Coffee is Love, Love is Coffee

I've been meaning to make something for the Coffee Lovers Bloghop pretty much every time they come around. After all.... I do love coffee! But I haven't found the opportunity before now.

Yay! Yesterday I coordinated a 2 year old and a 2 month old's naps and I got some time to craft!!

The theme (apart from coffee... or tea... or cocoa) is Fall and so I started by deciding on an appropriate colour scheme and then went from there.

I recently bought a new 6x6" stencil which I wanted to try out. It's called Buffalo Plaid by Carta Bella and I got mine HERE. I can see lots of possibilities with this and it was really fun to use! So that became the background for my card.

And then I used a combination of Neat and Tangled's Perfect Blend stamp set for the coffee cups, and Krumspring's Coffee is Love stamp set for the sentiment.

I filmed a very impromptu timelapse video of my process if you care to check it out! I'm not sure if it'll work very well here in Blogger, but I'll upload it to my Instagram account as well!

You can find all the details for the Coffee Lovers Fall Bloghop HERE. 

Krumspring Anniversary Blog Hop!

Welcome to the Krumspring Stamps 1st Anniversary Blog Hop!! YAY!!

If you're on the blog hop trail then you should have landed here from the amazing Amy Lee's blog. But here's the whole list if you're a little lost.....

• Krumspring Stamps
• Vera Rhuhay
• Michelle Short
• Amy Yang
• Tina Krauer
• Niki Bee
• Jessica Frost-Ballas
• Anna Kossakovskaya
• Kathy Racoosin
• Amy Lee
• Natalie Elphinstone <<<<< YOU ARE HERE
• Mayline Jung
• Keeway Tsao
• Amy Kolling
• Birka Reinitz
• Dana Gong

I've been so lucky to be part of the Krumspring Dream Team for the past few months and keep pinching myself that I get to work with Maria's fun stamps! And now here we are celebrating not only the 1st anniversary, but a whole new release to go with it!!

8 BRAND NEW SETS of stamps are available right now in the Krumspring shop! There's everything from classic florals, essential background stripes, on-trend coffee, funky animals and some very cheeky fruit!

But for the card I'm sharing with you today I chose to work with the "Drinks Are On Me" set.

This set includes four different shaped glasses, lots of other bits to fill them with - fruit and flowers and straws and bubbles, and quite a few sentiment options too. It's so fun, and gives you so many possibilities for different themes. I'm thinking you could use the tropical elements for a holiday card, the champagne glasses for weddings, and the wine glasses could easily go on a masculine card. 

In my usual style I ended up throwing the whole rainbow of bright colours onto it, as well as a touch of bling to give it some sparkle. I can't help it!

Now it wouldn't be a blog hop without some PRIZES would it?!!
Leave a comment here, and on each stop of the hop - not only will you catch a boat-load of inspiration, but it will give you 16 chances of winning a $10 gift certificate to the Krumspring Shop!
But there's even more good news! You'll also go in the running to win the GRAND PRIZE which is a great big bundle of Krumspring stamps!

The blog hop runs until August 23rd at 12pm CET and the winners will be announced on the Krumspring blog very shortly after that.

Your next stop along the way is... the incredible Mayling Jung!!
Good luck and happy hopping!
 
xx
Natalie

The Awesome Krumspring Peacock

Did you know that 'krumspring' is a Danish word which means 'doing something in a funny or non-traditional way'? That's probably why I love working with my Krumspring stamps so much.... because they always inspire me to make something a little bit different!

During June at Krumspring we celebrated Summer by making cards that best represented the season. Summer makes me think of birds and animals and being outside surrounded by nature, so I started my card with the gorgeous Peacockness stamp, and built it up from there.

Of course, I couldn't help but colour my peacock in with a rainbow of colours! I used Zig Clean Colour Real Brushes on the watercolour paper I stamped him on, and finished off with some Wink of Stella to add some shimmer.

To build my little window scene I stamped 'One Triangle at a Time' in green ink and coloured in all the little segments with various other green inks. The leaves are a Sizzix die called 'Garden Greens', and the frame is designed by Tim Holtz. It's called 'Stitched Rectangles'. Whilst the 'awesome' die comes from Studio Calico. Talk about mix and match!!

