Join my Stamping With Karen Mailing List and be in the know!  When you sign up, you will get a FREE gift, A Dozen Creative Gift Wrap Ideas.  Just fill in your name and email in the box on the right side of my blog to join. I send out an email every Tuesday. The first Tuesday of the month will be several project ideas with instructions and supplies, plus any Stampin’ Up! news and special offers. Two other Tuesdays are an additional project or two with any Stampin’ Up! updates.  And in the middle, is usually a “Best of the Blog”, just in case you have missed some of my blog posts!

I really appreciate my email subscribers and enjoy treating them to a weekly special holiday email getting close to Christmas, the 12 Weeks of Christmas, with card ideas, gift ideas and gift bags and tags ideas. In any of the emails you can copy the project as is, change it up and make your own version, or just enjoy looking at some exclusive ideas that you won’t find on my blog or Facebook page. Believe me, that will be coming up way sooner than any of us would like to think!  Except crafting for the holidays is so much fun!

And occasionally there is a time-sensitive offer or breaking news from Stampin’ Up! that I like to send out an email right away, like the Retirement List or some such thing, so my customers find out as soon as I can tell them.

So don’t miss out!  Find that red box at the top right side of my blog and put in just your name and email.  You will receive a Welcome email back that will have the link to my free gift!  And more importantly, you will be all set for Stampin’ Up! projects and news!

Thanks for joining us!

Be sure to open your Stampin’ Up! Catalog and use it for inspiration!  This is where the idea for this card, Simple Stamping Lots of Love Card, came from! I wasn’t quite sure how to get started with this stamp set, Lots of Love, today so I looked in the catalog.  This is almost copied exactly from the sample on page 86, but not totally.  You can look at both and see if you can tell what I did differently!

Sometimes it is nice to JUST STAMP, hold that block in your hand, and stamp away on clean white paper! Instead of Big Shot pieces and lots of embellishments, just do some simple,  basic stamping with ink and paper. It feels good and is therapeutic! I had fun trying out the different flower and leaf stamps and using Stampin’ Write Markers to color some of the stamps in two different colors of ink.

The card base is one of the new In Colors, Tranquil Tide.  Since it is not a color that I can claim to love, I thought it would be good on this card because it could match some of the leaves I stamped also in Tranquil Tide.  The leaves are stamped in all different green colors – Old Olive, Pear Pizzazz, Tranquil Tide, and Lemon Lime Twist.

Bold greetings are really in style these days and this stamp set, Lots of Love, has one! I stamped it in Black Memento Ink.  Here’s another card I made with that bold greeting.  I think you could also omit the word “Sending” and just use the “Lots of Love”. Always nice to know other ways to use the stamps we own!

The card could have been left as is with just the stamping, but I decided to try adding just a simple bow with the Tranquil Tide 1/2″ Finely Woven Ribbon.  It is adhered with Mini Glue Dots.  I love that ribbon for tying bows and I think just this simple bow makes the card.

Think about the inside of the card, also.  Since this is a dark cardstock, you probably want to add a Whisper White layer inside the card, perhaps stamping a flower and some leaves in the corner to decorate the inside of the card a bit. You can also add a strip of designer paper inside a card, too.

Don’t forget Bonus Days are going on at Stampin’ Up! during the month of July!  With every $50 purchase, you will be emailed a special Bonus code to use on your order in August for $5 off. You can earn and use as many Bonus codes as you want!

SHOP STAMPIN’ UP! HERE TODAY AND GET YOUR BONUS CODES!

We can always use a stash of “all-occasion” cards, or maybe they should be called “any-occasion cards” and this easy to make all-occasion card fits the bill! And sometimes you just want to make a quick and easy card and not spend a lot of time designing something super-special. Last night that was the case with me, as my niece had just come for a visit for several days, so I just wanted to try out some of my new paper but not take a lot of time right then making a card.

I decided to use the new Naturally Eclectic Designer Series Paper on this card. I chose a color for the card base from the list of coordinating colors with the paper on the back of the cardboard in the package (or you will find the colors in the catalog). I went with Peekaboo Peach, one of the continuing In Colors that we will have for another year. When I first laid this piece of designer paper on the top of the card, I loved it. Then I played around with other half and half combinations, etc. and nothing was striking me.  So I went back to the original paper and added a narrow margin of Soft Sky behind it. The Peekaboo Peach Ribbon is retired, but I had it so I used it!  You can substitute some other new ribbon.

