Trendy Tree Wreath CASE

Okay so I am counting down the hours now until the NEW 2010-2011 Stampin' Up! catalogue will be released - noon tomorrow - and as Christmas seems to be fast approaching I decided to distract myself by making some Christmas cards. I saw a nice card the other day here and knew I just had to CASE it (copy and share with everyone). So here's my super similar version of it:

Stamps: Trendy Trees, Baroque Motifs & Contempo Christmas
Ink: Old Olive, Real Red
Card stock: Whisper White, Real Red, Old Olive
Accessories: Stampin' sponges, paper snips, SNAIL, Stamp-a-ma-jig. Real Red 1/4" grosgrain ribbon, 2 way glue pen, Boho Blossoms punch.

As you can see from the close up, I have just stamped the tree and punched it out with the large Boho Blossom flower from the punch, sponged the edges and layered them into a circle (I used 15 tree florets to make my wreath). Then I stamped the smallest flower from Baroque Motifs five times, cut them out and glued them on top of the wreath and added a little bow. Between the layering and sponging it has a nice depth to the card, which is probably hard to see from my photos!

Super Special Last Chance Offers

Well, if you weren't tempted by what was on the Last Chance List for the first time ever Stampin' Up! have issued a second list - the Last Chance list has just had a red pen slashed through it and below are some extra special deals up to 50% off some of the current punch design punches & designer papers. Unfortunately it is first come first served and if you have already ordered the items earlier this month then I can’t refund the difference in price – sorry!

The Last Chance promotion ends 31 August, 2010. All items are only available while supplies last, and with these discounts, they won’t last long! Get your orders in soon, before these products are gone forever!

Oscar the Grouch's Summer House

On a Stampin' Up! Demonstrators list ESAD that I belong to there was a challenge this week to make a 3D item and matching card using this truck template http://www.thecraftypc.com/mintrucboxte.html . Well after a few days of thinking and bouncing ideas off my long suffering DH - I decided upon making a wheelie bin from the 3D item, but then couldn't think of a matching card to make - until my son was watching Elmo on a DVD. Well it's not quite Oscar's normal trash can, but maybe I can get away with it as his summer house as we just don't have trash cans like his in Australia for our rubbish collection.

The result was simple, but cute (in my opinion of course!!) Not a stamp in sight and CASEing the sesame street character design from SCS which I would love to know who first came up with it, but a big thank you to the talented individual that did!

Paper: Handsome Hunter, Basic black, Real Red, Old Olive, Whisper White

Accessories: Tombow Adhesive, Big Shot, timeless type junior alphabet die, scallop circle punch, horizontal slot punch, 1/2" circle punch, small oval punch, 1" circle punch, silver brads, 1/16" handheld punch, SNAIL

Crocodile Punch Art

What a busy week it's been, I've had two brilliant classes this week (more due to the participants than the content, although the later wasn't too shabby!) - one for Christmas cards and the other for masculine cards and an upline meeting. I still stand by my quirky statement from years ago  that stamping is so much cheaper than therapy! Now of course they are advocating people who have any sort of mental illness, seniors wanting to stay young at heart, stressed work-a-holics or stay at home mums who are starved of adult company who just need time out,  take up a hobby and I have to say stamping & scrapbooking can be a very social thing to take up as a hobby. Hmm wonder when there will be a government rebate on Medicare for stamping supplies!!

Anyway as part of the monthly upline meeting I go to, aside from getting to see lots of lovely people, getting new ideas and brushing up on old techniques and learning a few new ones we have the option of joining in a themed swap. This month was punch art - about 3 months ago I bought a tutorial on some wonderful punch art animals (Zoo Collection at Kim Score's website under her list of punch art tutorials if you are interested in getting the directions yourself or I will be doing some classes later this year if I find time - if not feel free to book a class for punch art and I can come to you and teach them there!) Now I just need to find some time to finish the other 4 animals that come in the tutorial and I'll be able to do a double page 12x12" layout featuring the zoo animals or an entire set of wonderful punch art greeting cards as a gift!

How cute is that! You really don't even need to add the greeting to it unless you wanted to - how fabulous would that look on a scrapbook page for a zoo visit?

See how wonderfully dimensional the crocodile is with all the layers, Stampin' Dimensionals and the texture on the card stock from the sponging, white gel pen and textured embossing folder.

Stamps: Picture This, Trendy Trees

Card stock: Old Olive, Certainly Celery, Whisper White, Real Red, Pacific Point, Pumpkin Pie, Yoyo Yellow, More Mustard.

Ink: Old Olive, More Mustard, Real Red, Basic Black.

