Happy weekend, crafty friends! It’s been a big week around here (and everywhere – gosh, what a world we live in right now!). Yesterday was The Annual Festival of Me, or my “birthday” as some people call it. I had a fabulous day with my family and ended it with pasta, wine, and cake – all the good things!! Today I’ve had the best present of all which has been hosting some of our team for our annual “retreat day”  – a whole day of friends and stamping and yet more cake!

And of course, I made time for this week’s CASE-ing the Catty challenge. This week we have the second Sale-A-Bration release to inspire us.

While I don’t have any of the new SAB products yet (my box is somewhere between Sydney and Perth right now) there’s still so much inspiration to take from the sample cards in the catty. My project this week combines elements of these two beauties, the purple card from the front cover (left below) and the green card from page 3 (bottom right below).

I’ve also been inspired to use the SAB set Lovely Lily Pad (available until the end of the month). My own water lilies are looking so beautiful right now.

So all these elements have combined into this card.

For the background, I repeatedly stamped and clear embossed the largest of the lily images onto Thick Whisper White cardstock.

I then applied ink directly onto the card over the clear embossing – Blackberry Bliss at the bottom, blending up and into the Highland Heather at the top.

The ink is resisted by the clear embossing, leaving a white lily impression behind. You can use a soft cloth to wipe gently over the top to take any ink off the embossing so it is a cleaner, more white impression (the Blackberry Bliss does stain the embossing a little, it’s just the nature of those dark red-based colours). It’s such a beautiful effect and a favourite technique of mine.

With such a beautiful background the card doesn’t need much else. I’ve mounted it on some Rococo Rose cardstock and then a base card of Whisper White. The centre panel uses the largest label from the Stitched So Sweetly dies (Mini Catalogue). I’ve used two stamps from Peaceful Moments (Mini Catalogue) for the sentiments. The Thank You is stamped in Blackberry Bliss and fussy cut and raised up on mini dimensionals. And I’ve split the “you shouldn’t have, but I’m glad you did” stamp in half so I could stamp it in two parts (don’t be afraid to cut your stamps – it opens up a whole new world of possibilities). The silver leaves are cut using the tree die from Sweet Silhouette (Annual Catalogue).

That’s my creation for this first week CASE-ing the second SAB release. As always, please share your SAB inspired projects with us for the next two weeks over on our Facebook wall.

And hop on over next to the fabulous Rebecca who has been similarly inspired this week and has some more gorgeous ink blending to share with us all.

Thanks for stopping by,
Siobhan.