Happy Christmas

A very happy Christmas to all my readers and a big thank you to all my Stampin' Up customers who continue to support my business from year to year! I really appreciate that you keep ordering from me and attend my classes.  I also want to say thank you too for new customers who have found me through my little blog world, I love it when a total stranger finds me here and goes on to become a customer and sometimes even a friend, makes me very happy....

I hope to blog much more in 2015, as many of you know I spent most of this year organising and making lots of things for our daughter's wedding, so I hope to have a lot more time to write more frequently and share with you lots of paper craft ideas. Stampin' Up have some new fantastic products due for release with their Spring catalogue and Sale-a-Bration both starting on the 6th January so I'll be back with those very soon! 

Lastly, as promised here is a photo of my Christmas tree, which turned out to be quite difficult to photograph, this was the best I could do. Lol

Wishing you all a very happy Christmas

Tilda Santa

My first love will always be paper crafting using Stampin' Up's fabulous products but I do like to dabble in other crafts from time to time. Back in September I joined a little sewing group in Donaghadee, Northern Ireland which is run by my good friend Betty. It took me some weeks but I finally manage to finish a sweet Tilda Santa, I love him and it was worth the effort!

I also made star ornaments for friends's Christmas presents.  I made them using the largest Star die from Stampin' Ups set Stars (133723). They cut through the hessian material with ease, I stitched them around the edges using a zig zag stitch to stop them from fraying.  I stamped the word sparkle onto a piece of linen and cut out then sewed a little button on the linen and added a gold bell to the bottom, I think I managed a nice rustic memento for my 

friend's trees and even manage to include some things from my paper crafting!

I am going to try and find time to come back tomorrow with a photo of my Christmas tree so I hope you join me for that.

Christmas crafts

As a Stampin' Up demonstrator, although independent, I have the pleasure of getting together every so often with other demonstrators to share ideas and generally just have fun.

Well last Saturday was one of those days! In Antrim, Northern Ireland 31 of us from all over NI met up and spent the whole day together. Our manager Paula and her assistant Kelly had flown in especially for this event.  They were joined by my upline Natalie who give us a very interesting talk and they showed us lots of lovely new products which are coming out with our new spring/summer catalogue, can't wait for that!

Part of the fun of getting together is swapping ideas, we did this by making 31 of the same thing and swapping those with the 31 ladies who attended, that way we all came home with 31 new and different ideas! Below is my basket of swaps, I made little box type envelopes with the envelope punch board, leaving the top part open. I put in a lovely sachet of Malteaser drink and added a festive candy cane, what do you think? Everyone seemed to like them.

Here's a close up, I used the Perfect Blend stamp set (131392) I stamped the cup and coloured it in using Stampin' Ups Blendabilities. The stamp set comes with two sentiments but as they aren't suitable for Christmas I choose Christmas Cheer from the very useful Endless Wishes stamp set 136829

I'll be back soon with a photo of all the lovely swaps I received in return, come back for that.

Last of the wedding projects

I'm showing you the last few wedding projects, don't want to bore you and also I have some Christmas things to share.

 

For the table plan I used an old picture frame and painted it with Annie Sloan paint then backed it with hessian look wallpaper, printed the names onto very vanilla card and added a little pearl trim.

These are the table numbers which I made using my Stampin' Up oval dies, very vanilla and crumb cake card adding some pearls to finish them off.

This photo shows the lovely Stampin' Up bunting I made using the celebration kit 333007 which I placed across the beautiful  fireplace in the stable room (where we had our coffee after the ceremony) Hard to see in the photo but I used mini clothes pegs to attach photos of the bride and groom, from the first photo they had taken together to their engagement photo which I thought was a nice touch.  Above the fireplace are little jam jars filled with flowers, I decorated the jars using Stampin' Up's lace, burlap ribbon and very vintage cream buttons.  So although I wasn't able to do everything for the wedding with products from Stampin' Up, I certainly did mange to do a lot! 

More from the wedding

Today I am sharing the order of ceremony I made for my daughter's wedding. I bought the large stamp on line (just loved it) stamped and heat embossed it with cherry cobbler embossing powder to give a lovely shiny raised effect.  I used the same lace as the invites but cut it in half so that it just trimmed down the side of the card and finished it off with ivory ribbon along the spine. These were quite big, a full A5 size.  I was please how they turned out.

I'll be back next week with some more of the wedding projects. In the meantime have a lovely weekend, we're spending the day putting up our Christmas tree and decorating the house, I love Christmas and the family that arrive with it!

Wedding invitation

Hello there, sorry I haven't posted in awhile but over the last few months I have been working, along with my daughter, on her wedding.  Any of you who have done this for a family member will know that it takes over your life! I've thoroughly enjoyed it though and I am happy to let you see what I made. My daughter wanted a rustic/vintage wedding and she got married in a beautiful barn in the middle of the countryside. 

