One of the things I truly love about making your own cards and gifts is being able to coordinate your gifts with your card and seeing the delight on the recipients face when they see all their matching goodies.

There is no other company I know of that coordinates their products as well as Stampin’ Up!® does!  All their colour families are the same in the cardstock, inks, pastels, markers, ribbons and Designer Series Papers and Simply Scrappin kits.  You will also love the new catalogue as there are now little colour swatches with the samples of the Designer Series Papers showing what colours thye’ve used for that particular pack so it will take alot of the guess work out for us.

Before I joined Stampin Up I would spend hours just picking out patterned papers and matching it with cardstock or ribbon in my local Scrap Shop. With the coordinating that Stampin’ Up! does you know that you will always be able to get the right colour to match your printed paper with your inks, pastels, cardstock and the like.

Here is a little set I made on Saturday for a party that Emily was going to.

I’ve used one of the gift sacks from Stampin Up! and just attached the same paper to the bag that I’d used as the background on the card. I first chose the paper I wanted to use and then matched the colours from there – it was so easy just to know that the colours used in this DSP pack were Lavender Lace, Pixie Pink, Tempting Turquoise and Certainly Celery so I knew exactly what cardstock to use and colours to use when colouring the image.

Here is a close up of the card.

I’ve used one of the new Hostess Sets from the new 2009-2010 Idea Book & Catalogue called Window Dressing.

It was so much fun to use this set as you have the window image and then you add to it with the little girl, bird and cat. There is also some snowmen, pot plants, pumpkins and 2 more sayings that go with this set. I can see many many uses for it and I’m sure you’ll see more of this set over the next 12 months!

The mother of the birthday girl was very impressed with the card and gift bag whereas Emily’s friend just loved the cat!

All in all it was a good day for all and the girls loved the Ten Pin bowling party while I rushed around doing the grocery shopping and a couple of other errands.

I hope you like this card and if you’d like me to show you how well the papers match with the cardstock, inks, markers and accessories then contact me and we’ll arrange a date for me to come and show you all the lovely new products starting April 1st.