Accessories: Stampin Dimensionals, Tombow Glue, Stampin' Sponge, SNAIL, Polka Dot textured embossing folder, Big Shot, White Gel Pen and too many punches to list individually!

Tool Time Card

Our upline Stampin' Up! group had a swap recently of masculine cards (getting ready for Fathers Day on the 5th of September) and I had to use Totally Tools........I totally LOVE that stamp set - one of my favourites and one I bought before joining as a demonstrator and I'm still using it lots! This is one of my cards from last year using it. The rivets are fake - circle punches with crystal effects & some more crystal effects on the handle of the screwdriver and hammer handle to make the card stock look like a plastic tool handle. 

Stamps: Totally Tools
Card stock: More mustard, chocolate chip, Windsor Knot DSP
Ink: Chocolate chip (ink pad & marker)
Accessories: Stampin' Sponge, Crystal effects, 1/2" circle punch, paper snips
Non SU: standard paper hole punch

Then this was the one I did for the swap using virtually the same materials, but a very different card resulted - funnily enough another of the 8 swap participants chose almost exactly the same colours/DSP/stamp set to make her card with as well - but the result was still different!

Stamps: Totally Tools

Card stock: Old Olive, chocolate chip, Windsor Knot DSP, Whisper White

Ink: Chocolate chip (& Old Olive

Accessories: Silver brads, paper piercer, 1 3/8" circle punch, 1 1/4" circle punch

Hot Air Balloon

When I first got the stamp sets that were suitable to use with the sweet treat cups I went nuts making cards & 3D items with them and always incorporating the sweet treat cup - which is fine and a lot of fun, but I sort of forgot that they are terrific to use without the treat cups as well *LOL* I made a card recently with the A Little Treat stamp set (it made some lovely 3D flowers with jelly bean centres for Mothers Day too!) but this time I went for a hot air balloon look. If you are wondering why it is so pink - it was for an 8yo girly girls birthday (hence pink & glitter on the centre flower circle).

Stamps: Circle Circus & A Little Treat

Card stock: Chocolate Chip, Whisper White & Pretty in Pink

Inks: Pretty in Pink & Chocolate Chip (ink pad & marker pen)

Accessories: Aqua Pen, Scallop edge punch, 1 3/4" circle punch, Pretty in Pink 1/4" grosgrain ribbon, Dazzling Diamonds glitter, 2-way glue pen, SNAIL.

Last Chance List Update

Well time is ticking by if you want to take advantage of some of the discounts offered during the Last Chance list - of course not everything is discounted on the list, but it is you last chance to get the items on the list! Some like punches and card stock configurations are changing, but most of the items are going............to make way for loads of lovely new things! So if you do want something off the list, I'd get your order in sooner rather than later!

Please Note: All of the punches are listed on the Last Chance List becuase they are all being reconfigured into the new Slimline Design.  All but FIVE punches will be returning.  The punches that are NOT returning are:

105088 Double Rectangle Punch

105089 Horizontal Slot Punch

104388 Slit Punch

109045 Small Star Punch

109183 Trio Flower Punch

Sold Out Items

106561 Basic Black A4 Card stock (will be returning in packs of 24 in the new catalogue)

108600 Close to Cocoa A4 Card stock

114037 Sweet Slumber Specialty DSP

106532 Basic Black 12×12 (will be returning in packs of 20 smooth & textured)

106552 Sahara Sand A4

106554 Kraft A4 (will be returning as Cake Crumb in packs of 20)

111859 Basic Gray A4

Running Low Stocks

115788 Eastern Influences

106530 Very Vanilla 12×12 (will be returning in packs of 20 smooth & textured)

105090 Word Window Punch (old design)

115860 A Rose is a Rose

116332 Playful Petals

116428 Totally Tabs

116412 Short Order Alphabet

106529 Whisper White 12×12 (will be returning in packs of 20 smooth & textured)

106544 Old Olive 12 x 12 (will be returning in packs of 20 smooth & textured)

102996 Real Red Standard Cartridge

112193 I Wish Simply Scrappin Kit

112172 Rock A Bye Boy Simply Scrappin Kit

109039 Elegant Eggplant 1/4″ grosgrain ribbon

105542 Stampin Pastels

104183 Pop Up Glue Dots

116394 Nursery Necessities

 So if you want to order anything drop me an email soon!

