Layered Christmas tree

Turn your bunting upside down and you have a Christmas tree! Here I’ve layered three shades of green, all embossed using the Polka Dots embossing folder. The Pennant Parade stamp set features a little Christmas tree pot so you can get more mileage out of your stamps and the punch. Clever, eh?

The rhinestones were coloured with a red Sharpie before I added them to the centres of the tiny flowers.

Stamps: Pennant Parade

Cardstock: Cherry Cobbler,  Whisper White, Pear Pizzazz, Lucky Limeade, Always Artichoke

Ink: Cherry Cobbler, Chocolate Chip

Accessories: Pennant Punch, Modern Label Punch, Basic Rhinestones, Big Shot, Polka Dots embossing folder, Itty Bitty Punches

All products by Stampin’ Up!®            

Cheerful tree(t)

Happy Saturday everyone! It's been a full-on week, so I'm glad it's the weekend and here's a bright and cheerful card to celebrate.

Easy Events has to be the single most useful stamp set in the new catalogue. There are stamps in the set for all year round, and you can mask off the greetings – or even trim them if you’re feeling brave – so that you get even greater versatility.

Here I’ve stamped the tree in Basic Gray and coloured it with blender pens and ink pad lids. The stamp says “sending you love” but I find I need birthday cards more than anything so masked off the sentiment and stamped “happy birthday” from the cake stamp, masking off the cake.

Instead of the little heart on the tree, I thought a flower would be nice, so used the Itty Bitty Punches to create a tiny flower. I gave this dimension by holding it in the palm of my hand and pressing a rubber-tipped pencil into it, which lifts up the petals without causing me pain. It’s topped with a Basic Rhinestone for a little bit of subtle bling.

The paper is from the gorgeous Cheerful Treat collection, which is only available to those lovely people who hold a Stampin’ Up!® party. Holding a party is great fun – all you have to do is lay on a few very light refreshments (we don’t want to distract them from the stamping goodies on offer!) and find the guests. They don’t have to be crafters: remember, we were all non-crafters once, everyone has to start somewhere!

If you’d like to book a party, please get in touch. If you’re not in the area, I can probably find you someone within my team who is close enough to help you. You can even hold a virtual party – if  you  is gather together £150 of orders from your friends you will still qualify as a hostess and earn yourself the freebies! And if you’d like to join my next Virtual Hostess Club round, please let me know as I will be beginning to compile a list shortly. There are more details here. 

Stamps: Easy Events

Cardstock: Melon Mambo, Concord Crush, Lucky Limeade, Whisper White

Paper: Cheerful Treat

Ink: Basic Gray, Lucky Limeade, Soft Suede, Concord Crush

Accessories: Scallop Edge Punch, Itty Bitty Punches, Basic Rhinestones, Word Window Punch, Blender Pens

All products by Stampin’ Up!®            

Extended pillow box

Isn’t this cute? And perfect for those bars of chocolate which won’t fit in a normal-length pillow box!

I first got this idea from a French* demonstrator after receiving an extended pillow box from her in a swap earlier this year. It really is very simple – all you do is die-cut two pillow boxes and join them together with Sticky Strip! Then you just have to make sure you’ve covered the join with something – here I’ve used the oh so very lovely Cheerful Treat Designer Series Paper which is available to hostesses who hold a workshop with sales of £150 or more.

The snail is pretty cute for a vile mollusc/garden pest/thing of nightmares – made even cuter by the paper piecing. I stamped him once on Whisper White cardstock and then again on different scraps of Cheerful Treat paper, which I then cut out and stuck onto the white cardstock.  I love the way the swirls of the Bashful Blue piece seem to look particularly shell-like... even in an unrealistic blue!

* Oops, apparently she was German, not French. 

Stamps: Easy Events

Cardstock: Bashful Blue, Melon Mambo, Lucky Limeade, Whisper White

Paper: Cheerful Treat (hostess)

Ink: Basic Black, Melon Mambo

Accessories: Big Shot, Polka Dot Embossing Folder, Pillow Box die, Scallop Circle Punch, 1 3/8” Circle punch, Word Window Punch, Modern Label Punch

All products by Stampin’ Up!®            

Catalogue countdown, day 3

Staying with the Christmas theme, Pennant Parade, one of our new stamp sets, is perfect for Christmas cards – because if you turn the stamps upside down, you get these lovely trees! There’s even a pot in the stamp set, as well as a star, although I’ve not used the star here.

