Botanicals · Techniques

Spotlight on Flowers

Howdy, friends! Did you miss me? Last week didn’t exactly turn out as I had planned. I had grand plans for all of last week’s posts and then our schedules just kinda imploded. Between a major office furniture swap out and then a home update project, last week was chocked FULL and I didn’t have anything left for crafts.

Sooo here we are in a brand new week and I finally get to bring you all the fun ideas I have for this new design theme — the spotlight technique. Typically, this technique will, in some way, repeat a pattern or an image in a fresh, new way. Today, we’re using the elevated coloring method to spotlight a portion of the Flowers Fair stamped image.

We get started with a background of Blackberry Bliss cardstock. The focal panel backdrop is a quarter panel of white cardstock stamped with the Flowers Fair stamp and then cut to size with the largest Perennial Postage die. A second white quarter panel is also stamped with the identical image and then we use one of 2025 Advent Calendar dies to cut out a small portion of the image and then color it with Stampin Blends. The small colored panel is matted with pink shimmer paper and the two are adhered together with dimensionals. We wrap our background panel with pink ribbon before adhering it to our card front with dimensionals. The spotlight panel is adhered in place with dimensionals so it is just above its uncolored counterpart in the image below. The sentiment from the Rolling Waves stamp set is heat embossed in silver on Blackberry Bliss cardstock and then cut out with the Stylish Shapes banner due. Some pink flat pearls in opposing corners finish things off perfectly.

I hope you’ll drop in again to see what other spotlight methods we’ll be using this week!

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Botanicals · sketches

So Grateful

Welcome to the weekend. I hope you enjoyed some weather as lovely as we did here today. It was spring in every way — warm temps, breezy, and sunny. We got some spring cleaning done both inside and outside today.

And speaking of spring, this week we’ve been using all the spring flowers to create our projects and using a sketch as design inspiration. Today we’re pairing up the Delicate Dreams paper with a sketch from the gold folks over at the Global Design Project.

We get started with a base of Crumb Cake cardstock. our background panel comes from the Nature Walk paper pack. I used the Everyday Arches dies to create our focal panel. Our mat is a sheet of Misty Moonlight glimmer paper from the Peaceful Garden glimmer pack and then our focal panel is from the Delicate Dreams pack. The panel is wrapped with some white & gold ribbon tied in a decorative knot. The sentiment from the Sentimental Framing stamp set is stamped in Secret Sea on white cardstock and then diecut with the Word of Beauty dies and then adhered at the base of the focal panel with dimensionals. We finish things off with opal rounds and hues of blue flowers.

Thanks for hopping along with me this week. I hope you’ve enjoyed this series.

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Botanicals · sketches

Have the Best Day

TGIF — am I right friends? It’s been a long week, but we all made it! I must say I’m lamenting the fact that’s it’s Friday just a little bit, but that’s because my kiddo is gone for the next week. It sure will be quiet around here!

This week, our design them has circled around spring and we’ve been using sketches to get the ball rolling. Today we’re bringing out an oldie but goodie. We’re pairing up the Perennial Lavender paper with a sketch from the good folks over at Freshly Made Sketches.

We get started with a neutral base of Crumb Cake cardstock. Our focal panel from the Perennial Lavender pack is double matted with a combination of garden textures foil paper and shimmer paper. The combination of the dark blue and light pink really bring out the darks and lights of the floral pattern sheet. The banner is cut from a purple sheet from the pack using the Stylish Shapes banner die, which serves as the perfect backdrop for the sentiment. The sentiment from the Cutest Crew stamp set is stamped in Gorgeous Grape on a white banner cut with the smaller banner die from the same set. The two banners are adhered together to form one panel and are then adhered over the pink ribbon with dimensionals. We finish everything off with a scattering of purple shimmer gems.

We’ll be wrapping up our series tomorrow and I hope you’ll drop by to see what pairing finishes things off.

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Botanicals · sketches

Peaceful Birthday

Welcome back! I’m sure glad you stopped by today. This week, our design theme is inspired by spring and we’re pairing up our spring theme with a sketch each day to make it super easy to pull together a card each day. Today we’re using the Peaceful Garden patterned papers and pairing it with a sketch from the folks over at Atlantic Hearts Sketch Challenge.

