Amour

 

Artistic Etchings…..This was the set that I won last year at the 2010 Convention.  It’s such a gorgeous set and yet is one of my under used ones.  So I thought I’d have a hunt around the net and see what was out there. 

I came across the fabulous blog of  Darlene McCallum who is a Stampin' Up!® Demonstrator from  Alberta, Canada and this design from her blog……

I just love the way she has used the 1/8” (3mm) Taffeta Ribbon to edge the banner across the card.  It’s just so effective.

And here is my take on it.  I used Very Vanilla, Old Olive and Early Espresso cardstock.  The Key and Crown are stamped in Old Olive onto the  Old Olive cardstock.  The emblem and banner are stamped in Cherry Cobbler on the Very Vanilla cardstock.

The slight difference is that the Scallop Circle Darlene used is larger so her emblem has a border around it.  And I haven’t used the pearls on my one as I wanted it to be a little more masculine.

I hope you like it.

See you soon

Elaine x

Top Note with a Twist

I wanted to make a card with a different type of matting layer.  It’s very easy to just trim your cardstock to a square or rectangle but this time I wanted it to look like a frame.  I also wanted to work with a colour scheme that I don’t normally use.

So here it is……

Isn’t the frame gorgeous??  So how did I do it you ask?  Well out came my trusty and well loved Top Note die – I really, really love that shape.  Using an piece of Pale Plum cardstock I cut out the top note shape using my big shot.  Then I turned it 90 degrees, lined it up and ran it back through again. So simple!  I love it!

The centre piece is a 7 cm x 7 cm (2 ¾ inch x 2 ¾ inch) piece of Whisper White cardstock that I stamped the leaves from the Just Believe Stamp set on in Sahara Sand and Pink Pirouette.  Using a sponge dauber I rubbed around the edge of the piece in Pale Plum to soften it up.  Stick this to the Top Note die cut and added some silver brads. 

I stamped the same leaves in River Rock ink on the front of the River Rock card and mounted it on my card using Stampin Dimensionals to give it some depth.

The Birthday Wishes comes from the Occasional Quotes Level 3 stamp set and is punched out using the Modern label punch.

Back Soon

Elaine x

Stamp a Stack - Mens cards - New Event

I have a fabulous new Stamp-a-Stack card making session for you.

You will be making a stack of 10 Men's & Boys cards using Stampin' Up's

fabulous stamps sets, embellishements and some thier new range

of textured embossing dies 

Class Date, Times & Venue 

 Thursday 4th August from 7pm until 9:30 - 10:00pm.

Venue - Harrow

   

Class Cost:-

The cost for the class is £15 per person, and all materials will be supplied.  

This is a very informal evening and you can copy the samples made or

make your own designs using the materials provided.

As always I will be on hand to assist.

Please contact me for more details.

Bring a friend

Have a crafting buddy, someone that would love to come along too?    

Maybe you have a friend that would like to have a go that has never made cards before.  

I will be on hand at all times to help and coach.

Please let me know and pay by Monday 1st August 2011 if you will be attending  

so that I can make sure that I have enough packs.   

 I cannot wait to hear from you.

Hope to see you soon.

Elaine x

J4XM9JVWXXX5

Tombola Prize Crafty Goodies

Hello again,

Wow I seem to have quite a few posts for you recently!  What's going on? Well as you’ve probably red my son is leaving Nursery to go to Big School in September.
Just before the start of the summer holidays they have their end of year Sports Day, Graduation & Summer Fete.  So in true crafters style I made some little crafty bits to go into the Tombola Prizes.  I decorated some little Tea Light Candles and boxed them up into a little set of 4 and I covered a few little jotter notepads with our gorgeous Designer Series Papers (DSP)

Here are the little sets of candles.  A friend of mine gave me the boxes a while ago and they were just perfect for them.  I out a piece of coordinating cardstock in the base, a little tissue paper in between and tied the boxes up with our stunning ribbons or Seam Binding.

