The Summer Mini Is Dead, Long Live the New Catalogue!

OK. not exactly dead - just in the last throes.   So is Sale-A-Bration.  SAB finishes at the end of this month (a week!).   Summer Mini finishes at the end of March.   In honour of both, here are a few recent creations featuring DSP/stamps from the Summer Mini and SAB.

Here's a gorgeous card box I made with the Bali Breeze DSP:  

I embellished it with the Felt Flower Fusion flowers (from the Mini) and a tempting tourquise brad.   I am not nearly clever enough to have invented this box; I found it  last year some time on Dannie's Designs - she has a fabulous video   This is the third one I've made so far, and not only am I better with practice, but I'm using better quality materials now, and  it really does make a difference.  The first two I made before I had a lot of SU! stuff and the quality was not so great.  Six months later those boxes have fallen apart because I just used ordinary double-sided tape instead of Sticky Strip.  Also I used cute DSP but didn't have co-ordinating cardstock so the end result wasn't as good as it could have been.  I am way too embarrassed to show them to you.  Chalk it up to experience!

Next I've got the card I made for my lovely MIL's birthday today (Happy Birthday Shirley!) using the SAB Botanical Blooms set again.  It's a completely different look from the other card I made.  This time I stamped the images on watercolour paper with black Stazon ink and watercoloured them with my aquapainter.  Such a soft look!  And completely co-ordinated with the card.  

The card co-ordinated with the present of course - a handmade card tote with about 16 or so cards in it!  

    

I  will post later with the directions for the card tote - I have adapted one I made earlier to fit a standard Australian C6 envelope.  The tote is made from Always Artichoke cardstock, with So Saffron and Soft sky ribbon.  The "for you" decorating the front is from the Say it With Scallops stamp set (Mini) and punched out with the square scallop punch (mini).  I also used the scalloped edge punch (mini) there too.  The big silver brads are from Styled Silver Hodgepodge (Mini).

Remember I posted recently about experimenting with One Sheet Wonders?  The cards in the tote are all made using a single 12 x 12 sheet of Le Jardin DSP.   Again, I didn't invent the concept; there are hundreds of different OSW recipes on the internet.  This one is by the fabulous Mae Collins - check her blog Mae's Cachet here.  (Edited to add I've fixed the link)

I used the palette of colours in the DSP as my guide - River Rock, Very Vanilla, Soft Sky.  They look so soft and elegant together I think.

From this:

To these:

Not a scrap of the gorgeous DSP wasted.  Pretty good value I'd say!