We get started on our card with a base of Secret Sea cardstock. I chose a more neutral pattern from the Peaceful Garden pack and then a sheet that would compliment my chosen focal image. I placed the busier Secret Sea floral pattern on the bottom and then have the neutral Crumb Cake pattern as the half circle on top. The Layers of Beauty image is stamped in black on white cardstock and then the leaves and daisy centers are colored with Stampin’ Blends. The centers of the roses have a touch of Wink of Stella for a little twinkle. Our focal image is adhered onto the card front with dimensionals. The sentiment from the new Rolling Waves set is stamped in Secret Sea on a white banner that has been cut with one of the smaller banner dies from the Stylish Shapes set. The sentiment is mounted over some Old Olive rickrack with several layers of dimensionals. We finish things off with a few Old Olive sparkle dots.

This one is truly easy to make and such a stunner! I’m going to try it with some other larger floral images in the stash! I hope you’ll drop in tomorrow to see what goodies come to the party next.

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Botanicals · sketches

Glad We’re Friends

Welcome in on this wonderful Wednesday! I’ve been confused about what day of the week it is all day today. I’m pretty sure I’ve called it every day of the week but Wednesday. Not sure what exactly has me turned upside down, but hopefully I’ll keep things straight tomorrow!

This week, we’re exploring the crafty stash to create some spring-inspired cards and we’re using a new sketch each day to get started. Funny enough, Texas weather has decided to send us back to winter and we’re expecting temps back down close to freezing tomorrow morning. This week has truly been a don’t like the weather? just wait a minute kinda situation! So needless to say, I’m dreaming of all the pretty flowers I’ll be buying over the weekend.

Today we’re pairing up the Florals in Bloom paper with a sketch by the good folks over at Atlantic Hearts Sketch Challenge. We get started with a base of Secret Sea cardstock because I really love how the contrast provides an extra pop for our focal panel. The background pattern is a sheet of the Secret Sea patterned paper from the Florals in Bloom pack. Our focal panel is double-matted with a combination of Pool Party shimmer paper and some Berry Burst garden textures specialty paper. I love how this combination really pulls out the colors in the floral pattern sheet of the Florals in Bloom that sits in the center. I used a double twist of the new Berry Burst shiny ribbon as the drop-down element and backdrop for the sentiment. The sentiment is from the new Cutest Crew stamp set and is stamped in Secret Sea on white cardstock and then cut into a banner shape with the Stylish Shapes die. We finish things off with some Berry Burst garden epoxy dots.

I took some liberties with today’s sketch. What do you think of this variation? Can you see where I made some swaps? Do you ever go off the reservation from your inspiration piece? I hope you’ll drop in tomorrow to see what combo we play with next!

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Botanicals · Online Exclusives

Sending Blossoms of Love

Welcome to the weekend, everyone! It’s a rainy Saturday here in North Texas. And while I have lots of things on the outside spring to-do list, the indoor activities won out today. I started the day providing music for a funeral and then spent the afternoon at the kiddo’s Academic Pentathlon district meet, where he placed individually in Literature and then took several medals with his team. And before hitting the home to-do list, I’ve stolen a little time in the craft room to bring some of my own sunshine to this overall dreary day.

This week, we’ve been letting spring inspire our designs. And today is all about the gorgeous Lovely & Beautiful patterned paper, along with a few other things from the crafty stash, and a sketch as we create this beautiful encouragement card.

Because I’ve got a list of things to do, I wanted to create a beautiful card but without a lot of time spent on designing from the ground up. And what helps the most in those situations? For me, sketches are a must! So we’re using #719 by the Freshly Made Sketches team to make quick work of today’s card.

We get started with a base of Fresh Freesia cardstock. A sheet of the small floral pattern from the Lovely & Beautiful paper pack serves as our background pattern. A strip of Fresh Freesia helps break up our busy patterned background and we spruce it up just a touch by machine embossing our strip with the Beautiful Patterns embossing folder. From a scrap of one of the larger floral patterned sheets from the Lovely & Beautiful pack, I cut a gorgeous peony and adhered it on the left with dimensionals. The sentiment from the Fabulous Sayings stamp set is stamped in Versamark and then heat embossed in gold before being diecut with the Nested Essentials banner die using the extension method to get it just the right size. The vellum sentiment panel is adhered over the flower with mini glue dots. We finish things off with some pearlized faceted gems for just a touch of twinkle.

There are so many more beautiful spring florals in the current Stampin’ Up! lineup that I think we’re going to continue it for one more week. Do you have any current floral-y favorites you’d like to see? Maybe they’re in my stash. Drop me some suggestions in the comments! Until then, see you next week.

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Botanicals · Online Exclusives

Delicate Thoughts

Welcome back for today’s bonus post. This week’s theme is all about spring as things here in my area are certainly starting to feel like spring, including last night’s storms! But with spring showers come spring flowers and isn’t that what we’re all in for?! Today’s bonus card is showcasing more of the Delicate Dreams suite as we pair the Delicate Dreams and Delicate Designs foil papers to create this lovely thinking of you design.