The images on the candles are done using an image stamped onto tissue paper.  Punch a hole in the middle of the image for the candle wick to go through and punch the image out to the right size.  Put over the candle wick.   Heat up your heat gun until it is nice and hot (this will stop you from burning or melting the candle too much) and then very carefully and quite quickly melt the candle.  Don’t hold the gun to close and you’ll see the candle start to melt and soak into the tissue paper.  You only need to melt the top a little until all of the tissue paper has been soaked in the liquid wax. Once it has cooled down the wax resets and the image looks fabulous!



The jotter notebooks were very inexpensive from that store where “Every little helps”   I covered them in some DSP, a little cardstock at the top which had been trimmed with the Scallop Punch and added the letters to spell NOTES from the Broadsheet Alphabet Stamp Set.

The DSP’s cam from (Left to Right) – Lap of Luxury, Greenhouse Gala and Jolly Holiday.

I just love the alphabet letters as they are all so different and make up such lovely images when used together in your words. You can use them altogether as I have done here or you could use one as your starting letter of a word leaving the rest all plain from another stamp. A great way to do that is to only colour the second letter onwards with your Marker Pens so Happy Birthday becomes “appy irthday” but use a H and a B from the Broadsheet Alphabet to give it that WOW!

Hope you like these

Back Soon

Elaine x

Christmas………. In July!

 

I know, I know we haven’t even got the summer holidays out of the way yet, but for a lot of crafters Christmas really does start in July.  If you start now and make 10 cards a month that’ll be 60 done for Christmas!  See now 60 sounds a lot doesn’t it – but 10 that is a little more manageable.

I recently went along to some Demonstrator training in Peterborough where the theme was…Christmas.  So much fun.   I LOVE Christmas….and bling.  The projects we made were just stunning and I will be sharing some of these with you over the coming weeks. 

It was my first time to this training event and I had a blast.  It’s one of the great things about being a Stampin Up Demonstrator.  Not only do you get to meet such a lot of fabulous people just by holding classes, crops and doing home workshops you also get to hang out with amazing and talented Demonstrators from around the UK.  This can be at events like Peterborough Training which is run by 2 UK Demonstrators, but also at Regional Training and Convention which is put on by Stampin Up!  There is very little time in the calendar to feel uninspired or like your crafting mojo is flagging with events like these.

So, if you would like to join in the fun talk to me about becoming a Demonstrator too.  It’s so easy to do.  You’ll get discount on all your goodies, and even 30% on your very first order!!!  Check out the Join my team button at the top of my blog.

So the training left me very much wanting to make more Christmas projects.  So the other night while hubby was on a work call I crept off to my craft room and made this…

I used the triple snowflake stamp from the Serene Snowflakes stamp set to make the background, the greeting from the Curly Cute stamp set and the gorgeous bauble from Contempo Christmas stamp set.

Add a couple of Clear Rhinestone Brads to the greeting banner and a few Basic Rhinestone Jewels to the middle bauble and there you have it. 

I just love this card…but then I love Christmas so being able to start projects now is so much fun for me! 

Back Soon

 

Elaine x

Peterborough Training

 

I recently went along to some Demonstrator training in Peterborough where the theme was…Christmas. Peterborough training is run by Independent Stampin Up Demonstrators Monica Gale & Bekka Prideaux for other Demonstrators.

It was my first time to this training event and I am so glad I went.  I got to meet up with lots of Demonstrators that I hadn’t seen since Convention last November but also with a lot of girls that I regularly “see” on the In Love with Stamping forum but hadn’t met.  Oh and there was cakes too…love cakes!

As with previous training events there were SWAPS!  We love swaps!  Anyone can take part, you make up a bunch of cards, little projects or similar using all Stampin’ Up! goodies and swap with others.  As always the standard of work by the others never ceases to amaze me. 

For my swaps I wanted to do something a little different but using Stampin’ Up Christmas images.  Well the theme was Christmas.  So….. I opted to make Wine Glass charms.

