Small Housewarming Gift

This past weekend I went to a get together with a bunch of my coworkers. The girl whose house we were going to just recently bought it so I wanted to bring a small housewarming gift for her. I had seen some 3D templates of houses and decided to give one from PTI a try to bring the gift in!

This is the front view of the house. I don't own any house themed stamps so I just cut a couple rectangles for the door and window. Back view of the house. House filled with candy. As you can see, I used some ribbon to cover the edge of the roof piece. This project was so easy but quite time-consuming. I love the way it turned out and my coworker loved it. I even used her actual house as inspiration and used her exterior colours as the colours of the paper house. She is crafty too - but more in a sewing/baking way so she totally appreciated it and showed it off to everyone else who came!

This project features two colours being affected by the colour renovation:
-mellow moss cardstock, which will be retiring so order it soon if you are interested!
-river rock ribbon was an in colour a few catalogues ago, and this colour will be returning as a part of the neutrals collection in July's catalogue!

After spending so much time making the house, I lost all my steam so I created a super simple card. All I did was cut some white cardstock as the card base and matted some of the "good neighbours" dp from SAB on old olive cardstock. Inside the card I stamped the sentiment "welcome home."

Supplies

House
Papers: SU ww, mellow moss, chocolate chip, sahara sand
Ribbon: SU river rock (retired)
Brad: SU silver

Card
Paper: SU ww, old olive, good neighbour dp (retired)
Stamp (inside the card): SU sweet little sentiments (retired)

Stampin Up! Colour Renovation

I've been a bad blogger this month. Grant and I have been busy over the last few weeks with travelling, working and starting the process of building a house. Things should start to settle out a bit now and hopefully I can get back to posting a little more regularly.

Stampin' Up! announced recently that they will undergo a colour renovation for the new catalogue coming in July. After two years of studying the trends, they have decided to retire several of the current colours, add new colours and re-vamp that colour families. Some of the new colours will be some of prior years' in colours such as my favourite baja breeze! Click here to open the document showing the re-vamped colour families. Click here to open the document showing the retiring colours. You can continue to purchase these colours throughout April and May and beginning June they will be available for purchase as supplies allow.

OCC Sketch Challenge: Take 2

I loved the way that this card turned out so much that I decided to recreate it using designer paper that is the same pattern but a different colour. This card isn't quite as nice as I had pictured but I still quite like it. I just find the green doesn't seem to fit in as well with the pinks as it did with the blues! Also, I couldn't decide which pink to make the butterflies so I went with both colours and matted one of them so there would be an even number of each colour but still a total of three butterflies (if that makes sense)!

Stamps: SU thank you kindly, organic outlines
Ink: SU old olive, regal rose
Paper: SU ww, pretty in pink, regal rose, georgie peach dp (retired)
Punches: SU scallop border
Brads: SU pretty in pink
Embosslits: SU beautiful wings
Misc: SU dimensionals

Viva La Verve Challenge: Week 3

I skipped week 2's sketch of the challenge because I just wasn't inspired by it and moved right on to week 3's challenge and chose to work with the red/black/wood/white inspiration picture. I love the way this card turned out. It has an Asian sort of feel to it. I love how the red and black look on the kraft background. This is one of those few cards that turned out even better than I had imagined!

Stamps: SU eastern blooms, upsy daisy
Ink: SU basic black, real red
Paper: SU ww, kraft, real red, basic black, urban oasis dp (retired)
Brads: SU real red corduroy buttons

Decor Definitions Update

My blog has been so quiet for comments these days! There's lots of new posts below so be sure to check them out if you haven't!

Some of you may remember this post where I finally made frames with the Decor Elements definitions "create" and "inspire." Well, I finally completed this project and hung it up! I didn't like that the two fabrics were different from each other, and Grant wanted them to be different colours, so I ordered some of the honeycomb pattern in blue! We both like the way the pink looks the best, but like having them the different colours so they are here to say. The blue doesn't translate well in the photo due to the lighting and size of the area in the picture, but it's quite soft and pretty!

Also, some of you have emailed and asked what size the frames are - they are 10" x 24" from Michael's.

Diaper Cake and Card

I have been wanting to make a diaper cake for a long time now and finally had the perfect opportunity to for my girlfriend at work. I'll probably be heading over there to give it to her this week and can't wait to see how her little baby has changed. I saw her the day after she was born and now she'll be a couple weeks old!

Here is the front view of the cake (You can click on any of the pictures for a larger view): Here's a view of the cake from the sides where you can see a little bit of where I decided to place all the items that are included in the cake. The seams in cardstock appear more noticeable in the photos than in real life. What's included in this diaper cake:
-72 diapers
-1 blanket
-4 onesies
-1 temperature sensitive rubber duckie
-1 Johnson's essentials pack (that includes baby wash, lotion, shampoo, baby powder, penaten cream and nursing pads)

These diaper cakes can be as cheap or expensive as you want depending on how much you wanted to include. Seeing as I am quite good friends with her outside of work, I wanted to do more than just the diapers and top decoration!

After making the diaper cake, I didn't want to use the original card (you can see it in this post) I had made for her and wanted to make something that would match the cake. I was inspired by Jen's SFYTT for this card. Here's a better pic of it close up. I hope she loves this gift! I was a bit concerned that there is so much blue, but I don't think she'll mind. I really just took inspiration from the onesies!

You can see a tutorial on how to make your own diaper cake here. I personally had to modify it a fair bit in order to include all of the gifts but it's a great foundation to start with!

Stamping Related Supplies for Cake
Paper: SU Delicate Dots dp (retired)
Ribbon: SU 5/8" so saffron grosgrain

Card Supplies

Stamp: PTI bitty baby blessings
Ink: SU so saffron, versamark, pumpkin pie
Paper: SU ww, bashful blue, so saffron, delicate dots dp (retired)
Button: SU bashful blue
Misc: SU white embossing powder, circle cutter, dimensionals

Viva La Verve Challenge: Week 1

In searching for my sketch challenges to inspire me, I re-discovered the Viva La Verve monthly challenges. This is for the Week 1 challenge for the month of March. In addition to the sketch challenge, there are three pictures to choose from to inspire your sketch (either colours, textures, etc). The above picture shows the picture that I chose to inspire my card (below). As you can tell, I worked mainly off the colours in the pictures. I love the way this card turned out. These aren't my typical colours but they work well together. The flower was coloured using SU markers and my aquapainter on watercolour paper. It was then cut out and mounted on dimensionals with the leaves adhered behind.

Stamps: SU organic outlines, fifth avenue floral
Ink: SU dusty durango, crushed curry, kiwi kiss (retired), black StazOn
Paper: SU ww, dusty durango, crushed curry, kiwi kiss (retired), watercolour paper
Die-Cut: SU little leaves
Misc: SU aquapainter, dimensionals