Easter Gifts - Part 1

This Easter has been a special one for me as my parents were able to visit, not only for Easter, but for my birthday as well.  I wanted to make them something a little special and so came up with these cute little card boxes.  

This one is the one I made for my father, I wanted to use some masculine colours and textures so chose the lovely Natural Trim Ribbon, it matches perfectly with Crumb Cake and is inspired by Hessian so has a lovely rough texture.  Just the thing when you want to add a ribbon but keep the masculine feel to the project.  Some masking with the Everybunny stamp set created the cute little scene.

This is the inside of the 'card', and as you can see the base of the card is actually a box that holds a block of Cadburry's chocolate.  My father had Old Gold Rum and Raisin in his.

 This is the front of the box I made for my mum.  I wanted it to be far more feminine and so used some retired DSP and carried the colours through to the flowers from Bordering on Romance.  I just adore the sentiment, an a la carte stamp called Easter Blessings (well named lol).  In the box for mum I put a big block of Peppermint chocolate which she also loved.  

I love being able to create special gifts for people, and I know my parents appreciate the extra care that goes into a gift like this.  I will post again tomorrow to show off the cute little Easter baskets I made for everyone too.

Happy Stamping

Nacho Challenge

Nacho Average Challenge is a fairly new challenge and I loved the colour combination this week.

I have again used my Apothecary Accents Framelits dies, using one to back the main image.   I stamped the flowers from Bordering on Romance onto water colour paper and then coloured using blender pens to get the various shades of the Raspberry Ripple.  The sentiment is from Language of Friendship, and I realise that I don't use this sentiment enough!  I have used the new stitched wassabi ribbon on cross corners and added a bow.

Happy Stamping

Double the Fun, Double the Challenge

I have some exciting news this week,  for one week only Paper Lovin' Gals have joined up with the team from Friday Mashup.  Regular visitors to my blog will know that I love to join in with the Friday Mashup so I was very excited about this one. This week you can

1. Make a card inspired by the PLG image
2. Make a Mother's Day card
3. Make a pop-up card

Or mash them up and make any combination of the three, or even all three!

This is my card 'closed'  you can see here the stamping I did on the top surface and the punched flower made with different parts of the Triple Layer Punch.  This isn't the exciting part of the card however.

This is what the card looks like when you 'open' it up!  I used the two tags die for the pop up part of the card, and the Bordering on Romance stamp set.  I went with all three elements, colours from the inspirational photo, the Mother's Day card (shhh don't tell mum), and the pop up card!  This was my first attempt at a pop up card, and once I got going it was quite easy.  I got the tutorial from Split Coast Stampers.  This is just one of many pop-up card types, and there is no lack of inspirational options this week, so grab a tutorial and join in with the joint challenge this week.

Pop on over to both blogs to see what all the design team members have created to inspire you Paper Lovin' Gals  and The Friday Mashup.

Happy Stamping

ESAD Autumn/Winter Blog Hop

It is that time of the Stampin' Up! year again ... the release of a new Mini Catalogue, this one runs from 1st April until 31st July.  I have to say this is my very favourite mini catalogue ever, well since I joined Stampin' Up!  To showcase some of the great items now available for purchase the girls at ESAD have once again put their creative caps on and have made some wonderful projects to inspire you.

What is ESAD? ESAD stands for "Extra Special Australasian Demonstrators" and it is an on-line group just for Australian and New Zealand Stampin Up demonstrators.

We so love what we do and not only do we love to share it with our customers, friends, and wonderful blog visitors, but we share our love for what we do with each other as demonstrators. We run swaps, challenges, tutorials, product know-how, and cyberstamps, and we are always there to help and support each other when it is needed.

So if you are a Stampin' Up! demonstrator located in Australia or New Zealand, then please feel free to click here to join our wonderful group

You might be starting with my blog, or have come from looking at Narelle Hoggard's wonderful creations, it doesn't matter.  With a blog hop you just follow the link at the end of each post to take you to the next blog in the hop.  So grab a cuppa, sit back and enjoy ...

I have a few projects to show you today, I just couldn't choose which set to use or what to show!  This cute card and matching box set use a number of the new products. The card uses the Bordering on Romance stamp set which is so lovely and soft, and has two stamps that match perfectly with the Edgelits Dies.  You can see the scallop die used in this card, I love how each scallop has it's own little scallops.  The box on the right is made with the new Simply Scored Scoring Tool and the Framelits Labels Collections Die.

Here you can see how I have used the second largest label and folded (along dotted black lines) and cut (the small red lines) to make the top and base of the box.  The ribbon hides some of the flourish but it does look really cute.  I adhered the base onto the Window Sheet with sticky strip and the top fits over the top and the ribbon holds it on.

When new products are released I really like to use them with existing items to see how well they work together.  In this card, and the next one, I have used the Designer Frames with the Bordering on Romance stamps.  On both cards I have also used the new Pleated Satin Ribbon, and I have added some pearls onto the ribbon to give a richer feel to the cards.

Like the previous card this one has used the Pleated Satin Ribbon with the pearls, the difference with this is that I have used the second Edgelits die.  Isn't that a great shape?  The Edgelits are great to use, they are thin dies that are made to go through the Big Shot and even though they are quite thin they are very strong and cut beautifully.

These next few pictures are not so much about my creations as they are to share a couple of things with you that I have found useful with the new Framelits and Edgelits.  The first I came up with to help keep everythign steady when getting it lined up to go through the Big Shot.  I started out by buying a new set of Standard Cutting Plates.  On one side I used my quilting ruler to add paralel lines both vertically and horizontally.  On the other side I smeared TomBow glue along every second line and allowing it to dry, making it become tacky but not a permanent adhesive (you could also use Dotto in this step). Once it was dry I patted my hands over it to reduce the strength of the tackiness a little. As you can see it makes it much easier to line the edgelits up and hold everything steady as it gets run through the Big Shot.  

Finally I wanted to show you how I store my Framelits and Edgelits on my desk.  I have used two of the plastic photo frames and adhered magnet sheet to each one, then added some of the Twitterpated DSP to the front to make them look a little bit prettier.  The magnets are strong enough to work through the DSP and hold my dies in place ready for me to grab when I need them.  I also love this because it makes them so much easier to keep track of - I tend to have things all over my desk as I work and the little dies were at risk of going AWOL before I came up with this system.  I still keep the packets they came in for when I take them to workshops.

I hope you have enjoyed looking at my creations, and hop on over to visit Nicole Derendorf and see what she has made.  As you hop around don't forget to leave comments to let everyone know what you think of their creations.

Here is a list of all the participants, just in case any of the links are not working:

Tanya Bell
Michelle Grech
Jane Norish 
Juliette Chapman
Pauline Bennets
Alison Barclay
Keryn Campbell
Sharlene Meyer
Theresa Schirmer
Caroline Cassidy
Michelle Halling
Leonie Schroder
Delys Cram
Libby Dyson
Tina Hewett
Kelly Nelson
Yvonne Walker
Alisa Tilsner
Nicole Stalker
Peggy Quarmby
Andrea Buckland
Carolyn Bennie
Narelle Hoggard
Monique Fielder - You are Here
Nicole Derendorf

Happy Stamping