Have you ever received an interactive card for your birthday? Stampin' Up!'s Sheep stamp set and dies make this card  Turning the wheel to get the sheep to "jump" over the fence will bring a smile to your face. I shared how to create this card at this month's team meeting on Zoom. 

Welcome to this month's Pretty Cards & Paper blog hop. We are sharing projects created using Stampin' Up!'s Painted Christmas designer series paper (shown below) to help inspire your creativity! To visit the other's blogs scroll down to after the video below to find a list of all the blogs.

Hello! Welcome to September's Colour Combo Blog Hop. Autumn is my favourite time of year. Doesn't this month's colour combo of Blushing Bride, Cinnamon Cider and Mango Melody give off fall-ish vibes? 

How do you decide what colours to use for your projects? Sometimes I will pull ink pads off the shelf and arrange them on my desk to see what colour combination inspires me. Or I'll check Stampin' Up!'s catalogues and see what I can find on Pinterest.

When I think of polar bears and the Arctic, I picture ice burgs and impressive skies. The Water Painters and the Fluid 100 Watercolour paper were used with Misty Moonlight and Pool Party ink refills to create the sky and water. Working with the Water Painters can be a little intimidating at first. Using them with the Fluid 100 Watercolour paper will help you because it can handle the water better than either Basic White cardstock or the Thick Basic White cardstock.

Hello and welcome to my blog in this month's Colour Combo Blog Hop. Our projects for this blog hop use Gray Granite, Bermuda Bay and Gorgeous Grape.

Have you tried the Painted Texture 3D embossing folder before? It was available in the Jan-Jun Mini Catalogue and has carried over to the Annual Catalogue. I went digging through my embossing folders yesterday wondering what one I should use. It was hard to pick between the Painted Textured and the Tasteful Textile embossing folders. The best thing to do when you cannot chose between which embossing folder to use is to make a sample of both in the colour you will use. Then you can put the embossed cardstock down and place the items (without gluing them down) over top to see which one you prefer. Add the piece you don't use to your stash so that it's ready to go or make a 2nd card using it while you have all the items out. Then you'll have a few cards ready to send out for the time when you need it!

Do you love to colour? The Beautifully Penned designer series paper is designed for you to add colour! Or you can leave it black and white. You're choice. On this card I've used a piece of the polka-dot design and coloured the whole piece using Pool Party ink and a Blending Brush. The striped piece across the center is from the same pack of designer series paper that I didn't colour in. If you would like to see how to create this card watch my Instagram Reel: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CSNrYRJH_b0/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link. I was going to try colouring it with Gorgeous Grape ink but thought the purple might be overpowering! What do you think, would the purple be a good addition or not?

You can find the Hand-Penned Petals bundle, the stamp set and dies used to create this card, in the Annual Catalogue on page 105 along with other items from the Hand-Penned Suite. While I do like the coordinating Hand-Penned designer series paper, I wanted to share that you can choose which designer series paper (DSP) you want to pair with any stamp set. Using DSP that is designed to work with a stamp set or bundle is an easy way to recreate project seen in the catalogue or create your own designs. But sometimes the DSP is either not in our favourite colours, design or perhaps there is already some DSP stashed in your crafting supplies? No, that last one cannot be the case! shhh, I won't tell. I have lots that I haven't used too!

Inside the Annual Catalogue you can find the Holidays Section starting on page 88. The Tidings of Christmas suite uses the traditional colours I like to use for Christmas: greens and red. There is a coordinating stamp set & die bundle that is designed to work with the Tidings of Christmas designer series paper. But you could use any Christmas or Holiday themed stamp set with it. I've used the Season's Blessing stamp set and now the Perfectly Plaid stamp set.

Welcome to July's Pretty Cards & Paper blog hop. The You're A Peach designer series paper is the focus of our projects this month. And bonus - it's on sale until August 2 for 15% off.

Do you like the colours in this pack of DSP? They are Balmy Blue, Bumblebee, Calypso Coral, Early Espresso, Mango Melody, Pale Papaya, Pear Pizzazz & Petal Pink. It's neat how the colours are used to colour in the peach - Bumblebee, Calypso Coral, Petal Pink and Mango Melody. The flowers on my card were coloured in using some of these colours with the Stampin' Blends.

This month some of my favourite designer series papers are on sale for 15% off. Although it's hard to choose just one that is my favourite! Although the new Annual Catalogue started in June I already have 5 of the 9 packs that are on sale this month. Don't have any designer series paper yet or not sure how to use it? Or maybe you love it SO much and can't bear to cut into it? If you need inspiration to use your DSP make sure to check out my posts using DSP here: http://www.fromwhereistamp.ca/search/label/Designer%20Series%20Paper

Welcome to July's Global Stamping Friends Blog Hop! Our theme is recipe and using the following to create our projects: use Crumb Cake as one of your colours and incorporate food into your project (recipe card, scrapbook page about food, or maybe food related stamp set used).

I had a hard time deciding which of the images would be stamped for this card. Decided to use the sentiment as my guide - dash = salt shaker & spoonful = spoon. Both of these images were stamped directly onto one piece of Basic White cardstock but you could stamp them and die cut them using the Cookin' Dies.

Canadian Stampin' Up! demonstrators gathered together a few weeks ago on Facebook. It was fun! We were given a mystery stamping challenge and this is the card I made using the pieces we were told to gather. My favourite part of this challenge was the designer series paper strip. Can you believe that all the DSP is from one strip measuring 2" x 12"? Even the brick design is from the same sheet. To create each of the layers cut from the strip of DSP on the long side, cut at 3", 4" and 5". The Evening Evergreen cardstock layers behind each pieces of DSP are 2.25" x 3.25", 2.25" x 4.25" & 2.25" x 5.25". Before gluing the pieces together layer them on your card front and arrange the layers in the design you like or copy what I've done with my card.

This photo shows what you would've received if you subscribed to the kit before June 10. Instructions are also included. If you've received a Paper Pumpkin kit from Stampin' Up! in the past the instructions have been updated to include more details and are printed in colour. It was a lot easier to figure out which items were needed for each card.

On Saturday I participated in an online event where a fellow Canadian demonstrator hosted an online training and creative session. This was one of the cards she designed for us to create using stamps, dies and designer series paper from the Plentiful Plants suite. It's fun to gather with other demonstrators virtually or when there were in person events. The community that enjoys being creative and loves Stampin' Up! products is what I enjoy the most about events and meeting other demonstrators. It's one way I can feel connected and part of something bigger than me. Knowing that there is someone else out there that enjoys the same things I do is a great comfort.