Swaps

Today I am off to Auckland to stay in an apartment with fellow Stampin' Up! demonstrators from my upline. We are going to be attending OnStage Live at Sky City Convention Centre. This 3-day event will be lots of fun for everyone attending as we get to play with some new products, see demonstrations, mingle with other demonstrators from all around the world, and get a sneak peak at the upcoming annual catalogue, which goes live on June 1st.

One of the fun things I love to do every time I go to OnStage (the event happens twice a year) is make things to swap with other demonstrators. I usually make 3-D objects such as boxes or little baskets but this time I decided to make some small cards. I can't wait to see all the creative gifts I receive in exchange for my swaps. I will be sure to show pictures of them in a future post, but for now I'd like to share how I made the 100 cards I have to give to other demonstrators.

I chose to use the dog and cat stamp sets with matching punches for my cards -- Happy Tail, Dog Builder Punch, Nine Lives and Cat Punch. I first designed the 3" x 3" silhouette cards in black and white. However I don't like to waste anything so I stamped the animal images on one side of the whisper white square using my Stamparatus.

Then I cut the animals out with the matching punches. I turned the 'negative' card over and again used the Stamparatus to stamp the sentiment on each one. I love using my Stamparatus to make multiple cards as I can line each piece of the card up perfectly to get identical images quickly. 

I stamped small hearts on a piece of whisper white cardstock for the inside of each card along with a matching sentiment -- Meow! or Ruff! Then it was just a matter of adhering each layer to the 3" x 3" card bases and putting a red heart, made from the dog punch, on each silhouette. Of course I had to stamp a cute image on the matching envelopes. 

I made one larger card using the punched out animals from two smaller cards. I used Wood Textures (1" x 4") and Gingham Gala (3" x 4") designer series paper along with matching cardstock to make a 3.875" x 4.125" card (9.9 cm x 10.5 cm). This sizing allowed me to get three cards from one A4 piece of cardstock without any waste, however you will have to adjust these sizes if you are using letter-sized paper. I used my Stamparatus to place the sentiment on the top left corner of the Gingham Gala paper. Besides allowing me perfect placement, using the Stamparatus let me stamp the words again if the Memento ink didn't come out evenly.

I adhered the DSP to the front of the card as shown in the pictures (overlapping the Gingham Gala with the Wood Texture dsp) and popped the animals up on dimensionals along with a stamped heart cut out from the dog punch. For the inside of the card I stamped the sentiment from the Happy Tails stamp set along with a paw print.

I hope you've enjoyed seeing my swaps for OnStage and if you are one of the demonstrators I get to swap with, thank you very much!

#ComputerAndCraftDesigns #StampinUp #creativetherapy #PaperCraftIdeas #HandmadeCard #Swaps #OnStage #AucklandOnStage #MiniCard