Revisiting Craft Asylum Candy

This week there's an inspiration photo at Sweet Stampin  and as soon as I saw the pretty pastel colours and the chevron tiles, I was reminded of the Craft Asylum Candy papers, both 6" and 12" pads, that were languishing part used in the bottom of my stash box and probably hadn't seen daylight for a couple of years, so I lifted them out and got a little bit carried away!

First of all, here  is the card I made for the Sweet Stampin challenge

I stamped the hearts and sentiment onto one of the label panels from the smaller pad and layered them together with a border from the same pad onto a card covered with the small heart paper. The pennant is a die cut from the larger pad and the flowers are made with snippets from both pads, stamped with a flower that was a magazine freebie many years ago, fussy cut and with enamel dots for centres.

Tucked into the back of the smaller pad were absolutely masses of snippets, so next I die cut a whole load of circles of different sizes, used some of them to back sentiments from the die cuts in the larger pad, and added to a pink background along with a border from the small pad.

Some of the elements are stuck directly on to the background, others raised with foam pads.

There were still lots of snippets left, so I looked to Pinterest for inspiration, where I found the card that I CASEd for this next one. I would credit the original artist, but for some reason instead of giving the blog or site it came from as Pinterest usually does, it just said "Source: Instagram". Instagram's a blooming big place and I couldn't face scrolling through a few billion pictures just to find a single one, so whoever you are, thank you for the idea!

Again, one of the die cuts from the large pack has been used, this time with a die cut scalloped circle. The squares are cut from snippets of the patterned papers and the butterflies punched from snippets of the plain ones, and the pennants stamped onto another plain blue snippet.

I am going to enter the two snippets cards as a pair, making a single entry to Pixie's Snippets Playground, because I can't decide which I prefer.

Finally I did something I almost never do, an exact copy of a card - well, almost exact, except that I made the "minor" adjustment of changing the background from white to black, which I think completely alters the look of the card. I saw the original on the Craft Asylum Blog (sadly like the company, now defunct, but at least the blog is still visible) - you can see it here.

I think swapping out the white background for black makes the embellishments - all from the die cuts in the large pad - and the stamped sentiment really pop and means it would be suitable to send to a man.

Well, I've had a blast reliving these old papers - and still have plenty more left to use. But until next time I get struck by an inspiration particle, it's heading back into the stash box (oh go on then, I'll be honest, boxES ) for now. Apart from those stamps, I'd forgotten just how useful they are!