The background is “debossed”, which means the dots go in instead of out. Whether that was by accident or design, I’ll leave you to decide! I made the ground using torn vellum... the trees didn’t look right without it, they were just floating.

Stamps: Pennant Parade

Cardstock: Lucky Limeade, Chocolate Chip, Cherry Cobbler, Whisper White, Vellum cardstock

Ink: Cherry Cobbler, Chocolate Chip, Lucky Limeade

Accessories: Basic Rhinestones, Pennant Punch, Word Window Punch, Modern Label Punch, Big Shot, Polka Dots embossing folder, Scallop Edge Punch

All products by Stampin’ Up!®            

Retro stitches

Don’t you just love the retro look of these fab papers from the Mini catalogue? They’re called Sweet Stitches and are very funky.

They were perfect to make a thank you card for a very talented lady who has altered a coat for me. I made a buckle card, instructions for which are here. It’s a really simple card to make, with no waste.

There’s very little stamping on this card; there really was no need because the papers are so fantastic. I used a panel of the sewing machine patterened paper and an inchmark strip from the bottom of another of the patterned sheets. The finishing touch just had to be a button!

Stamps: Trendy Trees

Cardstock: Tangerine Tango, Whisper White

Ink: Early Espresso

Accessories: Word Window Punch, 1/8” Taffeta ribbon – Daffodil Delight, Regals Buttons

All products by Stampin’ Up!®            

Appreciating Eileen

Here’s the second card I sent off to Germany for Demo Support Appreciation Day, this time for the lovely and super-helpful Eileen.

Again I used the Nature Walk stamp set, my favourite from the Mini. I inked the stamp with markers. Let’s pretend I used Early Espresso and Cherry Cobbler, as that’s what it looks like, although I have a horrible feeling it was Real Red on a dirty stamp!

The strip of Designer Series Paper is Elegant Soiree, which is one of the most popular collections in the main catalogue. I topped it with a strip of Baja Breeze seam-binding ribbon and my very last piece of Early Espresso taffeta.

Stamps: Nature Walk, Tiny Tags

Cardstock:  Baja Breeze, Early Espresso, Very Vanilla, Cherry Cobbler

Paper: Elegant Soiree

Ink: Baja Breeze, Cherry Cobbler, plus markers

Accessories: Word Window Punch, Modern Label Punch, Scallop Edge Punch, Seam Binding Ribbon – Baja Breeze, 1/8” taffeta ribbon – Early Espresso

All products by Stampin’ Up!®            

More fun with the Top Note Die

Top Note Die idea no. 5. I don’t know if I dare admit how many ideas I’m aiming for... no, I’ll keep quiet until I know I can reach my target!

This is simply a background panel for a card... although if you look carefully you’ll see it’s so much more than that because the raised flowers are paler than the background. I borrowed this idea from Monica, another UK demonstrator; here’s how you do it:

1. First create a Top Note from cardstock of your choice – choose one that you have the ink pad to match. I used Sahara Sand.

2. Take your Elegant Bouquet embossing folder, the matching ink pad and a brayer. Sorry folks, you’ll have to dust off the brayer for this one! Now brayer all over one side of the inside of the embossing folder – make sure it’s the side with the flowers indented, not raised.

3. Sandwich your Top Note in the folder and run through the Big Shot. The result should be raised flowers which are unlinked, with a darker background. Experiment with different colours to see what other effects you can create.

Now you’ll notice that I’ve slipped in the Strength & Hope stamp set which I have just taken delivery of and am having fun playing with. It’s not proved very popular with my customers but it’s very pretty, really, and it’s for sale for a very good cause. My Strength & Hope fundraiser is being rescheduled, but in light of the reaction to the stamp set, I will be offering an alternative. However, maybe you will all be won over by then!

I inked the butterfly using the rocking and rolling technique. This means I inked it with Baja Breeze ink and then rolled the stamp around the edges on the Soft Suede ink pad to ink up the edges. I also inked just the antennae of the butterfly in Soft Suede and stamped it directly onto the Top Note, then stuck the cut-out butterfly on top. I used SNAIL in the centre of the butterfly so that it was flat to the card and Dimensionals under each wing to raise them up.