Firstly I had a stamp made online of their names as I wanted to heat emboss it with cherry cobbler embossing powder rather than just print it off from the computer, it looked lovely and made it more special.  I used Stampin' Up products where I could including their Kraft card for the card base and layer, also the tag on the front of the box with the recipient's name on it.  I choose to put the invite into a box, mainly to protect it but also so we could tie a nice ribbon around it (Stampin' Up's chevron 132982) and add one of the very vintage cream buttons tied on with twine.

The printed words "wedding invitation" were computer generated and I die cut the little tag using Hearts a Flutter thinlit die (130159) and finished it off nicely using twine tied around the lace.

I have lots more projects from the wedding to show you so come back soon for those.

First Christmas Class

I know it seems early to have a Christmas class in October but my ladies like to get ahead with Christmas, anyhow we had great fun and everyone loved the projects.

Set up and ready to go

Stamp set and little gift box with some yummy chocolate inside.

Screen divider card and gift box we made

Close up the screen Card

Close up of the gift box

Long post to make up for not being on here for awhile, hope you like everything.

Tap Tap Tap Note-let gift set

This is another project from Friday's class. It's a little note-let set. We made the folder to put 3 cards and envelopes in then decorated the front of the folder, the stamp set is very aptly named Tap Tap Tap (134204) and features this lovely image of an old fashioned typewriter which we stamped on the front of each card. Great to give the whole set as a gift or just nice to sit on your desk for when you need to send a quick note or thank you to someone.

A very useful little set with three different sentiments as well as the lovely images I used above, suitable for male and female cards.

Friday's Class

Happy Monday to you, I trust you all had a nice weekend. The weather here was quite good so we got some gardening done and spent time outside. Friday started off my weekend with a lovely group of 10 ladies who came to my class for an afternoon of fun and crafting! This week I will share the projects we did with you, everyone seemed to enjoy them, hope they inspire you to get some crafting in today!

Here's the first project, a little set for a wedding made using the I Love Lace background stamp (134036) and the lovely sentiments stamp set, which we embossed in gold, is called Cheers to Love (135374).  The little bag would make a more interesting way to give a cheque or vouchers to the couple if you pop in some little wedding day candles too. Some of the girls also thought the bags would make nice wedding favours too.

Here's a close up of the gold embossing:-

I'll be back soon with more of the class projects, don't miss that!

                         

Stampin' Up's new Autumn/Winter catalogue starts today!

I'm always happy when we get a new catalogue but I particularly love this one, for most people August is early to think of Christmas but for us crafters it's not! Getting ready early is essential for all the cards and gifts we will make for friends or the craft fair tables waiting to be filled, well this lovely catalogue is bursting with ideas for all of those. 

My existing customers will be getting their catalogues this week and if you are not already on my list please email or call me for your own copy. In the meantime you can view online by clicking on the catalogue on the right hand side.

Stampin' Up have also decided to offer a free stamp set called Good Greetings from now until the end of October to coincide with this catalogue launch, see details below to take advantage of this offer.

Be back soon with some projects made using products from this new Catalogue, please come back for those!

                         

                         

Short & Sweet

Hi everyone, sorry it has been awhile, summer is such a busy time and my poor blog is sadly neglected. I hope to post more projects in the coming weeks but thought I would pop in to share a short and sweet offer from Stampin' Up. Starting today for one week only you can join my team for only £99 and receive £150 of projects in you start up Kit. 

To welcome you to my team you will receive a little handmade gift and card personally made by me when you join.  Maybe you were thinking of a part time job to earn a bit extra for Christmas but want something with hours that suits you. Being a Stampin' Up demonstrator may be just the thing for you, I will give you full training and help you in any way I can to get started. Please contact me for all the details.

Hope you all have a nice weekend and I'll be back next week with some  lovely  craft projects to show you.


                         

New Stampin' Up Catalogue

Our new catalogue goes live this Tuesday 1st July and all my customers are really excited and writing out their shopping lists this weekend. They have all received their new catalogues from me along with the little bookmarks in the photo. The bookmarks highlight our five new colours, which I love. Tangelo Twist a lovely bright orange shade, Hello Honey a nice sunny yellow, Blackberry Bliss, looks dark in the photo but it is a beautiful purple, Lost Lagoon is a very pretty shade of blue and reminds me a bit of Wedgwood blue, this is my favourite! Lastly Mossy Meadow is a lovely rich green, going to be useful for Autumn leaves and Christmas projects.

If you would like a copy of this very exciting new catalogue, full of new products and fantastic ideas on how to use them, then contact me at the above email address to find out how to get yours. I will include one of the bookmarks with your catalogue so you can see the new colours for yourself.

Enjoy your Sunday and I look forward to hearing from you.

