Birthday Cards........

Well amidst the Easter festivities, school holidays and work I had a birthday *grin* yep they do sneak up on me each year! Anyway this year I thought I would share with you some of the beautiful cards that friends gave me.

A gorgeous panelled card using Elements of Style from Catherine:

A fishy affair from Charmaine:

A Load of Love from Annette:

An amazing gift and card from Marsha using the Fun Flowers die & Happiest Birthday Wishes:

That even had a matching envelope - how cute is that!

A wonderful gift card from Myleigh and the Stampin' Sistas:

And inside a vellum embellishment:

Thanks girls - you all helped make my day very special!

Magazine Card Holder

There is a really cute mini magazine holder on page 132 of the Ideas Book & Catalogue (IB&C) that I thought would be perfect for use in my downline meeting this month, but I also used them as a hostess gift holder as well. They are sized to fit standard C6 sized envelopes and cards. For our meeting we actually decorated them using the wheels as we did a mini workshop on wheel techniques, but you can decorate them however you like or just use DSP as per the example in the IB&C. We decided that they would make lovely gifts containing a few handmade cards for elderly relatives or those that are challenging to buy for.

The new chocolate chip polka dot scalloped ribbon is definitely one of my favourites from the new catalogue and I continued the polka dot theme on the label with a white gel pen.

Stamps: Baroque motifs, Elements of Style
Ink: Not Quite Navy
Card Stock: Baja Breeze & Not Quite Navy
Accessories: Chocolate Chip Polka Dot scalloped grosgrain ribbon, curly label punch, 1" circle punch, white gel pen, Sticky Strip.

Elements of Style Box

Here's another hostess box I made a while ago - for each hostess that books a party in addition to a number of other items, I also like to make them a little gift box with a stamp and some other goodies in it as a personal thank you, this is one I did during Sale-a-bration and here is another one. The Vintage Trinkets & Victorian lace - both got carried over from the summer mini and are still available for purchase. Would you like a gift like this? Contact me to book a party with some friends and take advantage of some super special offers that are happening at the moment, including an extra $70 in hostess rewards for parties over $450!

Stamps: Elements of Style
Ink: Cherry Cobbler, Baja Breeze, Old Olive
Card Stock: Crumb Cake, Very Vanilla, Baja Breeze, Cherry Cobbler
Accessories: Vintage Trinkets, 1" circle punch, 1 1/4" circle punch, Top Note die, Big Shot, Fancy Favor box   die, Aquapainter, Stamping Sponges, Victorian Lace.

Elements of Style Tri-fold Card

I recently cut the base of a tri-fold card in Real Red card stock, then got time anemic and the base got put to one side and is currently buried under a pile of stuff with other UFOs (Un-Finished Objects) awaiting my attention. Then I saw a gorgeous tri-fold card Belinda N. made on an online SU demo site and in the same internet surfing session saw the latest Inkspiration colour challenge and got re-inspired to make one, (although I just went back to the site and realised whilst writing up the recipe for this card I used Regal Rose not Rose Red as my colour combination - dolt - can you tell I'm not a pink person and get easily confused!). Ohh well mistakes aside this was the result:

I really love this stamp set, Elements of Style, probably because I also love water colouring and Aqua Painters make this a really fast process to do. The circle scissors allows the perfect cutting of the centre piece for the die cut scallop circle as well, I thought about adding a second yellow layer in between the white and pink, but decided against it - was this a good thought?

I also love the distressed edges of the fancy flower (I just did this with my fingers not the distressing tool), the coloured card stock almost peels into layers to add extra depth and dimension to the card, the sponged edges also help though! Anyway the card has already been written in and is awaiting the post box in the morning - hope she likes it!

Stamps: Elements of Style

Ink: Regal Rose, Wild Wasabi, So Saffron

Card Stock: Regal Rose, Wild Wasabi, So Saffron, Whisper White, Newsprint DSP

Accessories: Big Shot, Scallop Circle die. Beautiful Wings Embosslits, Little Leaves Embosslit, Basic Pearlsm Wild Wasabi double stitched 1/4" grosgrain ribbon (retired), fancy flower XL punch, Boho Blossom punch, Stampin' Sponges, Tombow glue, SNAIL, corer rounder punch, 1" circle punch, linen thread, 1 1/4" circle punch, 1/16" hole punch, paper snips. 

Summer Mini Scrapbook CASE

The Summer Mini catalogue is in full swing and Sale-a-bration starts tomorrow (happy dance) if you want to book a workshop for it, please contact me. I have also been working on a new 3D valentines tutorial from the Paper Crafters Library, but I got sidetracked recently as a lot of people I know saw page 11 of the Summer mini went "Ohh I want to make that". 

