Wednesday, 17 September 2025

Traditions of Christmas for the New at SU! Blog Hop

Hello and welcome to my blog. Today, I am participating in the New at SU! blog hop. We are a group of Stampin' Up!® demonstrators from around the world who are full of creative papercrafting ideas to share with you to get you crafting. We are showcasing projects using new products from the September to December Mini Catalogue and the latest Online Exclusives release. It's a great opportunity to see new products in action!

I am using the Traditions of Christmas Suite together with the fantastic Branching Out dies. These can both be found in the September to December Mini Catalogue.

I recently made a batch of Christmas cards for a Team Swap (more of that in another post!) using traditional greens and reds. This time I am using a similar layout but I've chosen some of the other colours included in the suite (Pool Party and Secret Sea) alongside Real Red. The Designer Series Paper packs are always a good starting point when you are deciding on a colourway as the featured colours are listed on the back of the pack for easy reference.

The embossing folder included in the Traditions of Christams Suite is a large style one. I have centred my Pool Party layer within the wreath embossing it entirely. The open area in the middle is hidden my the stacking layers cut using the Branching Out dies. I love that they nest within each other and that they have stitching around the edge.

With the Christmas Greenery dies not only do you have the ability to crop out images from the stamp set but also some of the images on the Designer Series Paper. I cut out the ribbon tied posy for my focal point and embellished it further with die cut leaves, Baker's Twine/Iridescent Ribbon and sparkly dots. The flowers really pop against the plainer Secret Sea DSP.

The sentiment, from the Keeping Traditions set, is stamped and heat embossed for that lovely shiny raised appearance, and the ends are dove-tailed so that they sit within the edges of the frame. For the card with the red flowers I used gold embellishments, but for the lighter flowers I chose to use white Baker's Twine and heat embossing for a softer look.

Usually, when I have made a card that is exactly the same but with a different colour combination I choose a favourite. This time I like them both equally. I hope that you have been inspired by my project today. What element will you use on your next creation? Continuing along the hop to the others will provide you with even more project ideas - you are currently with me, Furry Cat Designs by Karen Henderson - but before you hop on to the next post, please take a moment to leave a comment. We love reading your comments!

Do you need any of the products used on today's cards? If you live in the UK please take a look in my online Stampin' Up! shop. You can follow the link or click on the pictures below of the products I have used today.

Stay safe and as always, happy crafting,

If you would like to order any supplies, and you live in the UK, I would love to be your demonstrator. To place an order please visit my online shop HERE. The products I have used on today's project are linked from the images shown below.

All Star Video Class Bundles

The Video Class Bundles have 12 AMAZING video tutorials to inspire you each month. For September, we are featuring the Painterly Pears Suite.

Click HERE to purchase.

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Click on the images of the products I have used today to purchase them in my online shop:

Saturday, 13 September 2025

Stamping Inkspirations Blog Hop - Tic Tac Toe Challenge

Hello and welcome to my blog! Today I am taking part in a blog hop with some fellow enthusiasts who love sharing their creative talents using their Stampin' Up!® products. This month in the Stamping Inkspirations Blog Hop we are creating projects using a Tic Tac Toe grid for our inspiration.

To create the project a line is selected - horizontal, vertical or diagonal so that at least three elements are combined to create a card. The board is open to interpretation, so there are endless possibilities!

I selected the diagonal line including orange, layers and torn. Orange is not a colour that I use frequently. However, I am becoming a fan of Timid Tiger and particularly a sheet of Designer Series Paper in the Floral Charm pack, which is where my card began.

After starting with that sheet of Timid Tiger DSP I quickly decided I also wanted to use the Layers of Beauty bundle. The flowers are beautiful and colouring them with the blending brushes through the masks is so effective. The masks do all the hard work adding the shading in just the right places. I prefer to use one ink pad for the flowers and another to colour the leaves. Layering the same colour through the different masks creates a natural graduation of tone on tone colour. I used Timid Tiger for the petals and Mossy Meadow for the leaves.

The sentiment is white heat embossed on a Mossy Meadow strip. I scrunched up the card which made tearing the edges much easier, but the embossing powder tried to stick to the wrong places! (I used the putty end of my Take Your Pick tool to remove the stray grains of powder.)

The corners of the Mossy Meadow and DSP layers were distressed and curled which not only fulfilled the layers component of the Tic Tac Toe grid but look almost torn too.

The flowers are mounted on dimensionals which allows for the addition of linen thread and curled die cut foliage to be tucked underneath. These layers sit on a Cazun Craze base card which has tone on tone flowers stamped on to it adding another layer to the card. The Cajun Craze and Gold dots are the perfect finishing touch to the card - I added some to the background and some of the smaller ones to the centre of the flowers.

This card just evoloved without really knowing how it would end up, but thankfully it worked. What do you think? Please continue along the hop to see what the others have created too...enjoy the projects! We would love to hear from you and so if you have been inspired, please leave a comment.