Hey Chick and Hey Birthday Chick

Who wants to see more chicken samples? I have lots to show you today, this time using both of the stamp sets in the Hey Chick promotion.

In an unprecedented move (honestly, who else is sick of that word? How about ‘remarkable’, ‘unheard of’ or ‘atypical’ instead?), Stampin’ Up!® have brought back Hey Chick, an old favourite stamp set from Sale-a-Bration 2017. And four years on, it remains as popular as ever. It’s a great opportunity to buy the Hey Chick stamp set if you don’t already have it – and this time you have the option of adding dies, too. 

The dies are fabulous – with lots of fun little extra touches such as a chicken coop, bag of grain, picket fence, tree stump and some really tiny ears of corn. What’s not to like?

 

 

As well as the return of Hey Chick, there is Hey Birthday Chick in the January-June Mini Catalogue, which also has coordinating dies. 

 

See the whole Hey Chick range of products here

 

Take a look at some of these great projects made by the SU design team. Aren’t they fabulously inspiring?

 

 

And if you’re wondering what I’ve been up to all week, it’s been preparing for a blog hop on Thursday and also for my Dandy Garden Day this coming Saturday – which has been fraught with challenges because I wasn’t sure if my parcel would arrive in time... and then it did... but then it was half empty.

In case you’re not in the UK, or have just not been ordering lately, we have been having major problems with orders taking weeks to arrive, then arriving tampered with... hence my missing items. This has been as a result of Brexit + pandemic but I’m pleased to say the problems are now almost ironed out; orders are taking a bit longer than usual but arriving in a more timely fashion and intact!

Thankfully, demonstrators helped me out again, and my hoarding tendencies came to the rescue too, so my class can go ahead after all!

 

Chick out the whole Hey Chick range in my store here (opens in new window)

 

The Hey Chick promotion runs until the end of June, although bear in mind products will switch to ‘while supplies last’ towards the ened of this period.  If you are in the UK and would like to order, please visit my store and, if you use the February host code D6PKN76U, I’ll send you a thank you gift in March!

To make it easy for you, please shop using this link

Does your wish list come to more than £99? Please get in touch and I will help you get more for your money and unlock discounts all year round.  

 

Please message me via my website

 

Fun with Hey Birthday Chick stamps and dies

I am totally hen-amoured with our Hey Chick and Hey Birthday Chick bundles. I loved Hey Chick back in 2017 when it was our most popular Sale-a-Bration stamp set, and I still love it today. Everyone who has kept their Hey Chick Sale-a-Bration stamp set since then will be delighted with the fun dies which are now available. 

 

I love Hey Birthday Chick in the new Stampin’ Up!® January-June Mini Catalogue, too, and that also now has dies available. What fun bundles they both are!

 

 

In this rather busy card, I’ve attempted to hen-capsulate the sheer joy and silliness of Hey Birthday Chick. But once you’ve stamped and die-cut these hen-gaging hens, you just can’t stop colouring them. And once they’re coloured in, you may as well use them, which is how I ended up with this totally bonkers birthday card. 

How to avoid die-cutting fatigue

 

As is so often the case, the Stamparatus is your friend here. 

Here’s how you can die-cut multiple chickens (or any shape) quickly and accurately:

• Place your cardstock in the corner of the Stamparatus and position all your chickens on the plate with some space around them to allow for the dies. 
  
• Stamp all your chickens in one go.
• Leave the cardstock and stamps in the same position on the Stamparatus (that’s really important!).
• Die-cut the chickens as normal, being extra careful to do so accurately.
• Now you can die-cut a pile of chickens from blank cardstock which means a) you don't have to worry about positioning and b) you can maximise use of cardstock as you don’t have to leave space around them.
• Now just slot the chickens into your cardstock template and stamp for perfect positioning every time.

Can you use the template again? Yes... but only for as long as you leave the stamps on the Stamparatus plate. If you remove the stamps from the plate, you can try placing the stamps into the template and picking them up with the plate and you might get away with it. This would be easier with photopolymer stamps but with red rubber you may find you have start the process again and create a new one.

That was a long tip, wasn't it? Back to more Hey Birthday Chick cards... 

 

I made a batch of these for my customer thank yous for their January orders – chickens are for life, not just for birthdays! 

 

I used the sentiment “Good things are worth waiting for” from Enjoy the Moment to acknowledge the fact that their January orders have taken so long to arrive due to Brexit-related customs delays. I share their pain and have been tracking their parcels with them.