For the greeting, I used the new stamp set Label Me Pretty and the coordinating punch, the Pretty Label Punch.  I stamped the greeting with Peekaboo Peach ink and then punched out. I thought I probably wanted to layer the greeting on something so I first thought I would cut off the margin of the punched greeting so I could layer that on the piece of cardstock punched with the Pretty Label Punch. But before I did that, I punched two pieces of Peekaboo Peach and layered them under the greeting and it seemed to be just fine!  What do you think? You can’t really tell it’s two separate punched pieces! There are other ways to make a punched layer look larger, like we used to do with the Decorative Label Punch but cutting two pieces in half, one horizontally and one vertically.  If you like the Label Me Pretty Stamp Set and the Pretty Label Punch (who wouldn’t?!), then buy them together in the Label Me Pretty Bundle, either clear-mount or wood-mount.

I think this is a very nice, simple stamp set and punch that you can use together or separately and get a lot of use out of. And of course the Naturally Eclectic Designer Series Paper is pretty on it’s own and help you be very creative!

Shop Stampin’ Up! For All Your Papercrafting Needs!

Make a bold bright card for any occasion with this beautiful designer paper, stamp set and trendy colors!  I just love this Whole Lot of Lovely Designer Series Paper in the new Stampin’ Up! Catalog.  I made a project the other day with the pattern on the other side of this black and white polka dot paper, so today I used this dramatic pattern. I decided to pair it with the Lemon Lime Twist new In Color for the card base and ribbon.  The bold greeting is from the Lots of Love Stamp Set.  I wasn’t quite sure how the size of the greeting would work on the card, but stamping it on a larger piece of paper gave me the idea to tie the ribbon around the bottom of the greeting.

You really never know exactly what you are going to come up with when you start stamping! You may think you have a specific idea, but then as you work, often some other idea pops into your head! These pretty designer papers this year in the new catalog as just scrumptious to work with! Be sure to check them out and however much you think you might like them, just multiply that by 200% by how you will like them in person!

I think this Lemon Lime Twist color (am I finally learning the proper name of it??) was one that maybe a lot of people didn’t like at first, but I think it is going to turn out to be a favorite.  I also love the Powder Pink.  And the Berry Burst isn’t bad either!

The ribbon I used on the card is the Lemon Lime Twist 1/2″ Finely Woven Ribbon.  I think you will like it.  It’s very soft and easy to tie.  I think it makes beautiful bows.  You can get it in any of the In Colors. So many pretty Stampin’ Up! ribbons this year too!

Go check out Lemon Lime Twist and see if that color appeals to you or grows on you!  You can get an assortment package of the In Color paper, that way, you can try them all and pick your favorites. Then go make a bold bright card for yourself!

Shop Stampin’ Up! Online 24/7!

Online I saw several examples of a watercolored background and then the Happy Birthday Thinlits Die adhered over the watercoloring, and I really liked that look. It just takes some random watercoloring to make this so easy watercolored birthday card.  Just imagine all the different backgrounds you could make like this in so many colors!

The card base is Pear Pizzazz, layered with Fresh Fig, one of the new In Colors. The Happy Birthday Thinlits Die is also made with Fresh Fig. You have two choices for the top layer of the card. Whisper White is not very good for watercoloring although you can do a very minimal amount. A better choice is the Shimmery White Cardstock (I love that paper because it has the most subtle shimmer under the light!). This is what I used on this card. The best choice for watercoloring is, amazingly, Watercolor Paper!

To make the watercolored background, I just picked up various colors of ink in the lids of the ink pads with my Aqua Painter, one of my favorite tools, and randomly watercolored some blobs of color on the Shimmery White.  If you squeeze the ink pad top to bottom before you open it, you likely will cause a puddle of ink to appear in the lid of the ink pad.  If you do not, then put a tiny drop or two of reinker in that lid. You can also just touch the Aqua Painter to the actual ink pad to pick up ink but try to just do this on the corners of the ink pad so as not to get a lot of water in the ink pad. Also, if the puddle you make in the lid is real watery when you are finished, just take a paper towel and wipe it out before closing the ink pad so as not to get water in the ink pad. Depending on dry your ink pad seems to be, you might consider reinking it while you have it out!

The greeting on the card is just the Happy Birthday Thinlit Die so that serves as both an embellishment on the card and the greeting!  I love this die! Here is another card I made recently with the Happy Birthday die.  

I don’t own them yet, but I think Stampin’ Up! carried them in the past, the new Multipurpose Adhesive Sheets. You can adhere a piece of the adhesive sheet to the paper you are die-cutting, then the die cut will automatically have adhesive on the back.  No putting tiny dots of glue on the back of a finely die-cut image. So that is a product to consider if you are having trouble with adhering these intricate die cuts.

For some extra embellishment, I used a few of the retired Candy Dots scattered around, but now we have new versions you can purchase in the new catalog on pages 196-197.

I highly recommend the Happy Birthday Thinlit Die because it is bold enough to adhere over a lot of different backgrounds yet very delicate and pretty. Try the watercoloring technique for a background for your card as a different way of making an easy watercolored birthday card.

Shop Stampin’ Up! for all your cardmaking supplies!