Welcome to this week’s CASEing the Catty blog hop.

Every Sunday night at 7pm AEST, the CTC Crew share great ideas from the latest Stampin’ Up! Catalogues.  We either directly CASE (Copy and Share Everything) a project in the catalogue, or we use an aspect like a layout or colour combo as inspiration for our own creations.
This week, we are sharing our projects inspired by our favourite Big Shot project in the 2017 Occasions Catalogue.

Come and join us! Make your own project and share it  in the CASEing the Catty Sunday Challenge Facebook Group.  

Hi friends,

It’s been too long since I joined in the CASEing The Catty weekly blog hop, so I’m thrilled to be back this week. How can I resist a theme like “Favourite Big Shot Project from the Occasions Catalogue”?

The hard part was narrowing it down to which project to focus on!

In the end, I couldn’t go past that fabulous shaker card in the top right corner of page 4.

It has been a great source of inspiration over the past few months of the Occasions Catalogue, and I’ve taught it at many classes, clubs and craft shows.

Today, I changed up the colour scheme and ended up with this one….

Paper used on this one is the fabulous and bright Festive Birthday Designer Series Paper.

With colours like Emerald Envy, Crushed Curry, Tempting Turquoise, Pumpkin Pie and Melon Mambo – it’s hard to resist.

Did you know that the Balloon Pop-Up Thinlits Dies and Balloon Adventures stamp set, which feature in this project, are HEAVILY discounted at the moment?! And (in Australia at least) are still available! They are currently on the retiring list, which means we KNOW that they will not be in the upcoming new annual catalogue. Very sad 🙁

So, if this die and stamp bundle is calling your name, make sure you grab it now before they are gone forever.

HOT HINT: Normally we use a different item code when we order sets as a bundle, but at the moment it’s actually cheaper to buy these two items separately! The stamps and dies are individually reduced, but the bundle is not.

View Balloon Adventures stamp set in the online store HERE.

View Balloon Pop-Up Thinlits dies in the online store HERE.

Continue on the blog hop this week to see more of the crew’s favourite projects. Next up, is Liz at Lillylovespaper – you can find her here and OH MY GOODNESS her project is totally stunning!

Happy stamping,

Hold on to your hats, friends. Look what I have to share with you today! The Stampin’ Up! Retiring List!

RETIRING LIST 2017

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Download Retiring List (Excel)
(sort by page number, percentage off, or alphabetical order)

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Download Retiring List (PDF)

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Yes, it’s that time of year again when we say goodbye to many of our favourite Stampin’ Up! stamps, tools and embellishments.

Some items are reduced by 50%! But regardless of price, they are only available WHILE SUPPLIES LAST. If there’s anything you want, it’s time to grab it now.

(Edited: some items are already sold out).

>> SHOP NOW <<

A few things to take note…

1. (Deep breath) The owl punch is retiring. Shocking, I know, I know. Just order it here. 
2. Over 195 items have sold out as of 11.45am! Seriously, don’t leave it too long.
   (Edited: FYI we originally thought the clear mount cases were retiring, but they will still be available to purchase even though they aren’t in the catalogue).
3. The 2015-2017 In Color products are retiring. Not a surprise, I know, but each year customers contact me looking to restock their In Color consumables (think -> cardstock and ink refills) but there’s nothing we can do! Don’t miss stocking up on them while they are still available. And if earlier years are anything to go by, they won’t be available for long.
4. Gorgeous Grunge is retiring. A staple in my collection, and one that has been hugely popular for my customers over the past couple of years. If you ever wanted it, and never got it, then you’ll definitely want to do that now. The Nailed It tool stamp retired too, but unfortunately it has already sold it! It was gone in minutes.
   [Edited again: Correction – Nailed It is still available but as a bundle with the framelits only! See it HERE]
   

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New Catalogue

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For Stampin’ Up! demonstrators around the world it’s a very exciting day because the upcoming annual catalogue is now available on our demonstrator website.