I did something really rash with my brand new Enjoy the Moment stamp set. I actually cut this stamp up so I could stamp it on two lines easily. The joy of unmounted stamps is that you can put them back together on the block if you want to. The rash bit was doing this AFTER I’d added the label... and my label positioning wasn’t perfect so now it just looks like a dog’s dinner. A fully functional dog’s dinner but it’s still a little galling.

I used Shimmery White cardstock for the main panel here and watercoloured the background with a big brush and some Granny Apple Green and Coastal Cabana ink picked it up from the lid in the time-honoured fashion. I find Shimmery White is a bit more tolerant of watercolouring than Whisper White. I haven’t had chance to try it on our new Basic White just yet because, you know, Customs...

I had fun colouring these cheeky chickens with my Stampin’ Blends and experimented with a few colours. Which one do you like the best?

 

How I coloured the chickens

 

 

This one is simply done in Daffodil Delight, light and dark, with a Pumpkin Pie beak and a Poppy Parade comb. The chick is the same, but with an Ivory eggshell. 

For this chicken I used Granny Apple Green, light and dark, with some Daffodil Delight light and dark for the belly, wings and tail. Do you like the little picket fence? I love it. The new Birthday Chick Dies have lots of fun little elements like this, as do the Hey Chick Dies, as you can see above. 

This one is a bit more high maintenance. I began with a strip of dark Rich Razzleberry around the base and up towards the tail, then switched to light Rich Razzleberry to start blending upwards and a little all the way round. Then, as I don't have any paler purples or dark pinks, I switched to light Calypso Coral for the paler areas, finishing off with a light Petal Pink towards the belly. Yes, four markers for one chicken... six if you count the Poppy Parade comb and Pumpkin Pie beak!

Chick out the whole Hey Chick range in my store here (opens in new window)

 

The Hey Chick promotion runs until the end of June, although bear in mind products will switch to ‘while supplies last’ towards the ened of this period.  If you are in the UK and would like to order, please visit my store and, if you use the February host code D6PKN76U, I’ll send you a thank you gift in March!

To make it easy for you, please shop using this link

Does your wish list come to more than £99? Please get in touch and I will help you get more for your money and unlock discounts all year round.  

 

Please message me via my website.

NB: Please note orders are currently taking quite a bit longer than usual to arrive, due to a combination of extra paperwork required following Brexit, lower staffing levels due to the pandemic, and an influx of orders as a result of both lockdown and Sale-a-Bration. Please ask if you require more information.

 

Last day of Sale-a-Bration 2017!

This is it, folks! The last day of Sale-a-Bration 2017! Your very last chance to:

Spend £45 and earn a fabulous FREE product, such as the gorgeous Hey Chick stamp set - the most popular SAB item this year!

Host a £200 party and get an extra £20 in Stampin' Rewards - while you may not get a party booked for today, you can place your own qualifying order online and still earn the rewards, so call your friends, quick!

Join Stampin’ Up! as a demonstrator for just £99, and get an extra TWO stamp sets of your choice (not SAB sets) in your Starter Kit!

I’ve had a fabulous Sale-a-Bration, so I’d like to thank everyone who helped by hosting, joining and placing orders. I’m excited to see what’s coming next!

And the most popular Sale-a-Bration product is...

Bit of a daft question as the answer is staring you in the face but do you know what the most popular Sale-a-Bration product is BY FAR? Yup, it’s Hey, Chick, which comes as no surprise to me as I was so excited when I first clapped eyes on it way back in November.

It’s such a fun stamp set and was inspired by the artist’s experiences on a friend’s farm. The illustrator, Loris Sume, said:

"When I was a child growing up in Canada, I remember some family friends who had little chickens that I thought were so cute. A couple of summers ago here in Utah, I stopped at a friend’s ranch and saw all their cute animals including their chickens. They had typical chickens but also another kind called Polish Frizzle Bantam White Chickens. I think they are so funny with all those feathers flopping around on the top of their heads and how they like to stare straight at you and cock their heads.

"So when I was assigned to create the Hey, Chick Stamp Set, I was so excited. I wanted to exaggerate the rounder chickens and really make them round, and I also really wanted to draw one of those funny chickens I saw at my friend’s ranch. It was a really fun set to create."

