Creating Kindness Blog Hop: Because We Care

Hello Everybody! I'm glad to have you here today because today is another fabulous Creating Kindness Design Team blog hop. Our theme today is Because We Care and it such a fitting theme for this time of year when we have so much opportunity to care for others.

I have a few different things to share with you today and I'll be the first to say that my photos aren't spectacular as I hadn't actually planned to share these first two (until I realized that they fit this theme perfectly), but, stay tuned for a third project with a VIDEO TUTORIAL (bottom of post). I live in a tiny, little mountain town in California, USA. Our town's recreation department recently purchased an abandoned country club with the intention of turning it into a rec center for our community to use. This would be so great for our community as our summers are hot and we do not have a community pool. It would also be fantastic for our local youth to have a safe place to go for summer activities. Now that the property has been purchased the Recreation Department is in desperate need of funds to renovate the property. Our town held a fundraiser (an epic Chilli Cookoff!) with a huge raffle to try to help the Rec Department out. I donated a huge stamping/crafting basket and a gift set of cards to the raffle. 

My basket was full of card and project kits many of which were put together from leftover Paper Pumpkin Supplies. I also added Stampin' Write Markers, adhesives, embellishments, some finished cards and projects and some treats as well (chocolate). I have no idea who won it but I sure hope they loved it!

Here's a pic of the card set I donated. It was a set of four different customs cards. I closed them up in an acetate box and added a belly band to pretty it up. 

I also did something fun at the On Stage event in Salt Lake City, Utah this past month that I think fits the theme of "Because We Care." There is of course a small back story... Earlier this year (April) I attended the OnStage event in San Diego. I had been selected as a stamper for one of the Display Boards and I spent the time leading up to the event stressing out about creating pretty things for my display board. I didn't have time to prepare swaps and I decided that I would just have to be ok with that. But, guess what...?  My heart was absolutely melted by the kindness that so many showed to me that day. Many people asked me to swap with them and of course I didn't have anything to give. The first time that someone smiled huge and pressed a beautifully wrapped chocolate bar into my hand and told me to "take it anyways..." brought the hugest smile to my face. And folks, it didn't stop there. Many more people gifted me beautiful handmade creations throughout the day. I went home feeling so happy, so lucky, to be part of this beautiful community. 

This time as I prepared for OnStage I had originally decided not to do swaps because I was so busy and didn't need the stress. But then I remembered the kindness I had experienced in April and decided that if I could only get ten swaps done then hopefully that would be enough to put a smile on a few people's faces. I suddenly felt that it was really important to pay it forward. I ended up making over fifty "swaps!" Of course, they didn't end up being swaps as I gave them away to anyone who wanted one. Thirty of them were these treat boxes that I'm sharing with you today. The other 20-30 were smaller and had sticky hands inside (I love sticky hands!). 

Anyhow, the most special part of my day came when I was explaining why I was just giving my swaps away to a table of people. I explained how good I felt being the beneficiary of other people's kindness and that I just wanted to do the same. I was Paying It Forward I guess. One woman at the table was so thrilled! She was so happy and excited that she said she was gonna do this same thing at the next OnStage! How cool! I plan to do it again too as seeing people's happy faces as they received an unexpected gift was really quite the treat. Ok, I'll stop rambling now. Here's my project.

Each of these little boxes held a Hanuta treat, was wrapped with a DSP belly band and had a touch of Black Shimmer Ribbon popping out the side. 

The sentiment pieces were stamped with Basic Black Archival ink onto Shimmery White Cardstock and spritzed with Island Indigo, Lemon Lime Twist and Berry Burst (rubbing alcohol mixed w  re-inker in a spritzer). Please not that if you got one of these from me and your colors blended more than splattered like these examples.... It's because I accidentally refilled my re-inkers with water and it does give a different look than the alcohol mixture does. So, some of my sentiment pieces had a splatter look and some of them blended and bled together a bit more. 