Lots of squeals and excitement already this morning.

For now, the catalogue is only available for demonstrators. But if you want to have a look, you’ll need to join us, which you can do right here. I would love to welcome you to our friendly team. A team who genuinely care and connect with each other, right here in Australia. Don’t become just another number. I offer personalised support for those who want to run a business, and respect those who just want an awesome discount. I’ve been with Stampin’ Up! for nearly 10 years, and run an ethical, supportive and authentic business. Sometimes you just have to follow your gut instinct.

OnStage

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And in further news…

Over the weekend, Stampin’ Up! hosted demonstrators from around the world at our 6-monthly convention. We were all there to celebrate Stampin’ Up! and each other, to welcome the new annual catalogue, and to learn about all the AMAZING new products coming our way. And yep, there really are AMAZING new products!

If you followed my Stamping With Simone Facebook page you may have seen my happy snaps and videos from Sydney.

Here are some more – including some sneak peeks of the new 2017-2018 Annual Catalogue!

Sydney is an impressive city, no doubt about. I was lucky enough to get up early on the last day and set up this time lapse video (tip: check out the ships!)
[Viewing via email? Visit website to see the video]

CentreStage Leadership Night

Friday night was our CentreStage leadership dinner at Luna Park in Sydney.

It was a brilliant dinner – very fancy schmancy – and I’m still dreaming about the desserts. Oh my.

We were treated to training delivered by Carrie Cudney Warner and Paula Critchlow, and given the ‘heads up’ about a few upcoming changes and improvements. It’s so nice to be treated with such respect and care by a company, and we certainly left feeling valued as leaders and demonstrators. And we left with gifts!

I was able to share the evening with 7 of my team, including my upline! What a treat! You have to be a title of Silver Elite and above to qualify to attend this event, and unfortunately not all those in my team could come, but those missing were certainly in my thoughts during the evening.

And here’s some of the fabulous loot I brought home after the dinner! Woohoo – can’t wait to ink up my new stamp sets. (We got more the next day too!)

Stamp sets, a cool journal and note-book, stylus pens, a Stampin’ Up! apron, heaps of post it notes and a really lovely bag. Thanks Stampin’ Up!

Also….. drum roll please….

We got the new catalogue! (We haven’t been allowed to share any details about the catalogue or the event, but we can from today).

Such a pretty cover! Of course we hardly got any sleep that night, from pouring over the catalogue and studying all 232 pages of it!

[Yes, it’s bigger than last year!]

OnStage

The next morning kicked off early with a 7.30am start. I was lucky enough to share a table with some team members and a new friend I met at the event (Hi Emma!).

The day was filled with training and presentations, crosses via video to OnStage Live (which was hosted in Amsterdam this year), food and even some crafting. In fact, we made 4 full cards using new products from the upcoming catalogue.

So there you go! I hope you enjoyed my wrap of OnStage in Sydney. Of course, we saw a lot more products, which I will share a little bit here and there, but none of it will actually be available to buy until 1st of June. In the meantime, make sure you study the Retiring List and get any last minute items you want. Some items sold out within minutes, so don’t leave it too long.

Happy stamping,

Colour INKspiration #6: Night of Navy, Pool Party, Calypso Coral and a touch of Gold meets Stampin’ Up!’s mini egg cartons

What an amazing colour palette we have for ColourInkspiration Challenge #5!

Such a striking combo, it actually made me want to run to the craft room to create something.

I pulled out my inks and papers, but in the end my eyes kept returning to the fabulous mini egg cartons that were sitting on my desk. I think they were calling my name. Check them out here.

They come in a pack of 8 neutral, uncoloured egg cartons, and you can dress them up any way you like! Very clever actually.

Colouring Stampin’ Up! Mini Egg Cartons

I added a few drops of ink refill to a spritzer, along with some Isocol rubbing alcohol, and sprayed the colour on to my box. The rubbing alcohol works great, because it evaporates really quickly and doesn’t seem to ‘wet’ the carton as much as spritzing with water. You could spritz with pure ink refill, I suppose, but the colour would be very intense, so I like to add a carrier like the rubbing alcohol.

