Trendsetting Spotlight on Lesley Croghan

Hey TSG fans, and welcome to this week's Trendsetting Spotlight. If you aren't familiar with the Trendsetting Spotlight, it's where we focus on you, our loyal fans and customers!! 

Today, the spotlight has fallen on Lesley Croghan!!! Lesley's blog is called Always Playing With Paper, so be sure to check it out right noooow.

For now, here are a few of her cards for you to look at using TSG stamps!!

Her first car uses the super cute Get Your Thong On set. I love the rainbow patterned paper, and her simple layout.

Her next card uses the Blossom by Blossom stamp set. I love the sweet colors and embellishments.

For her final card, I chose one she made using Shiver Me Timbers. I LOVE that she used a tag, and that paper is PERFECT!!

Be sure to head to Lesley's blog and tell her we sent you!! Have a great day!!

Wednesday Trends - Nautical!

Hi there! Sarah here to talk about a BIG trend happening lately, nautical!

Nautical is everywhere right now - fashion, decorating and definitely paper crafting. Think navy, red, crisp white and pops of yellow with stripes, anchors and banners and you are SO on trend. Here's a little collage I put together from my nautical pinterest board:

Feeling inspired? Good! There She Goes has a bunch of sets perfect for this trend, Aquaholic, Float my Boat and Shiver me Timbers just to name a few.

My first card today uses Shiver Me Timbers.

For this card I took advantage of one of the many nautical paper collections out there at the moment. This one is Down by the Shore by Echo Park.  I like to add natural fibers on my nautical cards, I'll admit - I tried to tie a sailors knot, and failed miserably (multiple times) so went with a knot and button combo instead.

I love that pirate image! I coloured with copics and fussy cut right on the edges to create a simple scene.

I like to finish off the inside of my cards, it's a great way to use up all those leftover paper scraps! Here's the inside of this card:

Don't have enough paper to cover the inside of your card? Combine them! Here I used the leftover anchor paper and tacked on some stripes to make the piece big enough.

The great thing about this trend is it is so easy to achieve the look without any special papers. For my next card, I went clean and simple and I just love the crisp, fresh look!

I cut strips of navy card stock and adhered them to a white card base - if you start with the middle strip, it's much easier to get your spacing perfect. I die cut a red frame (reminiscent of a porthole) and stamped the awesome sentiments from Handwritten on a banner shape.

You don't have to use ocean themed stamps on a nautical card - I think this is a great uni-sex look for a thank you card. I finished the card with a little charm I found in my stash, hanging from some thick hemp twine.

Thanks for stopping by today, I hope you're inspired to add a little nautical interest to your next creation!

Trendsetter Tuesday-Sarah!!

This week's Trendsetter of the Week is our newest addition to the team Sarah Gough!! Sarah has long been one of my favorite stampers, and she is ROCKING her Trendsetter spot...ROCKING it!!

Here is a little info about Sarah, before we get to some of her A-MAZ-ING work.

Now let's get to the good stuff....prepare to be WOWed!

Her first card was for last week's paper piecing challenge...and it is SO cute! I love the patterns she used, and the little scene she created using PANDAmonium is just ADORABLE!

Her second card....be still my heard. It is TOO fun! She used Jungle Out There, and I love all the great layers, and all the different elements are AMAZING! So cute...

Finally, we have her card from this week's challenge, using Bombdiggity. 

I love what she has done with the color challenge, and the composition of this card is just devine. 

Well, that is it for me for now!! Be sure to stop by Sarah's blog and say hey and check out her amazing work!

TSG219-Inspiration Color Challenge

This week our challenge is brought to us by our Trendsetter of the week, Sarah!  She has challenged us to make a card or project with the provided picture as a Color Inspiration for your card!! 

To be eligible for the giveaway, create a NEW card or project using the inspiration photo inspired colors, and then come back to the TSG Blog to add your name and a link to your project in the InLinkz that is located at the bottom of this challenge post. This challenge is open until the winner has been announced on the following Monday (August 12th ). The winner will get a $5 gift certificate to use in the TSG Web store!

By participating in this challenge, you may also find yourself in the Trendsetting Spotlight that shines on the TSG Blog every Thursday. We will be on the lookout to find challenge cards that stand out and show Trendsetting qualities. TSG stamps are not required to participate in the challenges but are appreciated :) 

You do not need to have a blog to be able to participate in the TSG Challenges! You can simply add the URL link from your project after it has been uploaded to your online craft gallery. If you upload your card to an online craft gallery, please use the keyword TSG219 so we can check out your beautiful work!