Want to see how I put these together and get some measurements too? Here's a quick video tutorial for you. Enjoy, and then check out the description in my video to see a list of awesome videos from my Creating Kindess Friends. 

So glad to have you stop by today and I'll see you back here soon! I hope you'll continue the hop by clicking the button below and heading over to see what the fabulous Cheryll Miller has made to share today!

Maria

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Email: mariawillis@hotmail.com

Want a great discount on Stampin' Up! Products and to have a fun new stamping family? Join me on this fun adventure! I can't wait to be your super excited Stampin' Up! side kick and support lady! In case you didn't know, you can join Stampin' Up! just for the discount and never sell a single product. If you want to know the details just let me know. If you're looking for a discount on your favorite hobby (stamping and paper crafting with Stampin' Up! products) and want to earn money doing it... let me know! I'd love to talk with you whatever your interest might be! If you want to see a little more info go ahead and click the button below. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Creating Kindness Blog Hop: Support or Friendship

Hello everybody and welcome to another Creating Kindness (Around the World) Design Team Blog Hop. This month our theme is Support or Friendship and I had a hard time deciding what to share with you today. After a lot of thought I've decided to share a card that I've made for a friend that I went to high school with.

This friend has Multiple Sclerosis and has not been well lately. She is such a lovely person and is always keeping a positive attitude. I've decided to send her a card so that she'll know that I'm thinking about her and in hopes that it will help keep her spirits up.

I used a technique that I've never tried before when I made this card. I used my Flourishing Thinlits Dies with my Big Shot to deboss my background. I used watercolor paper for the background because it is softer and thicker than normal cardstock and I thought it would hold an impression better.

I layered my watercolor paper on top of some cheap fun foam from my dollar store, put the framelits on top with the cutting side up, put a cutting plate on top and cranked it through the Big Shot to press the die into the paper. It worked like a charm!!

Then I used sponge daubers and Lemon Lime Twist, Emerald Envy, Island Indigo and Elegant Eggplant to cover the entire background with ink. I gave it a little flick with water to lift some of the color and added a heat embossed sentiment to finish it off.

I've made a quick video to show you how I did this technique and put the card together... 

Thanks for stopping by today! Let me know if you try this technique out and what you think of it. I hope you'll continue along on this hop. I can't wait to see what the rest of my teammates have chosen to share this month. If you'd like to keep on hopping, just click the next button below. 

Have an amazing day and I'll see you back here soon (to be specific... I'll be back in just three hours with another post because I have two blog hops today!).

Bye for now!

Maria.

Continue the hop by hopping over to our incredibly talented guest designer: 

Jessie Holton!

Want to shop with me? No problem, just click the button below. 

Let me know if you have any questions!

Email: mariawillis@hotmail.com

Want a great discount on Stampin' Up! Products and to have a fun new stamping family? Join me on this fun adventure! I can't wait to be your super excited Stampin' Up! side kick and support lady! In case you didn't know, you can join Stampin' Up! just for the discount and never sell a single product. If you want to know the details just let me know. If you're looking for a discount on your favorite hobby (stamping and paper crafting with Stampin' Up! products) and want to earn money doing it... let me know! I'd love to talk with you whatever your interest might be! If you want to see a little more info go ahead and click the button below. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Creating Kindness Blog Hop: Color Inspiration

Hey Everybody! I hope you're having a great day today! I am excited because it's time for another Creating Kindness around the world blog hop. We are a group of Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrators who have teamed up to bring you crafty fun once a month, both via a blog and a video hop. This month our theme is Color Inspiration. Each of us has picked three colors (we are allowed to add neutrals if we'd like to) and had a good play. If you'd like to see the whole team's projects please be sure to click the next button at the bottom of my post.

I decided to use Pacific Point, Berry Burst and Daffodil Delight as my three colors. I picked these colors because I was pretty sure that when watercolored they would blend fantastically into a wider range of beautiful colors. 

I decided to use the largest stamp from the Hello Color stamp set to stamp a background on my watercolor paper. I had to stamp it twice to cover the background. I used Versamark ink and then heat embossed in gold. This stamp really has such a fun design.

