By the Bay Sale-a-Bration stamp set

This was my joint first choice out of the Sale-a-Bration brochure... luckily my order meant I could earn more than one freebie.

Every £45 you spend during SAB (Jan-Mar) earns you a freebie from the brochure. I highly recommend By the Way, used here on a product-heavy card which we made at Crafty Friday.

Look out for two carryover items; the Sprig Punch and Braided Trim, both still available from the Autumn/Winter catalogue.

Sprig Punch wreath ornament

Friday night was my monthly Hygge Night, where we made three Christmas ornaments... all very different. This was my take on the Sprig Punch wreath which you can see in the Autumn/Winter catalogue.  Mine isn't as scrunched up because I chickened out!

The whole thing is spritzed with a mix of isopropyl alcohol and Champagne Mist Shimmer paint - you can mix it with water, but it tends to clump, and also doesn't dry so quickly so can warp your cardstock.

Read the tutorial here

Frosted Floral card, three ways

I needed three cards to contain garden centre vouchers, so this Frosted Floral Designer Series Paper proved perfect once again. I wanted to make them all different, so picked a colour from each piece of pattern to highlight.

I think the Blackberry Bliss one is my favourite, although my favourite design of paper is the one below...

Mini treat - Maltesers

These Clear Tiny Treat Boxes are lovely for displaying the tasty Maltesers inside. I was surprised how many the box would hold, too - but luckily I had a decoy box so I didn’t go hungry.

This was part of my “simple Christmas” demo where I showed the hostess and guests how easy it can be to make your own festive projects... especially if you use washi tape.

Do you like what I did with the Tailored Tag Punch? I simply popped the punched piece back in to add some little flags to each side. Not sure if I love it but it does make a change.

Simple Christmas? Or stepped up?

The card on the left is a three-minute Christmas card, proving without a doubt that you DO have time to make your own cards this year. Time is saved by using the pre-folded Notecards and Envelopes, and the fabulous Suite Season Washi Tape.

Please visit my Facebook page to see how I made this card in super-fast time

The fiddliest thing about this card is the linen thread bow, but you could skip that and replace with a jewel... just be aware that the faceted gems will bump up your postage in the UK to a “large letter”, and we don’t want that!

For the stepped up version, I dispensed with the Sprig Punch and used the fabulous new Blizzard Thinlits die instead, as well as some basic rhinestones to add a mixed metallics theme.

You can also see a hint of a scalloped Cherry Cobbler edge. This is a piece of the Delightfully Detailed Laser-cut Designer Series Paper, brayered in Cherry Cobbler ink. So, on the whole, a more time-consuming project, but nice if you want to send something a bit more “special” to a close friend or family member. Or, if we’re being honest here, a fellow cardmaker. We know we all save our “best” cards for crafters, don’t we?

Wonderful pillow boxes

These pillow boxes have been so useful for making quick gifts for my team members and customers. These were created for my All-Day Craftathon to thank the ladies for spending the day with me.

I used the Dashing Along Designer Series Paper which was available to hosts for September only, but any festive DSP would do the job nicely. The sprigs finished it off and the sentiments came from Rooted in Nature.

Inside are some scented wardrobe sachets which I assured the ladies are perfectly nice in isolation, but completely overwhelming when you have 12 of them in one room, so they were banished to a sealed box in the porch (the gifts, not the ladies).

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.