You can catch more summer-inspired Krumspring cards on their original blog post here.

xxx

Escape the Cold Winter with the Jot Magazine July Mood Board Challenge

I'd say "winter is coming" but I think it's well and truly already here! I'm literally sitting here wearing four layers of clothing and fuzzy slippers.
I much prefer the warmer weather. Give me sunshine, a sea breeze and a umbrella drink any day :-)

That's why I was inspired to pull together the July/August mood board for Jot Magazine with this tropical theme in mind. And the brightly saturated colours in nearly the whole rainbow spectrum are definitely me. Check it out....

Does it make you forget the cold... even for just a second?! LOL!
I started creating my card by piecing together this toucan which would become the focal point. We recently visiting the paint section of the hardware store and I just happened to pick up all the samples that coordinated with this mood board ;-)

I stamped the toucan from the Krumspring "Tou-Can Do It" set onto the various paint chips and then cut out different bits from each colour to put this together. I used my Sizzix Garden Greens Die Set (#661206) to cut out the leaves from all the green paint chips. I just love the unique texture these give to the card.

As for the punny sentiment... well I borrowed that idea off something I saw on Pinterest whilst I was putting together the mood board!

Care to join in with the challenge? Its running for the rest of July and August as well which will give you plenty of time to create something marvellously tropical ;-)
Evie from Funky Flair Studio is our sponsor - she offers "the best possible flair designs at the best possible price"!

Check out all the challenge details on the Jot blog HERE!

Krumspring Star Power and the New Release!

You might remember how I said that during May we were highlighting a different Krumspring stamp set each week? These were some of the older releases, but still very classic designs and they deserved some attention!

I wanted to share with you the card I made with the last feature stamp set called "Star Power". It's got some of Maria's signature geometric patterns in it, including one giant star..... which ironically I didn't end up using on this card because I wanted to do something a little bit different ;-)

Instead, I focused on the lots of other smaller stars you can find in the set, and I turned them into a night sky scene above a city. Why a city? I have no idea! Maybe because I was also desperate to use my new Sizzix Cityscape dies designed by Tim Holtz and this seemed like a good opportunity!

Can you tell I've been practicing my ink blending?
I needed to!

In other news, the newest release stamps have just gone live in the Krumspring shop and you can buy them as one bundle (there's 4 new sets) or individually of course. But you know you're always going to save money when you bundle them together. Speaking of saving money.... 

This is valid until June 10th!
And let me share with you just some of the sneaks of what I've been up to with these stamp sets already...

Firstly there's this fabulous Funky Pineapples Set which I am absolutely IN LOVE with! I stamped some out and started colouring them before I even had a plan in mind for what I was going to do with them! LOL! 

Then there's the Awesome Triangle Wizard Stamp which is another classic Krumspring design and makes for great backgrounds. I used mine to stamp a border onto some handmade Project Life cards which I got all of the kids to write some journaling on for the welcoming page to my 2017 album. 

You can actually see the whole page and lots more detailed images on the Krumspring blog HERE. 

And lastly for now I'll leave you with this simple little tag I whipped up using just a single heart stamp from the Monkey Madness set. Isn't it funny how sometimes the most simple of images or ideas can sometimes be so very effective? I do so love me some rainbows!
But certainly, I will still have some gorilla-oriented projects coming up real soon too!

xx

Dude, you are so old!!

The Trophy Husband had a birthday just recently, and the Ephie Kids and I thought it would be hilarious to use the Krumspring 'For My Caveman' stamp set to whip him up an appropriate card. I even coloured him with grey hair for the occasion!

Actually, the real pun is in the sentiment right? Ironically, that actually comes from a different stamp set, called 'You Pixelate Me', but pairing them together was a natural train of thought on my behalf ;-)

Turns out The Trophy Husband also loved the idea so much that when it was his turn to attend a mate's birthday party the following week, he commissioned me to make a very similar card. He requested the dinosaur from the same 'Caveman' stamp set this time though, and I was very happy to comply.

I created a little scene for my dinosaur with some Thinlits dies from Sizzix. The tree is from the Green Garden set (661375) and the grass and cloud are from the Great Outdoors set (661228) which is a bit of a favourite of mine ;-)

I'm really enjoying the creative outlet of mixing and matching my supplies recently - I must be getting adventurous!

More melonisation

So remember how I was telling you about the awesome #melontierchen challenge on Instagram, and I shared the first attempt at a tag I made, but I thought it was too subtle? Well, I remedied that by having another go, and this time 'doing it right'!! 

You see, the idea is to colour an image to look like a watermelon, and there are of course, variations on that theme. But clearly the mainstay is going to be one section is red with seeds, and the other section is green, perhaps stripy green.
I am totally in love with this cute concept!!

