The VERY FIRST Creative Crew Gallery ~ January 2011

The day has arrived ~ our Creative Crew gallery for Januaray 2011 goes live at 1pm Eastern Time!

There are 4 main themes for this months' gallery:

*Mini Occasions Catalog Focus* For these projects, I used the new 'Baby Blossoms' set which is just SO versatile and easy to use. I love the vintage 'shabby chic' feel of this set. It was a lot of fun putting this card and box together.

*Designer Paper/Colour Combo Focus* Love Letter DSP/Vanilla, Black, Riding Hood Red. I used the new 'Valentine Defined' stamp set for this project. The definition 'Valentine' was embellished by stamping it twice, the main image was in Basic Black, but the 2nd time I stamped in Riding Hood Red and cut out key words and popped them up on dimensionals to give the card some visual interest.

This card is made in the CAS style. The black ribbon was awful to photograph, for which I apologise, but it does look good IRL! A lot of people have a hard time with CAS cards, but the main idea is to stop, stop, stop and don't over embellish. I would say that my most comfortable stamping style is this one. The main image on this card was actually stamped THREE times and layered. I'll add an extra pic to show you how great it looks popped up.

*Holiday Focus (Valentine's Day)* I am so happy with this card. I was inspired by a Christmas Card I received from a friend in England which had a really unique 'bendy fold'. I couldn't wait to translate it into a Stampin' Up card and LOVE how this turned out. I do have a tutorial if you'd like to contact me for a copy :)

*SB (Scrapbooking) Focus* I'm not much of a scrapbooker, but I did love these pics of my daughter Sarah taken a few days before Christmas. An inexpensive frame and some embellishing using the new Springtime Vintage fabrics and seam binding ribbons and hey presto, a scrapbook inspired photo frame which is going over to my parents in England for their kitchen wall. Like all proud grandparents, there is a section of wall COVERED in photos of their 2 grand- daughters!

I hope you've enjoyed a little peak into my projects for the Creative Crew gallery. If you'd like to play along, then please use the keywords as follows:

Mini Catalog Projects : CCREW01111CF
DSP/Colour Focus : CCREW0111DF
Valentine Focus : CCREW0111HF
Scrapbooking Focus : CCREW0111SF

Can't wait to see what everyone comes up with!

Introducing your January 2011 CREATIVE CREW

Some of you may have heard the buzz over on SplitCoastStampers about the new SU gallery created just for your inspiration by Stampin' Up demonstrators. The eve of the gallery going live, I wanted to introduce you to the Creative Crew! I want to take this opportunity to thank Patty, Susie and Jana for putting together a FABULOUS Creative Crew and I hope you will come and see me tomorrow, January 1st to see our very first "January 2011" Creative Crew Gallery. Hopefully we'll inspire you enough to play along with our 4 themes.

Jackie (aka Jactop on SCS)
Lisa (aka ponygirl40 on SCS)
Charlsanne (aka cla616 on SCS)
Brenda (aka pinkpapercupcakes on SCS)
Melissa (aka melbarkwith on SCS)
Renee (aka prchvs on SCS)

... and me!

Leadership Swaps

Well, in less than 2 weeks I'm taking a trip of a lifetime. You may be expecting me to say "I'm going to Egypt to see the pyramids, or "I'm going to Australia with Oprah" .... but actually, I think it's more exciting than both of those things! I'm going to Stampin' Up Leadership in Nashville Tennessee with my 2 FABULOUS SU demo buddies, Dawn Marie and Debra. We are like little kids on Christmas Eve ... of course, I'll be blogging from The Gaylord Opryland Resort with all the exciting things SU will be doing with us. Did I say I cannot wait? Hee hee.

I thought you might like to see 2 swaps I've prepared using new product from the Occasions Mini Catalogue. I love how they turned out. The first one "Nature Walk" is very CAS, but there's actually a lot of work in it. I used the new tulip border embossing folder but cut out the centre rectangle and popped it up on the main card using dimensionals. Then the centre is just very plain with the bird image stamped straight onto a mounted piece of River Rock. It's also popped up so the dimensions adds quite a lot of visual interest.

My 2nd swap is using the new 'Sew Suite' set ... I wanted to get fabric into this card and thought some fancy quilting stitches would be appropriate too :) I love how this turned out.


Recipe 1
Stamps : Nature Walk
Cardstock : River Rock, Crumb Cake
Ink : Early Espresso
Accessories : Framed tulips Embossing Folder, Big Shot, Early Espresso 1/8" Tafetta Ribbon, Buttons, Linen Thread

Recipe 2
Stamps : Sew Suite, In Stitches (Wheel)
Cardstock : Regal Rose, Early Espresso, Whisper White, Baja Breeze
Ink : Baja Breeze
Accessories : Vintage Springtime Fabric, Pear Pizzazz Seam Binding Ribbon, Sewing Machine, Watercolour Wonder Crayons, Aquapainter

More Creative Crew Sneak Peaks

I'm really hoping you'll be inspired to play along with the Creative Crew in January, here's another sneaky peaky ....

DT Announcement and A Sneak Peak

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas Day yesterday! Not long now until we move forward into 2011.

On January 1st, 2o11, there's a brand new 'Creative Crew' appearing on www.splitcoaststampers.com and I have been selected to be one of the 7 Stampin' Up Demonstrators to showcase their work in a specially designated gallery. I am thrilled to be given the opportunity to work on some SUO (Stampin' Up Only) challenges and to help inspire many of the SU fans out there to pull out their supplies and play along!

I'll post a link to the Creative Crew's gallery when it goes live on New Year's Day ... but just to whet your appetite, here are a couple of 'sneak peaks' to entice you to come back to see more!

I've adopted Sarah's BFF, Becky ... she really does belong to me because she LOVES stamping, unlike Sarah, so she must be mine, right? Hee hee. We drove over to Western Michigan University on Friday to pick her up and bring her home over the w/end. Of course, that meant we had some time to stamp today :)

Look at Becky's Christmas Card which she mass produced this afternoon while Sarah was stuck at the High School in between performances of the Winter Collage Concert!

Christmas with Vellum

I needed my few final Christmas Cards to post to England, I hope I'm not too late. I used the Scallop Square Die for the Big Shot and layered up Cherry Cobbler and Shimmery White with a layer of vellum attached over the top. I like the simplicity of this, although my Daughter Sarah and her BFF Becky don't like the white space ~ imagine?!!!!

Here's a close up of the sentiment part. I love the look of vellum over the background stamp, I should use it more often!

Recipe
Stamps : Music Notes, Christmas Collage, Bells & Boughs
Cardstock : Shimmery White, Always Artichoke, Shimmery White
Ink : Always Artichoke
Accessories : 1/2 Pearls, Cherry Cobbler Seam Binding Ribbon, Big Shot, Scallop Square Die