Gently Falling in the summer

My favourite stamps are leaves  - oh and flowers, trees, birds, butterflies, animals, splodges, graphic shapes, background stamps... Hmm, I think you get the idea with that! Back to the leaves though, Stampin' Up's retiring Gently Falling is a stamp set that has seen a lot of action in the Crafting Square Metre. Here it is again, taking another airing:

Gently Falling is a two step stamping set, meaning that you get an outline image and a coordinating filler image. I  stamped a border of outlined leaves in Garden Green and filled them with Pistachio Pudding for a cool summer feel.

You know those retro prints that have outlines with slightly offset coloured infills? Well that's the look I was going for here. I used a stamp-a-majig for accurate placement, so that it looks as if I didn't (if you know what I mean!)

The speckle images from Gorgeous Grunge are great for adding flecks of colour. I used the fabulous Crushed Curry for this - it's fast becoming my 'go to' yellow. The sentiment is from So Very Grateful (available until the end of June), stamped and heat embossed with clear embossing powder for a glossy finish.

• Click here for more inspiration using Gently Falling

I'll be linking today's card up with Less is More where the challenge is to use More Than One Stamp; The Male Room, where the theme is Trees and Leaves; and CAS(E) This Sketch where this gorgeous sketch is providing the inspiration this week:

HERE'S WHAT YOU'LL NEED TO MAKE THIS CARD
(Click on each item to find it quickly in my shop) 

Stamps: Gently Falling (retiring) wood or cling, Gorgeous Grunge wood or cling,
So Very Grateful wood or cling

Ink: Garden Green, Pistachio Pudding, Crushed Curry, Basic Black classic inks

Card stock: Very Vanilla

Other: Clear embossing powder, Heat tool, stamp-a-majig

Click above to place an order any time, day or night,

but if you have any queries, or prefer to speak to me, I'm always happy to help.

You can contact me by email or phone on 01280 820593.

Some of the items in the annual catalogue are retiring to make way for new products. Don't miss out on your favourites! Some of these items have been discounted too - check them here.

Yesterday I burnt myself while taking something out of the oven and my 'ow' noise brought my youngest son in to check that I was alright. Once I had reassured him that it was just a minor problem, he looked at me. "You sounded like R2D2," he said. "You shouldn't make those noises when you're hurt because it makes me think you're just doing R2D2 impressions."



See you tomorrow,

A mix of Grunge and CAS

You may not think CAS and grunge styles go together at all but I thought I'd give it a whirl anyway! Here's what happened:

The background is stamped with Stampin' Up's fabulous Off the Grid background stamp, through a mask made with one of the Circles framelits. I filled in some of the squares on the grid with a black marker and I must warn you, in case you fancy a go at this, it is strangely addictive!

I loved the shape of the leaves on the sketch and noticed that the sycamore seed image in the Gently Falling stamp set was similar - yay! Love it when I find a new use for one of my stamps! The flowers are stamps from Flower Shop and Petite Petals, both of which have a coordinating punch to make life quick and easy. These stamp sets are natural partners, so if you have one, you might want to consider getting the other so you can mix flower sizes.


Today's card was inspired by Addicted to CAS where the cue word is Grunge; and also CAS(e) this Sketch where there's a fabulous sketch and an inspiration photo courtesy of the Runway Inspired challenge.

HERE'S WHAT YOU'LL NEED TO MAKE TODAY'S CARD
(Click on each item to find it quickly in my shop) 

Stamps: Off the Grid wood, Flower Shop wood or cling
Petite Petals wood or cling, Gently Falling wood or cling

Ink: Tangerine Tango, Cherry Cobbler, Pear Pizzazz, Sahara Sand and Soft Sky classic inks
plus black stazon and Basic Black marker

Card stock: Whisper White, scrap of Soft Sky

Other: Circles framelits, Big Shot, 1/2" circle punch, Neutrals candy dots, stamp-a-majig

Click above to place an order any time, day or night,

but if you have any queries, or prefer to speak to me, I'm always happy to help.

You can contact me by email or phone on 01280 820593.

