Are you ready for the next Art With Heart Team Blog Hop?  Well, wait no longer, here it is!

Our theme is Easter so you’re in for a real treat just to get you in the mood for all that chocolate next month!  I have made some small gift packages, perfect for a handful of little solid eggs, and a matching card.

I have used

• Eggcoutrements Stamp Set and
• Spring Floral Stampin’ Round Wheel both from the Summer Mini Catalogue
• Urban Garden Designer Series Paper
• Not Quite Navy, Kiwi Kiss and Baja Breeze Card and Ink
• Baja Breeze & Kiwi Kiss ribbon

The Art with Heart team consists of over 80 Stampin’ Up! demonstrators across Australia. We have a great team forum and heaps of support from like minded demonstrators. If you’d like to become part of this great team just email me for more details.

The blog hop will be a monthly event happening on the last day of every month. There are 12 stops along the way, and you may have just come from Christine Blain’s blog or you might be starting here.  At the end of each post there will be a link to take you to the next stop on the tour. It would be fantastic if you could leave a comment on each blog!

So grab a cuppa, and set off on what we are hoping will be an inspirational journey! and we hope you will visit each one to see the wonderful creations we have to show you! If you leave a comment on each and every blog and then email Nikki at [email protected], your name will be put into the hat to win some beautiful blog candy. There is a deadline of 72 hours to leave your comments and only non SU demos are eligible to win the candy - although we'd love all visitors to leave some comments please.

The next stop along the way is Kimmie Mieklejohn.

Did you know that Stampin' Up!'s biggest promotion of the year is currently underway and lots of those funky free stamp sets are walking out the door?

Sale-a-bration is on until March 31, which coincides with the end of the gorgeous Summer Mini Catalogue too, so I thought I'd have a play and mix together some of the products from the Summer Mini, with some of the free Sale-a-bration sets.

I am really thrilled with what I came up with - adore the colours of that yummy Kaleidoscope Designer Series Paper, and love how well Whimsical Words and Vintage Labels stamp sets work with it!

I have used :

• Kaleidoscope DSP from the Summer Mini $16.95 for a pack of 12 sheets of 12"x12" double sided paper
• Vintage Labels and Whimsical Words Sale-a-bration stamp sets - free with any order over $100.00
• Scallop Circle Punch from main catalogue $30.95
• Various card, ribbon and inks to co-ordinate.

If you'd like to see any of the stamp sets or products before the promotion ends, give me a call as soon as possible as I only have a couple of dates left in March. 

Kathryn  0418 361 931

Hi everyone!!

Are you ready for another blog hop?  The Art with Heart team has been working hard again and this Sunday you will be able to hop from blog to blog checking out a whole heap of gorgeous Easter Creations.

Now I bet you can't wait to bounce out of bed on Sunday morning and jump on the internet! See you then!

Kathryn.

On Monday I showed you some Crayon Resist ATC's made using Circle Circus stamp set from Stampin' Up!

It's a lovely funky set and very versatile.  I have used up some of the offcuts from my ATC's to decorate a couple of items - really I'm just having a bit of fun trying how things go together.

This very pink card became a birthday card for one of my nieces. It was just a matter of cutting the strip into three matching lengths, mounting it onto Rose Red card, then onto some SU Designer Series Paper and adding ribbon and a greeting. 

I love the simplicity of a card that just uses leftovers!  My next project was to decorate the cover of an Art Journal which I will be using for my techniques book. Once again, a strip of prestamped and coloured circles is mounted on card, then attached to the front of the book - this little project isn't quite finished yet, as it needs a little more and I haven't decided exactly what :o)

Ballet Blue has got to be one of my favourite Stampin' Up! colours, and I adore the Tea Party Designer Series Paper I have used here too - with a little extra Circle Circus stamped in pink.

In case you're wondering, I also use the Spiral Punch for the bound edge of the book, and the sanding blocks to smooth the edges where I glued on the DSP (instead of folding them inside like I was covering school books).

Enjoy!  Kathryn. 
  
  

Recently the Art with Heart team had a "Crayon Resist" technique ATC swap.  ATC's are Artist's Trading Cards and they are the perfect (small) size for trying new techniques, then swapping the samples with your friends so you can all be inspired by the results.

I hadn't used the technique for a couple of years and actually had trouble finding a white wax crayon that gave me the result I wanted.  In the end, I used left over pieces of an extra white house candle.

I used the SU stampset Fifth Avenue Floral, and inked my favourite rose stamp out of the set with Black Staz'on ink, then stamped onto gloss white card.  Once dry, I used the piece of candle to colour some small sections, then inked up my brayer in Pale Plum ink and rolled all over it.  Use a soft tissue to wipe back any excess ink on the white areas. To add interest I then stamped some random twigs in Elegant Eggplant around the edges.

I wasn't particularly impressed with the result so I decided to try again, adding layers of ink with the brayer, in between adding more and more wax to the image.  The results are much more rose like with the extra depth.

I then decided I was up to my ears in purple so I changed the colour scheme and used So Saffron, Regal rose, Rose Red and Old Olive.  It was hard to not be too heavy handed with the wax as it was really hard to see on the white gloss card. Nevertheless, I was much more pleased with the results.

However, for the swap, I wanted something a little more funky, so I got out my Stampin' Up! Ideas Book and Catalogue and started trawling the pages for a stamp set that jumped out and shouted "Crayon Resist Me!".

I found Circle Circus, and after inking up the gloss card again with black stazon, I decided to colour some of the circles first using a cotton bud, before I applied the wax.  I really loved the results I was getting with the multiple layers and colours, so I had a good bit of a play.

