Two in one challenges

Today I decided to combine two challenges into one card.

The Freshly Made Sketches challenge no. 123

And the Create with Connie and Mary no. 290

Island Indigo has to be one of my all time favourite colours (along with Rich Razzleberry) and I was so happy that Stampin' Up! didn't retire it.

I did in fact make two cards but this is the one that I'm going to enter into the challenges.

Here's a view from the side - just realised that I need to add some Whisper White to the inside too. I'll do that later.

I used the Rock and Roll technique to ink the stamp - firstly inking up with the Smoky Slate and then rolling the edges in either the Island Indigo or Daffodil Delight.

Stampin' Up! supplies used:

Stamp set : Lacy and Lovely, and Wetlands (greeting)
Card stock : Island Indigo, Daffodil Delight and Whisper White
Ink : Island Indigo, Daffodil Delight and Smoky Slate
Accessories : 1" Circle Punch, Island Indigo Baker's Twine, and Basic Rhinestones

I'll post the other card sometime over the weekend. I'm off to sunny Florida later today (wind permitting) to  visit a college with my son Michael. I have to admit that I won't miss all the rain here in the UK, I only hope that the whole place hasn't floated away by the time I get back next weekend.

More Convention News

So, Friday night was award night. We all got to dress up - some people went completely over the top with long dresses etc but I decided to be a little more informal.

As we entered the conference centre we were greeted by some of the staff from the Home Office and Demo Support and were each given our own country's flag to wave. Here's Chris, he is one of the team from Demo Support in Germany. He and Andre (not pictured) look after us UK demo's, and they do a brilliant job of it.

Friday night is our chance to applaud all the demonstrators who received some form of recognition because of their great leadership or sales.  There were quite a few from the team who got to "walk the walk" across the stage, including our esteemed leader, Natalie (she of the star impersonation in the previous post). And I have to thank my fantastic downlines because I got to go up for a leadership award.  I have to admit that I was going to give it a miss but there was quite a few of us and I thought that I would be able to slip through unnoticed. It didn't quite work that way because we were all asked to walk heads held up high and wave, and like a good girl I did!!!

Not quite the royal wave, but at least I did it!

I have a small team of lovely downlines, but we are growing and I'm proud to say that I'm even a Stampin' Up! great-grandma now.

After the awards it was off to the after party. We all had a great time messing around in the photo booths. I can honestly say I've not laughed as much or as hard in ages.  I'm not sure that I can show you all of the photos, but here is one.

We had 10 seconds between each photo to change hats, glasses etc. In normal circumstances that would be fine but we were laughing so much it proved impossible.

Anyway, enough of Friday night. I am sure you are really wanting to see some more ideas and inspiration. So here's a few more.

I'm sorry to say that with the exception of the last one, I can't tell you who made these cards as they were pinned to boards. The last card was made by Marine Wiplier from France. Marine made this card as one of the Workshop Wows. It is really cute and there were other examples made by her that were pinned to the boards.

Another Wetlands

Here is another project made using the fabulous Wetlands stamp set. This time I decided to keep it pretty plain and simple and used only colours from the Neutrals family collection (except for the tag- see note below).

Stampin' Up! supplies used:

Stamp sets : Wetlands and Teeny Tiny Sentiments
Card stock : Very Vanilla and Baked Brown Sugar (closest I had to Soft Suede)
Stampin' Write Markers : Crumb Cake and Soft Suede
Accessories : Word Window Punch, Linen Thread, Naturals Trim, Glue Dots and Dimensionals

In case you are wondering, the corn stalks in the background are supposed to be like that (honest). I simply stamped the third one without having re-inked the stamp.

Please note, that I had to use Baked Brown Sugar card stock to make the coloured banners as I don't have any Soft Suede card stock over here. I guess I may have gotten away with it had I not just confessed to the fact. I simply punched the card stock using the Word Window punch and then snipped one end to make the banner.

Don't forget to check out the Blog Hop on 2 September - it should go live at 10.00 am. I'm sure mine will be posted earlier than that, but all the links may not work until 10.00 am.

Wetlands

One of the stamp sets that I brought over with me is the new Wetlands set.

I've seen some fabulous cards made with this set and wanted to play while I was away.

One of the effects that I've seen is where the stamped images are sponged with differing colours. I don't have many ink pads with me so this technique is just not going to work for me at the moment. What I do have are some of my Stampin' Write Markers and also some of my Clear Acrylic Blocks, so I decided to try one of the techniques that was demo'd at Regional Training a few months ago. You may recall the cards I made using the Zoo Review stamp set.

So, here are the two cards that I made yesterday using the Acrylic Block Background Technique.

The background on the left had less water spritzed on the block.

One of the things that I love about this technique is that no two backgrounds come out the same. It is also simple to do so long as you have water based markers. The Stampin' Write Markers have exactly the same ink in them as the Stampin' Ink Pads so they are a great substitute if you can not afford to buy or store a whole lot of the ink pads.

Stampin ' Up! supplies used:

Stamp set : Wetlands
Card stock : Very Vanilla, Pool Party and Island Indigo
Stampin' Write Markers : Pool Party, Marina Mist, Crumb Cake,  Calypso Coral and So Saffron
Ink Pad : StazOn Jet Black

I will have one more post to do before I head back to the UK tomorrow night. I also have a project to make for the Stampin' Stars blog hop that is happening on 2 September.  Check back tomorrow to see what else I have been up to while I've been here but if you don't get a chance don't forget to check back on 2 September to hop around the blog hop that I've been organising.