Just Believe

This card was another project made at our World Card Making Event by Samantha which was a gorgeous CASE from Tenealle Williams using the new Just Believe Stamp set. One terrific thing about having our event in October was that we could us all new papers, stamp sets, ink colours, ribbons etc from the new Ideas Book & Catalogue = YAY! This card focused on the technique of using stampin' write markers to colour direct to the rubber, a simple yet effective technique. The greeting is also raised up with Dimensionals to give it well - more dimension!

Stamp Set: Just Believe
Ink: Marina Mist & Soft Suede
Card Stock: Marina Mist, Soft Suede and Very Vanilla
Accessories: Very Vanilla satin ribbon, Polka Dot textured embossing folder, Top Note die, Scallop Trim border punch, SNAIL, basic pearls, Dimensionals, Modern label punch.

Party This Way!

Well one of the cards that the ladies made at our World Card Making Day was this one featuring the new stamp set Party This Way, designed by me (sorry for all the cutting out with the pennants, but SU! hasn't made a punch for that item yet! I wanted a bright fun card that could be used for children or teenagers, but it would also suit adults - so a general all rounder type of card really. This stamp set really lends itself to any celebration occasion (although it does well as a hat for punch art too!) and at $26.95 for wood mount ($21.95 clear mount) it's a bargain!

What you can't see form the photo is that the pennants, arrow, sentiment and balloon are all popped up on dimensionals to give the card more character.

Stamps: Party This Way
Ink: Pacific Point, Real Red & Basic Black
Card Stock: Pacific Point, Real Red, Basic Black, Whisper White & Celebrations DSP
Accessories: Paper snips, Hemp twine, 1/16" handheld punch, dimensionals, Modern Label punch, Word Window punch, Black Stampin' Write marker pen, 1 3/4" circle punch, SNAIL

Check back later in the week as I'll be posting the other 5 projects that we made at the World Card Making Event - missed out on the fun, subscribe to my newsletter for information and dates on upcoming classes and events like this one, either email me or subscribe via my website.

World Card Making Day Event

Well I'm running a few weeks (months) behind in my blog posts, but I am slowly catching up! On Saturday the 23rd of October Charmaine, Samantha and myself decided to run an event for World Card Making Day, with the money raised going to the National Breast Cancer Foundation.  Ironically none of the three of us actually are particularly fond of pink, but we pulled out all the stops and decorated the venue and ourselves in the colour to help raise awareness and funds! (If you are ever looking for NBCF pink things try here). So there were balloons, streamers, name badges, t-shirts, bags and even cupcakes all in pink along with a group of lovely ladies and Charmaine's ever wonderfully supportive husband to have a fun day of papercrafting and fundraising! I also have to thank Elysia (Charmaine's daughter) and Diana (my Mum) for helping out in the kitchen all day keeping us supplied with food & helping with all the cleaning up.

These are the bags which contained the project materials for 6 items on the day - I'll post photographs of each of the projects soon!

Here are some of the ladies hard at work creating (above) and admiring some of the display boards that we put together (below).

It was wonderful how many people volunteered their time and skills to help us on the day. The cupcakes below were made by Cassie, and her lovely dad Fred made some awesome curry puffs for the day as well.

We had some amazing prizes donated for the raffle, games, silent auction, written auction & door prizes donated from  Stampin'Up!, Catherine Baudains, The National Breast Cancer Foundation, Vivi of Buds of May and Charmaine. Of course a special thank you also goes to the wonderful Kelmscott tennis club who donated the use of their venue free of charge for the event - thanks so much everyone, without your support & generosity we would never have been able to do an event like this!

Overall we were able to donate a grand total of $1,900.94 which was a pretty good first effort for us and were were very pleased and grateful to everyone who helped out on the day. I know this amount is very small compared to what is needed to continue the much needed research & education that will help fight this awful disease for our future generations, but every little helps. 

I'll post photographs of the 6 projects the ladies made on the day soon. Our insanity continues though as the feedback was very positive for the day and so consequently we'll be back bigger and better than ever in May next year!

Look Who's Turning!

We made some fun and quick cards for children at a recent class and two of them we made using the new Look Who's Turning stamp set, it's so cute! I teamed it up with the new Celebrations designer paper and used inks and card stock to match the designer paper - don't you just love that about Stampin' Up! stuff - it all matches! Of you want to come along to any of my classes please contact me or sign up to my monthly newsletter which has all the classes I am running listed for the next two months.