The layout for today’s card uses Sketch 276 from the Freshly Made Sketches team as the starting point. We get started with a base of Misty Moonlight cardstock. Our base layer combines the small blue floral pattern from the Delicate Dreams pack and the leaf pattern from the Delicate Designs pack and then separated with some Misty Moonlight and silver edged ribbon in a faux book binding look. Our focal panel plays double duty as our sentiment panel. The sentiment from With You In Mind is stamped in Versamark on vellum and then heat embossed with copper. The panel is cut with the Label Me Grateful panel die and then adhered over some leaf fronds cut with the same die set from a combination of earthen toned metallic and blue garden textures foil sheets. We finish things off with a combination of metallic gems on our sentiment panel and then blue opal rounds surrounding our focal panel.

This paper is just so beautiful that I keep turning to it. But I promise I’ll be branching out into some other goodies in the crafty stash tomorrow as we continue our spring design series! Hope to see you then!

Edited to add: would you like to know what happens when you get in a hurry to post your card because you’re so excited about how it turns out? You forget to actually insert it in your post. DOH!

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Botanicals · florals · Online Exclusives

Floral Hello

Welcome in, friends, on this very soggy day. We experienced some record-breaking rainfall in our area yesterday, which made yesterday’s commute home very interesting and is sure to impact this morning’s commute, as well.

Today is going to be a two-post day since my evening didn’t go quite as planned yesterday — I’ll tell you a bit more about that later. This week, we’re tipping our hats to spring with all of our projects. And today we’re letting the brand new Flowers Fair background stamp and the Delicate Dreams foiled paper take center stage.

We get started with a base of white cardstock. A sheet of the small floral patterned paper from the new Delicate Dreams paper pack serves as the backdrop for our focal panel. The focal panel starts with a quarter-panel of Cloud Cover cardstock where we stamp the new Flowers Fair image in black. Using a combination of Pretty in Pink, Berry Burst, and Lost Lagoon Stampin’ Blend markers, the image is colored in. The panel is cut down to size for our card front using the Branching Out dies. I wrapped some of the new Berry Burst shiny ribbon around the midsection of the panel and then adhered the sentiment panel over it. The sentiment panel starts with a mat of the Earthen Toned metallic paper that is cut with the larger sentiment die from the Words of Beauty set. The sentiment panel is cut from white cardstock with the smaller sentiment die from the same die set. Then we carefully stamp the sentiment using a combination of stamps from the Wonderful Thoughts stamp set using Blackberry Bliss ink. We finish things off with our embellishments — a dash of Wink of Stella to the lighter pink flowers, some smaller iridescent pearls to the sentiment panel, and a few metallic dots on either side of our focal panel.

I really love how this card came together. And this is truly one of those instances where the whole design evolved as I went and pulled new crafty goodness that I wanted to be sure to include.

Now how about a little backstory on how my evening didn’t go to plan. Aside from the exceedingly long and rainy commute home, one of the feral kitties we’ve been feeding finally returned to our porch last night in between bands of rain. Yes, we’re some of those crazy cat people!

She’s quite young — likely approaching her first season — and super friendly. While she’s naturally skittish, if she figures out that you’re one of the nice ones, she sticks to you like glue and just wants all the pets. We’re calling her Ava. So needless to say, we quickly began formulating a plan to try to catch her the next time she appeared so that we could get her vetted, fixed, and put up for adoption through our local rescue group.

Last night, she was being pursued by a suitor in our driveway and I went outside to see if I could call her up. I called once and she came running — suitor hot on her tail….until he caught sight of me. After she snacked for a bit and got lots of pets, I swooped her up and brought her inside with our feral momma kitty who is close to her release date. So she got to stay safe and dry during last night’s torrential rains and we’re now making plans to find her a happy home.

Hopefully this evening will be a little less eventful and I can bring you the card I have in mind for today. As always, thanks for popping in and I hope you’re enjoying this week’s series so far!

Products used in today’s card:
Basic White, Cloud Cover cardstock
Delicate Dreams, Earthen Toned metallic DSP
Branching Out, Words of Beauty dies
Flowers Fair, Wonderful Thoughts stamps
Stampin’ Blends
Wink of Stella
Berry Burst shiny ribbon
Iridescent basic pearls, metallic dots
Dimensionals

Coming Soon · Online Exclusives · Sketchy Fridays

Sketchy Fridays: Little Howl-lo

Happy Friday! We finally made it. You know, it’s so funny. I was in a work meeting today and we were all talking about how the last two weeks have felt like a month and it’s just been CRAZY. Anybody else been in the boat? BUT we’re finally to the weekend and get a little breather.

