Cake celebration birthday card

 How do you find inspiration?  It's a question I get asked quite a lot and today I thought I'd share one way that I get inspiration.... catalogues! That's right I use the beautiful projects made for catalogues as a fantastic source of inspiration. Years ago they they were described as being ideas books and that just stuck with me. Now in this digital age how does it work I hear you wonder 🤔 Well  if you go explore my Stampin' Up!  Online Shop you'll find projects galore. For every stamp, die, punch, pattern paper there are beautiful stylish project ideas shown. Whilst the ideas might be related to a certain product don't think that you need to use those products! Today's card was made using inspiration from 1 set but using something completely different! 

Today's inspiration is using the gorgeous Cake Celebration stamps and coordinating dies. But the inspiration was from and very different set called Hearts and Hugs! Cake celebration has a watercolour feel and is all about, as the name implies 😉, cake. Whilst the Hearts and hugs is what I call a cutesy animal based one. They're very different!

Here is the Hearts and Hugs sample from the online shop ...

Now I know I said it was an animal set but the coordinating dies have lots of extras in it which are featured in this sample.

Now here is what I created using the Cake celebration stamps and dies....

Can you see the similarities?  The use of the 3 panels of embossed cardstock. The use of 1 colour predominantly. The softening of the edges using time on tone ink blending.

Same but different.  This is what I call casing. This is where you use a card to inspire your own creation. Sometimes you will just tweak the original slightly. Other times you might just use it as a starting point. But there is always a connection to the original inspiration. I think to case a card is OK but please remember to give credit to the original inspiration and it's creator.