The two cards are basically an identical layout, we just changed the orientation of the card. During the class we were trying to figure out if we could get away with calling the bird an Emu rather than an Ostrich - what do you think? He looks pretty cute stamped in Chocolate Chip!

Stamps: Looks Who's Turning
Ink: Real Red, Bashful Blue, Chocolate Chip & Old Olive
Card stock: Celebrations DSP, Whisper White, Real Red & Old Olive
Accessories: Stamp-a-ma-jig, Stamping sponges, SNAIL,

Pink Stamp-a-thon

In September I helped two friends (Louise & Charmaine) out with their Breast Cancer Fundraising event called Stamp-a-thon. a full day of fun and paper crafting for almost 100 people. It was pretty full on, but a lot of fun and lots of money was raised to go to the National Breast Cancer Foundation for education and research projects. I was happy to help out on the day with whatever needed to be done at the time, but I also made some little thank you cards and matching soaps which were included in each raffle/door/auction prize on the day. 

The little thank you cards were simple and cute, but effective as we were all sincerely very grateful to everyone who helped by participating, buying raffle tickets, bidding on auctions, helping out decorating the venue or in the kitchen and of course cleaning up at the end! The soaps were made with Rhubarb al Fresco fragrance & smelt so yummy - I sell them on my Made It store (this Australian version of Etsy) and donate all the proceeds to the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

Stamps: Trendy Trees (sentiment)

Ink: Pretty in Pink

Card stock: Very Vanilla. Regal Rose

Accessories: Polka Dot Texture plate, Clear Rhinestone brads, 1/16" handheld punch, Pretty in Pink 1/4" grosgrain ribbon

Dog Scrapbook Page

Two scrapbook pages in two days - what's going on! This page was done for a class that will be taught next week (so if you are interested in attending the class - you can see my website for details or email me). Anyway back to my page - it was done using the lovely D is for Dog stamp set and I decided to use photographs from our lovely farm dog Dinny, who sadly after +14 years of being a cattle dog died in July this year. These photographs were taken in January 2010 when we visited the farm, our son loved sitting on the dog bed patting and chatting to him, not realising that Dinny was completely deaf!

I wanted to give the effect of having a dog collar on the page, so used the circle scissors plus to cut a 5" circle an then used a sponge to age it and a chocolate chip marker to draw on faux stitching. The dog tag was made using the stamps from the set and held on using a loop of card stock and hemp twine.

There is journaling room on a pull out sheet behind the main photograph - I used the same dog stamp image on the journaling area as in the centre of the dog collar. I also thought of adding a few bone stamps on the page, but as Dinny has an "i" in it - I used it on the title instead along with letters cut from the Junior Timeless Type alphabet.

I sponged all of the edges of the 12"x12" page with chocolate chip ink as well. The random paw prints going across the page were originally just going to be a tidy border, but as Dinny had a mind and personality all of his own, I figured he wouldn't have just staying walking in one straight line! The punch art puppy dog is not my design, it is from Valita's blog, isn't he cute?

Stamps: D is for Dog, Just Believe

Card Stock: Very Vanilla, Chocolate Chip, Crumb Cake, Basic Black

Ink: Chocolate Chip

Accessories: Scallop square punch, 1 1/4" circle punch, 1 3/8" circle punch, 3/4" circle punch, small oval punch, large oval punch, 1/16" handheld punch, hemp twine, Dimensionals, SNAIL, Chocolate Chip marker pen, white gel pen, stamping sponge, paper snips, round tab punch, Junior Timeless Type Alphabet, circle scissors plus

Non SU: single hole punch

Spring Scrapbook Page

Well spring has sprung with a vengence - to be honest it felt like we had skipped spring and gone straight to summer this week with a 37'C day - thank goodness for airconditioning & photo voltaic panels is all I can say! However I digress, I made a scrapbook page (I know so unlike me), actually I was asked to do a "yellow" page for a class and found it a bit challenging so it metamorphasised into a "spring" page with yellow daffodils! What do you think?

 The orange photo matt area opens out to reveal another area for journalling and a second 6"x4" photograph.

