Stamp Review Crew | Nothing’s Better Than

May 31, 2021May 30, 2021 ~ Kelly Kent ~ 1 Comment

Hello! A couple of times a year we get the pleasure of a bonus Stamp Review Crew hop when there’s 5 Mondays in a month. It’s always fun to hop with my Stampin’ Up! friends from around the world. You can see the full list of everyone joining in on the main Stamp Review Crew blog.

Today there’s nothing better than a bonus hop as we showcase projects we’ve made using the “Nothing’s Better Than” bundle.

This stamp set has the cutest images with all your favourite indulgences and pretty fonts with quirky sayings. There’s coordinating dies with outlines for the art stamp and gorgeous word dies to match.

I’ve made two cards to share today. The first card is all about the cocktails. This is my favourite stamp from the set – it’s a party in a drink!

The colour choices for today’s cards are inspired by the Pattern Party DSP. This bumper pack of patterned paper is available as a reward on Stampin’ Up! orders over $250 (in Australia). The order will need to be over $310 for it to be completely free, or you can use the $25 of rewards on a $250 order and pay the $6 difference. Stampin’ Up! rewards are so wonderfully generous and flexible.

These colours are Granny Apple Green, Pumpkin Pie & Flirty Flamingo on a Blushing Bride card base. The cocktails are Daffodil Delight and Balmy Blue.

The ‘happy birthday’ is from a new stamp set I was so excited to add to my collection – One Happy Family. As well as the amazing styling of the birthday greeting there’s a bunch of other sentiments covering pregnancy, good news, love and babies.

The second card I’m sharing uses the another pattern from the Pattern Party DSP. Both cards also use the Picture This Dies – two fabulous layout dies – one circles, one rectangles with stitched detail to make them extra special.

This card has all the vices you could need – coffee (or tea in my case), chocolates and a cookie, with a ‘love you more than’ sentiment.

‘Because you’re awesome’ comes from three different sentiment stamps in the set – easy to piece together into a custom saying.

The colours for this card are a Pear Pizzazz base with Granny Apple Green, Balmy Blue, Misty Moonlight, Daffodil Delight, Mango Melody and Bumblebee circles.

Thanks for hopping by by blog today. Next up is Lou Kitzelman – there’s nothing better than her creations! I’ll be hopping again with the Stamp Review Crew next week – as we roll into the first Monday of June and share more projects with another fantastic stamp set.

Have a great week!

Happy Love Day 2021

February 14, 2021February 14, 2021 ~ Kelly Kent ~ 2 Comments

Happy Valentine’s Day friends! It’s a big weekend of love here at Papercraft HQ. Yesterday Mr Papercraft and I celebrated our wedding anniversary, Little Miss Papercraft had her birthday and today it’s Valentines Day!

Back in early January, I used the Darling Donkeys stamp set (available for {FREE} during Sale-A-Bration until 28th Feb 21) to make Mr P’s birthday card. Click here to see it if you missed it.

So, it seemed like perfect coordination to keep the theme going and use another donkey from the set to make a card to cover all the occasions of this weekend.

Together with the perfectly named Love You Always Specialty DSP in elegant Sahara Sand, a Real Red heart die from the Be Mine Stitched Dies, ‘love’ sentiment from the Well Written Dies and ‘you’ stamp from the Pretty Perennials stamp set, the donkey is just the cutest expression of love!

I hope your day is filled with lots of happy – with people you love and activities that fill your cup.

Sending lots of love from Australia,

Music From My Heart

February 14, 2020February 13, 2020 ~ Kelly Kent ~ 4 Comments

We like to keep things simple around here. Mr Papercraft has no excuse to forget our wedding anniversary – it falls on the same day as Miss Papercraft’s birthday and the day before Valentine’s Day.

For our anniversary, in keeping with that simple theme, I made an almost one layer card using the Music From The Heart stamp set and hearts from the Detailed Hearts Die.

Music From The Heart | kelly kent

This gorgeous musically themed stamp set was designed by Dawn Olchefske (one of my fave SU designers and the first place I check if I need a tutorial!) as part of her million dollar sales achievement.

Music From The Heart | kelly kent

The colour theme is simple too – red, white & black, which matches the theme we had for our wedding. I’ve shared some photos before of our beautiful day (see here and here), but here’s another one from the archives.

Sadly this restaurant is no longer is operation, but how amazing is that red wall??? And so convenient to match our colours!

There’s a solid place in the crafting world for a traditional lovey-dovey card with hearts all over it! The hearts I’ve used on this card are from the Detailed Hearts Die. As well as a great die cut for cards & scrapbooking, the hearts it leaves when it cuts out the die are amazing for adding to projects. I took a little liberty with the music notes and transformed them into hearts too!