Aren’t they gorgeous?

Here’s a closer look at each:

Aren’t they fab?

I used two stamp sets for the charm images – Contempo Christmas and Sparkly & Bright.  I stamped the images on the shrink plastic.  Think back to shrindinks you had as a kid or your kids had.  You know the ones put them in the oven and they shrank down in size?  

I stamped the images and either punched them out using the Ornament punch or cut them out by hand in the case of the Christmas Tree’s.  Then using my Crop-a-dile I punched the larger of the two holes to make sure once it shrank there was a big enough hole to attach the jump ring.

I mounted them on co-ordinating cardstock and bagged them up ready to go…All 40 of them!  I think they went down very well.

I will take a picture of all the wonderful swaps I received in return very soon.

Back Soon

Elaine x.

Teacher Gifts

 

My son starts “Big School” in September.  I can’t believe he is going to be 5.  So this week is his last one at his Pre-school Playgroup.  He has been there the past 2 years and I decided to make some gifts for the teachers.

I thought something that they could keep would be nice and so decorated some glass votive’s (tea light holders).  I made fabulous little boxes for them too.  Only I packed them all before I could take a picture of the decorated holders.  Still here are the boxes that they will be delivered in.

The boxes are in Baja Breeze cardstock with a 2.5 cm (1 inch) strip of Springtime Vintage Designer Series Paper. attached over one side to the other.  The boxes are from a sizzix die that I have which I ran through my Stampin’ Up! Big Shot.  I really love the versatility of the Big Shot which allows me to use other dies. 

Once the tea light holders were sealed inside the boxes, I tied some of the gorgeous Certainly Celery 3.2 cm (1 1/4 inch) Striped Grosgrain Ribbon.  The tag is made using the Cute by the Inch Hostess Stamp Set stamped in Baja Breeze on Very Vanilla cardstock.  I then punched out this out using the Small Label Punch.  Using the Large Label Punch I punched out the larger layer in Always Artichoke and attached it using Baja Breeze Seam Binding.

Here is a close up of the Thank You card.

The sentiment is from the wonderful Oval All stamp Set.

I am so thrilled with the way this has all turned out.  I hope they like them.

Back Soon

Elaine x

Pick a Petal Birthday

Pick A Petal

 

This is one of my under used stamp sets.  I have no idea why as it is such a lovely set.

 

I have used my favourite Concord Crush as the main card and layered with Whisper White and then another layer of Concord crush. Using the big shot I embossed two petals that I have stamped and cut out from Pretty in pink to add texture.  Then I stamped the dotty petal with Concord Crush ink onto Whisper White cardstock.  I layered these out on my background and then using Whisper White Craft Ink I stamped the scribble petals in place.  Add the centre and a bit of bling and there you have the flower.  I love bling!

 

The sentiment is from the Perfect Punches set, punched out with the XL oval punch and attached to the card.  A little bit of bling later and there you have this wonderful simple and stylish card.

 

Now to decide who to send it to……

 

Back soon

 

 

Elaine x

Hop, Skip and a jump

Hi and welcome to the ILWS (In Love With Stamping) Colour Coach Blog Hop.

Just dropped by?  No worries.  A blog Hop is where a group of people all join in collectively to set up a post on their blogs to go live at the same time on the same day giving you our fabulous visitors some pretty awesome projects as you hop from blog to blog.  In a second you’ll see who was before me in the blog hop and at the end of this post you’ll see the details of the next person in the Blog Hop.  Hopefully you’ll make your way round everyone who was involved picking up some fabulous projects along the way.

I’ll also post at the end the entire list of Blogs just in case a link is broken along the way.

Hopefully you have joined me from the lovely Claire’s Blog   “Scrappin it & Stampin It”  http://stampinupscrapper.blogspot.com/   I’ll be off blog hopping later today to check things out too.

