Haitian Disaster Relief Update

Stampin' Up! Update:

There are just a few days left to participate in Stampin′ Up!’s Haitian relief efforts! Until 28 February, 2010, Stampin′ Up! is setting aside $2 from the sale of select stamp sets to be donated to the Red Cross’ Haiti Relief and Development Fund. So far, demonstrators around the world have sold 11,895 sets, which equates to over $20,000 to be donated to this fund--but don’t stop now!

This is the last day that you can order the I {heart} Hearts stamp set to help Haiti. If you are interested in ordering this set, please contact me TODAY! Email me or phone: 0407 262 452

Thanks for looking,

Just Add Ink Challenge #6

Hi All,

Just a super quick post tonight whilst I wait for tea to cook and my DH to get home from cricket training...

I managed to piece this card together for the JAI challenge this week this arvo whilst my girls were both asleep (this doesn't happen too often during the day!)

The colours combo I was stuck on.. I really wanted to use the brocade blue paper for this layout and I'm loving the "Animal Stories" stamp set (can you tell? lol), but what to combine it with.... In the end, I used close to cocoa, creamy caramel and some whisper white. And I'm really happy with the way the colours turned out.

Anyway, I loved this sketch on the JAI blog and hope to do lots more with it soon.


Thanks for looking,

Just Add Ink Challenge #5

Hi Everyone,


For this Just Add Ink Challenge, I have taken one of the Stampin' Up Templates and made the Flower Favour Box, added a faux suede scalloped flower, made my own co-ordinating button (see Danielle's great step by step tutorial), and even made my own hairclips for inside the box! Phewwww that's all! Can you tell I've been very indecisive about what to do and had a lot of techniques I wanted to try! Lol  

 Here's the photos:

Materials Used:

Flower Favour Box:

• 
  
  Orchid Opulence & Pale Plum Cardstock
• 
  
  Boho Backgrounds Stamp set
• 
  
  Whisper White Inkpad
• 
  
  Silver thread (retired stock unfortunately)
• 
  
  Versamark
• 
  
  Crop-a-dile (to make the 'button holes')

Hairclips:

• 
  
  Matching pair of black hairclips
• 
  
  Paper Flowers from my stash
• 
  
  Crystal Effects
• 
  
  Dazzling Diamonds
• 
  
  Rhinestone Brads

Well its something different to a card and I think it can meet the JAI challenge to add dimension!

Thanks for looking,

Happy Moments...

Hi Everyone,

I'm still on my mission of using up my Leaning Tower of Pisa of card and paper pieces... So here's some more cards:

Materials Used:

Stamp sets: "Happy Moments" Sale-a-bration Set (you can earn this for FREE with any order over $100 before March 31st)

Other: Scallop Square punch, Corner punch, 2mm circle punch, brads, Stampin' Write Markers, Basic Black inkpad

This next card is approx 10cm square:

The layer of Pretty in Pink card behind the flowers has been run through the crimper twice to create a waffle cone (yum!) effect.

Materials Used:

Stamp Set: "Happy Moments", Sentiment and background flowers are both from retired sets and I can't think of their names... oops!

Other: Stampin' Write Markers, Eyelet border punch, Whisper White grosgrain ribbon, crimper

And another happy moment, although its family and not cards:

My youngest daughter decided that the best spot to hide was in her hat & shoe cupboard! Here's a couple of pics of our silly monkey...

Now in case you are wondering, she worked this trick out all by herself, including closing the door after she's inside. She also worked out that a karate chop or kick gets the door open and makes a good bang onto the wall as well. And all this during her supposed sleep.... Whilst I was cross at the mess and the lack of sleep, I couldn't help but laugh.

Thanks for looking,

Scalloped Ovals without a punch

Hi All,

This is another card I made over the weekend, and its one of several where I have been trying to use up some scraps and precut card sitting several stories high on my side table to my desk. Actually, I'm pretty sure this pile could take on the Leaning Tower of Pisa for a feat of physics.