DON'T FORGET TODAY'S THE LAST DAY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE WEEKLY DEALS!

Grunge and CAS, sigh. It's the difference between my idea of suitable clothing for my youngest son and his own. Why does he always manage to find the most disreputable-looking pair of joggers from the back of the drawer and team them with some shapeless sludge-coloured t-shirt or hoodie? Naturally I'd prefer him to dress like the boys in this 18th century portrait by Joseph Francis Nollekens:

And, to be fair, he'd probably be quite entertained to dress up like this for about ten minutes or so!

See you tomorrow,

Gently falling by 25%!

What could be better than a new stamp set? A new stamp set at a discount of course! Stampin' Up has discounted 25 stamp sets by 25% as part of its 25th anniversary - just look:

A Dozen Thoughts • Zoo Babies • Lots of Thanks • Happy Day • Gifts of Kindness • Hearts Aflutter • Hello Lovely • Crazy Mixed-up Love • Bright Blossoms • Itty Bitty Banners • Yippee-Skippee • Gorgeous Grunge • Ornament Keepsakes • Apothecary Art • Cuddles and Kisses • Oh Hello • Label Love • Christmas Star (single) • A Gift for You (single) • Betsy's Blossoms • Morning Post (alphabet set)  • Gently Falling • Snowflake Soirée • Jewish Celebrations • That's the Ticket

What a list! Just click the picture above to see before and after prices. Offer ends on 28th October.

And to get the party going with even more of a swing, if you key in hostess code FWRY 6ZXV when ordering online, you could also win at least £25 worth of free goodies of your choice!

Here's another project I made using the fabulous Gently Falling set which is on the 25% discount list:

If you were wondering what I did with the rest of the designer paper I'd stamped for yesterday's card look no further! I used it on this card along with the lovely 'smile' sentiment from Happy Day - and yes, THAT's on the 25% discount list too! There was plenty of the stamped card stock left to make another couple of cards as well as this matching box:

The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed the little tag... It's stamped with That's the Ticket (yet another gorgeous stamp set on the 25% discount list!) and cut out with the coordinating punch. I added a sentiment and a tiny punched flower decorated with a candy dot - these are BRILLIANT! (I may have mentioned this previously once or twice or er... 800 times!)

Here's what you'll need to make this project

Stamps: Gently Falling, Happy Day, That's the Ticket, Express Yourself

Ink: Old Olive, Daffodil Delight, Cajun craze, Pumpkin Pie, Early Espresso, Raspberry Ripple

Card stock: Naturals Ivory, Very Vanilla

Other: Ticket punch, Itty Bitty punch pack, corner rounder, linen thread, thin organza ribbon (retired), candy dots, Simply Scored, stamp-a-majig

You can order from my online shop any time, day or night,

but if you have any queries, or prefer to speak to me, I'm always happy to help.

You can contact me by email or phone on 01280 820593.

Customers placing orders of £250+

will get a whopping £65 worth of freebies during October!

If you'd prefer to spread the cost of your crafty stash, but still get

freebies as well as handmade gifts and cards and complementary catalogues,

why not consider joining my Stampers 6 club?

Yesterday evening my daughter looked up from her laptop. "Last night I dreamt I was being strangled," she said cheerfully. "Shall I look up what that means?" She tapped away for a few minutes, googling the meaning of dreams, and then I heard her giggle. "These are the replies:" she said. "'You might be a bit worried' and 'I hope you don't get strangled'!"We laughed for a bit and then I suggested she might tidy her room to avoid the possibility of being strangled by her mother!

See you tomorrow,

Get your Stampin' Up stamps for less!

Oh my goodness, the great news just keeps on coming! Earlier on today I was letting you know that the new flip card thinlits dies are now available and now there's even more excitement! Stampin' Up has been celebrating its 25th anniversary all year and, as part of the festivities, has whipped 25% off 25 of the most gorgeous stamp sets in the catalogue!