The winner of last week's TSG218 Challenge is:~DEANNE~ 
Here are your random numbers:

11
Timestamp: 2013-08-06 00:08:33 UTC

Need some inspiration to help you get started? Check out these great cards made by the following Trendsetters!

~ Sarah
~ Karin
~Tracy M.
~ Kim O.
~ Torico
~ Mary J
~Wendy

Week In Review: July 28th - August 3rd

What is Release Week In Review (WIR)?- WIR is where we showcase cards made by the Trendsetters and myself throughout the our release peeks week. Not only to you get to see gorgeous projects made using TSG stamps, but you also have a chance to WIN one of these cards! Leave a comment on this post and next WIR I will choose a winner using a random number generator. That person will then get to pick out their favorite card and the Trendsetter that created it will send it to them :)

Last Week's Winner Is:Laura Turcotte

Here are your random numbers:

3

Timestamp: 2013-08-05 00:51:19 UTC

Kim O. (Penelope and Birdcage)

Jenny (It's a Jungle Out There)

Torico (Amaia's Daisy Fairy, This is my Life, Mixed Media Backgrounds)

Torico (Chalkboard Memories)

Sarah (PANDAmonium)

Stampbook Saturday with Jenny

Hi there! It's me again! I have a few pages to show you today, that I made for my Snapbook (Simple Stories). Snapbooks seem most like a cross between Smashbooks and Project for Life. There are pages that are photo sleeves and then there are journalling/ smashing pages as well. This is my first go at this kind of scrapbooking (I am guilty of having purchased both Smashbooks and Project for Life, but have not used either yet).

Just a few weeks ago, my little family packed up and went on our annual trek to visit my family in Victoria, British Columbia. We decided to take a detour on the way home and headed into Washington, and then Idaho, on our way home to Alberta. If you have never been to Victoria, it is a beautiful city! Anyway, we took a ferry from Sydney to Ana Cortes, Washington. It was such a gorgeous trip, sailing right through the San Juan Islands. I loved it! 

The first page, in the two page layout, shows pictures of us on the ferry.

Our little pirate friend and the sentiment are from the set Shiver Me Timbers. The fish down on the bottom are from Aquaholic.

The second page shows a few pictures of the boys at this really AMAZING restaurant in Seattle that we hit up on our first night there. It was called The Crab Pot and was so fun!!! My hubby and I ordered some kind of feast that they literally dumped on the table, after covering it with news paper, putting bibs on us, and arming us with wooden mallets and thick wood cutting boards to eat/ pound on!!! The kids of course, were gagging and complaining about the smell of the crab, prawns, mussels and clams that we were gorging ourselves on! lol! Poor landlocked little prairie mice! No taste for ocean cuisine!

I used the lobster and crabs from the set Beach Bums and 'caught them' in mesh net ribbon!  I also anchored the sentiment (HAHAHA!) with one of the critters. The title is Thickers and black CS letters that I cut using dies.

 I hope that you've enjoyed a little peek into my life! Adding stamps to your scrapbook layouts is a fun and economical way to add pizazz to those pages! I encourage you to dig through your stash of TSG stamps and find one, or a combination like I did, that will work for your photos!

ABC Friday- Bag Tag

It's me, Jenny, again! I wanted to try my hand at a mixed media project, but needed to 'dip my toes' in, so to speak! So I thought maybe a tag would be the perfect smaller canvas to start with! Tobi did a really good tutorial on the TSG blog awhile back and it's really helpful for beginners (like me!)

I used a bold, funky TSG stamp that is perfect for mixed media stamping! Dream in Color. Check it out- it's fun, different and cheap at only $9!!!

I literally had to unwrap everything I used from it's original packaging, lol! I always buy with the intent to use, and then, well......you know how it goes! So even just unwrapping got me psyched! haha

I used Gesso, Molding paste, a stencil, Gelatos, a Pitt Pen, Derwent Inktense pencils, and Perfect Pearls Mist. No word of a lie. ALL STILL IN PACKAGING! 

This was sooooo much fun to make! My fingers were all messy, I got molding paste on my pants, but I felt like a little kid in art class again!!!! I added my tag to a gift bag and threw some tissue in, and voila! A nicely packaged gift for a friend! Who wouldn't love this?