Anyway, here's the card:

And here's an upclose pic of the detail:

Now I've made this scalloped oval around the sentiment from my scalloped border punch and its remarkably easy. I'm pretty sure I saw this tip on another stamper's blog, but I can't remember who - if its you, please let me know and I'll set up the appropriate links. Otherwise, if you are interested in trying it yourself, I've outlined the steps below:


Making Your Own Scalloped Oval:

1. Cut a thin strip of cardstock and punch along one edge. My finished strip was about 5mm wide at the widest part (across the scallop)
2. Take your stamped and punched oval sentiment, and place sticky strip adhesive all around the edge on the back. For this card, I've layered my punched sentiment on a piece of kiwi kiss card and trimmed to shape with my paper snips.
3. Gently adhere your scalloped strip to the back of your oval, slightly bending the strip around the oval. If you look really closely, you may be able to pick up where I was a little too rough and ripped the scalloped strip.
4. I finished off by sponging around the edge and then adhered the entire sentiment to my card with more sticky strip.

Not bad for my first attempt hey!

I've also used some rhinestone brads for the centre of my filagree flower brads. The plain brads just weren't going to be enough on this card.


Materials Used:
Stamp Set: "Vintage Labels" & "Boho Backgrounds"
Cardstock / Ink Colours: Basic Grey, Kiwi Kiss & Whisper White
Other: Designer Series Paper - Urban Garden, Filagree Brads, Wide Oval Punch, Sponge Daubers, Paper Snips



Thanks for looking,

Fifth Ave Floral & Sale-a-bration's Vintage Labels

Hi Everyone,

I thought I'd better pop in this weekend and show you at least 1 card I have made... You'll just have to excuse the photography though, as my lights aren't the best and the camera flash made the card way to glary!

Up close on the sentiment:

Materials Used:

Stamps: "Fifth Ave Floral", "Vintage Labels" (Sale-a-bration 2010 Set)

Cardstock / Ink Colours: Night of Navy, Kiwi Kiss, Baja Breeze & Whisper White

Other: Whisper White Grosgrain Ribbon, Dimensionals, Piercing tool and Mat Pack, Scallop Circle Punch

Thanks for looking,

Molly's Birthday

Hi All,

The girls and I went to a 1st b'day party on Wed and this is what I used to package the gift of 2 little dresses:

Its the first time I've made such a big box (well first time since primary school when I was always making boxes to hold all my treasures). The box is a 20cm square, made from 2 pieces of Pink Pirouette 12x12" card. And the big button is 'sewn' on with a skinny strip of chocolate chip card threaded through the holes and adhered with some sticky strip.


I also made a co-ordinating card:

Materials Used:

• Cardstock - Pink Pirouette A4 card & 12x12" card, Chocolate Chip, Whisper White
• Ink: Pink Pirouette, Chocolate Chip
• Sweet Always Designer Series Paper
• Stamp Set: "Curvy Verses" & "Animal Stories"
• Whisper White Ribbon and Pink ribbon from my stash
• Big button is also from my stash

Thanks for looking,

Inkspirations Colour Challenge # 18….

Hi All,

Another challenge, at least this time I have more than an hour before the challenge actually finishes...

This time Makeesha's Inkspirations Colour Challenge #18 is to use these colours:

A really unusual combination isn't it! But that's the beauty of the Stampin' Up colours - you can easily mix and match between all the colour families. Well, I thought I'd try a boys card with these colours....


So this is my card and I've used the owl from "Animal Stories" and the sentiment is from "On your birthday" :

The mellow moss has piercing across the width of the card & around the scallop but it didn't really show up in this photo.

All the colour has been added via Stampin' Write Markers for all the stamps and also I dyed my whisper white ribbon with my brocade blue marker to co-ordinate the ribbon into the challenge. I didn't use a single ink pad, well, that is until I decided I needed to add some ruby red sponging around my vanilla card.

I think this will be a nice and easy card to case in a hurry and especially for little boys as you can just write a different age each time and stamp an extra owl or 2.


Thanks for looking,

JAI's 4th Challenge

Hi Everyone,

Wow 2 posts in 1 day - I hope you haven't fallen off your seat when you saw me back again today...

This is a super quick post so that I can enter the Just Add Ink's 4th Challenge.. I got caught up watching So you think you can dance and nearly forgot to enter this challenge... Thankfully, I just made it in time.

The challenge was to use these colours:

And I combined it with my first Mojo Monday Sketch of 2010:

To come up with this card using the "Animal Stories"  stamp set:

I also had my first attempt at a new technique using my chalk pastels to create a background. I saw this technique whilst out in blogland last week and was reminded to try it by my sideline demonstrator Andrea when I saw her card this week. I can't remember the site where I originally saw this techinque but have a feeling it was a different site to Andrea's link.