A Dozen Thoughts • Zoo Babies • Lots of Thanks • Happy Day • Gifts of Kindness • Hearts Aflutter • Hello Lovely • Crazy Mixed-up Love • Bright Blossoms • Itty Bitty Banners • Yippee-Skippee • Gorgeous Grunge • Ornament Keepsakes • Apothecary Art • Cuddles and Kisses • Oh Hello • Label Love • Christmas Star (single) • A Gift for You (single) • Betsy's Blossoms • Morning Post (alphabet set)  • Gently Falling • Snowflake Soirée • Jewish Celebrations • That's the Ticket

And to get the party going with even more of a swing, if you key in hostess code FWRY 6ZXV when ordering online, you could also win at least £25 worth of free goodies of your choice!

Offer ends 28th October

Some of my all-time favourites are in that list - including the wonderful Gently Falling set which I used to make this collage-style project:

This card is made in all the colours of the autumn hedgerow - but don't feel that leaves are just for this time of year. The beech leaf and the long tall leaf are perfect used as Christmas trees (like I did on this card) and any of the leaves can be teamed with your florals to give them a new look all year round (as I've done here.)

Gently Falling is a two-step stamping set which means you can stamp the outline and fill in colour with the corresponding stamp. This gives so much detail as you can see above. I used the 'kissing' technique on the leaf using a stamp from Gorgeous Grunge - yet another of my favourites on the 25% off list! PLEASE don't miss out on that one either!

I made my own designer paper with some of the stamps from the set and used a little as a background, attaching it with glue and using strips of washi tape as a decorative detail.

This card was made to celebrate the birthday of a lovely friend of mine so I hand-stamped some paper to wrap her present in too.

Here's what you'll need to make this project

Stamps: Gently Falling, Gorgeous Grunge, Petite Pairs

Ink: Old Olive, Daffodil Delight, Pumpkin Pie, Cajun Craze, Baked Brown Sugar, Early Espresso, Raspberry Ripple

Card stock: Very Vanilla

Other: Season of Style washi tape/designer paper, Early Espresso stitched grosgrain ribbon, candy dots, corner rounder, paper snips, stamp-a-majig

You can order from my online shop any time, day or night,

but if you have any queries, or prefer to speak to me, I'm always happy to help.

You can contact me by email or phone on 01280 820593.

Customers placing orders of £250+

will get a whopping £65 worth of freebies during October!

If you'd prefer to spread the cost of your crafty stash, but still get

freebies as well as handmade gifts and cards and complementary catalogues,

why not consider joining my Stampers 6 club?

Talking of Gently Falling, I've just been made to jump out of my skin by a thudding sound behind me. It was the cat falling off he sofa! She'd been napping on the very edge of the sofa due to her shockingly trained owner who had left her shopping bags untidily there ready to go out but had got distracted by Stampin' Up excitement! Needless to say the cat pretended that she had meant to jump off the sofa and lounged off in search of choice morsels in the kitchen (which she won't find because I haven't done the shopping...) Better dash or we won't be on meowing terms!

See you tomorrow,

A Gorgeous Grunge autumn birthday

Not all of my friends understand about crafting - can you relate to that?! One of the things I most love about being part of Stampin' Up is that I've made lots of really lovely friends who completely understand the excitement I feel about a new stamp set or the way a piece of designer paper coordinates with some ribbon! It's a great reason to join - and until 21st October joining only costs £25! Click here for more info.

One of my Stampin' Up friends celebrated her birthday last week and, since she invited me to her birthday meal, it would've been rude not to bring along a handmade little something! Come and see:

Note how the Gumball Green Christmas paper and washi tape works brilliantly with Pumpkin Pie and browns for a lovely autumnal look!

I don't know if I'll ever get tired of making cards with washi tape, Gorgeous Grunge and a topper of some sort, like these beautiful leaves from the Gently Falling set:

It's so easy to make them turn autumnal using markers directly on the rubber before stamping.  All the splatters are made with my Gorgeous Grunge stamp set - much easier than really splattering ink! Oh and have you spotted my favourite embellishment of the moment? Yes it's the candy dot! These come in all the fabulous Stampin' Up colours and I can reveal to you that I nearly had to be sedated when they came out!

This is the coordinating tag I made for the little gift box. I used the same stamp sets and washi tape and cut the pretty shape quickly and easily with the Curly Label punch.

