Merry Christmas!

Some of my Christmas cards this year- using the merry christmas stamp from the Easy Events SU stamp set.
I stamped the image using black stazon ink (so the lines wouldn't smudge), coloured in the leaves and popped pearls onto the mistletoe berries.
I used some Crochet Trim (lace-like ribbon), border punched card stock and for one of them used Dazzling Details (silver glitter glue) around the edge for extra detail.

A Trio of Christmas Cards

I made these 3 Christmas cards after a friend had seen a version of the middle 'christmas tree' card (that I'd  made at a recent craft evening) and asked for 3 for his family!




I set to the task using the same format -Island Indigo cardstock  run through woodgrain embossing folder with a whisper white two tags die cut and voila- played around until I came up with 2 more card toppers:












I used the flocked window sheet from the Candlelight Christmas Speciality Designer Series Paper on this tag, and then the merry christmas sentiment and motif from the Easy Events stamp set.



These Bauble stamps came from Tags til Christmas and Delightful Decorations stamp sets.

As you can see the mini tag punch came in handy too, as well as the 'merry' sentiment from the tiny tags stamp set.


I hope you like these too!

New look website and New Trimmer-FINALLY available to buy!

Its the first of the month, so what's new with SU?

The SU website has a snazzy new look:

SU Homepage -1st Dec 2012

 

And the long-awaited SU Paper Trimmer (showing above on the homepage today) is finally available to purchase!

• Stampin’ Trimmer (129722) £25.95

Here's a video showing all its fancy features! 

(We met the chap in the video here at convention -very sweet guy :)

Snowflake Season Simply Scrappin' Layout Kit

Snowflake card class

Tah Dah! I fnally got round to holding a class on Friday eve- here's some pics pic of my table and board of cards we made. You can also see the swaps I got at Convention all hanging up on the wall :)

I gave my ladies this handout, so if they didn't get round to finishing all the cards they could carry on at home. There was also lots left over to make even more cards with the pack- although the 6 cards did use up all the lovely glittery snowflakes.

Feel free to download the pdf here (nb: possibly only works with Google Drive/Docs ?) Let me know if it works or not, thanks!

SU! Convention 2012, Mainz Germany

Had a great time at the European Convention last week! And I even spotted a pic on http://www.facebook.com/stampinupfrance  of yours truely and some fellow "pink ladies" as we went to collect our Convention bags at Check in :)

Jade, Rachel, Sasha and me

I have lots of pics and swaps to show-just need to get some time to do it. Watch this space!

Orchard Harvest

I'm still here- and have even been crafting this month! In fact so much so that I haven't had time to sit and blog about it all. But just while I think about it i'll post a couple of pics of what i've been up to.

I have been working with the Orchard Harvest DSP paper (from the AW catalogue) along with the matching fabric and Perfectly preserved stamp set.

This is one of the cards I made for my Inspiration Table at the recent
Bicester SU Quarterly training day.
I CASED it from one by German SU Demo Jenni Pauli- I can't find the exact page but her amazing blog is here: http://paulinespapier.de/page/9/

My swaps this time were using the Two Tags Die, scallop circle punch and matching circle, apple and sentiments both from the Perfectly Preserved stamp set.

2012-2013 Annual Catalogue

 

The New -all singing, all dancing- Stampin' UP! Annual Catalogue is here

 

Running from Oct 1st 2012- June 30th 2013 

To view the online version click here

To Download  a Pdf version click here

 October/November Offer

Become an SU! Demo during October or November (by purchasing a £99 starter kit) and get a FREE pack of SU! Paper each month for the next 6 months (with every subsequent monthly order you place)

Become a Stampin' Up Demo (click here) 

 

Visit the SU! UK Website here

More retiring items...Triple Treat Flower

Another favourite of mine is retiring tomorrow - the Triple Treat Flower (individual stamp). This stamp came into its own during a training day back in January, where Michelle Last showed us how to make a 3"x3" card box and cards. The TTF stamp provided the finishing touch on the belly band around the box.

It works perfectly with the 5-petal flower punch (retiring), fancy flower punch and the 1/2" circle punch-so 3 motifs for price of 1!

Retiring time...

With the Stampin' Up Retired List in full flow, I thought i'd better get some pics up of cards i've made with those products soon to disappear - before it's too late.

Click here for the Retired Lists 

-items no longer available after September 30th 2012!

