favourite person.  The instructions for the card are here.

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My next project also uses some of the canvas from the Heartfelt Banner Kit.  For this project I went back to my original design for the Scallop Tag Topper punch box and tweaked it a bit.  This time I wanted the box to close and, after a couple of not-so-successful tries, I finally got the measurements right.  You won't have to fiddle around because I'm offering the free template and instructions here.

Once I finished creating the box, I decorated it using some Modern Medley Designer Paper as well as some of the Sweet Sorbet Designer Paper which is available only through Sale-a-bration.  The canvas banner, cut to size, worked perfectly on the sides of the box, especially topped with a little banner punched out from the same designer paper as I used on the front and back.  

Then I used sentiments and images from the Itty Bitty Banners, The Open Sea, and Love You More stamp sets to finish the box off.  Finally I stamped the chevron image from the Tape It stamp set on a piece of Very Vanilla Seam Binding and tied up the box with that.

It's cute from the front as well as the back.

And best of all it closes up at the top.

Just think---your goodies won't fall out.  Enjoy using the template but please do not sell it.

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And finally we come to the last of my projects.  This one was so much fun to make and turned out better than I ever expected.  For this one I turned to the Good as Gold Card Kit from the Sale-a-bration Brochure. It's a fun kit with which you can make 8 cards.  It also comes with embellishments as well as envelopes and gorgeous Gold Foil envelope liners.  This is what the finished card could look like:

It's such a happy card, isn't it?  There are dots of Crisp Cantaloupe, Tangerine Tango, Bermuda Bay and Gold Foil.  Who wouldn't like to get one of these cute cards, especially since it comes in its own Gold Foil lined envelope.

Well, even though the cardstock for this card only measures 7" x 5", it has the same pretty design right across instead of ending where the front of the card would be.  And that gave me ideas.  Why not use it to make one of those cards-in-a-box?  After all, the measurements could easily be adapted from the one I featured here and, best of all, there was already an envelope for it to fit into.  What could be better?

So I scored the cardstock at 1 3/4" from each side.  The centre was, of course, already scored for the kit.  Then I scored it along the long side at 2 3/4", leaving the last section unscored.  You'll have noticed that there wasn't room for a tab to connect the sides.  That was easily fixed by cutting a 3/4" x 2 3/4" piece of Whisper White and scoring it lengthwise at 3/8".  Using my double-sided tape, I closed the side of the box with that strip.  Because the pretty design was just on the one side of the paper, I chose to have that on the inside so that the folded flaps as well as the straight piece at the back showed it off.  Then I cut two more pieces of Whisper White measuring 1" x 2 1/4" and scored them both at 1/4" and 2".  Assembly was the same as for the previously featured card.

Then I went a bit wild in decorating up the card.  Decided to use the colours in the paper and added flowers, hearts, banners and lots of gold foil.  The stamp set used for this project were:  Perfect Pennants, Love You to the Moon, Petite Petals and (from the Sale-a-bration brochure) Banner Blast.  I also used the Banner punch (from the Sale-a-bration brochure), one of the Chalk Talk framelit dies, the Petite Petals punch, the Scalloped Oval punch, the Large Oval punch, the Small Heart punch, and some Hearts framelits dies.  This is what the various layers look like when you look down into the box.

And this is the card from the right

And from the left

And finally, from the front

It's hard to believe that both these cards had the same beginnings---and that each will fit into an envelope like this.

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Well, that's it for my projects for this blog hop.  I hope you've enjoyed them and will leave a comment if you get a chance. Thanks so much for joining us today.  I know you'll love the wonderful creations that our next hopper, Marsha Reed of Iowa, USA has prepared.  She always has such great blog posts.