I went for a mottled build up of colour as shown below…

And inside is a lovely box of treats for my ‘sweetheart’!

Get it? Sweet {heart}   <3

I played with lots of dies and embellishments and basically just had fun putting this little project together. Don’t forget to create matching “fill” for inside your box. The easiest way is to cut up coordinating cardstock with the fringe scissors.

Thanks for visiting today. Next stop is the fabulous Kelly Kent. You are going to LOVE her project.

I hope you enjoyed this 6th Colour INKspiration challenge. Each fortnight the crew inspires you with a blog hop as we unveil the new challenge colours, and you can join in on our challenge page! Come and join us. For a little bit of extra fun, each week the crew will pick a winner, and there’ll be a people’s choice winner too.  

Happy stamping,

Welcome to this week’s CASEing the Catty blog hop.
Every Sunday night at 7pm AEST/8pm AEDT, the CTC Crew share great ideas from the latest Stampin’ Up! Catalogues.  We either directly CASE (Copy and Share Everything) a project or we use a layout or even a colour combo as inspiration for our own creations.
This week, we are sharing our projects inspired by pages 46 – 49 of the 2017 Occasions Catalogue.

Come and join us! Make your own project and share it  in the CASEing the Catty Sunday Challenge Facebook Group.  

This week we were given pages 46-49 of the Occasions catalogue to look to for inspiration, and even though most of those belong to the Urban Underground suite I chose the fabulous Everyday Hero cards instead.

In particular, the striking comic strip (comic book) themed card on page 49. Here it is:

Oh my! I love this layout so much. And I think I’m not the only one 😉 You might see a few of these cards on our hop this week. xxx

I kept the same layout and stamp set but added a bit of GIRLPOWER to my comic strip card!

The trickiest part with these Comic Strip cards is coming up with the measurements, so I’ve made life a bit easier for you by listing those dimensions below.

MEASUREMENTS: Everyday Hero Comic Strip Card

NOTE: I start with A4 size paper which we use here in Australia and I believe it’s used in Europe too so I’ve used only millimetres.

CARD BASE:

21cm x 14.5cm, scored at 10.5cm (you’ll get 2 bases from one sheet of A4 cardstock, plus a few mm’s trimmed off). I used Thick Whisper White cardstock from Stampin’ Up!.

TOP ROW:

• 7cm x 4cm Blushing Bride
• 4cm x 2cm Sahara Sand

MIDDLE ROW:

• 4cm x 3cm Real Red (embossed with the Lucky Stars embossing folder)
• 6cm x 4cm Daffodil Delight

BOTTOM ROW:

• 9.5cm x 4.5cm Sahara Sand

SPACING:

There should be an even 5mm (half centimetre) spacing around each box.

Struggling with the spacing? Cut a 5mm strip of thick cardboard and use that as a DIY block divider.

For a bit of WOW, try adding some extra embellishments or raising the fussy cut pieces with Stampin’ Dimensionals.

Supergirl was stamped on Shimmery White cardstock in Stazon ink. Colour was added by first wetting each section and adding ink dipped on the end of an Aqua Painter. The colour will pool in the wet area, so the trick is to resist every urge to touch the paper until it’s totally dry.

Otherwise it will run = huge inky mess.

Yep, it really will 😉

Oh and those fabulous Pacific Point blue stars are from the Star Blast Edgelits dies. Have another look at those dies if you overlooked them originally. Seriously! They are much more versatile than they first seem, that’s for sure.

Well, that’s it for me this week!

Thanks for visiting but I hope you’ll stick with me as we continue on the blog hop. Our next stop is Judy May. Let’s see what she has created for us this week…

Happy stamping,

P.S. Have you booked your spot in this week’s pop-up and pop-out card class?

