Class With Polka Dot Pieces

Happy Sunday everyone! Today I have some time to relax after a hectic few weeks and I thought I should catch up with some blogging!

Yesterday we had a fantastic crafty afternoon at our Summer Papercraft Class. Fiona Cullen and I taught 14 lovely ladies how to make 3 cards and a gift box using their very own set of stamps - Polka Dot Pieces - a brand new set in the Annual Catalogue. I think this one is going to be really popular - it's got flowers, butterflies and birds all in one set and a cute sentiment too!

With it being so new, there isn't a lot of photos online yet of cards and projects made with this stamp set. So my usual source of ideas and inspiration for my class projects was quite limited. But the stamps are really easy to work with, especially using the coordinating punches too, so it was fun coming up with a range of designs for the class projects.

Here are the 4 projects we designed for the class.

The first card used the bird. We coloured the stamp with markers and punched it out with the bird builder punch. The flowers are made from the Simply Pressed Clay and molds - we made these in advance of the class. The papers are the Gingam Garden Designer Series Papers.

The second card was a simple one with butterflies and the sentiment from the set.

The third card was an explosion of flowers and a sentiment from perfectly penned in the centre!

Finally a simple 2-4-6-8 gift box decorated with butterflies.

Some picture of the ladies in action, and some of their cards where they had come up with designs and ideas of their own...

Everyone got their stamps to take home in a goody bag which contained an extra treat...

We even decorated the bag and treat using the same stamp set to give everyone more ideas for how they can use the stamps to make more projects at home.

This was Fiona's first class since becoming a demonstrator in my team in May. She did brilliantly and everyone enjoyed their afternoon of crafting so no doubt there will be more!

For details of my upcoming events and classes, click here

If you live closer to east Leeds then check out Fiona's classes

Kylie x

Floral District Inspiration Station

Last October I was asked by Julie Kettlewell to create an Inspiration Station to display at our quarterly training day.  She asked me to showcase the Floral District Designer papers and fabrics and Betsy's Blossoms stamp set.  I spent a couple of weeks making lots of projects as I really wanted to make the most of these products, try new techniques and really push myself to make a really inspirational display.  I had lots of help from my friend and upline Alex Spence who made the gorgrous 3D cards and kept me company over several intensive crafting sessions!

Here is the full display - thanks to Alex for the use of her wine boxes which I have borrowed many times since!

The fabric bags I made using a pattern from the internet - even with my basic sewing machine skills I managed to knock up these two in about an hour by follwing a YouTube video!

A tealight holder box, one of Alex's 3D cards and my handstamped candles

These owls were made using a pattern I found online and look great with the Floral District fabric and some scraps of trouser fabric I found.

This butterfly canvas is so quick and easy to make with the Elegant Butterfly punch. 

I cut leaves out of the Floral District papers using the Autumn accents die and hot-glued them onto brances to make a lovely paper tree!

I take this rosette wreath with me to all my events and it always attracts lots of comments!

Papillion birthday

It's still all about the butterflies! Here's another card which uses the lovely Papillon Pot Pourri stamp set. This one also uses two of the soon to be discontinued colours - Baja Breeze and Not Quite Navy (see Saturday's post for details). Baja Breeze will be especially missed but I'm looking forward to using some new ones!

Supplies used:

Stamps: Papillon Pot Pourri, Petite Pairs

Inks: Crumb Cake, Not Quite Navy

Card: Crumb Cake, Baja Breeze, Note Quite Navy

Papers: First Edition

Equipment: Circle punch, Scallop Circle Punch, Elegant Butterfly Punch

Embellishments: Pearls

Belated Butterfly Birthdays

One of my new year's resolutions was to be better at sending out birthday cards on time!  I've not done brilliantly so far.  A few people have received their cards on time, but others have not been so lucky!  SORRY!!

To catch up I thought I'd get one of my favourite stamp sets out and make a set of cards to write and send out in one go.  It's so much easier to make 10 cards in a batch than doing them one by one as they are needed.

After stamping the butterflies in white all over the crumb cake card base I varied the design slightly on each card.

Now I'm up to date with my birthday card list - yey!

Kylie x

A card for Mum

This weekend is all about the Mums! I have made several different Mother's Day cards this year and I've found it so easy with the products from the Spring/Summer catalogue.

This one started out as a Mother's Day Card but I actually ended up adapting it for my Mum's birthday which was a few weeks ago (she's 60 years young this year so I added a die-cut 60 in the glitzy silver glitter card - I forgot to take a photo though!).

The design is one I adapted slightly from Julie Kettlewell's at our quarterly team training event. I  just loved using the alphabet stamps to create my sentiment, so much so that the alphabet set ended up on my next order! Ooops!!

Products used:

Stamps: Noteable Alphabet, Oh Hello

Card stock: Naturals ivory, Very Vanilla

Inks: So Saffron, Early Espresso

Papers: Tea for Two Designer Series Paper

Equipment: Honeycomb Embossing Folder, Elegant Butterfly Punch, Bitty Butterfly Punch,Oval Framelits

Embellishments: Pearls, Calypso Coral Ruffled Ribbon

Sympathy and butterflies

Luckily I don't often need to make sympathy cards.  I do end up thinking more about the design than I do for other cards, finding it hard to get the balance of mood right.

But the ever versatile Papillion Pot Pourri stamps always comes to the rescue.

The sentiments from Petite Pairs say exactly what I wanted to on the front and on the inside of the card.

Products used:

Stamps: Papillion Pot Pourri, Petite Pairs

Card stock: Not Quite Navy, Crumb Cake, Very Vanilla

Inks: Crumb Cake, Not Quite Navy

Papers: First Edition speciality papers

Other: Elegant Butterfly Punch, Pearls

Oh Hello!

Good morning!  I'm quite exhausted after all the blog hopping I did yesterday but filled with crafting inspiration from all my talented team mates! Be sure to check out the fabulous projects if you missed it yesterday (grab a cuppa, click the Blog Hop icon on the right to go to my post and start hopping!).

I just wanted to share a card I made at our team training last month which showcases loads of new products from the Spring/Summer catalogue, including the Oh Hello stamp set - another one of my favourites!

Julie's simple design also incorporates the new paper doilies and two-tone ribbon, and butterflies punched with the Elegant Butterfly punch and the new Bitty Butterfly punch which look great layered up like this!  The papers are More Amore.

The patterned background is stamped and then cut with the new oval framelits on the Big Shot.

This is the first of many cards I'll be showing off with this stamp set - you'll see how versatile it is.

Thanks for reading, Kylie x.

Supplies used:

Stamps: Oh Hello

Ink: Pool Party, Basic Grey

Card: Primrose Petals

Papers: More Amore Designer Series Paper

Punches: Elegant Butterfly, Bitty Butterfly

Embellishments: Rhinestones, Paper Doilies, Two Tone Ribbon in Basic Grey

Other: Oval Framelits