Prickly Pear Australasian Blog Hop

Hello and welcome to our Australasian Blog Hop.  Hello to those who have arrived from Colleen's Blog - I hope you are enjoying the hop.

Confession time.  I am not a lover of cacti.  This could possibly be because I remember eating prickly pear on a camping trip as a kid and having to go wailing back to campsite so Mum could remove prickles from the roof of my mouth.  When I first saw the Prickly Pear Paper Pack it didn't sing to me.  However, I have just busted open my second packet.  Why? Because the colour palette in this one goes with EVERYTHING.  It also works really, really well with some of our older complements and papers and washi tape.  It is SOOOOO easy to use and because it is bright and bold a little bit goes a long way.

I have to also rave on about the Prickly Pear Scrapbooking Stamp (D1722)  As you probably know, at Close to My Heart we are all about celebrating relationships.  I feel like this stamp nails that! It is perfect for creating special pages to celebrate family and friends.  It has user friendly words that coordinate with "I love my.." or "is the best time" so you can make a page celebrating your grandparents, family, cousins, parents or sisters/brothers and friends.  This is the page I am teaching at my workshops this month so that my customers can celebrate someone dear to them:

See how the Prickly Pear paper goes so well with our old washi and the stamps just support the photo of me with one of my besties? I just cut one 1/2 inch sapphire strip and a 1 inch strip to use with the scallop border punch, with a 2 inch strip of Prickly Pear to sandwich in between.  If you don't have old washi then any zip strips or patterned paper would work just as well.  The stamping was done in Sapphire, Poppy and Tangerine.

 I love this rainbow stripe paper so much! It makes an effortless border, with a simple title straight from the Complements.

 Proving versatility - this is using Sweet Leaf cardstock as the border background and then the complements with a couple of dovetailed scrap strips. Easy Peasy!

 My take on the layout straight from page 27 of the Seasonal Expression.  I wanted to add more photos and moved the strips over to the left hand side of the page.  This is a fabulous layout for using up scrap strips of paper (when you are getting towards the end of a paper packet!)  I can't wait to share this idea with my customers!)

Lastly, this paper lends itself really well to cards.  I had fun mixing and matching paper and stamps.

So if you aren't particularly fond of cacti either please don't let that one feature paper put you off.  The floral and the rainbow stripe in this are just gorgeous, as is that sea glass irregular stripe.  It is a paper pack that will extend what you already have in stash.  The Complements have beautiful sentiments and flowers so I just used up the cactus stickers on cards to give away.

I hope you fall in love with Prickly Pear.  Doris has some great ideas so pop over to her blog now (and don't forget to leave a comment - we love to hear from you!)

Keep smiling,

Nell