Stamps: Something to Celebrate (hostess)

Cardstock: Baja Breeze, Sahara Sand, Soft Suede, Very Vanilla

Paper: Elegant Soiree

Ink: Soft Suede, Baja Breeze, Sahara Sand

Accessories: Top Note Die, Elegant Bouquet embossing folder, Modern Label Punch, Word Window Punch, Basic Pearls, Seam Binding Ribbon – Crumb Cake

All products by Stampin’ Up!®

Double slider card

These are really fun cards to make – a bit tricky to start with, but you soon get the hang of them. They are double-sliders but I’ll have to sort out instructions for you another time I’m afraid.

The card on the left is the closed view – you pull the tab at the top to reveal the elephant and the greeting.

We made these at my Word Window Punch class in the dim and distant past and they were so popular that I know that several of the ladies have made lots of these cards since then!

Stamps: Animal Stories, Sincere Salutations, A Bit of Birthday Cheer, Circle Circus

Cardstock: Cameo Coral, Basic Gray, Real Red, Whisper White, Basic Black

Paper: Kaleidoscope

Ink: Basic Gray, Real Red, Cameo Coral

Accessories: Word Window Punch, silver/black eyelets, Boho Blossoms punch, ¾” circle punch, ¼” Grosgrain Ribbon –Real Red, Stampin’ Dimensionals

All products by Stampin’ Up!®

Buckle card

Card number 2 of 5 for the teacher tin was a buckle card... and pretty much the same design as used at my Word Window Punch class, which you can see here, with instructions.  No point in reinventing the wheel, right?

Stamps: Sincere Salutations

Cardstock: Cameo Coral, Whisper White, Basic Black

Paper: Pink Flamingo

Ink: Basic Black

Accessories: Boho Blossoms punch, rhinestone brads, black brads, Whisper White Grosgrain Ribbon , Word Window Punch

All products by Stampin’ Up!®

Buckle Card from Word Window Punch class

Sorry for the lack of blog action recently. I’ve not been well and it all caught up on me on Thursday so I took to my bed, had a very long nap and now I feel a lot better.

But it’s been a busy weekend, with my Word Window Punch class on Saturday morning, among many other things. On Saturday we made three projects. Each card had at least two different ways of using the Word Window Punch and, during the course of the morning, we used it to:

1. Make a decorative tab
2. Make a slot for a buckle card
3. Make a long slot for a double slider card
4. Make a tab to pull out a slider
5. Punch out a word with another punched tab behind it
6. Punch short tabs for shorter words
7. Make the box fold for a pop-up card

There are loads more uses for this punch but we couldn’t fit any more in!

This is the final card we made at the class, although I’m posting this first because one of the ladies had to leave early so has all her bits of cut-up cardstock but probably won’t know what to do with them without this picture.

This is a buckle card and it is very easy to make and also a “no waste” project.

Buckle Card

1. Start with a normal card base made from a sheet of A5 cardstock scored and folded in the middle. We used Basic Black.

2. Cut off 4cm from the front. Save this strip and round the corners of one end.

3. Decorate the front of your card – which is now smaller than the back.  We used Kaleidoscope Designer Series Paper. Add a strip of Designer Paper to the black strip.

4. Now punch a Word Window in the front of your card. If you want to make sure you get it straight, you can punch out a piece of scrap paper and stick it on where you want the slot to appear. Holding the punch upside-down, you can then see exactly where to punch your window. Save the black piece you’ve punched out to decorate the front with later.

5. Take your decorated strip and measure 9cm from the rounded end. Score and fold here and apply adhesive to the shorter section (on the same side as the Designer Paper).  With the card closed, feed the rounded end of the decorated strip into the slot and stick the shorter, sticky, piece down on the inside of the card.

6. Now you can cover up the join with a piece of co-ordinating cardstock. I’ve used Summer Sun to match the Designer Series Paper.

7. Finally, embellish the card with a Word Window tab and flower at the top, and some ribbon on the strip.  I’ve just had another idea – you could punch out the flower from the Summer Sun piece to leave a black flower inside the card. That would work, too.

Stamps: Sincere Salutations

Cardstock: Summer Sun, Basic Black

Paper: Kaleidoscope

Ink: Basic Black

Accessories: Word Window Punch, Boho Blossoms Punch, Silver Brads, Whisper White Grosgrain Ribbon

All products by Stampin' Up!®

Bird tag

And this was the other Make & Take at my Mini Catty launch. It’s just a tag but it’s quite a fun one, using that oh so lovely two-step bird punch that everyone is ordering!