(don't ask about the red lettering at the top of the page - I know there is an easy way to covert a PDF to a jpg so I can upload it to my blog, but I only know the hard way of doing it and that results in red writing on the image - any computer literate readers I'd love some tips!!). Anyway I set about making a double scrapbook layout based on the above page. The first challenge of course was that the Presto Patterns Specialty paper used in the catalogue wasn't suitable firstly as I wanted a left and right page and that 'Paris' image is only on one half of the Presto paper and also in a class situation for everyone to have the same papers would mean that everyone would have to purchase a pack of the Presto Patterns Specialty paper in addition to the class cost. Answer - make our own paper using clear embossing powder, Versamark and the stamp set Friends 24-7 (thanks for the loan Charmaine - my order arrived today!). The result is below:

The pages have a lot of sponging on them as well as the new smooch sprays to add a vintage feel to them. 

Details of paper tearing and piercing to add a distressed look and layering to give it all depth and the rhinestones, well what can I say - they add style and sparkle at a very low cost!

The pages use lots of lovely Big Shot dies to make the flowers and lettering, some of the flowers I put through the textured impressions embossing folder to give even more dimension to them and other flowers were just stamped on with the Elements Of Style set, which was also used a watermark in the background of the pages.

So the left hand scrap page looks like this completed:

Obviously it will change a bit when I add photographs to it, but at the moment I was really pleased with the way the pages turned out.

This class is running on March the first if you want to come along and make your own set of pages with me (full details of my classes can be found on my website here) or if that time/day doesn't suit you can get together a minimum of four paper crafters and I will bring everything to you. 

Does this answer the question as to why Stampin' Up! call their catalogue an Idea Book & Catalogue?? Hopefully it has inspired you to have a second look at some of the pages and CASE some of the ideas within them.I'd love to see any creations you have CASEd using the Ideas Book & Catalogue!

Beach Scrapbook Pages

Well summer is well and truly here and this weeks scrapbook class made a gorgeous double page layout perfect for putting in their summer beach photos. I saw a nice beach layout here and used that for my inspiration, the photos are from a few years ago - I'm a tad behind with my own scrap booking, but we won't go into that! Not everyone has a boy, so we also had alternative punch elements to add for the girls involving a bit more glitter and pink!

I always do my classes as double layouts as I feel it looks nicer when they go into an album. These pages used a lot of sponging, rolling with the new Sandy Speckles wheel and lots of punch art! The crabs were CASEd from Teresa G. and Michelle H. and look so cute, especially as where these photos were taken was by the river where we do get lots of blue swimmer crabs.

I added the red spider crab though just because he was SO cute!

For those who didn't want to do crabs, we also had a glittery mermaid, a pair of thongs (flip flops for the northern hemisphere readers) and a beach ball. Some of the girls got carried away and added a shell bikini to their mermaids from the small Boho blossom flower, but I left mine plain.

I always use a terrific product called Dotto for piecing together my layouts before I stick them together permanently, such a great product, saves lots of frustration later on when you just want to move something that little bit, but can't as it's stuck down!  I couldn't decide when I was putting together this layout which colour letters to use for the title, eventually I did a shadow layer and liked the result - what do you think?

A close up of the first page is here, the shells were stamped in the darker soft suede ink and sponged with crumb cake as when I stamped them in the crumb cake ink, they just sort of disappeared and didn't pop out like I wanted them too.

The matching page also has plenty of space for photos and journaling.

Stamps: Nature's Nest, Elements of Style

Ink: Crumb Cake, Soft Suede

Card Stock: Bashful Blue, Crumb Cake, Pacific Point, Daffodil Yellow, Whisper White, Chocolate Chip & Basic Black

Accessories: Hemp Twine, Wide oval punch, large oval punch, small oval punch, two-step owl punch, photo corner punch, small tag punch, crop-a-dile, SNAIL, two-way glue pen, Big Shot, Junior Timeless Type alphabet, spiral punch, Sandy Speckles roller wheel.

I saw another gorgeous summer scrap book layout on "Water Play" at the Paper Crafters Library so might have to make up another layout soon using some of the many swimming at the beach photos I have taken and done nothing with! So if you are like me and have way too many photos that you have not done anything with, feel free to come along to our monthly scrapbook class or get some friends together and I can bring the class to you. Details of all my classes are either on my website and while you are there you can sign up for my monthly newsletter, so then you don't miss out on all the Stampin' Up! news and ideas.

Masculine Star Card

Well another of the projects that the ladies at our World Card Making Event Made was one using all new stamp sets - Word Play, Wonderfully Worn and Elements of Style. It was a CASE from Kristy Brown's, but modified slightly to accommodate new and retiring items. It has a LOT of paper piercing around both the Sahara and the Whisper White card stock pieces, but I think the final effect is worth the effort, don't you?

Stamps: Word Play, Wonderfully Worn & Elements of Style

Ink: Early Expresso, Not Quite Navy, More Mustard & Sahara Sand

Card Stock: More Mustard, Not Quite Navy, Sahara Sand & Whisper White

Accessories: Hemp twine, Paper piercer, Dimensionals, Regal Brads, SNAIL, Star Punch, paper snips & Mat pack