After I embossed my watercolor paper I started watercoloring at the bottom with Pacific Point. I used my aqua painter to add water and then color. Soon I began to add Berry Burst and I made sure to blend the colors together where they met to create some purpley-blues that I just love. I carried the Berry Burst into the top half of the card where I finally blended it together with Daffodil Delight. 

I selected some parts of the design to highlight and added extra ink to those areas to make them stand out. I used the Basic Black 3/8" Shimmer Ribbon to cover the middle of the card (where there was a gap between the background stamps). I covered that with a sentiment that is heat embossed in gold on a basic black oval that was cut with my stitched shapes framelits. I finished my card off with Black Rhinestone Jewels. 

In case you're curious, I've made a video tutorial sharing how I created this card. There are some watercoloring tips included just in case you're interested. Enjoy!

That's it for today folks! Thank you so much for stopping by. Please the button below to continue on to my incredibly talented friend from Canada... Carolynn Sander!

See you back here real soon-Come back Saturday! It's World Card Making Day and I've got something fun planned for the occasion.

Maria.

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Want a great discount on Stampin' Up! Products and to have a fun new stamping family? Join me on this fun adventure! I can't wait to be your super excited Stampin' Up! side kick and support lady! In case you didn't know, you can join Stampin' Up! just for the discount and never sell a single product. If you want to know the details just let me know. If you're looking for a discount on your favorite hobby (stamping and paper crafting with Stampin' Up! products) and want to earn money doing it... let me know! I'd love to talk with you whatever your interest might be! If you want to see a little more info go ahead and click the button below. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Creating Kindness Blog Hop: Art Inspiration

Hello, hello, hello everybody! In case you can't already tell I am so excited to share today's post and blog hop with you. Today I am hopping with the Creating Kindness Design Team and, as always, we have both a blog and a video hop for you today. Our theme is Art Inspiration and it is seriously one of the best and most inspiring challenges that I have ever participated in. All of us have selected one piece of art and created our work based off of that piece. After you check out my card and video today I hope you'll click the next button and continue the hop to see all of the amazing art pieces my team mates have dreamed up. 

Here's the watercolor piece that I had so much fun creating after I finally settled on just one inspiration piece. That was seriously the hardest part of this challenge. I found so many inspiring pieces that it took me quite a while to pick just one. 

Originally, I had planned to use street art as my inspiration. There is so much amazing street art out there and it's a realm that many aren't familiar with. So, I wanted to share street art since I really do love it. And then... I stumbled across this gorgeous piece by Maud Durland. She is not an artist that I had been familiar with but WOWZA!! Check her out if you have time because she is amazing! Here's a link to her site: Maud Durland's Website  Needless to say, when I saw these tulips they took my breath away and I knew that this would be my inspiration piece.

I decided to use one of the flowers from the Remarkable You stamp set and I heat embossed the image multiple times in gold. Yes, before you ask, this required some serious masking. I stamped multiple flowers onto post-it notes and fussy cut them out. I stamped and embossed my flower images starting at the bottom of my card to make it look like the flowers were right in front of me. Every time a flower got embossed, it got masked off with a post-it note flower so that I could stamp another flower "behind" it without overlapping my images. Let me know if you have any questions about this process. You can see the result in this close-up below as some of the flowers appear to be "in the front."

I absolutely love watercoloring flowers. I think that my favorite color combination is Daffodil Delight and Melon Mambo. These two colors blend together to make the most fabulous, vibrant colors. Every single flower on this card, no matter how different they all look, was painted with only these two colors. If you're interested in seeing how I blend the colors I hope you'll watch the video tutorial that I've made. You'll find it at the end of my post.

