Sentimental over sentiments

So, as you've probably seen at the top of my blog, the Stampin' Up Last Chance List has been published with all the stamp sets and accessories from the Idea Book and Catalogue that WON'T carry over into the new catalogue. Some of them are being sold at a discount, but hurry - they're only available while stocks last!

I have mixed feelings about this list as some of the names on it are old favourites of mine. (But of course the new catalogue will have plenty of new offerings to stimulate my creativity so I shall try not to mind too much!) I've used two favourites for today's card. Come and see:

I made this card to say thank you to my kind friend who looked after our house and garden over the weekend when my husband came to join us on holiday in Devon. Do you recognise the little house? It's from the Neighborhood jumbo wheel and has been stamped on watercolour paper, coloured with inks and an aquapainter, and cut out with my sharp paper snips.

This lovely wheel has had 40% lopped off the price and now costs only £5.10! You could unmount the wheel too as I did in this post, and split the buildings up - which would give you houses for a crazy £1 each, plus a kennel! The house is mounted on a strip of paper from the Greenhouse Gala designer range - and it's worth noting that all the paper ranges are retiring except the Patterns tone-on-tone range.

Apparently Samuel Beckett once said "words are all we have" but he had almost certainly never met a crafter! We tend to have loads of images but NEVER enough sentiments - or is that just me?!! The sentiment here has been put together with my stamp-a-majig and three stamps from a brilliant set called Basic Phrases consisting of heaps of words and phrases. They've knocked 25% off this set which is now a bargain at £25.46.

Supplies needed for today's card:

Stamps: Neighborhood jumbo wheel, Basic Phrases

Ink: Bashful Blue, Rich Regals markers

Card stock: Naturals Ivory, Very Vanilla, Watercolour paper

Other: Aquapainter, stamp-a-majig, paper snips

You can buy any of these supplies from me and I can have them delivered to your address in the UK. Just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593. Click here to view the Last Chance List - full of stamps and accessories, some at up to 40% off, available only while stocks last.

Writing about Basic Phrases has brought a lump to my throat because my daughter and I have had great fun with this set, vying with each other to make the most ridiculous sentiments. We love to make mad wordy things - this is the card I made her for her last birthday for example, using all sorts of sentiment sets. Anyway, that's enough of going to Mumland!

I really appreciate you popping in today and hope you manage to snap up a bargain! Have a great weekend and I'll see you very soon,

Bird on the rocks!

It's holiday season and I've been making cards for the St Lukes Charity Card Challenge which is asking for cards with a seaside theme. If you love challenges - or even if you've never done one before - DO try this one as your cards are used to raise money for such a great cause.

Come and have a look at my seaside-inspired card:

Can you tell I've been on the rocky Antrim coast lately? I made a frame with the mat pack - it's so easy to pierce a straight line all the way round the card front with the guide in this pack. The edges of the card and the bottom have been inked with Marina Mist ink to create the seaside feel and then I went over the piercing gently with a sharp grey watercolour pencil to make a soft, stitched look.

I made a seagull by stamping the bird from Sweetheart onto the greyish paper from Blueberry Crisp and cutting it out with my trusty paper snips. The rocks are pieces of Crumb Cake card stock sponged with Basic Grey and Marina Mist inks while the legs of the bird are actually the stalks of a flower image in the Just Believe set! It's amazing what you can see in stamps!

Supplies needed for this card:

Stamps: Sweetheart, Basic Phrases

Ink: Marina Mist, Basic Grey, Riding Hood Red

Card stock: Confetti White, Crumb Cake

Other: Blueberry Crisp designer paper pack, mat pack, paper piercer, watercolour pencils

You can buy any of these supplies from me and I can have them delivered to your address in the UK. Just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593 and I'll be happy to help.

Call me a heathen but although those wonderful photos of sandy beaches look very appealing I actually prefer rocky beaches. There's so much more to look at and do, and rock hopping keeps you fit too! We were amazed by the amount of huge jelly fish washed up in the rock pools at Portstewart this year and another year we saw dolphins swimming and jumping off the coast between Portstewart and Portrush. Of course this coastline has some beautiful sandy beaches too...

I'll have more seaside fun here tomorrow if you have a minute to pop back.
Hope you're having a good week! 

Seaside yumminess!

It's August and I'm definitely in holiday mood! Which makes the St Lukes Charity Card Challenge the place to be as this month they are calling for cards inspired by the seaside. The charity will be having a card sale at the end of this month to raise funds for the hospice so, if you'd like to join in with the challenge or if you have spare cards to send for them to sell, hop on over to the site.

I'm really enjoying this challenge and have made several cards which I'll be showing you this week. Come and see:

I cut the Top Note shape, using my die, and sponged the top half with Marina Mist ink and the bottom half with So Saffron. I love the way the ink picks up the stitch detail on the edges! The pointy bits on the sides were trimmed off so that I could wrap my Rich Razzleberry wide-striped ribbon round the Top Note.

