A Blog Hop 

Today some of the Art With Heart Stampin' Up! team girls are presenting some fabulous Father's Day ideas to inspire you, so if you just arrived here from Ros Davidson's blog, welcome. If you are starting here, please use the links at the bottom of each post to follow the blog hop through full circle and enjoy and be inspired by these great masculine projects.

I don't have anyone to give a Father's Day card to, but still there are plenty of males around and plenty of people looking for ideas for masculine cards.

Being a Pisces, when I saw By The Tide Stamp Set, I knew it was going to make it's way into my collection, however, I haven't used it nearly enough, so when I sat down to make some masculine projects, it was the first set that came to mind.

After selecting the set, I did a quick Google image search to see who had been using By the Tide and what they had been doing with it. I have to thank three lovely stampers, Monica Gale from the UK and Dawn Olchefske and Brenda Keenan from the US for the inspiration behind these Night of Navy, Crumb Cake and Very Vanilla cards.

Don't you love how the detail on that embossing folder ties in with the chevron ribbon?

The only other stamp set I used for these cards is Guy Greetings which I chose as I did want to include some words on the front of two of the cards. I have the photo polymer version of Guy Greetings which makes it so easy to stamp the greetings right where you want them.

Our new Holiday Catalogue is now available and starts on the 1st of September, so don't forget to ask one of us today to post you a hard copy. In the meantime, thanks for stopping by katlodesigns blog.  Please leave a comment and then if you'd like to continue the blog hop, click on the heart and you're off to see the work of my delightful stamping friend Kayleen McLean.

If you find a broken link or have come to this blog hop from a different entry point, you can view the participants below:

1. Tina Gillespie
2. Genna Gifford
3. Kate Morgan 
4. Jenny Van Dijk
5. Claire Daly
6. Judy May
7. Kathryn Mangelsdorf
8. Rachel Woollard
9. Ros Davidson
10. Kathryn Ruddick
11. Kayleen McLean

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This week is my Stamp Club night - it's normally the third Thursday night of each month, and it's a night I really look forward to each month.

The Stamp Club ladies have become firm friends, and I really love planning special projects just for them each month.

Last month we were really getting into kicking off our Christmas crafting (you know how close it's getting, right??) and so we started with a really busy Stamp Club night, where I confess I cracked the whip a bit, getting them to make THREE Christmas Gift Tags and FIVE cards each!

We used the Festival of Trees stamp set and punch bundle from Stampin' Up! and then mixed it up a bit with a new set called Lots of Joy which has some some really nice greeting stamps in it, as you can see from the photo.

We also enjoyed adding in the star elements using the Confetti Stars Border Punch and a small star punch.

I have a couple of spare seats in my Thursday night stamp club, so if you are interested to find out more about it, please give me a "Hoy" either by emailing [email protected], phoning or texting me on 0418 361 931 or leaving a comment below in the comments box.

We had such a busy month in July with our Christmas in July event and trying to kick the Christmas crafting into gear, that I still have a couple more projects I haven't shown you close up!

This first one is such a fun gift!

In the basket is a stack of Chocolate Sliders.  What is a chocolate slider? Well, essentially it's a cute cover with a bow attached that you pull, to slide the chocolate out from the cover. It's a really cool way of giving someone what is in essence, a really simple gift, but it's been personalised in a really special way for them.

I don't have a template for this, because each time I have made chocolate sliders, I have purchased the chocolate block first, then made a new template in the matching size - in other words, I get out a steel ruler and make the cover from scratch each time depending on the size of the block.

Can you see that the snowman on the Soft Sky chocolate slider (and the coordinating card in the background) is made entirely from different Stampin' Up! punches?

The 1" square for the hat, the Word Window for the hat brim, a circle punch for his head, two scallop circles for his body, the Tree Builder punch for his arms and the hearts on his chest.

The Santa's body Chocolate Slider uses a circle punch and the 1" square punch too.

Let me know if you'd like to attend a class to make these. They are such fun to make, and to give as gifts, I'd be happy to schedule a class to teach you how.

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OR : WHAT TO DO WITH ALL THOSE BUTTONS!

What's one of the most fun things with Christmas Crafting?

Churning out lots of cards in a very short time . . .

And what's one product I always have to buy, but then love so much I can't bare to use them up?

Yep, that's right, Stampin' Up! Buttons!

So, in the lead up to our big "Get into the Festive Spirit (or get your Christmas Crafting On) Christmas in July event, I decided to combine the two, using an extremely simple card layout to create lots of cards quickly!

And the bonus thing with this is, I have so many buttons, and so many different patterned papers, that I was able to create card for all occasions without even having to change the card sketch. How much fun is this?

If you have a big stash of gorgeous buttons and paper, why not get them out and have a quick play and see what lovely creations you can whip up!

Last year I particpated in a 12 month Mystery Box Swap where we worked on a set range of projects, to our own theme, over the whole year and at the end of the year, exchanged them with another stamper.