Thanks for looking,

Stamp 'n' Stack February

Hi Everyone,

As promised, I'm back with the photos of my first Stamp 'n' Stack for 2010, held on Saturday arvo. The focus was on making men's cards after receiving lots of comments throughout last year that they are often hard to make.

My guests (hello and thank you for coming along!) made 3 of each of the cards below. And whilst we ran quite a bit over time, I had a great afternoon and hope you all did too, there was lots of chatting and laughter, so something was working .

Materials Used:

• Cardstock: Handsome Hunter, Riding Hood Red, Very Vanilla
• Designer Series Paper: Washington Apple
• Stamp set: "Whimsical Words"
• Vintage brads
• Dimensionals

Materials Used:

• Cardstock: Pacific Point, Tangerine Tango, Summer Sun & Whisper White
• Ink: Pacific Point
• Stamp Set: "Seeing Spots" and sentiment is from "On your birthday"
• Dimensionals to lift up the sentiment layer

Materials Used:

• Cardstock: Taken with Teal, Elegant Eggplant, So Saffron, Very Vanilla & Watercolour Paper
• Ink/ Markers: Taken with Teal, Elegant Eggplant & So Saffron
• Stamp set: "Happy Moments" (Free Sale-a-bration Set) & various sentiments from "On your Birthday"
• Dimensionals

The next class will be held Friday 12th March and we will be making 5 Easter Cards and 5 Easter Egg holders - What a great excuse for me to buy some choccie eggs soon to trial my Easter egg holders! So if you are in the Perth metro area and interested in coming or hosting your own Easter workshop, please rsvp by emailing me or leaving a comment below.


Thanks for looking,

Happy B'day Dianne!

Hi Everyone,

We have another family b'day on Friday - Dianne's and I thought I'd show you the gift I have been busy making over the last week (as well as preparing for my first Stamp 'n' Stack held yesterday but I'll tell you more about that later on).

So, I have been dabbling in decorating photo frames of late, and thought it would be a perfect present for Dianne. Here's some pics of what I've made:

This is the group shot:

Just the frames:

Just the card:

A closer pic of 2 of the frames (as you can see from the group shot, there are 2 frames the same):

And a close up of the Crystal Effect and Dazzling Diamond detail on the frames:

Sorry the red pic is a little blurry... Note to self: next time use the co-ordinating colour card stock and not whisper white to stamp letters... But in real life, you can't really see it... lol :)


Materials used:

• Cardstock - Riding Hood Red, Whisper White
• Designer Series Paper - Washington Apple (I love this paper, ever since I received a card from Lee-Anne)
• Crystal Effects
• Dazzling Diamonds
• Big Deal Alphabet Stamp Set
• Photo frames are from Ikea
• Glued and glossed with mod-podge - a multi-use product avail at lots of craft stores and even hardwares and I wonder why I didn't buy some years ago...

All the photos may be a give away, but I was pretty proud of myself for making something 3D and also for starting (and finishing) a project before the day I needed it and doing! Ok, it was only finished Thursday but still, that's good for me! I've been known to dry Crystal Effects or similar with my hairdryer as I don't have a heat gun as yet - its on the wishlist.

Thanks for looking,

ESAD Wk 2 Challenge

Hi Everyone,

Here's my entry for the ESAD Week 2 Challenge. We had to case the card from page 13 of the Summer Mini Catty which looks like this:

Sorry the pic is a little blurry... You can view the Summer mini catty online by clicking on the link in the right hand column.

And this is my card:

The card uses the Flight of the Butterfly stamp set, the eyelet border & butterfly punches. The butterfly image was stamped using the "thumping technique", which I did by inking my stamp with the 'pretty in pink' inkpad and then thumping the side of my 'lavendar lace' marker (the fat end) over my stamp. Then I misted the stamp with water and stamped onto my 'whisper white' cardstock. The black outine is then stamped over the top and the butterfly is punched out. I've layered the butterfly on a 'pretty in pink' butterfly and raised it on a dimensional before sticking onto my card.

This card is super easy to make! So I encourage everyone to have a go! :)

You can see my Wk 1 entry here and read all about ESAD (its a Stampin' Up! Demonstrator's chat group).



Thanks for looking,