Then I went about making an ice cream cone and that was great fun! The cone is a scrap of So Saffron card stock embossed with the Square Lattice folder (how useful that little embossing folder is - only £6.95 and a real hard worker!) and the ice cream scoops were cut out of Pretty In Pink card stock using circle punches and sponged at the edges. 

For the sentiment I used 'thanks' from Basic Phrases and the word 'sweet' from Hello, You (a little-known set on p.86 of the large catalogue) which I extended with a marker to say 'sweetie'. The tag was punched out with the decorative label punch, folded and clipped over the ribbon with a library clip from the clip assortment - I am in totally in love with these! (If you love them too, check out the special offer this month at the top of my blog.)

Supplies needed for this card:

Stamps: Basic Phrases, Hello You

Ink: Marina Mist, So Saffron, More Mustard, Pretty In Pink

Card stock: Crumb Cake, Whisper White, So Saffron, Pretty In Pink

Other: Melon Mambo marker, Stamp-a-majig, Rich Razzleberry wide striped grosgrain ribbon, clip assortment

You can buy any of these supplies from me and I can have them delivered to your address in the UK. Just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593.

If the ice cream on today's card has tickled your fancy, what about this one? It's a banana split sundae from Morelli's as chosen and eaten with relish by my eldest son! Mmmmmm...

Or how about this? A Morelli Madness! My youngest son had his eye on this confection - so big they rang a bell whenever anyone was mad enough to order it!

My husband and my daughter offered to help my son out with this one but, despite their best efforts, they didn't get much of a look in!

You may be thinking that I very sensibly refrained from ordering a sundae...

... but frankly, I'm never really one to hold back where ice cream is concerned!

Thank you for dropping by today - I really do appreciate your visits. I'll have another seaside-themed card to show you tomorrow so come and have a look if you have a minute. I'll hope to see you then,

Masculine Monday will be back on 5th September.

Birthday card for an Xbox fan

Good morning! It's another Monday and another masculine card to start the week - and a very special one today. It may have been Harry Potter's birthday yesterday but, much more importantly, it was also my eldest son's! He likes all sorts of things including tennis and cricket, swimming and messing about on the river (sorry, I mean fishing!) cycling... but the thing he likes best (which I don't let him do as much as he'd like!) is playing on his Xbox. So the gadget in this photo, which has become a feature of our living room, was my inspiration for my son's card. Come and have a look:

I've used the coloured buttons for the design with just a nod to the other grey buttons and I wanted it to look as if they'd blown across the page and just ended up in the classic diamond formation. The circles were all cut out using the circle from the Itty Bitty Shapes Punch Pack - and I think these punches are a brilliant buy as I've been using them ever such a lot. They're £15.50 for the pack of three and contain this 3/8" circle, and two gorgeous little flowers. They also coordinate with the Itty Bitty Bits stamp set (£11.95 wood mount or £9.95 clear mount) and the Bitty Buttons too (£4.25 for a tub of 64 buttons).

I stamped the coloured buttons with letters from a retired alphabet stamp using Whisper White craft ink - but you could easily use letters from Basic Phrases. I popped them up on bits of dimensional to make them catch the eye even more. The sentiment is made up of two words from Basic Phrases which I put together with my stamp-a-majig and grounded with scored lines.

Supplies needed for this card:

Stamps: Basic Phrases (sentiment), Square Serif mini alphabet (retired)

Ink: Basic Grey, Whisper White craft ink

Card stock: Naturals Ivory, More Mustard, Night of Navy, Real Red, Old Olive

Other: Itty Bitty Shapes punch pack, stamp-a-majig

You can buy any of these supplies from me and I can have them delivered to your address in the UK. Just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593.

Did you notice that although the list of things my son likes to do is endless, it doesn't include settling down to do his homework unprompted or tidying up his room without being asked?!! Well, no-one's perfect - although he very nearly is in my eyes! (Oops I've gone to Mumland again!)

Thank you for popping in today. Do come back and see me again tomorrow when I'll be showing you a new 3D flower I've got all excited about! Have a happy Monday!

Saying sorry with Growing Green

I'm always interested in using up left-overs when I'm crafting, so I've been trying to play along with Jules' Crafty Snippet challenge and ONLY using scraps. The card I've made for today was the result of that but before I show you, would you like to see how I organise my scraps?

First, my card stock off-cuts! I keep those in a vertical tub - transparent so that I can see what's going on in there. Periodically, I go through it and punch shapes from the very small pieces, which I keep in jars on my shelf.

This is my designer paper drawer. Because I'm a Stampin' Up demonstrator, it makes sense for me to use only current papers, stored by range in large poly bags. All the off-cuts go back into the bags so it's all kept together. I use my papers for cardmaking, scrapbooking and giftwrapping as well as for altered items such as notebooks etc.

I keep this tub under my desk and it's where I keep card bases I make but don't immediately use (on the right) and items that I've coloured and cut out or punched or embellishments I've made but haven't yet used (on the left). I purge the embellishmenty bit sometimes but am quite good at using things up. This system works quite well for me and I hope it's helpful to someone else!