Time is running out to earn this stamp set, if you haven’t already done so. There are just THREE WEEKS of Sale-a-Bration left, so don’t delay if you must have chickens in your life!

All-Day Craftathon - Hey Chick workshop

The second workshop of my All-Day Craftathon featured projects made with the Sale-a-Bration set, Hey Chick. This is by far the most popular set from the SAB brochure this year and has proved hugely popular with my regular customers. 

We made three projects: this cute egg box, which we filled with a choice of raffia or coloured tissue (Home Bargains) and Easter treats.

It’s sealed with some more Succulent Garden Designer Series Paper, another piece of that gorgeous new SAB Glimmer Paper and a label created with the Window Box bundle. 

This card was the next project and I think it’s my favourite project from the whole day. The Window Shopping stamp set gets another outing, as does the Succulent Garden DSP. A 1" (2.5cm) strip was cut from the front of the Old Olive card base, to be used in the next project...

... can you see it? It’s just below the main panel. And who would’ve thought this stripey paper came from the same Succulent Garden pack?

For the final workshop projects, please come back tomorrow!

Hey, Chick! It's Friday!

We couldn’t head into the weekend without another chicken card, could we? This was the Make & Take from my team meeting recently; I wanted to show the team the amazing versatility of the new Dynamic Hexagons embossing folder.

Yes, the chicken wire is made with the embossing folder - simply ink it up and press directly onto your cardstock. I love this embossing folder – it goes with everything! Masculine, feminine, chicken wire, honeycomb... if you don’t have it yet, it would be a valuable addition to your next order! Bump it up to £45 and you could choose this fabulous chicken stamp set as your free gift!

And if you fancy joining the fun and becoming a demonstrator, I’d love to welcome you into my team. There are so many advantages to being a demonstrator that I won’t even try to go into them here, but if you have any questions, please do drop me a line. And if you’re ready to take the plunge, just click the image below!

Hey Chick, with watercolour pencils

Some of the most popular new products are showcased here: Hey Chick, the gorgeous Sale-aBration set, the Dynamic Hexagons embossing folder (which goes with EVERYTHING) and the Watercolour Pencils, which are causing big ripples of excitement.

We’ll be using these pencils tonight at my February Hygge Night - the focus is on colouring.

And this DSP - Affectionately Yours - features the same colours as the SAB paper, Carried Away, which means you can use the same pack of cardstock!

Hey Chick! Watercoloured and doodled...

Just a tiny card with a chicken on it. Watercoloured and doodled for maximum crafting fun. I do enjoy watercolouring and doodling; I find them both very relaxing, and I think this stamp set lends itself perfectly to both techniques.

The set, Hey Chick, is free during Sale-a-Bration with a £45 order. While I think it’s fabulous that we can earn such a gorgeous set for free, I kind of wish it was in the catalogue, so it would stick around longer. Because, after 31st March, this set will be gone forever! Don’t miss out!

Mix It Up Monday: Hey, Chick!

Only 12 hours late for today’s Mix It Up Monday project using another colour combination from my In Color charts… but better late than not at all. 

I’m being brave, with lots of encouragement from my customers, and using Peekaboo Peach again. This fabulous card idea is a CASE of one made by my friend and helper, Kelly. I simply remade it in Mix It Up Monday combination. 

I love the quirkiness of the colours and design and think they go perfectly with the quirkiness of this fabulous stamp set, Hey, Chick! It’s a Sale-a-Bration stamp set, free with any £45 order during the promotion, which runs until 31st March. Do get it if you can as it’s a lot of fun. 

Sale-a-Bration sneak peek - Hey Chick!

If this was the only stamp set in the Sale-a-Bration brochure (it isn’t, don’t panic!), I would be happy. I am so excited about this set as it combines two of my great crafting loves; animal images and the potential for watercolouring.

Plus, the images are cute without being “cutesy” and comical without having to wonder if the pun works if you say it in an American accent (yeah, yeah, I know there’s more than one “American accent” – it’s the same here, too).

I had lots of fun painting up some images from this set and have even managed to turn a few of them into cards, including this one of course, for my good friend Amanda. Who, as far as I know, has never expressed any interest in chickens whatsoever.

So how do you get this set? You have two options:

1. Join Stampin ’ Up!® NOW and you can order it in a week – free with a £45 order.
2. Wait until 4th January and get it free with a £45 order.

Either way, it’s FREE, which is everybody’s favourite kind of stamp set, right?