The background is wheeled with the Very Vintage jumbo wheel loaded with a Mellow Moss ink cartridge – this gives a very subtle effect on a Mellow Moss background. The bird’s body is Ruby Red, the wing is Bravo Burgundy and the branch is Handsome Hunter. All of the cardstock used on this card, apart from the Bravo Burgundy, is due to retire at the end of September so if you’re in love with any of these colours, please stock up before then! I’d hate you to be disappointed.

To make the tag, cut one corner off freehand, then take the triangular piece you’ve just cut off, flip it over and match it up to the opposite corner. Use this as a guide to cut off the second corner and you have a symmetrical tag. Clever, eh? Not my idea, of course! In fact *name-dropping alert* I think it was Stampin’ Up!’s own Shelli Gardner who demoed that one.

Stamps: Tiny Tags, Very Vintage jumbo wheel
Cardstock: Mellow Moss, Ruby Red, Bravo Burgundy, Handsome Hunter
Ink: Bravo Burgundy
Accessories: Two-Step Bird Punch, ½” circle punch, gold brads, Crop-A-Dile™, Mellow Moss taffeta ribbon, word window punch, Stampin’ Write Journalling pen

All products by Stampin' Up! ®

Business as usual...

Sorry about that "blip" on Monday. Hopefully near-normal service has now been resumed!

This – or a variation of this – is the Make & Take for my Sale-A-Bration workshops this month and last. It uses the very lovely Happy Moments stamp set, which you can earn free if you place an order of £45 or more before the end of February.

The image is stamped on a piece of Very Vanilla cardstock and coloured using Watercolour Wonder™ crayons. It’s the Taken with Teal frame which is popped up in this case – which leaves room for the ribbon to go behind it. The card on the left is very simple but can be stepped up if you have more time - like I have done for the card on the right.

This time I actually stamped the Polka Dot background stamp on the Taken with Teal piece – unfortunately I picked up the wrong ink pad (Tempting Turquoise) and the spots have disappeared! I've rounded the corners, tied a standard knot in the ribbon, added a Word Window and a Filigree brad. All fun elements but a bit too time-consuming for a workshop situation.

Stamps: Happy Moments
Cardstock: Rose Red, Taken with Teal, So Saffron, Very Vanilla
Ink: Basic Grey
Accessories: Striped Grosgrain Ribbon – So Saffron, Eyelet Border punch, 1 ¾” circle punch, Watercolour Wonder™ crayons – Rich Regals.

Stepped-up version: As above, plus Word Window Punch, Filigree Brads, Polka Dot background stamp (!)

All products by Stampin' Up!®

The buckle card...

So... the Buckle Card, as demonstrated at my catalogue launch. I’ve wanted to demo this card for such a long time but only now do we have the necessary Word Window Punch in our catalogue. And we’re all thrilled!

Have I mentioned how much I LOVE our new catalogue? My wish list is dangerously long. I’m chipping away at it but still covet so much more.

But back to the card. It’s really easy actually; you just make a standard card, then slice part of the front off (save the piece for another project!). The punch a Word Window, vertically, in the remaining flap.

Next you make a flap – or “buckle” - to slot inside the Word Window. The is the only important measurement – this buckle should be narrower than the Word Window.

If you make an inner piece to go inside the card – mine is Old Olive, unsurprisingly - this can be stuck on top of the end of the buckle/flap to cover any joins.

One thing worth knowing is that the Word Window Punch will NOT like it if you try to punch through two layers of cardstock. It will, however, happily punch through a sheet of Designer Series Paper and a sheet of cardstock. So, if you’re using paper and cardstock, go for it. If you’re using two sheets of cardstock, punch one layer then overlay the second layer and use that as a guide to punch again.

Of course, you don’t need a second layer or cardstock or DSP at all – you could always stamp the front.

Stamps: Animal Stories
Cardstock: So Saffron, Old Olive, Chocolate Chip, Whisper White
Paper: Tall Tales
Ink: Chocolate Chip
Accessories: ¼” Grosgrain Ribbon - Chocolate Chip, Word Window Punch, corner rounder

All products by Stampin' Up! Please email me to order a catalogue, or click the link on the right to view it online.