Treat Tube Challenge from Kim Score

I love to visit blogs of really talented stamping artists and I love punch art, I don't do that much of it, but I really admire some of the awesome work that can be created using punched shapes. Well this week one such artist issued a challenge to turn her gingerbread treat tube holder into our own personal design using the base instructions for the tube. So here is my end result:

Pretty damn cool hey!!! Even if I do say so myself. I confess to the idea of making a cannon barrel as not entirely being my own - I made up the tube in scrap card stock and was holding it and musing on it as you do and DH came to see what I was up to and we entered into one of those what could you make with this conversations (some bizarre and funny suggestions were bandied about, but then we settled on making a cannon). Thanks to Google I managed to get some half decent pictures of what a cannon should look like and I went from there. I actually extended the tube from the base design to be 5" by 5" in size as the original tube was a bit short for a cannon barrel. The carriage is cut entirely from one piece and the wood effect was done with a marker pen and sponge (I am so waiting for the new woodgrain stamp to be released in Australia in about 2 weeks time!).  I even went shopping for gob stoppers to be the cannon balls, but apparently they don't sell them in our supermarket and I had to settle for chocolate orange balls instead. The good thing is that you can fill the entire barrel with the chocolate orange balls and it doesn't tip over as the designer brads counterweight it nicely!

Card stock: Soft suede, brushed silver, basic black.

Ink: Chocolate chip pad & marker

Accessories: Star designer brads, 1 3/8" circle punch, 1" circle punch, vintage black brads, 1/16" handheld hole punch, 3/4" hold punch, fancy flower extra large punch, Sticky Strip, Stampin' Dimensionals, Stampin' Sponge.

Of course whilst taking photos of the cannon to upload to my blog, DH raided our sons Lego Duplo box and added a few extra props...........

Too funny - loved the challenge & the original idea that Kim had for the treat tube, thanks for visiting!

More baby cards!

Well my baby card theme is continuing as I saw some amazingly cute  baby buggy cards on SCS and blogs done with the Big Shot - I thought they looked lovely anyway! I have no idea who came up with the idea first as there are over 200 examples of it and I couldn't find who did it first, so if it was you - let me know and I'll be happy to give you credit for it. They were really simple to make as well thanks to the aforementioned die cut machine, the Big Shot - I love it, makes creating very simple at times!

Anyway these baby buggys are so simple it's a matter of scoring and folding them in half, putting through the scallop circle die (ensuring you don't cut a complete circle so as the card still opens, I think I left 5 scallops of the die not covered by folded part of the card stock when I put it through the Big Shot). I then re-ran the front of the card through the Big Shot with the polka dot textured embossing folder (don't do the entire card as then it'll make it hard to write on). The wedge cut out of the card is approximately 5 scallops wide and to the centre point.

Card stock: Apricot Appeal, Brocade Blue & Whisper White.

Accessories: Big Shot die cut machine, polka dot textured embossing folder, scallop circle, 1/2" circle punch, silver brads, Eyelet border punch, 1 1/4" circle punch, SNAIL.

Strawberry Ants & Colour schemes

I added a new blinky link to my blog recently called the "Colour Lab" it's so much fun - click on it and it takes you to a colour lab where you can figure out what colours go with what, you can choose from the new colours, retired, in-colours and even add your own or rate other peoples colour combinations. There is also a "surprise me" button for when you are up for a challenge or out of mojo. Anyway I've been using it a bit of late and have been happy with the results so thought I would share it with you.

Some of my favourite stamp sets are the simple ones - I love Tart & Tangy, it's really versatile, timeless and at AUD$21.95 is great value for money. I've done a few different things with the different fruits from the set, but had a lot of fun combining it with ant from Bugs & Kisses (for some strange reason the ant image from this set was missed out of the 2009-10 catalogue and in my opinion he was the cutest bit! Anyway here's a quick, clean and simple card made with them, change the greeting and it'd be suitable for any occasion really. The middle strawberry I popped up on dimensionals and all of the strawberries I covered with a thin film of crystal effects to give the card a bit more dimension.

Stamps: On Your Birthday, Tart & Tangy, Bugs & Kisses

Card stock: Real Red, Basic Black & Whisper White

Ink: Old Olive marker, Real Red marker & Basic Black

Accessories: 1/4" grosgrain black ribbon, stamp-a-ma-jig, paper snips, crystal effects, Stampin' Dimensionals,

Another Crazy For Cupcakes card!