I know what you're thinking... So what was in the box?

Well, my friend and I share an addiction to enthusiasm for good, dark chocolate, so that's what it had to be. In fact she got quite a stash of it so we need not worry for her sanity any time soon!

Here's what you'll need to make this project

Stamps: Gently Falling, Gorgeous Grunge, Express Yourself

Ink: Gumball Green, Summer Starfruit, Pumpkin Pie, Early Espresso

Card stock: Naturals Ivory, Very Vanilla

Other: Markers, Season of Style washi tape/designer paper, Pumpkin Pie 1/8" taffeta ribbon, linen thread, candy dots, Curly Label punch, paper snips, stamp-a-majig

You can order from my online shop any time, day or night,

but if you have any queries, or prefer to speak to me, I'm always happy to help.

You can contact me by email or phone on 01280 820593.

Customers placing orders of £250+

will get a whopping £65 worth of freebies during October!

If you'd prefer to spread the cost of your crafty stash, but still get

freebies as well as handmade gifts and cards and complementary catalogues,

why not consider joining my Stampers 6 club?

When I had my first baby, my lovely daughter, I knew absolutely nothing about practical parenting. I would have crossed crocodile-infested waters and protected her from The Hooded Claw but it took a long time for me to learn to carry at all times the armoury of wipes, changes of clothing, toys, snacks etc required to take a mum and tot smoothly through a day! My daughter's babyhood was punctuated with my mistakes.

Once, for example, on her second birthday, I invited all her little pals and their parents round to celebrate and proudly brought in the gorgeously rich, dark (adult!) chocolate cake I'd made for the occasion. For some reason, I assumed none of the tots would be eating cake but they all did and, well, let's just say that their parents reported that none of them were interested in sleeping for some considerable time afterwards!

Have a great weekend and I'll see you very soon.

Hugs,

Remembering Christmas with a leaf

I normally have a fair few Christmas cards made by this time of year but this year... well, suffice to say I'm beginning to feel that it's time to roll my sleeves up and get on with some! Luckily there are the 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown and Rudolph Day challenges to help me get my act together! Come and see what I've made:

 'Christmas Tree' is the theme from 52CCT and having had great fun turning the leaf from Wonderfall into a tree yesterday, I thought I'd try one of the leaves from Gently Falling into a Christmas tree! I stamped the background trees into a masked-off area and then fussy cut a separate one for the foreground. I think it works! What do you think?

I absolutely love this decorative scroll from the Merry Little Christmas set for a bit of subtle decoration. Here I stamped a bit of it on the oval mat and used my stamp-a-majig to line up the rest of the image on the card base itself. You can see the fussy cut leaf as a tree in this photo (although you might have to put your right ear on your shoulder to do so - free stretching exercises and everything on my blog today!) all dressed up with rhinestones and a bakers twine bow.

And this is the loveliest sentiment for all those folk you don't get to see very often. It's from Remember Christmas - a set I'll be show-casing a lot more of I can tell you!

Here's what you'll need to make this card
Stamps: Gently Falling, Merry Little Christmas, Remembering Christmas
Ink: Cherry Cobbler, Always Artichoke, Garden Green classic inks, Whisper White craft ink
Card stock: Whisper White, Soft Sky
Other: Big Shot, Ovals framelits, Basic rhinestones, Cherry Cobbler bakers twine, Chalk marker, stamp-a-majig

You can order from my online shop any time, day or night, but if you have any queries, or prefer to speak to me, I'm always happy to help. You can contact me by email or phone on 01280 820593.

And as a special thank you for shopping with me, you'll get a free gift and a handmade card when you place your first online order with me during September.


I'm thinking of renting myself out as a weather guage for weddings and picnics because whenever I settle down to make a chilly-looking Christmas card we seem to get a heatwave! A cardigan came off with every layer I added to today's card until I was seriously thinking of getting the shorts out of storage!

