The Wacky Watercooler March Blog Hop -- All about Sale-a-bration!

It's March and at the end of this month one of my favourite Stampin' Up! sales of the year ends.  What is it, you ask?  It's Sale-a-bration, of course.  Love, love, love those freebies you can get when you make a qualifying purchase.  In fact, this blog hop is all about showing off those free products in our projects.  Are you ready?  Be prepared to add a  few things to your wish list!

As you will remember, if you've wandered through our blog hops before, our blog hop is presented in a circular fashion.  What does that mean?  Wherever you begin in our blog hop, whether you go forwards or backwards through the participants, eventually you will wind up precisely where you began.  I hope you'll take time to visit all the participating blogs and, perhaps, leave a short message letting us know  what you've thought of our posts.

If you've been moving forwards through the blog hop, you'll have arrived here from the very talented Sheri Lee's post.  

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For my first project I decided to use the gorgeous Avant Garden stamp set.  This set is all about flowers, leaves and sentiments.  A great combination and useful for so many types of cards.  I decided to create a Thank You card.  I'm finding that I have need of those more often than other types.  There is, after all, so much for which to be thankful and so many people to thank.

I kept my card relatively simple, using only four colours:  Whisper White, Pacific Point, Soft Suede and Mint Macaron.  My base if Whisper White.  Next comes a layer of Pacific Point.  Then I added some subtle texture and interest  by choosing a pattern from the Irresistibly Floral Specialty Designer series paper.  What I love about that paper is that it appears to be heat embossed so it's great for emboss-resist creations.  For this card, however, I just enjoyed the subtle pattern and used it to space the image from the Avant Garden set which I stamped using Soft Suede.

I used my Aqua Painter to colour in the flowers once I had stamped them using the Basic Black archival ink.  And, finally, I finished it off with a few loops of Copper Metallic thread under the sentiment.

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My second project is all about colouring.  That's become a popular pastime for adults during the last few years.  Well, for Sale-a-bration Stampin' Up! added a supply of their own colouring pages.  You get 12 sheets of four designs.  I've had fun using them as backgrounds or as the feature of my cards.  For this card I used the paper in conjunction with another Sale-a-bration offering:  the gorgeous Glimmer Paper in three colours.  I'm not sure which I like best.  For this card I turned to the Bermuda Bay and the Sweet Sugarplum.

This card really celebrates colour.  I've used three of the 2016-18 In-Colors for the blossoms (Sweet Sugarplum of course, Peekaboo Peach and Flirty Flamingo).  The centres of the flowers are Daffodil Delight with a layer  of  the gold Wink of Stella added.  Two of the flowers are coloured with the Bermuda Bay ink to tie in with the Glimmer paper.  And then I've used a variety of greens for the leaves and stems:  Old Olive, Pear Pizzaz, Wild Wasabi and Always Artichoke.  And then, for a subtle green background, I used the new Watercolor Pencils.

I really like the offset Glimmer paper behind just a portion of the Designer paper, don't you?  Leaving the other portion against the base of Basic Black makes that side pop as well.  

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For my third and final project I went wild with the Hey Chick stamp set--the first product from the Sale-a-bration brochure which caught my eye.  Those chickens and the egg are simply priceless, aren't they?

To make the fullest use of those chickens and to make a really fun Birthday card for a member of the extended family, I decided to make this card a special fold.  Now I've heard this style of card called the Z fold, the Double-Z fold, and the Banded Z fold.  I really don't care.  In this case as in many others, what's in a name?  It winds up being the same card and I love how versatile it can be.

My base is Tip Top Taupe because it's nice and neutral.  The next layer is Early Espresso, taken from the colours in the Designer Paper which is from the Cupcakes and Carousels Designer paper stack.  Actually the colours in the Designer paper inspired most of the colour choices for the card.  As well as the Hey Chick stamp set, I used the Balloon Adventures set and also the Labeler Alphabet set.  Since birthdays are meant to be full of sparkle and fun, I also used some Red Glimmer paper, some Gold Glimmer paper and some of the Sale-a-bration Bermuda Bay Glimmer paper.  All additional sparkle was added with the Wink of Stella.  This card just catches the light!

This is the card totally folded up and ready to be slipped into a medium (4 3/8" x 5 3/4") envelope.  

I treated the centre section as I would the "card in a box" fold, sectioning it off so that the balloons could be layered and create more of a 3-D feel.  I could have added more detail, but remember, this has to be mailed.  More detail equals much more money in stamps.

This little guy simply shines with the brilliance of the Wink of Stella which enhances his feathers.

In this case the egg has some Wink of Stella and the rainbow-coloured "hair" and tail are brilliant with Wink of Stella.

I had so much fun creating this card.  I hope the recipient enjoys it as much.

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And that's it for my projects.  I hope you've enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed creating them.  From here you'll be visiting another wonderfully creative stamper, Marsha Reed.