Our blog hop as you’ve probably guessed was inspired by the Stampin Up Colour coach.  An invaluable tool that gives you gorgeous colour combinations from all of Stampin Up’s Colour Collections.  The colour coach can be purchased through me and can be found on Page 81 of the 2010 – 2011 Idea Book & Catalogue.



All we had to do was pick a Stampin’ Up! colour, and find the colour combination on the reverse of the card within the Colour Coach.  I chose Perfect Plum.  It’s a colour I don’t use that much so thought it would push me to try out different colours.  On the back of the card there are 2 colour combinations.  I chose the first one – Perfect Plum, Marina Mist & Rose Red.

I knew there and then just the stamp Set I had to use too – Greenhouse Garden.  I hope you like the projects I made with the colour combination and the Stamp set.

All of the cards have been made with the One-Sheet Wonder technique.  I randomly stamped up a complete A4 sheet of Whisper White with the images from the Greenhouse Garden Stamp Set in the colours from the colour combination.  I did use a couple of extra colours, Basic Grey for the detailing in the middle of the flowers and Pink Pirouette for the shadowy extra images on the One-Sheet Wonder Background.  This gave me a great background paper sheet to use throughout my projects.

First up is this gorgeous birthday card. The Birthday Wishes Greeting is from the Level 3 Hostess Stamp Set Occasional Quotes. I punched it out using the Window Punch then mounted it on to  punch out from the Modern Label punch.  A few basic Pearls just adds a touch of femininity.

Next up below is a beautiful card for a fabulous friend.  The greeting is from the Oval All stamp set, punched out using the 4.4 x 2.2 cm Oval punch and mounted onto a Scallop Oval in Rose Red.

Here below is a lovely Thank You Card. I had an A6 piece of Perfect Plum card stock left over and used the Eyelet Border punch down both sides.  This took just enough off the leave me with the fabulous matting layer.  The greeting comes from the Thank You Kindly Stamp Set.

And Last but not least is the adorable tissue pack holder  based on a design by Sara (Sarahstamper).  Sara has also joined in the blog hop so you’ll see her fabulous creations later during the hop.

Isn’t it just gorgeous?

         

Well I hope you’ve enjoyed looking at my projects.  I’d love it if you would leave a comment before you hop along to the next person on the Blog Hop.

Next up is Donna (DonnaM) http://www.head-over-heels-by-dlm.blogspot.com/ 

Here is the list of everyone taking part:-

  

Group 1 1. Scrappydiva (Anthea) www.stampin-divas.blogspot.com
2. The Crafty Bug (Julie) www.the-crafty-bug.blogspot.com/
3. AlisonP (Alison) www.craftyalisoninlyon.blogspot.com/
4. Daisydaye (Emma) www.emma-daye.blogspot.com
5. Frankiesue (Sue) www.frankiesue.blogspot.com
6. Glitter mum (niki) www.mygroovystampinup.blogspot.com
7. Sarah-Jane www.cardsandacuppa.blogspot.com
8.Cheshire Design www.cheshiredesignhouse.blogspot.com
9. Linzim www.lindseyscards.blogspot.com
10. Valmoody www.stampingwithval.wordpress.com
11. Cupake www.pinkycardsandcreations.blogspot.com
12. Laura  www.airingcupboardstamping.blogspot.com/

Group 2

13. Emily www.stampinmermaid.blogspot.com
14. Teri www.teriscraftspot.blogspot.com
15. Sara www.sarastamper.blogspot.com
16. Sarah www.stampinsarahiow.blogspot.com
17. Claire www.stampinupscrapper.blogspot.com/
18. Elaine (Sassy Stamper) www.thesassystampers.blogspot.com/
19. Donna (DonnaM) www.head-over-heels-by-dlm.blogspot.com/
20. Erika (TwinTrouble) www.twintroublescreations.blogspot.com/
21. Karin (Talarria) www.teacupdesigns.com
22. Vicky (VickyLou) www.vickylouscorner.blogspot.com
23. Jan (JJ66) www.jan-crippin.blogspot.com/

Have Fun

Elaine x