Just Made It

 I am off work for the week and have been enjoying some down time, but this afternoon I decided to have a browse through some of my favourite challenge blogs and came across the Just Add Ink sketch challenge. Trouble was I only had a few hours to get it finished and meet the deadline - whew, made it.  

I wanted to use some of the Sale-A-Bration (SAB) papers and stamps that I earned recently and decided for this sketch I would use my new Borders Scoring Plate, available in the upcoming Seasonal Catalogue that goes live on 1st February.  It has lots of patterns that you can dry emboss onto cards, for this card however I used the overlay sheet as a ruler and drew the curved lines and then cut with scissors.  If you zoom in on the picture you can see I also added a couple of dry embossed lines as well.  The Window Frames I ran through the Big Shot twice, the second time moving it so that I ended up with a more oval shape then ran through the Big Shot again with my Designer Frames oval folder.  The butterfly, flowers, bird and sentiment are all from the Bloomin' Marvellous stamp set that you can also earn for FREE!  

Happy Stamping

Playing with Pre-Order

One of the great things about being a Stampin' Up! demo is that I get to purchase select items from new catalogues a month before they "go live".   

There are three new items and three retiring items on this card!  The three retiring items are the Domestic Goddess DSP, the Poppy Parade card stock used as the base of the card and the Just For You sentiment from the hostess set Tagtastic.  The three new items are the cute frame in the centre from Apothecary Accents Framelits - this is a set of 4 frames of varying shapes and sizes, I can guarantee you will see these lots more on my cards in the future.  The second new item is one of the new In-Colour markers used to colour in the flowers in the sentiment, and finally, a bit harder to find, is the little triple flower stamp that I stamped in VersaMark on the base card.  I wanted something to give some life to the background card and realised that this little stamp was a great match for the flowers on the DSP.

Off to have more of a play with my new items!

Happy Stamping

16th Birthday Card & Gift

This weekend my lovely daughter had two birthdays celebrations to go to and I offered to make her a couple of cards to take. The first one I will show is the 16th card and matching gift box holding a very special hand made gift.

The first thing I made was the gift box.  I tried a couple of options, but the Box #2 die worked best with the gift (sorry no pic of that) but I will tell you about it.  I wanted to use the Framelits die for the cut out on the front of the box as I knew I could then use the larger frames on the birthday card.  I knew the birthday girl likes purple (I think a lot of 16yo girls do!), and so chose Elegant Eggplant, a colour I used to love but haven't used in ages.  I decided it would go very well with Pool Party, to give it a lift.  I chose Pool Party Seam Binding ribbon to tie up the box and hold the lid shut.  The sentiment is from Memorable Moments, stamped and than hand cut.

With the colour pallette for the project sorted out, and knowing I was going to use the Framelits all I had to do was come up with the card - sounds easy right?  Well it mostly was, I started with the Very Vanilla layer, stamping the flourish from Creative Elements in Elegant Eggplant, and then colouring in the leaves in Pool Party with my Stampin' Write Marker.  The Elegant Lines Embossing Folder seemed to go quite well with this so I embossed the Pool Party layer to give some extra texture.  I still wasn't quite happy, so used the oval from the Designer Frames lightly sponged with Elegant Eggplant to give a subtle highlight to the frame.  I added the Happy Birthday sentiment from Perfect Punches punched out with the Extra-Large Oval punch and sponged around the edges with Pool Party.  I finished off with a little bit of bling on the sentiment, Seam Binding to tie it in with the gift box,  and "16" cut out with my Junior Type alphabet die.

 Here are the two together.  Now what is in the box?  My daughter had to design a project for her textiles class this semester, the criteria was that it had to be affordable and easily manufactured.  She did a bit of research and came up with a concept, the first I knew about it was "Mum can I borrow your Big Shot?"!  She had decided to decorate a Bobby Pin with some material cut out with the Perfect Pennants Die, using two different colours of material.  Her project was chosen as one of two in the class!!! I found out while I was at Convention and actually sold one of her creations to one of the demo's there!  So she had decided to make two of these for the birthday girl, one in purple and a dark brown, and the other a purple and cream one.  They look great and are her first creations as McCrazzy Designs!

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