Four days left & faux buttons

I cannot believe there are only 4 days left of sale-a-bration & the summer mini catalogue! I am not sure about everyone else but I hardly feel as if I've had time to even properly sit down and use stamps from both catalogues yet - what a whirl wind everything is at the moment! Of course the one set I liked the least when I first saw it in the sale-a-bration catalogue - I now love the best of all of them all.

I was playing with some scrap cardstock about 3 weeks ago as I wanted a co-ordinating embellishment for a card, but the normal ribbon or brads just wasn't working. Then I remembered seeing faux buttons on Chic 'n Scratch and I did make them years ago, but had forgotten - funny how we're always looking for new things and sometimes forget the older techniques and tricks! Anyway here's what it involved

Materials: 1/2" circle punch (#104390) (or larger circle punch if you want larger buttons!); 1/16" handheld circle punch (#101227); 2-way glue pen (#100425); crystal effects (#101055); scrap pieces of cardstock in the colour you wish to make your buttons.

Start by punching two holes close together on your cardstock with your small handheld punch (this makes your button holes). Then cut out with your 1/2" circle punch, cut 3 more circles in the same cardstock. Glue a cardstock circle to yourone with button holes in it with the glue pen. Punch the button holes out again - this time it will cut through the second layer of cardstock - repeat for all four layers. Put a thin layer of crystal effects over the top and allow to dry - I leave mine overnight. Then they are ready to use on your projects - see super simple and a great television advert activity!

I used them on the below card as an accent and was pleased how they turned out (my photography sometimes leaves a bit to be desired!). I love this giraffe stamp - sadly it's in the Summer mini so we've only got it for another 4 days - but fingers crossed it will make a return in the next IB&C!

Stamps: Animal Stories & Hello Again
Cardstock: chocolate chip, whisper white, rose red & old olive
Ink: Pumpkin pie, so saffron & old olive
Accessories: crystal effects, snail adhesive, paper snips, stampin' sponge, hemp twine

Have a terrific weekend & hope you get time to get inky!

Ann

Stamping Sponges

Well I saw this idea whilst blog surfing last month at Chic'n Scratch and Angie was really nice and went to the trouble of makign an instruction video and everything on this.

Basically I have issues with nude cardstock edges, I simply love to sponge the edges of items. When I am stamping on my own I know which colour I have used where on a sponge, but it's more challenging when there are lots of excited participants doing a make & take at a workshop and colours get mixed up! So the simple solution of course was to buy one sponge for each ink pad.......but even though the Stamping Sponges #101610 are cheap at just $6.50 for a pack of three - it would still work out expensive when multiplied by all the gorgeous SU colours available and then store them all! So I enlisted the aid of my trusty scalpel (ex lab rat habit) and sliced each of them into 6 pieces, to give me handy little wedges. To prevent deterioration of the thin wedge part and make it easier for workshop/class participants to find the right colour sponge piece for the right ink pad quickly I used some scrap cardstock in the co-ordinating ink colour and punched out a round tab in each colour #108340, handwrote the name on each and stapled them on - the picture says it all

It was one of those really simple things that makes life so much easier and makes me wonder why I didn't think of it first! No more cross contamination of sponges, easy to find, use and hold and as for storage, well thanks to another friend who very generously gave me some yummy ferrero rocher chocolates that came in a nice hard plastic box, I threw out the chocolates (only kidding) and now all of my little sponges are neatly stored away.

Happy creating,
Ann

My New Stampin' Up! Blog

Stampin’ Up! Global have added the ability for demonstrators to have a blog on our Stampin’ Up! web pages. What makes this really exciting for me is that I can now separate my blogs – one for my personal stuff and one here for all my creative Stampin' Up! items. This blog links directly to my Stampin’ Up! page. By visiting my Stampin’ Up! page, you can see all the promotions that Stampin’ Up! have, all my upcoming events, classes that are coming up, project details, sign up for my newsletter, tell me you want to get together with some friends and host a workshop – and even sign up as a demonstrator! And now, you can see my blog too! When you hover over the “About Me” tab, you will see “My Stampin’ Blog” – click on that and you will see this blog and it's latest entries

I confess to being a bit of a tardy blogger though so I have failed to report the wonderful news of how much Stampin' Up! raised globally in support of the Haitian Relief Fund. $2 from the sale of each I {Heart} Hearts stamp set was donated to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief and Development Fun. This money will be used to not only provide immediate relief but provide long term support as well. Globally 13 587 of the stamp sets were sold during promotion period and thus over US$27 000 has been donated to the fund. In addition to this Stampin' Up! purchased & had vendors donate supplies for 5000 hygiene kits which Stampin' Up! employees in America assembled and were distributed via a relief organisation in Haiti to those in need. Personally I'd like to thank those customers who purchased the I {Heart} Heart stamp sets in support of this campaign and to help make a positive difference for so many people in need. It reinforces to me that a multitude of individual kind actions can make a very big positive difference in the lives of so many others.

Another perk of being a demonstrator is that I get to preview some of the products a few weeks before they are released for sale - at the minute I not only have the new "mini" catalogue in my hands that will be released on the 1st of April, but I have a couple of the stamp sets and new "in colours" here as well! So I am going to use the 2 hours I have before I have to return to being a domestic goddess (not) and get inky!

Happy stamping,

Ann