And I thought this was the perfect opportunity to have a Sketchy Friday. What do you think? For those of you who are new here, Sketchy Fridays is a weekly series where we use a card sketch to design our featured card.

Funny enough, I was drawn to a sketch that I used the last time I hosted a Sketchy Fridays post. Clearly, it must be a good one! Soooo this week’s card is based on the Freshly Made Sketches #706 sketch. As I was trying to find a sketch to go with the idea in my head to best show off the adorable new bundle called Cutest Crew, this one caught my eye. So here we go.

We get started with a neutral base of Crumb Cake cardstock. Our focal panel sits on a background of the brand new Garden Textures foil that will release next week. The base of the focal panel is a combination of a neutral geometric pattern from the Autumn Toile paper pack with a border of Earthen Toned metallic paper and adhered to the card front with dimensionals. The focal panel starts with a banner of Crumb Cake cardstock cut with the Nested Essentials dies. We heat emboss our sentiment from the new Cutest Crew stamp set in copper. Our cute band of doggos is from the new Cutest Crew stamp & die bundle releasing next week. We start by stamping the band of merry furballs onto white in black ink and then color them with an assortment of Stampin’ Blends, including Crumb Cake, Basic Gray, Basic Black, and a few others. The puppers are adhered to our focal panel with dimensionals. The full focal panel is adhered to the larger base with dimensionals over some Gray Granite variegated trim and Cloud Cover baker’s twine from the 2025 Advent Calendar. We finish thigs off with some opal rounds on opposite corners of our sentiment to draw our eyes across our adorable scene.

We’re rounding out our critter series tomorrow. Do you have any critter favorites that might be in my crafty stash? Drop me some suggestions and see if yours makes the cut!

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Coming Soon · L2S Group Instahop · Online Exclusives

Purrrfect Day

Happy Thursday, friends! We are almost through this week and on to the weekend. I’m super excited to bring you today’s card design because we’re getting sneak peeks at several new Stampin’ Up! goodies coming your way next week with the new Online Exclusives release. This week, our design theme is all about our favorite critters and there are some adorable critters coming your way! We’re pairing up the brand NEW Cutest Crew stamp & die bundle with the Easter Joy foil papers to bring together this adorably cheerful card. Let’s see how it all comes together!

We get started with a nice neutral base of Crumb Cake cardstock. It works well to bring out the pastels in the patterned papers without competing with them. (And trust me, I tried all kinds of colors as the base layer and the neutral worked the best!). Our background layer is a fun multicolor cross pattern from the Easter Joy foiled paper pack. There’s just enough peeking out around the edges to add some interest and pizzazz without taking away from the focal panel scene.

And speaking of our focal panel. We get started with the focal panel mat which is a brand new patterned foil paper coming your way next week in the Garden Textures foil pack. This panel is cut with the largest arch in the Everyday Arches die set. I chose the Blueberry Bushel sheet to help our focal panel stand out against our patterned background, and it also works to help the pastels in our scene pop. Our focal panel on which we’re building our scene is one of the ready-made panels in the Easter Joy paper pack. I used the next-smallest die in the Everyday Arches set to cut it out.

And then we get started with our cute kitties who are enjoying a romp on the grassy hill chasing butterflies. These adorable felines are part of the new Cutest Crew stamp set & die bundle releasing next week. I stamped the kittens on white cardstock and then used a combination of Stampin’ Blends to color them before using the coordinating dies and paper snips to cut them out. They adhered to the scene with a combination of glue dots and dimensionals to give lots of depth of scene. The butterflies are cut from Lemon Lolly pastel shimmer paper and adhered with glue dots. The sentiment from the Unforgettable Times ephemera pack is adhered over Secret Sea bordered ribbon using dimensionals. A double layer helps the sentiment to really stand above everything else and catch the eye. We finish things off with some flowers from the new garden epoxy dots pack and some pops of twinkle with the pearlized faeted circles.

Isn’t this super fun? We’re going to get a peek at a few more critters tomorrow as we return to the lazy days of breezy summers. I hope you’ll drop in and see what cutie critters are up next!

Today’s card is a part of the Luv 2 Stamp Group Instagram Hop, which goes live at 9 AM Pacific Time (PST).  Click here to head over to my Instagram feed at 9 AM Pacific/11 AM Central and check out what the other demos in our L2S Group have created for you today! 

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