Caturday: Bluebells cat

 

Doesn’t this cat have unusual markings? I initially thought those black markings on its head were its ears. In fact, I’m still struggling not to see it that way. 

It was spotted and snapped at Bluebells Farm (the ice cream people) in Spondon by my customer Karen. Good catch, Karen!

Blizzard Thinlits meet Peaceful Noel

Today I want to show you the last of three workshops we completed at my Autumn All-Day Craftathon.

We returned to the Christmas theme by combining Peaceful Noel with the Blizzard Thinlits die to create this no-waste set of projects. Can you see what we did?

We began by die-cutting the snowflakes from Pool Party and carefully prised out all the snowflakes to leave this lovely template behind. It would be a waste to discard this so it formed the basis of the front of this Night of Navy gift envelope, again using the Farmhouse Elements, this time sponged in Blueberry Bushel.

As you can see, it’s just a standard envelope, created using the Envelope Punch board. We used it to store four gift tags, but it could easily contain a gift card, money, or a small gift of jewellery.

Take a look at the tags close up... we’ve used the little stars from Farmhouse Elements, too, as well as red rhinestones for a touch of glamour. The “splodge” and greeting both come from Peaceful Noel.

As for the card, that continues the theme but keeps things Clean and Simple, too.

I hope you’ve enjoyed looking at my Craftathon projects. The next All-Day event will be early next year and in you’re local to Derbyshire I hope you’ll join me. The ladies have asked for fewer workshops next time, to give them more time to chat, so we’ll be doing one in the morning and one in the afternoon, with a buffet lunch in the middle and lots of cake available all day. Hope you can come!

Peaceful Noel split-top box ... but NOT Christmas

Welcome back to part two of my look back at Saturday’s projects from my All-Day Craftathon.

This was our second workshop of the day, a split-top box containing three notecards. It shows how you can use the Peaceful Noel stamp set (which everyone received in their kit) to create non-Christmas projects.

This is how the box opens; fun, eh? I’ll post the tutorial on my Facebook page tomorrow.

Inside are three very simple cards, stamped exactly how everyone wanted to (although some chose to copy exactly!) To steer away from Christmas, we used the greetings from Botanical Tags.

I love this colour combination - Blueberry Bushel goes SO well with Mint Macaron, it’s really lovely.

Peaceful Noel tealight holder and card

Are you in a festive mood yet? I hope you will be by the end of this post as this is the first project from my Autumn All-Day Craftathon. ”Autumn” was a bit of a misnomer as two out of the three classes were decidedly Christmassy, starting with this fun card and gift set. 

The card is largely based on this beautiful project by Monica Gale. As you can see, CASEing (Copy and Share Everything) doesn’t have to be exact; I’ve taken my favourite elements of Monica’s card – the stitched circle frame, the stamped background, the die-cut words and the Pinewood Planks embossed layer, and made them fully festive with brand new products from the Autumn/Winter catalogue. These included as the lovely Farmhouse Elements, which come in grey but can easily be sponged with ink, or coloured with markers (as long as you leave them at least 20-30 minutes to dry).

Inside, the card looks like this...

At this point, I should state that every guest had the Peaceful Noel stamp set in their kit, so all the projects were geared around this set. And I believe we used every single stamp from the set during the course of the day.

To accompany the card, we made this fun tealight box, although the guests had festive apple and cinammon-scented red candles to put inside their creations, instead of bog standard white!

The candles slide out, matchbox-style, and there’s a fun lift-up lid, too...

I love this project which I made using this tutorial from German demonstrator Nicole Schlack.  For a tutorial in English, please visit the Notes section of my Facebook page tomorrow.

I hope it’s helping to put you in a Christmassy mood... but if not, don’t despair as I have a non-Christmas project for you on Wednesday.

Caturday: Smokey Joe

Isn’t Smokey Joe a beauty? He lives in Ohio with Sandy, who kindly shared this picture on my Facebook page, when I put out an appeal because I was running out of Caturday pix. He’s certainly majestic, as all cats are really, but some more than others.

Dandelion Wishes gift box

A project from the (not-too-distant) archives which I knew would come in handy one day!

It uses the delightful Dandelion Wishes stamp set and was the 3D demo I made at a party a few weeks ago. I refrained from posting it as I felt I’d overdone the Dandelion Wishes projects.

However now, with my All-Day Craftathon tomorrow, I need a post and have nothing to show you without ruining the surprise for 12 lovely ladies who will be joining me for a full day of crafting.

Come back on Monday to see some of our Craftathon projects. I think you'll love them!

Dashing Along Christmas

I found this beautiful card idea on a Dutch demonstrator's blog and my limited (ie non-existent) knowledge of the language leads me to believe it was created by a lady called Janneke.

Having been totally engrossed in creating projects for my upcoming All-Day Craftathon, I needed a design in a hurry for a party last week so turned to Pinterest and found this beauty.