The daffodils are very simple punch art using the five petal flower punch and one of the flowers in boho blossoms, the stems and leaves are just hand cut and the dots drawn on in white gel pen. The small daffodils on the foled out page for journalling were made using one of the boho blossom flowers and the centre was a single hole punch circle.

I LOVE the embosslits buttefly die so they get included on lots of my items now, as are the basic pearls! The sun was cut with the circle scissors and sponged with ink.

Stamps: Cute as a Bug

Ink: Pumpkin Pie & Basic Black

Card stock: Daffodil yellow, Pumpkin Pie, Old Olive, Certainly Celery & Bashful Blue

Accessories: Embosslits Beautiful Butterfly, Circle Scissors plus, basic pearls, white gel pen, SNAIL, boho blossoms punch, round tab punch,  Timeless Type Junior Alphabet, 2 way glue pen, stampin sponges, bone folder, mat pack.

Non SU: single hole punch

Overall I liked the finished page and think I might make a matching one for a 2 page layout (I'm not a fan of single pages). I'm thinking of making the Jonquil daffodils on the second page, similar to those on the fold out journalling page - what do you think? Now I just have to sort out some photos to suit the layout theme. If you would like to do this as a class for a double layout let me know - if you want to do it as a single page then you can join us on Friday next week as I am teaching it then!

Lovely as a Tree Snow Scene

I recently had an interstate trip and whilst there we experienced some unseasonal weather - snow just 20 minutes away from where I was staying in October - unheard of! However it did remind me of the wintertime snow we used to get at Christmas when I was growing up in the northern hemisphere. So when I got back, I dug out one of my favourite stamp sets - Lovely As A Tree and made the following card........sadly the glitter in the trees didn't show up, fortunately I'm a paper crafter not a photographer!.

Stamps: Lovely As A Tree
Card stock: Night of Navy, Whisper White & White Gloss
Ink: Bashful Blue, Night of Navy & Black Stazon
Accessories: 2-way glue pen, Dazzling Diamonds glitter, embossing buddy, white wax crayon (non SU), stamping sponge, SNAIL.

It's actually a very simple and super fast technique, stamp the image with Stazon ink on the gloss card stock, use the white crayon to highlight bits of the trees and grass areas and then sponge over with the Bashful Blue ink. Add additional highlights to the tree with the glitter and then layer it up, stamp a greeting and you're done - a perfect card for mass production - what do you think?

Jolly Holiday Dasher

I am so loving the new Jolly Holiday Designer Series Paper - it has all my favourite colours in it & best of all even though it is sort of Christmas themed, the patterns are suitable for all year around - how versatile is that! Anyway here is a card I made using the new a la carte stamp Dasher - isn't he gorgeous? Sadly for some reason my copyright went right over the snowflake just to the left of his antlers that I highlighted with a single basic rhinestone, but it does add a nice touch of "bling" to the card!

Stamps: Dasher, Tiny Tags
Cardstock: Jolly Holiday DSP, Old Olive, Very Vanilla & Cherry Cobbler
Ink: Soft Suede, Cherry Cobbler & Old Olive
Accessories: Linen thread, 1/16" circle punch, jewelery tag punch, Sizzix Scallop Circle die, paper piercer, SNAIL, basic rhinestone

Okay more Christmas ideas coming soon - how are your Christmas items shaping up?

Classic Season of Joy

Here is the second card we made in a recent class using the stamp set Season of Joy. It has a nicer finish in real life as the glitter on the tree and rhinestone at the tree top didn't seem to photograph well - or perhaps it's just my photography skills! 

Stamps: Season of Joy

Card stock: Always Artichoke, Riding Hood Red, Very Vanilla

Ink: Always Artichoke, Riding Hood red

Accessories: 1/4" Old Olive Grosgrain ribbon, Scallop Trim Border punch, Oval XL punch, Oval 1 3/4" large punch, Stampin' Sponges, Dazzling Diamonds glitter, 2-way glue pen, basic rhinestone,  SNAIL.

So you can see Christmas card production is starting to increase of late, I do have some more plus the Breast Cancer Fundraiser updates to share with you, so hopefully I'll get those posted in the next few days. What do you think - do you prefer the classic Christmas colours and stamps or different colour combinations and maximising the use of non Christmas stamps for all occasions?