Stamping with Kathryn Lowe

Inspiring Ideas from the Catalogue

Often when I am stuck for ideas for a simple but cheerful card, I will turn to the Stampin' Up! Ideas Book & Catalogue and see if a particular card jumps out at me.  Then I will usually take some design elements from the layout, select my own stamp set and colours and create away.

This month, my sister said she wanted to make the cute Easter card on page 29 for one of her classes, but what else could she do in the class?

I thought this was a great card to team with a 6"x 6" layout for a lovely gift, and if you don't own Easter stamps, who cares?  There are so many other special occasion stamps you could select!

I love the Petite Pockets in Wisteria Wonder on the same page of the catalogue too, so I had a look around for a stamp set, and then decided to create away - pretty much re-creating the card as shown, with a different stamp set, putting together a co-ordinating layout, and making the Petite Pocket. Lots of fun and quite simple when you don't have to spend days thinking of how to put it all together.

My stamping friends who saw the elements of the card in real life, before I assembled it, think I am totally insane, for inking up that tiny stamp with markers! LOL that's one of my favourite techniques for multi-coloured stamping.

Now, as for that rosette, lovely touch, but that IS madness!

Now it happens that two of my lovely Stampin' buddies have just been promoted to the design team at Just Add Ink which is VERY exciting for them! Just Add Ink is a great challenge site, and this month their Scrapbook Challenge is Holidays!

So, even though this layout could be any old day out at the beach, a little tab added to the top of the photo reminds us that it was a) school holidays and b) I was on holiday visiting my gorgeous nieces & nephew.

A close up of the embellishments & DSP -see, really simple, with lovely cheerful colours :

Here's a close up of the Petite Pocket, as once again, I have inked up the stamp with markers - I really do love the effect of it, even if it is fiddly!

Thanks for having a look at what I've been doing - and be sure to check out Just Add Ink, and leave some love for Christine Blain & Tina Gillespie, my talented stampin' friends!

Simple Birthday Cards

In recent weeks the projects I have been showing on here have been more complicated - lots of steps and quite a bit of time spent and you could be thinking, "Yes lovely, but I just want to be able to whip up a few birthday cards to get me through the next month or two . . . "

Perfect! Today I have two really simple, quick and easy cards to show you, one for boys and one for girls!

This card is SO simple!  It consist of the Cajun Craze card base, one piece of striped paper from the Frightful Sight Designer Series Paper and one stamped greeting on a co-ordinating scrap of card.  The very cute spider on this card is actually part of the patterned paper.

I've chosen Cajun Craze for the background layer for the greeting, but you could use black, grey or Old Olive to co-ordinate with the DSP too.

My card for girls uses the same very simple supplies and sketch,with an added layer, a butterfly, and a pretty edge on the inside.

This double sided patterned paper comes from the hostess set Cheerful Treat - I love those stripes and the pretty floral pattern!

The great thing about these bright cheery, simple cards is that you can churn out quite a few in a short time.  I think they're terrific!  What do you think?