Wacky Watercooler Welcome 2015 Blog Hop!

Welcome back to the first Wacky Watercooler Blog Hop of 2015!

This time around, we’ve again been ‘assigned’ another Watercooler member to ‘case’ (Copy And Share Everything) for a project from last year’s Sale-a-bration or Occasions Catalogue, as well as choose a favourite stamp set or product from any of the current, and for the last project, I decided to choose an item that’s currently in the Clearance Rack, that I think you should add to your shopping cart!

If this is your first Hop, it’s easy peasy; all the blogs are linked in a circular fashion, so all you have to do is hit either the ‘Next’ or ‘Previous’ button to move to the next blog, or if you hit the ‘Home’ button, that will take you to the Wacky Watercooler home site, where you’ll find a list of all the participating blogs for this hop.

If you’ve been travelling in a forward motion – using the ‘Next’ button – then you’ll have arrived here from my talented friend Priscilla Ivler’s blog; isn’t Priscilla super-talented?! I love visiting her blog! If you’ve been traveling backwards, then you’ve arrived from my fellow B.C. Canada gal, Stefanie Pletscher. We Canadians know how to rock a blog hop, don’t we?!

I’d like to start with a project I cased from another talented Canadian gal – my friend Terri Antoniw! Terri is amazing, and I’m glad it was her name drawn for me to CASE. The hardest part was deciding what to CASE!!

I finally decided on this card; it’s not my typical style, but I love it, so I thought it would help push me out of my comfort zone a bit. Here is Terri’s version, which can be found on her blog HERE.

See – isn’t it gorgeous?! Terri did an awesome job on this card – so great, I had a hard time making any changes to it! I didn’t have the Dictionary background stamp that Terri used, so I used the now-retired En Francais background stamp.

You can see that I kept Terri’s great layout! (why tamper with perfection, am I right?!). As I said, I used the En Francais background stamp in Crumb Cake, in fact everything is stamped using the Crumb Cake classic ink. The flower is Happy Watercolour from last year’s Occasions Catalogue (I’m crushed that it didn’t carry over! ) , and the sentiment is from last year’s Sale-a-bration brochure, a set called You’re Lovely. As Terri did, I coloured in the flowers on the sentiment; I used my Blender Pens with Crisp Cantaloupe, Strawberry Slush and Pear Pizzazz inks. I also did the same with the flowers stamped over the background. I also used a current stamp set – Work of Art – to add the soft washes & dots of Crumb Cake ink. I stamped the sentiment 2 times; punching out the bottom shape with the Decorative Label punch, and then punching the circle 1 3/4″ Circle Punch, and layering them with Stampin’ Dimensionals. I wound some Gold Baker’s Twine behind the sentiment, then scattered some Gold Sequins onto the front panel. The card front is attached to the Crumb Cake card base using Stampin’ Dimensionals.

I think I managed to do Terri’s card proud – what do you think?

For my next project, I just had to pull out one of my favourite new bundles from the Occasions Catalogue – it’s the Crazy About You stamp set plus Hello You Thinlits Dies; I bought mine in Photopolymer (#138873) for only $52.50 – a 15% savings!! (This bundle is also available in Wood Mount #139324 $80.50, and Clear Mount #13925 $66.95). With a total of 33 stamps – that’s not a typo – that’s 33 stamps! – 30 sayings & 3 images; this is one of the best deals in the catalogue!

How’s that for an eye-popper! I just love these bright colours!

I started with a card base of Soft Sky, then a panel of Whisper White card stock. On the bottom 1/3 is a panel of gorgeous paper from the Sale-a-bration brochure called Best Year Ever (and FREE makes it pretty darned good!). I stamped the sentiment from the Crazy About You set in Crushed Curry onto a strip of Whisper White, and layered that on a strip of Calypso Coral card stock, and cut banner ends in both pieces. Above the DSP panel, I stamped the sun image from Kinda Eclectic (annual catalogue) again in Crushed Curry, showing just 1/2 of the sun, as if it were rising above the designer paper. The flower was stamped twice on Whisper White, once in Coastal Cabana, once in Calypso Coral; I hand cut both flowers (I don’t have the coordinating punch – yet!), then layered them with a Dimensional. Using the Hello You Thinlits Die, I die cut the ‘hello’ from Calypso Coral card stock, and used Tombow Multi-purpose glue to glue it down. I just think this is a super cheerful card; after all, when someone says ‘hello sunshine’, it’s always a good thing, I think

I bet your wondering what on earth I found on the Clearance Rack that I thought you should add to your shopping cart! I do admit, I’ve had this kit sitting around for a while, just waiting for some inspiration to hit…when I finally opened the kit, I was WOW’ed at how much there is inside!!

This is the Heartfelt Banner Kit, and marked down from $24.95 to $9.99 is an amazing deal!

This is the card I made with just a fraction of this kit (that means lots of leftovers for me to make more things!)

The canvas banner pieces are really easy to stamp on with our Classic Inks; the fern was stamped once full strength in Pear Pizzazz ink, then stamped again without reloading the ink. I stamped the flower image first with Memento Black ink, then used our Stampin’ Write Markers in Crisp Cantaloupe, Strawberry Slush, Pear Pizzazz and Old Olive to colour it. I brought in the Butterfly Basics stamp set and Butterfly Thinlits Dies to stamp the sentiment & butterfly in Crisp Cantaloupe; I used the Decorative Label punch for the sentiment, and the medium sized Butterfly thinlit to die cut the butterfly. I used the Linen thread that is included in the kit to tie the 2 banner pieces together, then layered everything on the Crisp Cantaloupe card base using Stampin’ Dimensionals. 3 Basic Pearl embellishments in the bottom right corner balance it all out.

I had lots of fun creating for this Blog Hop; I hope you’re having as much fun seeing all the projects, and getting lots of inspiration

Before you head on to the next blog, I hope you’ll take a minute to leave a comment, and let me know what you think about the projects and the hop; I just love reading your comments

Since my blog is last on the Hop, depending on where you started you may have already seen the fabulous projects created by Priscilla Ivler, but to see them again just click the ‘Next’ button; if you want to go back & see Stefanie’s creations again, click on the ‘Previous’ button.

I’ve listed all the participating blogs below, plus all the (current) products I’ve used. If you’d like to purchase any of them, just click on the picture, and you’ll be taken directly to my online store.

Thanks again for visiting – until next time; Happy Stamping!