Happy New Year Stampers!

It's Kathryn here, and I'm back with the second half of the Art With Heart 2020-2021 Colour Creations Showcase.

This week we have the very versatile Night of Navy from the Neutrals Colour Family. Night of Navy has been in the Stampin' Up! colour range for as long as I can remember, at times being the "new black" and always being a staple colour, for it's versatility.

I have created the colour combination chart this week from the colours in the lovely Paper Blooms 12" x 12" Designer Series Paper which is one of the free gifts you can select during Sale-a-bration with your $90 product order.

The paper coordinates with products in the new January to June mini catalogue, but you'll see that you don't have to have ALL the coordinating products to produce gorgeous matching projects.

After the crazy year that was 2020, I decided that I didn't need a day to a page diary or planner this year and I got myself a $2.48 week to a view A5 diary, knowing that I could easily cover it with Stampin' Up! paper to make it pretty!

I thought the sentiment from Ridiculously Awesome Stamp Set was a perfect fit to adorn the cover going into a new year, and I added a bookmark to keep track of the weeks.

On the inside first page I put a little affirmation - also from the Ridiculously Awesome stamp set, and on the week beginning March 1st, I added another - being the first week of Semester 1 for my third year at uni. I love that the Night of Navy ink matches the printing in the diary.

Covering the diary was so easy - just like you would with school books, and once I had all the papers out, I wanted to use all of them - they are so pretty! So I decided to whip up a really quick stack of birthday cards, to get me started with the 2021 birthday mail outs.

All I've done is layer a piece of the Designer Series Paper onto  Night of Navy card bases and added the fun sentiment stamp using layering dies.  A few different rhinestones finish them off.

On two of the cards, I also used the little white fabric flowers out of the Boho Indigo card kit to add more texture. And of course I added a strip of the lovely paper to the insides.

I'd love you to leave a comment and let me know what you think and if you would like to see the rest of the beautiful Night of Navy Creations from the Art With Heart team stampers, my dear friend Cathy has all of the links on her blog post and you can find them by clicking HERE.

See you next week!

Kathryn Ruddick

Product List

Night Of Navy Classic Stampin' Pad [147110] $13.00	Night Of Navy A4 Card Stock [106577] $15.25	Paper Blooms 12" X 12" (30.5 X 30.5 Cm) Designer Series Paper [155222] $0.00
Sweet Ice Cream Photopolymer Stamp Set [154456] $30.00	Ridiculously Awesome Cling Stamp Set [152512] $38.00	Whisper White A4 Card Stock [106549] $17.00
Layering Ovals Dies [151771] $58.00	Stitched Rectangles Dies [151820] $61.00	Stitched So Sweetly Dies [151690] $56.00
Boho Indigo Product Medley (English) [153132] $122.00	Holiday Rhinestone Basic Jewels [150457] $10.50	Champagne Rhinestone Basic Jewels [151193] $10.50

My little treat for you today is another layout I created in an Altered Book many long moons ago. This book from what I remember, was titled Myths & Fantasy and the project for the month had to contain Slits, Slots & Holders!

Wow, what a challenge!

I decided on the story of Elaine - or The Lady of Shalott.  If you're an Anne of Green Gables fan, you will know immediately who I mean!  If not, it's a sweet story that ties in with the Lancelot and Guinevere legends of King Arthurs day and there are thousands of different versions, probably the most famous of which was rendered into a haunting (very long) poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson - The Lady of Shalott.

I decided that slits & slots would be covered by making Elaine's River for her little boat to float down, just as it did - floating silently into Camelot.  I cut the slot through several pages of the book to strengthen it, then attached the boat in such a way that you could slide it up and down the river.

For holders, I created a ribbon holder for the tiny book which contains the words of Tennyson's poem (in tiny print you can barely read!), and a cd holder embedded into the facing page. I then burned a copy of a gorgeous, musical rendition of the poem onto the cd so that it could be listened too and placed it in the book.

The gorgeous floral image behind the clear cd holder is a sticker, and I printed a famous "Lilymaid" image onto a cd label to place on the cd.

A final touch was to create an extra pocket behind the layout into which I slipped another version of the story of Elaine, taken from the book "The Sacred Lake" which was largely about the love between Gunievere and Lancelot. Unfortunately it was so long ago, I can't remember the author of this book - but I will look into it!

Hope that inspires you today, and if you don't have to go to work today like I do, then I wish you just enough time in the day to also enjoy some happy creativity!

Hi folks, hope you're having a nice week?

In Tuesday's post about Black Saturday, I included a tiny snippet of photo of some pop-up firemen - just like a chain of paper dolls.  This was a project I was happy to revisit, as it was another Altered Book Round Robin which I participated in about 5 years ago, and it took me quite some time to dig out the photos, so I hope you don't mind, but I thought I would share more of the project with you today.

The book theme was black & white photos, and the layout that month had to include pop-up's. Never one to shirk at a challenge, and influenced by the mood in the world at the time (the London bombings had only recently occurred), I decided on a pop-up that was reflective, but also celebrated the strength of the human spirit.

The small piece of text down on the right hand corner reads, "Inside every good heart is a hero waiting to happen".

I'm sure you'll agree that human adversity certainly brings out the hero in ordinary, every day folk.

Congratulations to all our "New Australians" who receive their Citizenship Certificates in Australia Day ceremonies across the country today.  We had the pleasure of attending such a ceremony in our nation's capital, Canberra, in 2009 - it was such a buzz!  (or maybe that was the 21 canon salute, or the FA-18 flyover!!).

To celebrate today, I have gone hunting through some OLD photos and dug up a favourite project I did in 2005.  I was working on lots of Altered Book projects at the time, and this one had the theme favourite places.  The month's project had to include "windows" in the page, so I embedded acetate sheets between several pages and created some windows which I stamped one of our favourite national emblems onto - yes, the kangaroo!

Anyway, here's what it looked like!

The words are just a couple of verses from the very moving Dorothea Mackellar Poem, My Country, one of my all-time favourites.

Don't you love that last line . . . I know to which brown country my homing thoughts will fly . . . ?

It's like when you walk down those long corridors at Heathrow after a month in Europe and suddenly you see row upon row of flying kangaroos - yes the tails of dozens of Qantas jets, and with tears in your eyes, you realise . . . you're going HOME!!  Home to the best country on earth! 

Have a great day - enjoy this beautiful fresh air and sunshine and I hope your day is blessed with beautiful happy family memories!