These little snippets are mostly ATC's and some off-cuts - I stamped a full A4 sheet from which you then get 9 ATC's and one really good size strip for adding to a scrapbook page or card front. I haven't used up the left overs yet, but something dotty is sure to come out of it!

If you'd like learn more techniques, be sure to look out for my technique classes, returning in term 2 of this year.

Thanks so much to all the lovely ladies who've commented on my "wedding series" of posts. I really appreciate your feedback!

I like my projects to be a bit tactile - layers / textures / embossing etc.  All helps to add interest and stimulate the senses in more ways than just visually. Therefore when I created my "Love" layout I wanted the simple little native blooms in each corner to be more than just a flat stamped image.

I started by picking card stock in the colours I imagined the flowers appearing in nature. The waratah was going to be red with Mellow Moss leaves. To add depth I chose to do two layers of red, with Ruby Red underneath and Real Red on top.

The gum blossom would be the same two reds, and Mellow Moss, and I added Kraft card for the gumnuts and twig.

The banksia was always going to be So Saffron and Mellow Moss.

I then stamped the images from "Bloom Away" using chocolate chip ink, onto all the pieces of card in the various colours and cut out sections of them.

Then I used Stampin' Write markers in the same shades to just add the smallest amount of shadows to each piece, before adhering them together with a combination of mini glue dots and Stampin' Dimensionals. I also "frayed" the edges of the flowers just by clipping roughly with my Stampin' Snips.

There are three stamps in the set "Bloom Away" and I made two gum blossoms, and one each of the waratah and banksia, to match the flowers on our engagement cake.

I enjoyed creating these simple embellishments for my layout and I think they added just the right touch to break up all that chocolate.

If you'd like to try this technique yourself, please ask me about organising a class for you and your stamping friends. Once you've tried it once, you'll be hooked. You can email me on [email protected]

Talk to you soon!
 

I thought of this layout a week ago and finally had time to put the finishing touches to it on Saturday as I was preparing for a workshop.  I really love it - maybe because it's just all chocolate!  Claire Daly set the challenge over at Stamp-a-memory to create a layout based on one single word - LOVE.

These photos are from our engagement party back in October 2007, which just happened to also be the week in which my Stampin' Up! Demonstrator Kit arrived in the mail - how tempted was I to cancel the party and just start stamping!!

But I am glad I didn't cancel it, as I wouldn't now be preparing for our wedding, nor would I be enjoying pulling out these photos for another look!

I have used chipboard letters for the word LOVE, coloured them with Chocolate Chip ink, then literally drowned them with Stampin' Up! Crystal Effects, to recreate the gooey chocolate icing effect. 

To keep the layout simple and uncluttered I have stuck with Chocolate Chip and Close to Cocoa card stock and ribbon with a couple of native flowers from "Bloom Away" as embellishments.

The cake was a giant mud-cake I made a couple of days before our party - it took 3kgs of chocolate and 20 eggs!I hand wrote our names with an icing nozzle full of melted chocolate, but the gorgeous native flowers were all purchased at a lovely local cake decorating shop.  The journalling on the layout reads, "LOVE . . . is a giant chocolate mud cake with our names on it!" 

The "Bloom Away" embellishments really tie the native flower theme in, and I tried to do them a bit fancy by stamping them several times in different coloured card, cutting them out and layering them to get a papertole effect. The final touch was the scrap of natural linen thread which I thought really finished the layout nicely.

Hmmmmmmm I can almost taste all that yummy chocolate all over again!  If you'd like to see a couple more pics of this, I have put a couple of larger ones in my album.  And tomorrow I will be back to show you how I did the flowers!  See you then, Kathryn.
  
 

There seems to be a recurring theme happening here, and it's such a happy one, I am just going to go with the flow!  A friend asked me to make some prototypes for HER wedding invites, so of course how could I resist getting my fingers a bit inky?

I was given a picture from a magazine and a colour scheme and asked to see what Stampin' Up! products I had that could make something similar.  Pretty easy brief really (when you have as many stamps as I do LOL!).

I have used two retired stamps that I really love, "Paisley" and "Fine Lace" for the black lace effect, on very vanilla card stock with Mellow Moss satin ribbon.  I think these are really sweet and the idea would be the very vanilla card would have the text printed on before stamping the rest and adding the embellishments.

Love that black scallop circle with the boho backgrounds image stamped in Mellow Moss!

February is truly the month of Valentines as I noticed over at Stamp-a-Memory the Challenge for this fortnight is a layout based on the word LOVE.  Can't wait to have a play with that one!  Got some great ideas which might even prevent me going to bed tonight!!  I'll be sure to post it here soon. 

See you then, Kathryn.

I purchased something really special today and Tony said they belonged on my blog as they are very photogenic.  Now, if you love stamping, there's a very good chance you are a woman, and if you're a woman, there's a very good chance you also love shoes, so here is my latest wedding project, accompanied by some very "matrimonal" props . . .

Of course this blog is more about stamping, so now you've had a sneak peak at my wedding shoes, here's a few more close ups of the lovely heart card.

The hearts are made using the gorgeous heart stamp from "Always" stamp set, embossed in gold and if you look closely you will see that they alternate between whisper white and very vanilla cardstock.  These are mounted on gold metallic card, on a very vanilla card using snail adhesive on one side of the heart, and a dimensional on the other side to give it a little lift.

Don't you love the gold embossing? Such an elegant finish and much nicer than anything you'd buy commercially!  Well, off to do some more creating - I am in the wedding mood now, so make sure you check back in a couple of days to see what else I am working on :o)