Wedding card

Luckily it's just a couple items going from this one- the Mocha Morning Speciality Papers with 40% Off, down from £11.50 to £6.90.

And the Filigree Designer Brads  (£8.50) -alas not reduced in price but retiring all the same :(

Pink Flower card

Flower, Daisies #2 Bigz Die is going

with 25% Off, down from £16.95 to £12.71.

Melon Mambo 12" x 12" Card Stock  is retiring in this format (to be re-configured) but remains at £5.50

 

Four 3"x3" cards with holder

More Designer Series Paper (DSP) is leaving in the form of Domestic Goddess (one of my personal favourites!) with 25% Off, down from £9.95 to £6.46

And all but the Thank you stamp used here are from the current Hostess stamp sets:

Tagtastic

£20.95 Value or £12 Hostess pounds (wood set)

 Happiest Birthday Wishes

 £32.95 Value or £20 Hostess pounds (wood set)

 

 All going at the end of this month!!

 

Yellow Owly card

Another CASE, this time from from Amy White's Amazing blog -isn't it cute?! My version started out at a manageable size, but just grew and grew-thankfully I found an envelope that just fit!

Striped ribbon card

Wow- just found this pic of a card I made ages ago at a friend's craft class. Really classy I think, must make some more!

Baby bib cards

I churned these two cuties out today! I was experimenting with stamping onto fabric a while back and found this waxy cotton that took the ink without it bleeding too much. I used black staz-on ink with the "for baby' stamp from the 'East Events' stamp set and lightly coloured them in with markers. I then whizzed some felt pieces through my Big Shot machine and stitched them back together again. I attached the bibs to the cardstock with sticky strip and a glue dot to hold the bow in place.

Craft eve at My House

I finally got round to holding a card making eve at my house last night. Here's the cards we made:

Ever since I purchased the designer series paper "Domestic Goddess" I have wanted to create one of these apron cards.
The final design came from a mixture of the following gorgeous aprons I found in the blogosphere:

• Joanne Travis: Sleepy in Seattle
• Lynney: Spiralz & Curlz
• Kim Hughes: Paper Smooches (template)

 This butterfly card was pretty much cased from one made by Jo Dumbleton, shown on her blog "Stampin 'n Stuff".

We got a little gold embossing powder going with the flower motif from SU's 'Charming' stamp set and I used the 'Top Note' die on vellum card for the background piece.

Hopeful Thoughts

Here's a CASE from one of Julie Ketterwell's creations. 
The stamp set is "Hopeful Thoughts"

Sorry about the background (rather detracts from the card, but the gloomy day outside meant struggling for light to take a pic anywhere!)

Happy Father's Day!

Well, this is what my dad is getting on Sunday- a card full of veggies!
I started work on it at the Retreat-where I could go through loads of stamp sets experimenting with the ones that look like foliage and veg.
I'm quite please with the cauliflower-cabbage type thing on the bottom row (who could tell it was a flower from Everything Eleanor?!)

I took the idea and layout from a card I saw on the Marks & Spencer website!

I am quite proud of this card, so have decided to enter it into Make My Monday's competition: Father's Day/Masculine cards.




Here's the card with the different stamp sets used

Bird punch box and cards set

I've got a little thing for making 3x3" cards at the moment, I love making them, and they may lovely presents too-when popped in a box and this time I even made the envelopes too!

The dsp pattened paper is retired i'm afraid, but the bird punch isn't, nor the word window punch. I even made multiple stickers using the 'Teeny Tiny wishes' stamp set that will fit nicely into the word window -so the cards can be made up for any occasion.

Man card!

Cards for men are often tricky, but I sat down and had a go for Stampin Royalty's challenge this week: Masculine Cards!

I used the Happy Birthday Sentiment from "Happiest Birthday Wishes"- a hostess set from SU! and last year's sale-a-bration "punch bunch" square scallop stamp with the matching punch.

I pretty much relied on  my Stamp-a-ma-jig to get the stamp in the correct place for the repeat pattern.

To finish it off I added another bit of red at the bottom which I also punched with the scallop edge border punch.

Enjoy!

Time for a colour challenge!!

Stampin' Royalty Challenge

I've finally got round to making something for  a the Stampin' Royalty Challenge colour challenge!

This little tea bag holder set I made based on the one we did at team training last month.

