Control Freaks Occasions & Sale-a-Bration Blog Tour

Welcome... It's time to hop along with the fabulous Control Freaks!  This month we are focusing on sneak peeks of the Occasions and Sale-a-Bration catalogs!  If you are following the tour, you've probably arrived here from Lisa Martz's blog.  She does beautiful work!

Put Christmas preparations on pause... new catalog items are in da house!  I love new catty excitement... to sit down and play for no specific reason with new goodies is so fun.  Sometimes playing results in some decent stuff... sometimes.  Dina Kowal says, "You can make it perfect or you can make art."  No reason to stress about it.

I started by straddling the outgoing Holiday catalog and incoming Occasions catalog with this New Year's card.  You can't go wrong with gold!

I love, love the medium-sized balloons in the Balloon Celebration set, perfectly-sized for a balloon bouquet on a card front.  And the coordinating punch makes creating super easy and fast!

I stamped off the Delightful Dijon ink for the balloons and embossed the confetti with gold embossing powder.  The Winter Wonderland paper is still available in the Year-End Sale.  This card uses Retro Sketches #194.

Stamps: Balloon Celebration; Paper: Basic Black, Whisper White, Winter Wonderland DSP; Ink: Delightful Dijon, Basic Black Archival, Versamark; Accessories: Gold metallic thread, Gold sequin trim, Gold EP, Balloon Bouquet punch, Dimensionals.

I've got lots of ideas for the Going Global set. I figured joining in this hop would be a good way to warm up for a swap I need to pump out by mid-week.  So here's my first shot at it.

I watercolored in warm colors for the sun rays and stamped the globe in an opposite color on the color wheel for a dynamic pop.

Stamps: Going Global; Paper: Real Red, Very Vanilla, Basic Black, Watercolor Paper; Ink: Old Olive, Cherry Cobbler, Pumpkin Pie, Delightful Dijon, Daffodil Delight, Pacific Point, Memento Tuxedo Black, Whisper White Craft, Versamark; Accessories: Rhinestone jewel, Itty Bitty Accents epoxy stickers, Silver metallic thread, Clear EP, 2" Circle punch, Itty Bitty Accents punch pack, Watercolor brush, Sponge, Sunburst thinlit, Big Shot, Dimensionals.

Jump over to LeeAnn Greff's blog to check out what fabulously creative ideas she has.