Of course our Stampin’ Up! catalogues are an excellent shopping guide – they show you the products (at life size for most stamps and punches!), the colours, the prices – all you need to make your shopping decisions. But they are also great as a source of inspiration.

Hit a creative block? In a rush and need an idea? Just flick to any page of any of our catalogues and you’ll find projects that you can copy directly or alter to make your own.

For today’s card I used this project (page 198 of the main catty). It uses a hostess set that I haven’t got (yet ) but I adapted the idea (using products in our customer offer this month) and came up with a card that “borrows” heavily but is still my own.

I kept:

• layering the same colour card together
• same colour background stamping
• an aperture with a matching popped-up centre
• paper banner trim
• button and bow

I changed the :

• shape/size of the card
• colours used
• stamp sets used
• dies for punches
• type of paper
• type of button and bow

The card is an A6 landscape of Real Red. A mat of Real Red had an aperture die cut into it with the Holiday Ornaments framelits (127816)*. A frame was pierced around the aperture using the Festive Paper-Piercing Pack (127857)* and the matching bauble from the Ornament Keepsakes stamp set (W128048 or C128051)* was stamped in a regular pattern around the aperture using Real Red ink. A banner of Candlelight Christmas Specialty DSP (126901)* was adhered over the aperture and trimmed away from the centre. A tiny ornament was die cut from Real Red card using the same framelits set as earlier. The Festive Pack was used to pierce matching baubles onto Very Vanilla card and the tiny Red ornament. After popping the Very Vanilla mat up on dimensionals behind the aperture, the whole layer was popped up on more dimensionals onto the card front. Real Red 1/8″ Taffeta Ribbon (119251) was tied in a bow through a Brushed Bronze Designer Button (127833) and adhered onto the card front with glue dots. The tiny bauble was stitched and popped up on a dimensional in the centre of the aperture.

Here’s a close up of the stitching and I’ll add a tutorial for it later this week.

* There’s just a little less than week left to buy the stamp set/bundle together with the Candlelight Christmas Specialty DSP and get the Festive Paper Piercing Pack FREE!

I hope that today’s card gives you an idea of how you can use a design from the catalogue as inspiration for your own projects.

Sara xx