The pink to end all pinks....

A looooong time ago I used to work at a wedding invitation and party store and was surrounded by pretty paper all day long 😍. One of the perks of this job was a discount on all of those delicious A4 sized sheets of paper and cardstock and I made pretty good use of that perk however years later I still have a fair amount of all that card making stuff that I never get into. On my journey to try and use up all those long forgotten treasures I dug out all my pearl card and was inspired to make something using this pink to end all pinks 😂.

I absoloutley love this pattern paper. My kids are teenagers now and this kind of pattern does not really appeal to them anymore but it's the kind of pink and fun pattern that I love.

I pulled out another stamp that I have not managed to use yet and found the perfect stamp in a Close To My Heart set that I got A little while back. It was also really fun to pull out some embossing powder and have a play with that is a product that I not only love using but also love the finished look of, I simply do not get it out enough.

Sometimes a project that we have planned out in our head does not end up working out the way that we want, happens to the best of us from time to time. I recently made a card using some mystery foil that I now know is clearly of dubious origins but at the time just saw as reguar foil, anyways this foil just would just not do what I wanted it to do and i ended up getting less than stellar results from it.... never mind I still put it to good use for this fun and bright card. It is good to remember that sometimes mistakes or unexpected results can actually turn into wonderful projects or spark your creativity.

I actually really love how this card turned out and am glad that I got to have a play with this My Favourite Things stamp set that I have had for a while but as usual have not had a chance to play around with it. Next time I use this set I would love to make some fun and bright gift tags.

Last post I spoke about digging out some of my long neglected stamps.

Well recently I dug really deep and pulled out one of the very first stamp sets that I ever owned.
I really can't remember which was first but I do know that I had quite a few Fiskars stamp sets that fall into that category and this was one of them.

It was a Heidi Grace for Fiskars set.

WOW, do you remember that far back?

That is really showing how old I am and how long I have been at this crafting thing. I loved Heidi Grace Designs stuff, in fact I still have a whole heap of her valentines stuff in my stash.

How cute is this stamp set though? I have to admit it has been a hot minute since I used this one but this set has one of my favourite stamps on it, that seahorse and over the years I have used it on a number of different projects here and there.

I got to use a few different techniques that I haven't done in a while on this card which is nice because being time poor I usually stick to one techinque only such as just heat embossing as a feature but this card I had a nice play with.

It does make me realise that I love using distress colours as my preferred watercolour medium and that I need to get them out more often and also how nice the finished look of a no line water colour is, more of that too.

Easter is upon us....

 Another Easter throwback for you.

I made a couple of variants of this cards when I was away on our family holiday last September.  I did not take much with me but I did know that I wanted to use some new paper I had and a Close To My Heart stamp set that I bought at a craft de stash.

I have no idea how old this stamp is but I could no resist those cute bunnies. 
One of the things that I love about stamps is that generally speaking they have no "expiration" date.  Sure some styles go out of fashion or are no longer considered trendy but you can use stamps over and over again and change the look or feel of them by using different colours, papers and styling them in a different way.

It got me thinking about all those older stamps that I have not been showing any love to over the past few years so I am going to try and use some of those neglected older sets and breathe some new life into them again.

Everything old is new again.

   

An Easter Throwback....

An little Easter throwback for you in more ways than one.

For a start Miss T here is so much bigger and filled with a ton more attitude and eye rolls these days and secondly this was a layout started quite some time ago but that dreaded self doubt and indecisiveness came to visit and this layout sat in a pile of incomplete layouts for a really long time.

If I am being honest it was the two things that I struggle with the most that got to me....

Titles and Journaling, urrgh.

I am currently on a journey to work out to rectify this problem and find some solutions, one of the biggest hurdles I have and that I hate my handwriting on my layouts and I hate sitting at the computer and creating digital journaling so I am going to invest in fixing up a typewriter that I have and hopefully that helps me with that problem.

Titles, well that is a problem for future Erin to work out.

Aside from that how cute is this layout?

So different from what I would normally create but I love all the different pastel papers and tags all over the place.  Again as with most of my creations this is a great mix of old and new, brands and generic.  Some of the paper is from big box store stacks, some of the stickers are from a sticker book from Aldi and some of the paper and tags are from brands found at the scrapbook shop, I am quite partial to that carrot patterned paper if I am being honest.

Step outside that comfort zone....

I am a creature of habit.

I tend to use, wear, eat, listen and buy the same kind of things and where longevity is concerned it gets harder to step outside of that box.

I have been paper crafting for what feels like forever and you absolutely can fall into that routine of choosing the same colours, styles and products....1000% guilty as charged.

But what happens when you step outside that box?

Good things can happen.

Case in point, this lemon and lime beauty.

Is it pink?  No.
Is it purple?  No. 
Have a splash of teal?  No.
Is it glittery?  No.

Well there you go, something outside of the norm but it works, and it works really well.

That Damask Love pattern paper is glorious!  Bonus point for being able to use my most favourite cupcake stamp set from Papermania.....many years old and still going strong.

I am really trying to push myself to create more, to use up product that I already own and to show some love to my tools and supplies that have not been used in a long time.  I am a big fan of combining the old and the new in my creations and I feel that this is a great example of how you can take something new and exciting (that damask love paper) and make it shine even brighter with things you already own.  Pretty much everything else on this card is years and years old and who would know, they compliment each other perfectly.

So advise for the day,  step outside that box and try something different, you never know, you might just like it.

Cards and more cards

So I have a small confession to make.....


I used to really struggle with making cards, i sometimes still do.

For many years I was a traditional scrabooker and paper crafted using a 12x12 square base and when I tried to make a card I was stumped by the sheer lack of space that I had to work with.

These days however I have been embracing card making and tags, it has taken a bit of practice, trial and error but I finally got to a happy creative place with that small space.

One of the things that I love about the smaller scale of cards is that they are less overwhelming to try new techniques with, generally are less time consuming than a scrapbook page as alas I am a slow scrapbooker and exceptionally time poor these days and they are a great way to use up small amounts of left over products. 
If you know me at all in person I LOVE to be able to use as much of a product up as I can, I love frugal DIY's and I am a huge advocate of using all the old product and cards are perfect for this.

This was a fun experiment with gelatos, stencils and modelling paste, I also got to use my favourite cupcake stamp from docrafts. 

These tags are an example of a great way to use up older products in your stash.  These tags came from a craft kit and had sweater type prints on the bottom of them that I would never use. I managed to salvage them by covering up most of the pattern with washi tape.

How I love this card.  This was a lengthy make as I just could not get this card "looking" right.
I think it looks perfectly adorable now though.

Sometimes ideas don't pan out the way that you envision them in your head and sometimes you just need to play around with different ideas.  This is another card that has a few DIY and saved items on it.  The glitter hearts are from a homemade glitter paste, The card base is years and years old from when I worked in a wedding and invitation store and the gorgeous vintage girl image was cut from a pocket page card that I would never use for it's intended use as a pocket page card but I just loved her so much that I needed to find a way to incorporate her into my crafting somehow.