In Maud's painting she has some greens towards the bottom but no sky. This is where I decided to deviate a bit. This flower image is large and I was worried that if I crowded the flowers together the beautiful details of each flower could get lost in the next. That meant leaving some space between the flowers which of course needed to be painted as well. The lower part of the card including the stems of the flowers was painted in a combination of Tempting Turquoise, Lemon Lime Twist and Emerald Envy. Lemon Lime Twist and Emerald Envy are my favorite greens to mix when watercoloring and the addition of Tempting Turquoise added some depth and tied the greenery into the blue sky.

If you've never watercolored before it may seem a bit daunting but it can really be easy if you just know a couple of things before you start. I've made this Watercoloring Tips & Tutorial video in hopes that it might help someone who is hoping to start watercoloring and just needed a little nudge.

If you have any questions please feel free to leave me a comment below! If you watercolor something gorgeous I would love to see it! Shoot me an email at mariawillis@hotmail. com 

Thank you so much for stopping by my blog today. It's always a pleasure to have you. I hope you will continue on this hop by clicking the next button below. If you do you'll be heading over to my talented friend Jenny Hall!

Have an awesome day! See you all soon.

Maria.

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Want a great discount on Stampin' Up! Products and to have a fun new stamping family? Join me on this fun adventure! I can't wait to be your super excited (possibly way too enthusiastic... No! That's not possible!) Stampin' Up! side kick and support lady! In case you didn't know, you can join Stampin' Up! just for the discount and never sell a single product. If you want to know the details just let me know. If you're looking for a discount on your favorite hobby (stamping and paper crafting with Stampin' Up! products) and want to earn money doing it... let me know! I'd love to talk with you whatever your interest might be! If you want to see a little more info go ahead and click the button below. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Creating Kindness Blog Hop: Texture

Hello and welcome to this month's Creating Kindness (Around the World) Blog and Video hop (yes, we really have a video hop on YouTube)! If this is your first time to my blog, my name is Maria Willis, and I'm a Stampin' Up Demonstrator from a small mountain town called Boulder Creek, CA in the United States. I'm so glad to have you here. Today our theme is "Texture" and our design team has done our best to bring you some creative ways of adding texture to your own crafting projects.

For my card I decided to use Stampin' Ups! new Embossing Paste. It's great for adding texture to any project. I decided to keep my card simple to let the medallion pattern and vibrant colors take the spotlight. On this card I used a color combination of Daffodil Delight and Bermuda Bay. 

I used Basic Black cardstock in hopes of having the colors boldly pop off of the page and I like the way it turned out. After applying the paste and letting it dry I used sponge daubers  to apply color. The sponge daubers allowed me to apply the color lightly or heavily as I pleased. It also turns out that black is a good color to use as a background for this embossing paste as it provides a very forgiving background.

What you cannot see in my photos is how sparkly these cards are in real life. After sponging them with color I painted them with Clear Wink of Stella. They are so sparkly and pretty! If you're interested in seeing what they look like when the Wink of Stella catches the light I hope you'll check out my video.  In my video I've got some tips for keeping your background and edges clean as well as how to care for your embossing paste tools. I also show the full process of how to make these cards with measurements included and helpful tips along the way.  Here's a link to the tutorial video:

If you watched the video you saw that the card I featured today is actually the second card  that I made using this technique. The first card was more of an experiment that started with spritzing color onto the embossing paste (it worked but the color faded over the course of the week). Once I realized that the color was going to fade with the spritzing technique I decided to try with sponge daubers and I was able to get much more saturated color with this technique. The Clear Wink of Stella is a fun addition but not just because it sparkles. In the video you can see that the solution in the Wink of Stella helps to drag the ink color around blending the colors seamlessly.  Here's a look at both of the cards. My original card was done with Lemon Lime Twist and Island Indigo inks.   The colors aren't all that different but the Daffodil Delight and Bermuda Bay card is a lot more vibrant.

If you're interested in creating texture on a project without using embossing paste then check out my post from yesterday. Here's a link and a sneak peek... just click HERE.

That's it for today folks! I hope you'll keep on hopping along with us to see the amazing ideas the rest of the design team has to share. Next you'll be heading over to Satomi Wellard in Japan!

Thanks for stopping by and have an amazing day! 