The instructions can be found on this amazing site (just click on teabag and cookie holder for the pdf)

The SU dsp paper set I used is "Nursery Nest"

More to come..!

Swaps!

Ta dah! My swaps for Regional training as promised. I called upon the help of a dear friend who just so happened to have a badge making machine (how cool is that?!) She was able to make me 30 of these little beauties.
The fabric is called "Twitterpated" and is from the new Summer SU Mini catalogue which launched yesterday.
I finished them off by pinning them to card cut out with the Two Tags die and the sentiment is from Cottage Garden.

My name badge!

So yesterday was my first time to an SU Regional Training event. I can't officially show you the swaps I made yet as I made them with items from the new mini (released 1st May!) but I thought I show you the name badge  I made especially for the occasion!

Pink Ladies "Cathedral Window" swap

Last week I went along to the Pink Ladies SU demo's event in Bicester. I made 20 swaps, but only have this piccy to show as an example of the technique I used. The ones I swapped were made using domestic goddess dsp and/or paisly petals dsp paper and also 4 silver mini brads for the centre of each set of 4 petal shapes.

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Pink Ladies April 2012 Bicester Training swap recipe

·      Aprox 6”x6” dsp paper

·      1-3/4” circle punch (punch out 9 circles)

·      1-1/2” square punch (punch one out from some card as a guide to fold round)

·      4 x small silver brads

·      tombo glue

·      white cardstock

I got the idea from doing a bit of Cathedral window quilting inspired by a friend who recommended  this lady's UTube video-which I watched and followed.
It took me ages, and in reality its v.small but I do love the outcome and effect.
I wondered if it could be done with papers-and eventually stumbled on the above technique.

Spiced Paisly (possible man card?!)

Its always tricky making "man" cards, but I think this would work quite well! I stayed off pinks and have gone for blue orange, green and yellows. I do love this set :)

Another circley card :)

I just can't get enough of the
is card! (Cased from this blog) I made this for another friend's birthday- but this time I had a go at making a rosette too.

A matching Pair

Here's a couple of In Colour cards- 

Lucky Limeade

Calypso Coral

Wisteria Wonder

Island Indigo

Pool Party

The techniques speak for themselves really-dotty embossing; punches-scallop edge punch, square scallop punch and five petal flower punch and the triple treat stamp pinned to card with tiny  silver brads :)

happy birthday (chocolate) cupcake

Happy Birthday card using stamp from Easy Events. I embossed the cake in gold and coloured it in with inks and blender pen.  I chose to mount the motif on Mocha morning specialty dsp paper to compliment the brown (chocolate) on the cupcake! It took me a while to decide- but I think it works ok?

Thank you owly

Since getting the owl punch about a year ago-i finally got round to making a "bookish" card with it!

In my other life I am a Library Assistant, so when our work experience boy left last week I made him a little card. The book ends/sides were made with the word window punch.

Sale-a-bration CASE

I totally cased some more cards here-but just loved the design! Paulines Papier is the blog to check out some really beautiful SU cards. I think they'd work well in pink too...

Stamp set used: Fresh Vintage (free with £45 SU order-until end of March!)

Here's a link to the SU catalogues for more info: http://www2.stampinup.com/gb/eng/543.asp

Spice Cake Circles!

Now this little beauty is a total CASE from a beautiful blog I stumbled upon -what an amazing idea!

Sunflower Birthday

I used the Blossoms Petal punch to cut out the yellow petals, then used an ink dauber with matching yellow ink on the edges of the petals to give them some definition. Using versamark, I stamped the circular Happy Birthday motif from the "Happiest Birthday Wishes" SU" Hostess" set,  and using gold embossing powder brought it to life - voila!

Lots of Love

I recently went along to an SU party where we made this gorgeous card with SU Demo Julie Halls
The stamp set used is from the SU Spring Mini -"You are Loved". Instead of stamping with matching ink onto the card stock background, we stamped with versamark- whick makes a very similar effect-so great idea if you don't have the matching ink!

I did make some Christmas cards...honest!

I was rather rubbish at taking photos this year, looks like I only managed these two. But I did lots of others ...maybe I can see if any recipients still have their card floating around and get me a photo?!

Stamp used here: SU's "Something for Christmas" and the snow flake stamp is from "Season of Joy"
Both of these use embossing powders-gold and white respectively.