My theme was Black and White, and one of the projects towards the end of the year was gift tags. I never did get around to showing off my tags, because by the time the projects were exchanged, the 2014 Holiday Catalogue had finished and the gorgeous stamp set Festival of Trees and co-ordinating Tree Punch were no longer available to purchase.

But, NEW Annual Catalogue, and which lovely bundle of products has re-appeared?

Yes, that's right! The Festival of Trees Stamp Set and matching Tree Punch!

And yes, these are the three tags I completed for the Mystery Box Swap.

When I was planning for my team's Christmas in July event last month, I remembered that some of my lovely stamp club ladies had asked if we could do tags like these, so with the new catalogue in hand, and a list of replacement product options for the Designer Series Paper and the fabulous Banner Bigz L Die which were no longer available to purchase through Stampin' Up!, I sat down and created three more tags that the ladies could create as a Make & Take project at our fantastic event.

Without the Banners Die, the shape was going to be different, and I decided to go with the awesome Tag Topper punches, the Scallop Tag Topper and Ornate Tag Topper which meant the tags were also much smaller. I wanted to keep the overall design simpler because there were so many projects for the ladies to create at the Christmas in July event, that these needed to be easy to make.

So I eliminated the extra banner shape layer and also the stamped greeting. I love how striking they are with the Cherry Cobbler, Black and silver colour combo.

Shortly after this (before I had finished packing away all the equipment and materials from that event), I promised to put in an entry for a colour challenge on one of our demonstrator forums. The colours were Island Indigo, Old Olive and Silver and the sample card was Christmas themed.

Right away I thought of recreating these tags again, but with a new colour combo. This was fun, and I just love how they came up.

Did you know that the Festival of Trees Stamp Set and the Tree Punch are still available as a "Bundle and Save 15%" item in the Annual Catalogue? In fact there are 35 stamp sets available in 65 Bundle options in the Annual catalogue, where you save 15% by purchasing the coordinating items together. That is totally awesome!

I will be featuring lots of these bundles during August, so click on the subscibe button at the top of my blog page to enter your email address to make sure you don't miss out on seeing any of these bundles in action!

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How Uber Cute are these gift tags I made using the very sweet stamp set Santa's Gifts which is a set of 10 stamps on page 68 of our 2015-2016 Stampin' Up! Annual Catalogue.

I don't even own this set, I just borrowed it off a demonstrator friend at a recent stamping get together (that's what you do when you're part of an awesome Stampin' Up! team - you get together and stamp), and I stamped a few images in Memento Black Ink on Whisper White card, to have a play around with.

So glad I did! These tags ended up on a tree full of gift tags for a display at our recent Christmas in July event, along with a stack of other tags I made.

And notice the Cherry Cobbler tag right at the top of the tree with the Christmas trees on it? That tree stamp is from the same set.

The other stamp sets predominantly used here are the new Lots of Joy stamp set and a returning favourite, Festival of Trees stamp set.

I stamped enough images from Santa's Gifts to do a couple of other things, and since I was on a bit of a roll with the gorgeous Floral Frames Accordian cards (see my older post for more details on that), I decided to make one more with these fun images.

I just loved how this card turned out with it's soft neutral background and lovely, cheery bright images.

These are just a couple of the cute Christmas stamp sets in Stampin' Up!'s offering this year.

Did you know a brand new Holiday Catalogue comes out in September. Please let me know if you'd like me to post a copy to you, I should have my stocks of them in the next week or so.

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Have you seen one of the popular techniques going around at the moment?

Pop-Out Swing Cards

Everyone's making them and when I had to make a birthday card recently for a special person, I decided I would give it a go, instead of just making a standard card. 

I actually can't believe how easy it was to just whip this card up!

For the front panel, I used the Square Framelits to cut the window - they just happen to be on the Weekly Deals this week (Wed 5th Aug to Tues 11th Aug) in case you were thinking they might be a must have in your collection!

The cute candles are from the Build a Birthday stamp set on page 11 of our Annual Catalogue.

This is the kind of card we make at my Stamp Club or my Business Women's Unlock your Creativity Networking group - nice and easy so you can recreate it at home, but plenty of wow factor so you can give it someone special.

If you are looking for project inspiration that isn't hard to repeat when you get home, ask me about my events today.

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Hi folks,

Sorry its taken me so long! I just had to come on and share some of our photos from our Christmas in July event - it was such a fun day - so many creative people in one room!

A huge thank you to everyone who came along - we hope you got to make the gift card tote, the self-closing box, the pop-up diamond card, the floral frames card, the three gift tags and the four cute birdie note cards - or at least take home all the pieces and instructions!

Also a massive thank you to all the members of the Aussie Inkpressionist Stampin' Up! team for making such wonderful displays, fantastic projects for the guests to make, clever demonstrations, delicious food and bringing along your team members, family, friends and guests to enjoy the wonderful day!

We should definitely do more days like this!

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