Washi tape Merry Little Christmas tree

By the comments I’ve received, this seems to have been one of the most popular projects I made for the Creative Tour display, so here’s a closer look.

To create it, I applied strips of washi tape to Whisper White cardstock and cut out using the Perfect Pennants die. For the plant pot, I put just the Cherry Cobbler washi tape onto Cherry Cobbler cardstock, cut out using the same die, but cut the point off.

I can’t actually remember how I made the tree trunk, but suspect it’s just a strip of Crumb Cake washi tape.

These were all stuck to a piece of Whisper White cardstock, which is overlaid with a piece of stamped vellum.

The main problem with vellum is adhesive, as everything will show through, so I stuck it down with a glue dot at the top, which is covered with the rhinestone, and another behind the word “little”, which hides it.

Stamps: Merry Little Christmas

Cardstock: Sahara Sand, Whisper White, Cherry Cobbler

Ink: Black Stazon

Accessories: Perfect Pennants die, Large rhinestones, washi tape (Season of Style)

Caturday - My name is Earl

Lovely, lovely Earl. Regular Caturday readers will probably have realised by now that I have a bit of a thing for black cats. Earl is a relative newcomer to the cat shelter and if we weren’t already fully occupied here, I’d be adopting him for sure (along with Dennis).

Earl is a really chilled-out kitty, despite his youth. Last weekend he sat on the new castle ramparts – yes, there’s a castle now! – and purred while I stroked him. All the other young cats were hurtling around but Earl just wanted to be stroked.

Did I mention that I’ve taken over the Woodland Nook blog? It’s fairly new so we need to bump up our visitor numbers. Please drop in by clicking here. 

Washi tape Christmas tree

Washi tape makes everything easy. For this card I just tore different lengths to make a tree, which I embellished with a few rhinestones. You have to stick them down well as the tape is slightly shiny so the rhinestones are prone to slipping.

We made a similar one to this at my Christmas is Coming… Stamp-a-Stack at the weekend, but we used small circles of Champagne Glimmer Paper instead of rhinestones. Washi tape is one of my favourite products at the moment, so I made sure everyone had a full pack to use and take home afterwards, to make their Christmas cardmaking quick and simple!

There are only a few days left to book for my next event, which will be a fun and fab all-dayer. Places are filling fast, so please visit this link to see more details and register. 

Cardstock: Crumb Cake, Cherry Cobbler, Whisper White

Accessories: Season of Style Washi Tape, Expressions Thinlits Dies, Basic Rhinestones

Creative Tour display - and washi tape bird

I was very honoured this summer to be asked to create some projects for Stampin’ Up!’s Creative Tour, which ended last night. The projects have had to be kept firmly under wraps while the tour was in progress but now I can show you at last.

I was asked to showcase two products from the Autumn/Winter catalogue; the Season of Style Washi Tape and the Expressions Thinlits Dies. In the beginning it was a bit of a challenge but I soon got into the groove and I think it make me think outside of the box a little, too! It helped that the colours of the washi tape are my most favourite Christmas colours – I do love to keep things traditional with red and green.

Above is (almost) the full set (I accidentally missed one off the photo) – I’ll be showing you the projects in more detail over the coming days.

Today you can take a closer look at one of my favourite projects – my little Christmas robin. I got the idea from a magazine but then went my own way. Here’s how to make him:

1. Take some newspaper and screw into two balls, one larger than the other. Make a long triangular shape, too (for the tail).
2. Bind it all together with masking tape. If you’re making your bird from DSP instead of washi tape, you could use Sellotape but washi tape is semi-transparent, so I wanted to hide the newsprint.
3. I made a black cardstock beak with quite big flaps, taping it down using masking tape.
4. Next I stuck washi tape all over the bird. I wasn’t sure whether to go random or aim for a pattern, and in the end settled on a red breast (the temptation was too much to resist) and some green “wings”.
5. The legs are made from wire. I won’t pretend this was easy – in fact I had to call on my husband for help. It might be easier if you have softer wire, but he just found this in the garage for me. The feet are so big so that the bird stands up easily.
6. To “install”, I poked them into the newspaper to make the holes, then removed them and covered them in Crystal Effects before re-inserting.
7. The eyes are Basic Black candy dots – big thanks to fellow demonstrator Michelle Bryant for coming to the rescue with those!
8. Finally I made a tiny envelope for his beak – not sure how well this has lasted on the Creative Tour; it was looking a little limp by last Wednesday, so by Convention I’m sure it will be very droopy!