It’s a big call, I know. But I have to say it.

This colour combination is my favourite so far!

The challenge this time was to use Blushing Bride, Soft Sky and Sahara Sand.

And how adorable is our inspiration board? Love it! Bronwyn Eastley, the creator of Colour INKspiration challenges, is a genius at coming up with these fantastic colour combos inspired by other images.

I think I must have babies on the brain at the moment, so that’s the theme I went with.

Some friends are having babies, others are becoming grandparents for the very first time (how exciting!), and we had a few requests to do baby cards in stamp club this month too.

The lovely soft pastel colours are ideal for a baby card – although it was a little more challenging to use the colours on a single project.

This is what I ended up with….

This is an oversized card, which is 14.5cm x 14.5cm.

It features the Little Cuties stamp set from the Occasions catalogue, and the ‘hello’ and ‘baby’ stamps from Tin of Cards stamp set.

Also dabbled with a little bit of watercolour wash on the Shimmery White cardstock. Shimmery White gives great results for this kind of colouring, because it is more resistant to all the water that goes on. The rocking part was paper pieced onto the base – stamped and fussy cut from Sahara Sand cardstock.

Really lovely, soft colours that work beautifully together. Sahara Sand is a great neutral colour.

The Blushing Bride ribbon is a handy one for the collection too.

I hope you are enjoying seeing all the other projects using this colour combo – you can continue along the hop to visit Jackie’s blog here.

Happy stamping,

I hope you enjoyed this 5th Colour INKspiration challenge. Each fortnight the crew inspires you with a blog hop as we unveil the new challenge colours, and you can join in on our challenge page! Come and join us. For a little bit of extra fun, each week the crew will pick a winner, and there’ll be a people’s choice winner too.  

Welcome to this week’s CASEing the Catty blog hop.
Every Sunday night at 7pm AEST/8pm AEDT, the CTC Crew share great ideas from the latest Stampin’ Up! Catalogues.  We either directly CASE (Copy and Share Everything) a project in the catalogue, or we use an aspect like a layout or colour combo as inspiration for our own creations.
This week, we are sharing our projects inspired by pages 12 to 15 of the 2017 Sale-a-bration Brochure.

Come and join us! Make your own project and share it  in the CASEing the Catty Sunday Challenge Facebook Group.  

Tasty Trucks

Tasty Trucks is such a cute little Sale-a-bration item, and is proving to be quite popular with my customers.

That adorable truck alone is worth it!

Here is the lovely card that caught my eye for this week’s CASE-ing The Catty challenge:

Tasty Trucks is on page 12 of the Sale-a-bration brochure, and is a 16 piece photopolymer stamp set.

And here is what I came up with…

I kept everything fairly close to the original, although I did switch out the embossing folder and experimented with a touch of double embossing.

Have you tried that technique before?

Double Embossing

Simply run a panel of cardstock through the Big Shot with your chosen embossing folder, then run it through again after moving the cardstock slightly.

You end up with a very interesting look. I wanted the bricks to look a little smaller on my card, and I think it worked quite well.

The stamp set comes with a variety of cute little sentiments and smaller icon-type images… including:

• a cupcake,
• ice cream,
• hot dog,
• sausages,
• stack of pancakes
• and – a taco!

The taco is quite a big deal in our family. We are a fan of Taco Tuesday so that little taco has appeared in my planner more than once, and will no doubt be added to my collection of planner stamps. I’ll upload a picture of it in my planner over on my Facebook page.

The Happy Birthday was actually part of a longer sentiment, but I cut it apart as I often do if I want to get a bit more versatility out of the stamp. It saves me having to mask off the part I don’t want, and I can easily use different colours for the different words.

I hope you enjoyed my project today. Continue on to Kelly’s fabulous blog to see what she has in store for you today.

And as always, please feel free to join in if you’d like to CASE (copy & share) your own project from pages 12 to 15 of the Sale-a-bration brochure.

Happy stamping,