The only element I changed was the twine colour (because I need all the Cherry Cobbler for next weekend’s event) and I added some stamped flowers, too, as they match the Designer Series Paper perfectly.

The DSP is FREE to hostesses whose party totals reach £200 in September, so I'm delighted to say my host earned this and will soon be able to make lots of fabulous Christmas cards with it.

Winter Woods layered ink project

This is a lovely Stamparatus technique which I found thanks to Patty Bennett's great video tutorial. I didn’t have all the green markers I needed so incorporated some ink sponging, too.

I used one of my favourite stamp sets of the moment, Winter Woods, which is in the Autumn/Winter catalogue and is just perfect for loads of occasions, not just Christmas. It goes brilliantly with the Wood Textures Designer Series Paper, too... all of my favourite things in one project!

Caturday: Ted

Remember Bill from last week? Well here’s his brother... Ted, planning an Excellent Adventure with his map of the Lake District. Somewhat appropriately, he chose to sprawl across Cat Bells.

Detailed Deer pillow boxes

At first glance, a relatively simple project, but there are a couple of things worth pointing out. The first is that I have only just spotted these gorgeous pillow boxes in the Annual Catalogue - how did I miss them?

They make gift-giving really easy, as they're already fabulous, so you don’t need to do much to them to make your little gifts look amazing.

Secondly, have you noticed the lovely burnished oval? This is created with the amazing new Tin Tile Embossing Folder which I've used on Early Espresso cardstock and then swiped over with our new Bright Copper Shimmer Paint. 

We had shimmer paint in the catalogue before, back in the day when this blog was all fields, and I’m so happy to see it return. I was even happier to see we now have it in on-trend copper! 

I’ve filled these pillow boxes with little treats for some of my team members. Hope they like them!

Winter Woods Christmas card

I LOVE the new Winter Woods stamp set, and have always loved the Wood Textures Designer Series Paper so, for me, this is a match made in heaven.

This was the second project at my Crafty Friday event last week, using the circle we cut from the shaker card I showed you on Monday.

I can't get enough of tree stamps, woodland themes etc - I'm happiest when I'm in a wood. When I found out about shinrin yoku, it all began to make sense!

A whole lotta shakin'...

I loved this card by Leslie Webster and just had to make a Stampin' Up!® version using the new Autumn/Winter catalogue projects. 

This was one of our projects at Crafty Friday last week, and the ladies loved making a fun shaker card. 

The background is stamped with Winter Woods in Crumb Cake onto Crumb Cake cardstock, then coloured using the chalk marker.  The rest is self-explanatory. I'm afraid the sequins aren't current items but we do sell very similar sequins in the Annual Catalogue; I just didn’t see the point of updating them when I have so many in stock!

What I love about these dies is a) the stag pops out of the die beautifully, with no effort at all and b) you get four of these little flower dies so you can make them all in one roll of the Big Shot!

Caturday: Bill

Here’s Bill, who belongs to Jacqui, one of my customers. Can you guess what his brother’s name is? No, not Ben... it’s Ted, and you’ll get to meet him next week!

A citrussy, crafty birthday

Do you get clusters of birthdays on your calendar? We do. I find I have loads of birthdays around Christmas – most of them are my downlines or other crafting friends. And right now is another heavy birthday season, with them coming thick and fast.

This one was for Ruby, who turned 18 last week and is a keen artist, so the Crafting Forever stamp set was just the job.

I began by watercolouring some citrussy colours onto watercolour paper, then die-cutting using the Happy Birthday Thinlits. I covered the whole lot in Versamark ink and then embossed using a mix of clear embossing powder and Dazzling Diamonds glitter.

I’m not a big glitter fan – it gets everywhere and is a nightmare if it ever goes down the drain as it can pollute our seas, so this is a great workaround for me as it keeps the glitter nicely contained.

The card is finished off with some paintbrushes and some splatters made with the Artisan Textures stamp set. Hope she likes bright colours!

Autumn/Winter catalogue goes live today!

It’s time! The Autumn/Winter catalogue goes live today!

Click here to view the catalogue

Get your wish lists ready and please get in touch if you’d like to order. 

Or click here to shop online

A celebration in Bermuda Bay

This card was heavily inspired by Yana Smakula and I just knew the Bermuda Bay would be perfect for my friend and downline Kelly.

I brayered the whole piece from top to bottom using Coastal Cabana and Bermuda Bay (Kelly’s favourite SU colour), then embossed in copper using the spots from Dragonfly Dreams. I couldn’t find any word stamps in my collection which were big enough to stand out in the centre of the project, so die-cut the “celebrate” from copper foil instead. 

Some of the leaves are cut from the Delightfully Detailed laser-cut DSP, while others are die-cut using the Tropical Thinlits.  Hope she liked it!

Caturday - Boris

Beautiful Boris is Elsa’s brother and belongs to fellow Stampin’ Up!® demonstrator Joanne. Here he is, doing that cat thing – looking extremely comfortable and warm.