Hawaii Achievers Perfect Pairs Blog Hop

Welcome to the Grand Vacation achievers blog hop for June. This month we are excited to showcase some of the new Stampin’ Up! products from the recently released 2015 – 2016 Annual Catalogue. And we are  pairing them with something we had from the previous Catalogue. We hope you find great inspiration from the projects.

Get your wish list ready!

You may just be starting the blog hop here at my blog - Ann Craig - "distINKtive STAMPING", or you may have come from  the awesome demonstrator previous to me on the list. If you get off track at any time, the full lineup below will help you move along from blog to blog so you see all the projects. 

At the moment you are visiting Ann Craig from Canberra, Australia 

and I'm thrilled to welcome you to my contribution to the Hawaii Achiever Perfect Pairs June Blog Hop. 

I'm still dreaming of the beautiful weather we had in Hawaii - mainly because many of our mornings have been sub zero in temperature since the start of June, and I love the warmth. So this photo of our first evening in Waikiki will have to be the one that gives me warm thoughts.

Do check out all the contributions from Stampin' Up! demonstrators - I know you will find lots of incredible inspiration there, which I'm sure you will love.

My contribution for this blog hop "Perfect Pairs" uses a combination of new items - stamps and framelits, and some older favourites - Blackberry Bliss Classic Ink, Sahara Sand Lace Trim and a stamp from the Butterfly Basics Stamp set.

Don't you just love how easy it is to combine Stampin' Up! offerings? Coordination is such a big part of Stampin' Up! and you will see some fabulous ideas by following along with this blog hop. 

I have paired up some of our new stamp sets:-

Watercolor Wings

Best Thoughts (Hostess Set)

Birthday Blossoms

with a stamp from the returning set: Butterfly Basics.

And here is the card I made:

I used just one colour of ink for stamping the background images - the very gorgeous Blackberry Bliss.
One of the reasons I like this colour so much is that it is so easy to get a number of different tones from the one ink pad. And I have used the rhododendron stamp from "Best Thoughts". This is stamped randomly over the background of Whisper White card.

The technique I used is called "Pulled Colour" - a simple technique that involves pulling the colour from the stamped image using a Blender Pen.

Some details for constructing the card: 

Stamp the large flower from "Best Thoughts" randomly over the entire Whisper White card. 

Straight away, start pulling the colour from the outlines using the Blender Pen. I chose to use this method to colour some of the flowers plus some of the background.

Stamp the Butterfly from Watercolor Wings on a separate piece of Whisper White - this is a 3 step stamp and I used Pink Pirouette, Perfect Plum (stamped off once before stamping over the Pink) and Blackberry Bliss for the details.
 Cutting out the image is so easy as Stampin' Up! have a new set of framelits named Bold Butterfly - it contains 2 framelits that cut out a medium and a small butterfly. The small butterfly is cut out in Vellum, and the 3 step stamped butterfly uses the medium framelit.

 For decoration I added a strip of stamped and torn paper positioned over the top of a little Sahara Sand Lace Trim. The Butterfly was layered onto Dimensionals and adhered over some scrunched Linen Thread. 

All of this is layered onto a piece of Blackberry Bliss, which in turn is layered onto the fabulous new Whisper White Thick Card Stock. Isn't that just the best for card bases? A nice strong 270gsm gives the perfect base for cards. I've used so much of it already and just love it to bits.

Thanks for taking part in our blog hop, there are so many amazing ideas and inspiration you don't want to miss. Remember that currently you are at my blog - Ann Craig, so check the blog hop line up list to see who is next in line.

And now for some more incredible inspiration of how you can combine your old and new Stampin' Up! products you should hop along to the next  blog on the list below. 

Thanks for looking