Come and see the card I made using my scraps:

The starting point for this card was a left-over strip of Botanical Gazette designer paper - I adore this paper! In my embellishments tub, I also found this rose from Growing Green that I'd stamped onto water colour paper and coloured with my aqua painter. Whenever I use my Little Leaves die, I always make more than I need because they are so useful - so there were loads of these in my tub too. The card base was the other half of the A4 sheet used to make yesterday's card.

I mounted the DP onto an off-cut of Whisper White card stock that I trimmed with the eyelet border punch. It's topped with the leaves and then the rose cut out and mounted on a dimensional. I stamped the sentiment onto a scrap of vellum, curled it round a pencil and tucked it  under the rose.

Here's a close-up of the vellum sentiment with its snipped tail - and please, all you Latin experts out there, don't write in and tell me that you fainted when you saw this because the background I've used is full of rude words!

Supplies needed for this card:

Stamps: Growing Green, Basic Phrases (sentiment)

Ink: Always Artichoke, Melon Mambo, Peach Parfait

Card stock: Naturals Ivory, Whisper White, Always Artichoke, Pear Pizzazz, Vellum, watercolour paper

Other: Botanical Gazzette designer paper, Little Leaves die, eyelet border punch

You can buy any of these supplies from me and I can have them delivered to your address in the UK. Just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593.

I'm really enjoying having my children around. In between social engagements they come and chat to me while I'm crafting and we have a giggle together. This morning I made a silly quip to my youngest son and my daughter met my eyes over his head. "Oh Mummy," she said shaking her head affectionately. "You and your so-called sense of humour!" She is beginning to remind me of Dame Edna Everage!

Oh dear, I've written a novel again! If you're still with me, thank you so much for putting up with my wittering! I've had an idea for this week's FTL sketch so hopefully I'll be able to show that to you tomorrow. Hope to see you then,

New Year card using Sweet Summer

I've been cuddling my aqua painter and looking at the Sweet Summer set and thinking... One of the things I've been pondering is how to use the little butterfly and bird stamps a little more creatively. Of course, they make excellent additions to floral cards (this one for example, or these) but I wanted them to work a bit harder and take the starring role.

Today's card uses the butterfly in this way and was made for my lovely friend who hosted a fun games evening over the new year weekend which my family and I thoroughly enjoyed.

I liked the idea of a colourful explosion of butterflies - as if a champagne cork had popped. I stamped the butterflies with Early Espresso ink and coloured them in a variety of ink colours using my adored aqua painter. Why has it taken me so long to have a play with these? They are SUCH fun! They're £12.25 for a set of two, one medium and one large tipped, and because they hold a reservoir of water they're very portable too.

Purists would say I should have stamped the butterflies with Stazon ink so that the colour doesn't merge, but it doesn't merge much and I rather like the effect it gives.

I love playing about with sentiments! This one uses the word 'happy' from Basic Phrases and the numbers 2011 are hand written onto 1/4" punched circles. The popped up butterfly gives it a little finishing touch.

Here's how to make this card:

• Cut an 8cm square piece of Whisper White card stock.
• Using Early Espresso ink, stamp a design of butterflies onto it, making them closer together in the bottom left-hand corner and leaving the top right-hand corner empty. Stamp an extra butterfly on a scrap piece of Whisper White card stock.
• Colour the butterflies' wings in coloured inks with an aqua painter. Use the fine end of a Crumb Cake marker to colour their bodies. Colour the extra butterfly the same colour as the butterfly that will be nearest the sentiment. Cut him out with sharp paper snips.
• Use a stamp-a-majig to stamp the sentiment. Punch four circles with a 1/4" circle punch and write numbers on them with the fine end of a marker. Glue these below the sentiment.
• Bend the extra butterfly's wings up either side of his body. Cut a tiny piece of Sticky Strip to fit his body and stick the butterfly over the top of the one near the sentiment.
• Curve the top right-hand corner of the butterfly panel with a corner rounder.
• Cut an 8.5cm square piece of Night of Navy card stock and round the corner. Mount the butterfly panel onto this.
• Cut a 9cm square Riding Hood Red card base and round the top right-hand corners, front and back. Attach the mounted butterfly panel to the card front.

Supplies
Stamps: Sweet Summer, Basic Phrases
Ink: Early Espresso, Night of Navy (sentiment), variety for butterflies
Card stock: Whisper White, Riding Hood Red, Night of Navy, Pink Pirouette (for circles)
Other: Markers, 1/4" circle punch, corner rounder

All my children go back to school tomorrow and the wonderful Christmas holidays will be over for another year. It's hard to imagine getting back into the usual routine, and I always miss having them about during the day, but it will happen and, by the end of the week, these holidays will seem a distant memory. (Apart from the extra weight I'm carrying!)

I shall be back tomorrow with a cute birthday card made with the bird from the amazing Sweet Summer sale-a-bration set. Don't forget that the Sale-a-bration sets are not available to buy - you get a free set every time you spend £45! It's easy to order from me - just click here to email me or phone 01280 820593. I'm always happy to help!

See you tomorrow