Monday 23 February 2009

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!

4 comments:

Liam said...

You have been very busy and I love what you have done with the le jardin paper. I love this ds paper. Love the cards you made very creative. thanks for sharing. by the way love the doll bookmarks I seen them as well and I was going to try them too. They look fab.

Liam

Louise said...

Hi Liam, thanks for your kind comment! I'll be sad to see these DSP retire, although I am also very excited to see the new Catalogue!

Ooh, I'd love to see you make these bookmarks, they are actually not as hard as they look.

xx Louise

Lin Mei said...

Great totes, Louise! I also love the card that you made using Botanical Blooms - the colour combination you've used is really novel for that set.

Louise said...

Thanks Lin Mei - funny how using a different colour combo totally changes a stamp set. Botanical Blooms has really grown (boom! boom!) on me.

Getting closer....

It's nearly that time of year, where the retirement list comes out.  That means the in-colours we've loved the past 2 years are leav...