See you tomorrow,

The Gently Falling Flower Shop

It's so good to have a weekend at home! We had chores to do but I did get to make a leisurely card for the Less is More challenge where I'm delighted to see the lovely Lizy guesting today! This week's challenge is to 'use  felt or fabric on a CAS card' and at first I thought I might have to sit this one out, but then I spotted the canvas I'd used on yesterday's card - that's fabric isn't it?!

The canvas was stamped with one of the flowers from the Flower Shop stamp set. This was cut out using the coordinating punch and decorated with one of the beautiful antique brads. (I thought afterwards that the punches are really only designed to cut out paper so perhaps I should have cut it out by hand; but it did cut beautifully and didn't seem to do any harm to the punch which is a tribute to its sharpness!)

I stamped some leaf outlines from Gently Falling onto a piece of Very Vanilla card stock and cut a panel out. I cut only partially on one side so that I could trim round the leaf. A border was pierced on both sides for a bit of detail and the canvas flower attached using glue dots. I used a piece of chevron designer paper for the side of the card but it looked a little stark so I inked over it using the same colours as for the flower and that tied everything together nicely.

This bold sentiment comes from the Oh Hello stamp set and I've stamped it twice, once on the card front and then again on the panel, masking the card front off and using a stamp-a-majig to position it.

I've just spotted that CASual Fridays has a lovely autumnal challenge too, 'Fall colours and a leaf', so I think I'll link up there too.

Here's what you'll need to make this card
Stamps: Flower Shop, Gently Falling, Oh Hello
Ink: Crushed Curry, Tangerine Tango, Old Olive, Early Espresso
Card stock: Naturals Ivory, Very Vanilla
Other: Markers, canvas, Essentials paper piercing pack, Pansy punch, Patterns designer paper, antique brads, stamp-a-majig

You can order from my online shop any time, day or night, but if you have any queries, or prefer to speak to me, I'm always happy to help. You can contact me by email or phone on 01280 820593.

And as a special thank you for shopping with me, you'll get a free gift and a handmade card when you place your first online order with me during September.

It was such a relaxing start to the day that my daughter and I even managed a little rummage through Pinterest together this morning after breakfast! This is one of the images we saw:

Isn't it striking?! (Sadly we couldn't find a source for it.) My daughter, while appreciating the beauty of the image, is never one to pass up on a comedic opportunity. "You know that moment," she said dreamily. "When you kiss your boyfriend and he turns into birds!"

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and I'll see you soon,

A Gently Falling leaf

I've been such a busy old bee just lately but I found myself with a few idle minutes this morning (whoppee!) so I've snuck in a quick card for the Less is More challenge. There's some gorgeous colour inspiration over there today which in Stampin' Up colours (on my screen at least!) translates to Garden Green and Cajun Craze. Despite the sun still shining away here, there is a definite autumn nip in the air so I immediately reached for the leaves - come and see:

I've kept this card very simple (no change there then!) It relies on the dramatic colour scheme for effect and I added interest with contrasting textures of card stock and plenty of detail and movement on the leaf.

Here's a close up of that leaf. It's one of the gorgeous leaves from Gently Falling, a two step stamping set where you stamp the outline and then 'colour' the inside with a coordinating stamp. I added extra detail with an aquapainter and some speckles with one of the indispensable splatter stamps from Gorgeous Grunge before cutting it out with my lovely sharp paper snips.

Here's what you'll need to make this card
Stamps: Gently Falling, Gorgeous Grunge, Morning Meadow (sentiment)
Ink: Cajun Craze, Garden Green, Early Espresso
Card stock: Naturals Ivory, Garden Green smooth and Core'dinations card stock
Other: Aquapainter, paper snips, stamp-a-majig

You can order from my online shop any time, day or night, but if you have any queries, or prefer to speak to me, I'm always happy to help. You can contact me by email or phone on 01280 820593.

And as a special thank you for shopping with me, you'll get a free gift and a handmade card when you place your first online order with me during September.


It wasn't just the nip in the air and LiM colour challenge that prompted me to make today's card. As I stepped outside the French windows into the garden this morning something fell on my head (why do I always feel as if I'm taking part in a comedy?!) It turned out to be this:

Isn't it beautiful? But, frankly, not as a hat!

See you soon,