It's our birthday!

 Happy Birthday to us!  Sweet Stampin' has it's birthday this week and we'd love you to celebrate with us.

Our challenge theme, unsurprisingly, is Birthdays and we can't wait to see your birthday creations.  I have only relatively recently become a fan of the Greetery (Seven Hills Crafts has all of the Greetery goodness in their online shop) and I treated myself to this slightly older stamp and stencil set.

I chose a range of colours from an assortment of companies for my design - the possible colour combos for this set are endless, so I made a few in readiness for other cards.  As the stamped image is so busy I kept the rest of the card nice and simple, creating a thin black mat for the main image and echoing this in the sentiment panel.  A few gems from my stash completed the design.

We hope you can play along with us this fortnight and if nothing else it will give you a break from  your Christmas cards!

xxx

Red for Remembrance at Sweet Stampin' Challenge Blog

 I've been dying to use this beautiful press plate/stencil set from Altenew and our Red for Remembrance challenge starting today seemed the perfect opportunity.

Did you know that you can use your press plates in our Sweet Stampin' challenges?  After all, they're essentially just another way of stamping.

I ran the plate through my Betterpress machine using gold ink from Lisa Horton (these inks are AMAZING btw).  Once the ink was thoroughly dry I attached my stencils and inked the different sections using Pink Fresh Studio inks in Coral Reef, Passion Fruit, Berrylicious and Candy Apple.

I cut a frame for the image from co-ordinating cardstock, allowing for a thin white border to make the image really stand out.  I adhered a couple of gems from my stash and the job was done.

I really hope you can play along with us this fortnight while we give our thanks to all of those who served so that we can be safe and free.  My heart goes out to all of those affected by the horrific wars going on today across the world.  When will people ever learn?

You'll find all of the challenge details, along with lots of lovely inspiration from the Sweeties, here.

Take care xx