Maria.

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Want a great discount on Stampin' Up! Products and to have a fun new stamping family? Join me on this fun adventure! I can't wait to be your super excited (possibly way too enthusiastic... No! That's not possible!) Stampin' Up! side kick and support lady! In case you didn't know, you can join Stampin' Up! just for the discount and never sell a single product. If you want to know the details just let me know. If you're looking for a discount on your favorite hobby (stamping and paper crafting with Stampin' Up! products) and want to earn money doing it... let me know! I'd love to talk with you whatever your interest might be! If you want to see a little more info go ahead and click the button below. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Creating Kindness Blog Hop: 3D Gift Giving

Big Box of Birthdays!

Hi Everybody and welcome to this month's Creating Kindness Blog Hop! This month our team is focusing on 3D Gift Giving and we are so lucky to have the fabulous Sue Plote as our guest! She is a whiz at gift packaging and I cannot wait to see what she has to share with us today. 

In addition to this blog hop many of our team members have planned a VIDEO HOP for you as well. You can follow the video hop by watching my video below and then following the link to the next video in the  youtube video description (you never have to leave youtube!). Thanks for joining us!

I am really excited to share my project today because it is going to solve a really big problem that I've been having when it comes to gift giving and card sending... I forget people's birthdays! Yes, it's embarrassing, I agree. The truth is that I always catch myself thinking that "so and so" has a birthday coming up and when I look to see when it is, it's just passed me by. I love sending gifts and cards and I do not like forgetting, or, sending them late. So, for today's project I've decided to solve my problem by creating a system to help me remember. I hope that if you've been having a similar struggle this system might work for you too. 

I'm calling it the Big Box of Birthdays! It's a box with tabbed dividers for the months of the year. I decorated it using the Birthday Memories DSP and am really happy with how bright and cheery it looks. 

I added a fun embellishment to the front. The sentiment is perfect because I am always trying to figure out, "Who's having a birthday?' Thank goodness this box will help me to figure that out!

Here's what the dividers with tabs look like. I used the Circle Tab Punch to easily create the tabs, and, I used the Labeler Alphabet Stamp Set to stamp the "months."

Inside the box I will be filing Birthday Info Cards for all of my people. I got a start on some of them and this is what they will look like. I used washi tape to decorate the left sides of the cards. Then I will add full names, birthdays and mailing addresses. I decided to keep people's private info off of the internet though so I will finish these cards later. I added some fun stamping to each of the cards. The stamps I used remind me of something that I like about the people on the cards. For example, Quin is my nephew, and the last time I stamped with him he really liked the dinosaurs from the No Bones About It stamp set. So I stamped a T-Rex on his card.

When someone has a birthday coming up I will take their card out of the box and pin it to the side. It will stay there until I've sent a card or gift on its way to them. 

Here's what the box looks like with the dividers inside (well, they're spilling out a bit, when the box is upright they fit inside perfectly).

It should be easy for me to find people's birthday cards from here on out! I am so excited to finally have my gift giving and card sending organized in a system that works for me!

If you'd like to see how I made this, or you'd like to make one for yourself, here's a video. All measurements are included. Have fun and remember to click on through to the next video on the hop after you watch mine!

Thanks for stopping by today! I'm so glad you've joined us for this 3D Gift Giving hop and I hope you'll continue on by heading over to see my friend in Canada... the incredibly talented Carolynn Sander!

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Want a great discount on Stampin' Up! Products and to have a fun new stamping family? Join me on this fun adventure! I can't wait to be your super excited (possibly way too enthusiastic... No! That's not possible!) Stampin' Up! side kick and support lady! In case you didn't know, you can join Stampin' Up! just for the discount and never sell a single product. If you want to know the details just let me know. If you're looking for a discount on your favorite hobby (stamping and paper crafting with Stampin' Up! products) and want to earn money doing it... let me know! I'd love to talk with you whatever your interest might be! If you want to see a little more info go ahead and click the button below. Looking forward to hearing from you!