New Catalogue Party

I was very undecided this year whether to have a new catalogue launch party due to our overseas trip. I have been behind with everything ever since our return in June!

But I am glad I decided to go ahead as it was a lot of fun at both the morning and afternoon sessions. It's always encouraging to see new or reluctant stampers having a go and ending up very pleased with their ability to create.

I love the way Stampin' Up puts up Ideas Boards whenever they have an event so I thought this time I would try to do the same. I was at a bit of a loss to know how to display them but Geoff came up with the idea of mounting them with blue tac on some cupboards and that worked very well. I tried to give examples of the major techniques I have discovered so far.




I also did up these boards below to mount my cards to show off some of the new products in the new catalogue.

These cards were made using the new Zoo Babies and or the Alphabet Press Embossing Folder. It was fun using some new colours when making the composite animal images or using a stamp to make background paper or a border. The Alphabet folder is also fun to use for adult cards. See where I used it with the MDS image of an antique car down the bottom of the board.

This board displayed a few different uses of Washi Tape. I wasn't keen on using this tape but I can see why people like it so much. It is a quick and effective way to make a card. Also it showed a few different examples of the Mosaic Madness stamp set.

This one shows some of the ways I used the Six sided Sampler stamp set and the Hexagon punch. I particularly loved the design using red, navy and white that I cased from the net. This stamp set is a lot more fun than I expected and I found it hard to stop as I kept making card after card to use up the hexagons I had punched. I found the quickest way to attach the hexagons was to apply the glue to the back card in narrow strips, mounting a couple of rows at a time. Much less glue over everything!The bottom cards were examples of some hybrid MDS cards.

I really love the new Flower Shop and coordinated Pansy Punch. The possibilities seem to be endless. Looks great stamped by itself, in multiples, monochrome or a super colourful design. I think the Vellum flowers look so elegant. And for a very quick card just a single punch of Designer paper and voila, a card.

Then there is the new single baby stamp Worth the Wait. What a simple image for baby cards. It looks best with 2 colours, one for the outer part and a different one for the turtle. Easy to do by inking up the image with 2 different markers. Or, stamping another image in a different colour and punch this out and attaching with dimensionals.










 We did 3 projects in both the morning and the afternoon sessions.

The first one was a very simple single layered card using the new set, Too Kind. We used Crisp Canteloupe and Calypso Coral and Old Olive inks on Whisper White cardstock. It was a good choice as it gave new stampers the opportunity to learn basic stamping plus the 2 Step stamping technique. The card was finished off with some raised lines at the bottom using the Simply Scored board.

Click here to see the instruction sheet 

The second project was a layered card using the new Alphabet Press embossing folder and Zoo babies. For this card we used the new Pistachio Pudding card. This card introduced the new stampers to matting their image, the Big Shot, embossing with an inked folder and a cheats way to use ribbon. We also used one of the new clay blossoms to finish it off. Just love making those blossoms!

Click here to see the instruction sheet. 
The third card was one I had cased off the net from Susie Wood at http://stampwithsusie.blogspot.com.au/2013_05_01_archive.html

Click here to see the instruction sheet.

I had resisted the Swallowtail stamp until I saw all the wonderful things people had done with it on the web.It's a satisfying stamp to work with although I think it would have been better not to have included the extra wing layer in the workshop as this took a lot of extra time.

I had gone a little overboard with afternoon tea and I hope everyone didn't go away in a diabetic coma but everyone seemed to enjoy it. It was 8 pm by the time I got everything put away but I was glad I had decided to do it after all.