Well I have seen SO many awning shop type cards on the blogs of late - I finally decided to jump on the bandwagon and make one of my own! I loved this one here on fellow Australian  demonstrators site Andrea and as I had the Crazy For Cupcakes stamp set and Sweet Always DSP out for the Crazy For Cupcakes class I had teaching those were what I used - ohh plus lots of glitter - that class uses LOTS of Dazzling Diamond glitter, we all came away quite sparkley that afternoon! I made two versions of this card - one with the Dazzling Diamonds glitter and then a second with the light pink chunky sprinkles glitter (that was in the inventory clearance sale back in January). I preferred the one with the chunky glitter as it gave it more dimension, I'm also trying to decide if I like the happy birthday shop sign above the awning or if it needs to be layered up again - I really can't wait to see if we get the SU XL modern label punch in the new catalogue as that would be perfect to layer up the window word punch (my wish list is VERY long by the way)......ohh and it's not the card that was made crooked - that's my photography!

The awning was sponged along the edge and underneath held up with Stampin' Dimensionals to give a more 3D appearance to the shop front, the happy birthday was raised up again to give more dimension as well. The chunky glitter I stuck on with Crystal Effects - I figured as the size of the glitter was so much bigger than the Dazzling Diamonds, it would hold on better and give a more cupcake frosted 3D appearance if I used the Crystal Effects.

Stamps: Crazy For Cupcakes, On Your Birthday

Paper: Chocolate Chip, Whisper White, Sweet Always DSP, Regal Rose, Pink Pirouette.
Ink: Regal Rose, Pink Pirouette, Chocolate Chip
Accessories: Scallop edge punch, window word punch, Light Pink Chunky Sprinkles glitter, Stampin' sponge, Stampin' Dimensionals, SNAIL, Crystal Effects, Stamp-a-ma-jig.

Card Stock Changes are Coming!

It's so exciting - lots of things are happening at the moment in the Stampin' Up! world I'm almost on information overload!!! One area of change I have been given notice of and you might have seen on the retiring list was that some of the coloured card stock that isn't a colour that is being retired is showing on the last chance list.....no it's not a misprint. 

Traditionally the 12" x 12" single colour packs of card stock were only available as smooth card stock, well they are being reconfigured - from September the 1st if you order a pack of 12" x 12"card stock, you will now receive six sheets of smooth and six sheets of textured card stock. Up until now, only the multi-coloured packs have been available in textured or in the Simply Scrappin' kits so this is a really exciting change and will no doubt give a lot more dimension to your creations.

Another change is that the neutral packs of A4 card stock have only been available in packs of 40 sheets, from the 1st of September all colour packs will be available in packs of 24 A4 sheets, with the exception being Very Vanilla & Whisper White which will remain as packs of 40 sheets. 

The final change is that the price for card stock in many cases has increased, particularly in the A4 packs. It is an unfortunate reality of business that the cost of materials, supplies and shipping increases over time (the cost of paper has increased globally), but increasing prices is something that Stampin' Up! has tried to avoid and in most product cases in the new catalgoue there have been few if any price increases,  with card stock being the exception. Personally I always work out the cost of card stock per sheet and then compare it to what is available in papercraft & scrapbooking retail shops and hoenstly we are still very price competitive and for the most part a lot cheaper than brands like Bazzill. Of course the best part is that our card stock will continue to colour co-ordinate with  all of our inks, markers, ribbons, designer papers, brads, rub-ons and other accessories to give you a wonderful professional look to your creations. Of course if you feel the need to panic buy and stock up on your favourite colours at the current prices, feel free to contact me as I'd be happy to put your order in! 

The Last Chance List is Here!!!

Okay - it's here and now there is only one month to go until the new Stampin' Up! main Ideas Book & Catalogue is released, and that means that this month the Last Chance List  (previously called the Retiring List) is out!  The Last Chance List is exactly what is sounds like - a list of items that you have a last chance to purchase before the new catalogue is released, as after the 31st of August you can no longer order these items ever again! Stock is limited to what is on hand so they may run out earlier due to demand (remember in an earlier post I said that Close to Cocoa A4 card stock and the Sweet Slumber Designer Specialty paper have already both run out) so get in quick if there is something you really want!

 

At first glance the list looks REALLY long, but remember that the colour renovation and that the majority of the punches on the list are being "reconfigured", which means that they'll still be available, but in a new style slimline style of punch. Both of these events makes the list look really long at first glance, but honestly it's not that drastic and just wait until you see the new catalogue - it has some gorgeous new items in it!! 

Check out the list - as I noticed several items have been discounted for example there are three of the current style punches at almost 25% off the RRP so if you have been coveting the Boho Blossoms, scallop square or scallop oval punches and are happy to have them in the current style - get in quick as at $23.21 (plus P&H) they are a bargain. 

Normal postage and handling of 5% applies to each order. If you see some items in the list you absolutely have to have, please give me an email and I'd be happy to put the order in for you.