Music From The Heart | kelly kent

Happy anniversary to Mr Papercraft! The goal in life is not to find the perfect person, but to find the person perfect for you – and we’ve succeeded!

From My Heart

February 7, 2020 ~ Kelly Kent ~ 3 Comments

Just one week til Valentine’s Day! With three kids in the mix, our recent celebrations have extended only to a card – which is a task I can live up to!

This Valentine’s Day card was the make & take project for our recent team meeting. I wanted to share the From My Heart suite with the team and also my current obsession with ink blending.

From My Heart | kelly kent

The background for this card was made using Stampin’ Up! Classic Inks – Flirty Flamingo, Melon Mambo, Lovely Lipstick & Real Red. I applied them using make up brushes – which are perfect for ink blending, and also super easy to clean.

Start with the lightest colour, making sure to swipe the brush on scrap paper first before adding ink to your cardstock. This helps to avoid harsh marks where you first put your brush. I find working in a combination of left to right and swirling circles helps me to build up the colour evenly.

Once you’ve got the desired depth of colour, ink up the brush with the next darkest colour and blend to overlap the first colour. Continue until you’ve got all colours. You can always go back and add more ink if you think certain patches or colours need it – but the trick to ink blending is to get your project to a point where the colour has been applied but it still looks a little rough and leave it to dry – that’s when the magic happens! The superior quality of our Whisper White cardstock makes it ideal for ink and it absorbs and settles beautifully. So, in this case, the advice to put down the brush and step away is worth listening to!

From My Heart | kelly kent

Although I love the smoothness of the ink layered together, I love the texture created by adding water droplets once you’ve finished with the ink blending. There are many different ways to achieve this effect – I like to squeeze water to the end of my Aqua Painter and then flick the brush end of the Aqua Painter across the lid and let the water flick everywhere. I find this gives me varying size water droplets.

With my background completed, it was time to assemble my loved up card. I cut the ink blended background with a Stitched Rectangle Die and mounted it on a Thick Whisper White base (half an A4 sheet). I then cut the Detailed Hearts Die on Whisper White and trimmed a portion to lay across my card. I love this die! I left some of the hearts in the die cut, rather than popping them all out.

From My Heart | kelly kent

And finally the sentiment – HVD was stamped from the Heartfelt stamp set in Flirty Flamingo and the arrow in Smoky Slate. I’ve cut the hearts using the Heart Punch Pack – it has both smooth and scalloped heart bundles. Buy the punches in a 2 pack ($A59), or together with the stamp set (bundle = $A80).

To buy Stampin’ Up! supplies visit my online store – click here.

To join my Stampin’ Up! team – Paper Adventures by purchasing a Starter Kit for $169, click here. You’ll receive $235 of products, free shipping and a bonus stamp set, DSP pack and trimmer until 31st March 2020.

Happy crafting this weekend and have a L-O-V-E-ly week!!!

Paper Adventures Team Hop | Photo Inspiration

August 16, 2019August 16, 2019 ~ Kelly Kent ~ 6 Comments

Paper Adventures - Blog Hop Header

I wanted to take the chance to say a big thank you for all the comments, messages, likes and support after my very reflective post yesterday (if you missed it, you can read it here). In keeping with my aim to simplifying my stamping activities, I’m not responding individually, but I wanted you to know that you touched my heart and made me feel very special.

It’s very fitting that my first post on the new journey is a Paper Adventures Team Hop. These ladies are the heart and soul of my stamping experience. If you ask most Stampin’ Up! demonstrators what keeps them going, it’s usually the friendships. Making connections with like-minded crafting addicts is such a fabulous part of this adventure.

We welcome this month’s guest designer – Ellen Woodbridge. Ellen is a demo on the east coast who has the most beautiful smile and infectious laugh. I’ve been lucky enough to attend a few events with Ellen and it’s always a joy to see her. She’s pretty talented at this stamping thing too!!!

The theme for today’s hop is photo inspiration. We’re all creating something that has been inspired by this sweet image (credit: Amy Shamblen).

person holding bouquet of flower

I love hearts and flowers together, so this photo appealed instantly. I love all the extra details – the different types of flowers, the colours, the little ladybugs at the bottom. There’s so many points of inspiration and I know the team is going to come up with some great projects to share.

I used the idea of making a heart from flowers to start my card. One of my favourite DSPs from the Annual Catalogue is Pressed Petals. The colours & beauty of this DSP caught me by surprise – because it certainly didn’t stand out in the catalogue to me. I love the floral patterns, the burlap design and the way the sheets complement each other. The DSP is lightweight paper style which means the pack contains double the number of sheets as usual – that’s a win!!!