A lovely weekend but not one card made.... Just lots of smiles.

I’m very tired today!

Came home yesterday from a weekend away playing at my other hobby in life. Costuming. I have had a fantastic weekend spent with my fellow costumers at the Memorabilia show at the NEC in Birmingham. We are all part of the UK Garrison (501st Legion) who are a Star Wars costuming group. Here in the UK though we also have our TV & Film costume area of the garrison of which I am a part of. This is me (back row far right) with my Stargate SG1 Team Members.

The costuming group attends lots of events and shows around the country and in doing so helps to raise money for chosen chairties.  So we get to meet new people and friends, have fun and do something good too.

And as it happens while the Memorabilia Show was on, so was the Hobby Crafts show along with the Sew For Pleasure show (I think it was called) so needless to say during one of my lunch breaks I took one of my costuming friends in with me and hit the Hobby Crafts show at lightning speed. I picked up a couple of bits ( I was very restrained) but mostly they were for my mother in law as she does a lot of cross stitch.  My friend also came away with something so I have now got someone else finding thier inner creativity!!

More cards very soon.

Take care for now.

Perfect Pairs Workshop 23 March 2010

What a lot of fun and creativity the girls had!

The girls got to make upto 10 cards on the night or they could make less and take home any elements to finish off the others.

I had prepared packs of cards in Whisper White, So Saffron, Pretty in Pink, Chocolate Chip and Always Artichoke along with Whisper White and Very Vanilla Envelopes, ribbons & brads. They also had on the table’s boxes of card & Tea & Crumpets Designer Series Papers all cut down to manageable sizes so that they could use them for matting, stamping and punching.

They had cutting mats and paper trimmers...They've never been so quiet. :-) 

And it so nice to see a few new faces too, thank you for coming along.

They used the Flight of the Butterfly stamp set with the Butterfly Punch, In the Stars stamp set with the Large Star punch, Say it with Scallops stamp set with the Scallop Square punch, Oval All stamp set with the Scallop Oval punch and Simply Said stamp set with the Full Heart punch** and worked with the Tea & Crumpets DSP and matching cardstock.

Here are some of the fabulous designs that they created. I apologise for the lighting but it was late and my living room lighting gives off a yellow glow in some of the pictures.

Fabulous for Men & Women.........

With a co-ordinating envelope......

What a perfect bunch....

Girls , I had so much fun watching you come up with such beautiful cards and I look forward to playing again very soon.

Bye for now....

**Only available until the end of March 2010 and will only return in the new Idea Book & Catalogue later this year.

I'm getting it ready.....

I have been getting all the bits and pieces ready for tonight’s workshop. We are going to be using all the punches in Stampin’ Up’s March Promotion including the Full Heart Punch which, after this month, will not be available until the new Idea Book & Catalogue is release!

So if you have been umming and arring, time is now running out, you only have until the end of this month to get your hands on one. Otherwise you will have to wait until later in theyear!!! To order yours please get in touch using the contact me option at the right hand side of this page.

I shall take some photos of the girls handiwork from the workshop later and post them up soon for you.

See you soon.

Many Perfect Pairs

This month’s workshop is in line with Stampin' Up's March promotion entitled Perfect Pairs - A stamp set and a matching punch.

I want to give my group the opportunity to use all of the promoted stamps sets and their matching punch. So to keep things a neat, I decided on working with one colour scheme throughout.

I chose a pack of the Tea & Crumpets Designer Series Paper (DSP) and worked with the 4 colours in the pack:-

Pretty in Pink, Chocolate Chip, Always Artichoke and So Saffron.

Here are some of my samples ready for next week’s workshop:-

This card incorporates not only all 4 colours, but also the DSP and 2 punches.  The butterfly is made by stamping Chocolate Chip onto SU White Vellum Card Stock . 

The scallop square is stamped in Always Artichoke onto white cardstock and is from the "Say it with Scallops" stamp set.

Wish upon a star, with this fabulous and very simple card. 

This is a great card for a teenager; it is simple, sassy and fun!

Something a little more classic, using the Scallop Square punch and "Say it with Scallops" stamp set.  I added a gold brad to one of the flowers on the "hi" square, punched random squares from the DSP, stamped the thank you message twice once in Chocolate chip and once in Always Artichoke. 

I added the centre of the chocolate chip directly onto the Always Artichoke stamped image. A little ribbon knot to the pink square just finishes it off.  I did cheat a little - I used one punch not in the promotion. 

Can you guess which one?

Enough Said? No Simply Said......

The one above and the one below are both from the beautiful "Simply Said" stamp set.  Both incorporate the fabulous DSP.  In the top one I have coloured in the flowers using my "Many Marvelous Markers in Pretty in Pink and So Saffron.  The little dots in between are in Always Artichoke.

This is one and the same card - the one on the left was taken with the flash, the one on the right without.  I wanted to be able to show you that in the centre of the card there is a raised heart.

The whisper white background has the flowers stamped in Always Artichoke but they are not coloured in.

I stamped the same image in Always Artichoke on to a separate sheet of Whisper White cardstock, coloured in the flowers and punched part of it out with the Full Heart Punch.  Using my Stampin' Dimensionals I raised it up before placing it over the same image on the card.

I hope you like them.

A little Thank you.

I decided after my recent workshop that just saying thank you for your business to my customers wasn’t enough. So, last night I put together some little thank you cards using the Stampin Up’s love notes.

I just love the Oval All stamp set. As you can see the little thank you cards are in the same colours as the butterfly cards from my previous post and that’s because I hate waste. So I used all my left over pieces of Tea Party DSP, with some of the fabulous ribbon we have in the catalogue right now.

Now all I need to do is write a note inside and pop them into their bags when their orders arrived ready for me to deliver. I can also use them for my hostesses when they book their party and pop one into their Hostess pack.

Not only that,  they also make fabulous thank you cards for anyone. You can pop it onto a bunch of flowers, a plant or a box of chocolates just to make that "thank you" for whatever that little bit special.

A Creative Moment...

 

I had a workshop to prepare for a couple of weeks ago (Pre Blogging Days) and wanted to use the fabulous Flight of the Butterfly stamp set and the co-ordinating Butterfly punch from the current Stampin Up catalogue.

Both samples used the colours from the gorgeous Designer Series Papers - Tea Party.  You can see in the second one I used some of the DSP too.

I just love those colours together - Pretty in Pink, Almost Amethyst, Certainly Celery and So Saffron. 

  

I have had some of the Vellum cardstock for ages and had just never found inspiration to use it until now.  Although I think now the pack is open I shall be using a lot more of it.

The cards went down a storm and everyone loved the vellum wings.  For speed I did stamp these up already for my ladies prior to the worksop so that they were dry on the night.

I hope you like them!

Back soon.

Elaine

Blogging is boggling!

This is going to take a little while to get used to!  Typing I can do, uploading pictures I can do.

I just need to tie it all together to make it work.

TTFN