                         

I'm back

Sorry I haven't been around for awhile but life has been busy and not all in a good way. Sometimes life throws us surprises, we've all experienced that, we just have to deal with difficult times and get on with things :-(

To make up for my absence I have three photos for you today. I received some lovely pre-order items from Stampin' Up recently and I made a card and a little box which highlight some of our new colours, Blackberry Bliss and a lovely yellow called Hello Honey.

The new catalogue goes live on the 1st July if you would like to contact me I can post one out to you for a cost of £5 to include postage. You could get a free copy from me including a handmade thank you card by placing an order of £50 at my online store or you can join one of my monthly hostess clubs to get a free copy that way.  Contact me for details on my email address above.

                         

Graduation card for guys

Hope you have all had a great weekend, weather here was good though not quite as good as England but we still managed to get out in the garden for most of Saturday and it's looking good!

I promised you a card for a man, I don't make manly cards very often as I find it difficult to decide what to do for them. This type of card can be found all over blogland  it's just a case of deciding the size of triangles, really quite easy. My favourite part is the tie, I love this stitched satin ribbon in Midnight Muse colour, I think it looks like a real tie. My friend graduated on Saturday and I think he liked his card. Congratulations Michael, well done!

I have quite a few birthday cards to make this week, so can't share those with you until after the events but I hope to get a little play 

with some other ideas I've had, so come back later in the week for those. Have a great day.

                         

Monthly hostess club

I have been running a monthly hostess club for a long time now. Basically a group of ladies agree to spend a set amount each month, say £15 for ten months (10 people) or £25 (6 people) the total needs to be at least £150 each month, which is the minimum spend to receive hostess awards. So each person gets their turn to be the hostess and also the £4.95 postage cost each month is shared too, if you're interested in joining one of my clubs I have a new one starting in a couple of months, just email me to be added to the list. A lovely friend and fellow demonstrator Vicky Hayes from England first give me this idea and my customers love it.

Vicky also showed me how nice it is to reward these lovely club members, so each month, with their order, they get a thank card and small gift that I have made. I really like trying to come up with different ideas and I love their reactions when they look to see what's in their bags!

The photo below is the card and gift for May.

For the card I used the stamp sets Blooming with kindness (love this flower!) and Gorgeous Grunge, I like the way this stamp set gives a lovely splodgy painterly effect. For the brooch I used the spiral flower die (129379 and it is only £15.95) If you own a Big Shot and don't own this die, why not?! I think this is my most used die, ever! It works beautifully with either card or fabric. Coiled up tightly it makes a more rose like flower or wrap it loosely around a felt ball, like I did here, to give a totally different look.  I hope my ladies enjoy wearing these little brooches.

I'll be back soon with a card for a man, I don't do these very often so do visit to see that.  The sun is to shine here this weekend, hope it shines for you too. Have a great one!

                         

Sweet Baby

I have been busy in my craftroom but the problem is I can't always share what I make with you as sometimes the recipients haven't been given the cards yet. This card was given yesterday so I can share now. A lovely friend of mine became a Grandmother and this is the card I made. I really love the name!

I used the lovely baby set called Baby, we've grown (133089) from the current mini catalogue. I stamped the cute little shoes on the inside but forgot to photograph that! 

The morning post alphabet (126592) is my favourite, you have to cut it out but I think it's worth it as it's so pretty. I used pink pirouette which is a lovely soft pink, perfect for baby girl cards.

Thanks for stopping by and I'll be back soon with a pretty birthday 

card.

                         

Poppies galore

I love the large poppy stamp from Stampin' Up (page 75 of main catalogue and clear mount costs £12.95) and although it is large you can also use just a small portion of it, like I did in the card below. I heat embossed it with white embossing powder then water coloured it using an ink pad and aqua painter.

I used the Beautifully Baroque embossing folder for the background then added some Ruffle Stretch Trim in Pistachio Pudding and finished it of with a little pink flower from the In colour Dahlias. This card could be used for Thank you or a Birthday or anything you like as it's very generic. 

                         

Different crafts

Hope you have all had a lovely Easter and got to spend lots of time with your family and friends. I did, so I haven't had much time to go to my craft room, sorry I don't have any paper crafts to share with you but I have made two little button type bracelets, pink for myself and blue for my daughter, some Stampin' Up products on these like the lovely In Colour Dahlias (127556), other little buttons and accessories are from retired things or just random buttons I've had. These bracelets are a very simple make, I bought little cabochon bracelet blanks and I used Crystal Effects (great for sticking heavy items - 101055) to glue on all the little buttons and things. I love to dabble in other types of crafts, like beading, sewing, needle felting etc and whilst I don't spend enough time on any of these to get good at them I still find all crafts great fun!

I'll be back with my normal crafts very soon, I have some ideas running around in my head that I can't wait to get to my desk to make so please come back for those!