Plus, I also had the new-release Neat and Tangled stamps in my hands finally, and that unicorn from the Magical Day set was just begging to be melonised!

But what's even funner than melonising your favourite images? When your kids want to join in the fun too! Both my girls took part in the challenge last time it was on, and both couldn't wait to give it a go this time around as well. They each had very specific ideas in mind about what they wanted to colour, and strict instructions on what I needed to make their images into!

First up was Moriah (she's 7) who wanted to colour a giant flower. The Sunflower set from Krumspring was perfect for the occasion because of it's large central area, as well as the many many petals, and she painted it with liquid watercolours.... without the water ;-)

Then she told me it had to be made into some sort of shaker card with lots of sequins, and so we collaborated together to come up with this tag.

Then Bethany (she's 10) jumped on the melonising band-wagon as well, and she requested the cute squirrels from the Neat and Tangled 'My Favourite Nut' stamp set. She wanted to try a few different combinations of colours to figure out which worked best, and I love that she's used an ombre approach to both her red and green colours!

Being the avid reader that she is, she requested I make her squirrels into bookmarks. Since I had made a shaker tag for Moriah I went with a similar idea and filled the bottom of her bookmarks with a little vellum pocket full of glitter. Granted, the vellum makes it look like coloured sand... but the thought was there!

Why not try melonising something yourself?
xx

What's happening during May at Krumspring?

I can't remember if I announced it here or not, but after my stint as a Guest Designer at Krumspring Stamps in April I was invited to join the Dream Team for the next few months as well! Super excited!!

You might not have even heard of them right? It's a fairly new, fairly small (but about to go global!) Danish company making top quality acrylic stamps. Apparently Krumspring is a Danish word which means "to do something in a funny or non-traditional way". I love that idea!! 

Anyway, since there's no new releases until the end of the month (watch this space!) we've decided to do something a little bit different on the blog for the month of May and that's to spend a week spotlighting one of the previous release sets.

The first spotlight was for the Avocado Family set. See.... something a little bit funny and different? But it's also super-cute! And despite the fact that The Trophy Husband asked me why I was colouring amoeba I really like them!

They're perfect for expectant mothers, baby-showers and welcoming newborns, and that means I've got lots and lots of uses for them. As you can see, I've already made a few different projects with them - and this doesn't count the entire Project Life page I did as the title page for my own baby album!

During the spotlight week there is a sale on the featured stamp, a challenge, and of course... prizes to be won!

The next stamp to be featured (and which is the current spotlight) is the You Pixelate Me set. It probably has to be seen to be believed what the Dream Team girls have done with this stamp - think Gameboys, Pacman, Micky Mouse and so much more.
But me?..... I wanted to try something completely different...

I used the pixelate squares as a template for cross-stitching and spent an hour or so therapeutically hand-sewing all these crosses to form a simple heart shape. The effect in real life is something quite exciting, and there really are a million possibilities with this idea. 

So pop on over to the Krumspring blog to get all the spotlight stamp set inspiration, and to find out the details on the challenge and competition. Then jump to the shop to pick up the featured stamp on sale, as well as discovering a whole bunch of other sets you're going to fall in love with!

There's another Spotlight coming next week.... and this one might just be my favourite yet ;-)

Jot Magazine May Mood Board

I continue to love working with the Mood Board challenges at Jot Magazine because it pushes me to try different colour combinations and new designs that I might never have come up with by myself. Here's the latest card I've created in response to the May Mood Board which has recently gone live.

It's a quite literal interpretation of the image of the hot air balloon sailing over the top of the snowy forest below. I was really drawn to the idea of the pop of vibrant warm colours of the balloon in the midst of the cold glittery icy scene around it.

What I also love about working with these Mood Boards is that I can mix and match products in my stash without needing to stick to the one designer (which of course I need to do for much of my Creative Team work) and it allows for so many possibilities.

For this card I clearly needed a hot air balloon and so I used a stamp from the Krumspring 'Adventures Ahead' set. I embossed it with copper embossing powder and coloured it with watercolours - adding lots of layers to get the really saturated look I was after.

And the trees were cut in grey cardstock with a Sizzix die designed by Tim Holtz called 'Woodlands'. I sprayed the tops with white ink and then added lots and lots of glitter.

Last but not least I found the perfect sentiment stamp in my Neat and Tangled collection. It's part of the very popular Origami Map set.

If you're feeling as inspired as I was by the Jot Magazine May Mood Board then you can find all the details on their blog over HERE!