Hope you like him!

Stamps: Wishing You

Cardstock: Basic Black, Very Vanilla

Ink: Cherry Cobbler

Accessories: Season of Style washi tape, Neutrals Candy Dots, Crystal Effects

Other: Newspaper, masking tape, wire… patience!

Clearance Rack is up and running!

Clearance Rack is live! So get yourselves to www.helenread.stampinup.net and start shopping! You’ll find lots of your retired favourites, such as products in Baja Breeze and Lucky Limeade, as well as bargain scrapbook albums and kits, ribbons, buttons, dies, folders… there’s even the tabletop cutter, which is well worth having – I was very sad to see that retire. Missing the fabric? There's Spice Cake fabric at just £2.19. Yes, £2.19!

Remember, items are only available while stocks last and there is likely to be a LOT of interest today with it being the first day, so don’t delay – get what you can while you can!

The Clearance Rack is intended to be a permanent feature of the website, so keep checking back, whenever you get the urge for a bargain. Even though the products are all retired, you’ll find that some have carried over in a different format, eg you can (at the time of writing) get a full pack of Primrose Petals Core’dinations cardstock, which is now only available in the catalogue as part of an In Color assortment. And there’s a pack of old In Color markers, of which four out of the five have carried over to become core colours.

Anyway, enough rambling, take a look – and remember you’ll need an account and to pay shipping to have it delivered to your home. 

Flower Shop bundle card

This was one of my party Make & Takes for the past month or so. We used the Flower Shop bundle which features a set of flowers which all fit their co-ordinating punch. The words are from Remembering Your Birthday – I thought it would be handy to have a belated birthday card in stock!

You probably can’t see from the photo but the little flowers are stamped in Daffodil Delight on Whisper White. I used one of the other flowers from the set, which has various patterns on each petal – these Itty Bitty Punches are small enough that you can punch a patterend flower from each petal.

And in other news, this Sunday I am having a Macmillan Coffee morning in the garden, 10am-1pm. If you'd like to come along, please drop me a line and I'll send you the details!

Stamps: Flower Shop, Remembering Your Birthday

Cardstock: Pool Party, Rich Razzleberry, Whisper White

Paper: Epic Day

Ink: Island Indigo, Rich Razzleberry, Daffodil Delight

Accessories: Stitched Grosgrain Ribbon – Daffodil Delight, Itty Bitty Punch Pack, Pansy Punch, Candy Dots – Brights

Caturday: Dennis and Pan

Sorry for the Catur-delay - I've been out all day, stamping! This morning was my team meeting. We were a select few today but had a lovely time, chatting, laughing and stamping together.

This afternoon was my Christmas Stamp-a-Stack, where everyone made 10 cards in five different designs. I'll show you those another time because today is, of course, Caturday. By the skin of my teeth, anyway!

And here we have lovely Dennis and the equally lovely Pan... just before it all kicked off. Here's what happened...

Dennis is still quite shy. When he arrived at the shelter several months ago, he was totally traumatised, having been run over. For months he rarely left the safety of the rafters or the top of the shed. Lately, though, he's been coming down to sit in the Wendy House, where he's happy to be stroked and have his tummy rubbed. Even more recently, he's allowed us to stroke him outside, too, which is a big breakthrough.

Last weekend was a Big Day for Dennis, as he was being visited by a prospective owner. So daughter brushed him to make him look nice for the lady. He REALLY enjoyed this, and began rolling around, asking for more. He clearly forgot himself, as he ended up rolling around in front of Pan, who was having none of it and just after the camera went "click", pounced on Dennis and it all ended in tears.

But not for long, as the good news is that Dennis has now gone to his new home (it took an hour to catch him, apparently!) where I hope he will be very happy. I will miss him though. :(

UPDATE: Dennis was so traumatised by being moved that unfortunate he has had to return to the cat shelter for the time being. He's back to his usual self, but will need longer in the shelter before he's ready for a "forever home". Sad for Dennis but secretly pleased that he's back!