Christmas swaps

Once a quarter, Julie Kettlewell hosts a team training day for her team - Julie's Jems.  Since joining Stampin' Up! in February I have missed a couple of these, but managed to get myself booked onto the most recent one in July.  It was really great to meet other demonstrators in the team, and to get lots of tips and ideas from Julie.  We did lots of crafting too, and there were gorgeous cupcakes which seems to have become a tradition at these events.

There was a Christmas theme at this training day, and we were asked to make some Christmas swaps using a non-Christmas stamp set!  I used  Everything Eleanor, including the little bird which I coloured as a robin, and some festive colours (Real Red and Old Olive) to create my swaps...

Products used:

Stamps: Everything Eleanor, Petite Pairs

Inks: Old Olive, Soft Suede, Real Red

Card stock: Real Red, Very Vanilla

Ribbon: Very Vanilla Satin

Punches: Large Scallop Circle

It was great to swap these for some really lovely and unique projects from the other ladies!  It certainly got us thinking about Christmas and all the exciting things that will be coming in the new Autumn/Winter Seasonal Catalogue which will launch on 1st September!

Get Well Card # 1

My grandma-in-law hasn't been very well recently  and we wanted to send her some get well wishes.  I made this card using the pretty Everything Eleanor stamp set. 

In an attempt to make a bit more effort with this one I decided to try out a technique I've never tried before - masking! It didn't work out perfectly but was a decent first attempt. You can see the green flourish looks like it's behind the blue plaque - this involved stamping the plaque onto scap paper and cutting it out and using the cut-out to cover the actual stamped image while stamping over the top with the flourish. Sorry that's a really rubbish explanation - I needed pictures really!

I also used the spritzer tool to add a speckle of Marina Mist ink over the card and embellished it with  pearls.

Products used

Stamps: Everything Eleanor, Sincere Salutations

Inks: Marina Mist, Pretty in Pink, Lucky Limeade, Basic Grey

Card stock: Whisper White, Marina Mist, Pretty in Pink, Basic Grey

Embellishments: Stick on pearls, Lucky Limeade Bakers Twine

Equipment: Scallop Edge Border Punch

Leeds regional training - Swaps!

The best thing about the Stampin' Up! training event I attended last week, was swaps!!  The idea is everyone makes a huge pile of cards (or other small projects) and then swaps them with everyone else.  You end up with a huge pile of projects, all completely unique, and often using products you don't own.

I decided to make 50 cards using my current favourite stamp set - Apothecary Art. 

I really fancied doing a bit of colouring in so I stamped onto Crumb Cake card stock and coloured the little blossoms with the Whisper White inkpad and a blender pen.  I went over a few of the flowers with a Baja Breeze marker.  The white 'base' really made the colour stand out on the Crumb Cake.

My swaps:

Stamps: Apothecary Art, Everything Eleanor

Inks: Baja Breeze, Basic Grey, Whisper White, Lucky Limeade marker

Card stock: Baja Breeze, Crumb Cake, Very Vanilla

Equipment: Framelits dies, Perfect Dots embossing folder, Corner punch

Accessories: Baja Breeze seam binding ribbon

Completing all 50 of these, especially with the colouring in and running card through the big shot (x 150!), took longer than I anticipated, but it was worth it to get such amazing things back from the other talented Demonstrators...

 Thanks to everyone who swapped with me!  I love them all!!

Fancy a cuppa?

So I got my big box of goodies delivered on Friday.  I had a busy weekend making a stack of cards commissioned by friends (pictures of these to follow...), but I managed to make 2 cards using the new products from the Summer Mini Catalogue.

The first uses the Tea Shoppe stamp set and new Framelits dies.  It's a fairly simple one - I needed a change from some of the more elaborate and labour intensive cards I've been making for my friends!!

It also uses the flourish from Everything Eleanor to make the steam coming from the teacup! The 'steam' is stamped sraight onto the card base and a window was cut out of the very vanilla using the framelits and then embossed.The sentiment is from Teeny Tiny Wishes.

Stamps: Tea Shoppe, Everything Eleanor, Teeny Tiny Wishes

Cardstock: Crumb Cake, Very Vanilla

Inks: Crumb Cake, Regal Rose

Equipment: Framelits dies, Perfect Dots embossing folder, Word Window punch

Others: Pearls and Chantilly Lace Trim

Beautiful bows

I attended one of Julie Kettlewell's Saturday classes recently - it was all about the bow!  Julie taught us how to tie five different beautiful bows to give our cards a professional finish!  I'm looking forward to using these techniques on my own cards, but for now, here are pictures of the five cards we made at the class...

The standard bow

The faux-bow

Julie's trademark flat bow

The 'forking' bow (a tiny bow made using a fork!)

The very glamorous double bow

The stamp set we used was Everything Eleanor, plus various sentiments from the Sincere Salutations and Petite Pairs sets.  Colours were very vanilla, pool party, lucky limeade and crumb cake.  The ribbon we used was very vanilla satin ribbon - great for tying beautiful bows.

I'm looking forward to trying these out on my own cards!