Merry Minis set - a three minute star!

If you're anything like me, you'll still have all sorts of Christmas sets out in your crafting area - but that's a good thing because it means you can give them a new job! My Merry Minis set has come into its own with a batch of quick thank you note cards I've made for my regular Three Minute Thursday slot. Come and have a look:

Hmm - not my best photographic hour but I hope you can see what fun this card is from the following photos...

The star is cut into the corner of the card base using the coordinating punch from the Merry Minis punch pack. (All the images in the set have a punch that coordinates and if you want both the punches and the stamp set, don't forget to order them before the autumn/winter catalogue expires at the end of this month. I'd hate for you to miss out!) Next I stamped one of the star images from the stamp set below it and then, without inking up again, inside the punched star using my stamp-a-mjag for accurate position. I used a lighter blue for the third star and a marker for this gorgeous sentiment.

You can see from this photo how you get a star appearing inside the card using this technique...

... as well as the decorative cut out on the opposite page.

I designed these for my eldest son as he wanted to send thank you notes to our generous relatives, and it took very little time to produce a little batch of them.

Here's what you'll need to make this card
Stamps: Merry Minis, A Word For You
Ink: Midnight Muse, Marina Mist
Card stock: Whisper White
Other: Merry Minis punch pack, Midnight Muse marker, stamp-a-majig
I'd be delighted to order any of these items for you and have them delivered straight to your address in the UK. I'm committed to providing excellent customer service and am always happy to offer help and advice. To place your order, just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593.

Talking of stars, my three children decided to cook dinner for us on New Years Day. They planned the menu together, shopped for the ingredients and produced a fabulous meal with very few mishaps (although I'm told my youngest son inadvertently threw away the garlic my eldest son had just spent ages chopping finely which caused the good humour of the event to hang in the balance for a minute or two!) For those that are interested, we feasted on doughballs stuffed with garlic butter to start; chicken, bacon and basil in a creamy sauce served with pasta, green beans and carrots for our main course; and an amazing homemade banana and peanut butter ice cream to finish. Their team work and culinary skills were amazing and I took a trip to Mumland that lasted well into the washing up!

I'll be back with more thank you cards tomorrow using one of my new stamp sets. Hope to see you then,

Christmas biscuits, festively boxed up

I adore Christmas biscuits! They're quick to bake and decorate, fill the house with an excitingly Christmassy smell and make lovely gifts when they're attractively packaged.

I like to cut my dough with a star shaped cookie cutter and, when the biscuits are baked and cooled, decorate them with zig zags of white icing and soft gold or silver balls and just a dusting of icing sugar.

The wonderful kraft boxes on p.161 of the annual catalogue are perfect for presenting these little biscuits, but don't forget to line them with greaseproof paper first.  They're great for all sorts of other goodies too and at £2.75 for a pack of four, they don't break the bank either!

For Christmas, I like to tie mine up with the stitched grosgrain ribbon in real red - oh, this ribbon is divine and comes in loads of the Stampin' Up colours!

I used a fun tag from Tags til Christmas for this box. I stamped it in Real Red ink, cut the centre out with the new 1" square punch and mounted it onto a scalloped square punched out of Early Espresso Core'dinations card stock. I love how you get the sanded edges look when you punch this gorgeous textured card stock.

Of course I had to design a card to go with my box of Christmas biscuits and Merry Minis was the perfect stamp set for it! I used Real Red to stamp some stars and ornaments, punched them out with the coordinating punch and attached them with dimensionals to a string drawn with an Early Espresso marker (using an oval pie dish as a guide!)

The marker came in handy for doodling bows at the tops of the decorations too! Doesn't this make a sweet banner?!

I chose to use the wonderfully swirly Merry Christmas from Sassy Salutations, stamped again in Real Red ink.

And here they are together, all ready to go!

Here's the recipe I use for my biscuits (adapted from various other recipes I've tried over the years!)
5oz plain flour
5oz SR flour
4 tsp cinnamon
2oz dark muscovado sugar
2oz granulated sugar
4oz butter
1 large free range egg, beaten
A little milk if needed
Method
Cream the butter and sugars together until fluffy and add the beaten egg. Sieve in the dry ingredients and mix into a dough with a little milk if needed. Roll out to 1/2cm thickness, cut out star shapes and bake on floured baking trays in an oven pre-heated to 150 degrees C for 10-15 minutes until browned.

Here's what you'll need to box the biscuits up
Stamps: Tags til Christmas
Ink: Real Red
Card stock: Whisper White, Core'dinations in Early Espresso
Other: Kraft boxes, Real Red stitched grosgrain ribbon, Scallop Square punch, 1" square punch, white bakers twine.

Here's what you'll need for the coordinating card
Stamps: Merry Minis, Sassy Salutations
Ink: Real Red classic ink plus an Early Espresso marker
Card stock: Crumb Cake, Whisper White, Real Red
Other: Merry Minis punch pack, stamp-a-majig
I'd be delighted to order any of these items for you and have them delivered straight to your address in the UK. I'm committed to providing excellent customer service and am always happy to offer help and advice. To place your order, just send me an email or give me a call on +44 (0) 1280 820593.

This has turned into a very long post hasn't it... but still, I'm sure some of you could do with a bit of a nap! Our lovely cat Tuppence is napping away as I type and she's taken to making noises as she dreams - just like a dog! You can tell that she's being Warrior Tuppence, Defender of the Territories from the noises she's making (although in real life she's a complete wimp!)

I shall be back tomorrow with a really fun project. Hope to see you then.

Merry Minis and bright!

Here's a clean and simple Christmas card I made for the lovely Marie's CAS challenge over at Get Creative, Addicted to Stamps and More where they want to see markers being used, and 52CCT where the theme is Christmas Lights (and, may I just say, where I was absolutely delighted to win last weeks challenge with this card!)

I started by stamping a sentiment from my Jolly Jingle wheel which I've split into lots of useful sentiments (click here to see how I did it.) The Christmas lights wire was doodled round it with a Gumball Green marker before the lights were added.

I love the retro shape of this gorgeous bulb image - we actually had some like this when I was a girl! There are three different designs of the light/ornament in the Merry Minis stamp set (I've used the plain one here), as well as stars and Christmas trees too. And, what's more, they've all got coordinating punches to cut them out, which gives you lots more time to eat mince pies and watch re-runs of The Two Ronnies Christmas Show!

I used this great sketch from CAS(E) This Sketch to make my card (but unfortunately didn't make the deadline for the challenge... hey ho!) I can see that this great site is going to be very useful resource for CAS card makers.

Here's what you'll need to make this card
Stamps: Merry Minis, Jolly Jingle wheel (sentiment)
Ink: Real Red, Tempting Turquoise, Pumpkin Pie, Lucky Limeade
Card stock: Whisper White, Lucky Limeade
Other: Merry Minis punch pack, markers
I'd be delighted to order any of these items for you and have them delivered straight to your address in the UK, France, Deutschland, Nederland or Osterreich. I'm committed to providing excellent customer service and am always happy to offer help and advice. To place your order, just send me an email or give me a call on +44 (0) 1280 820593.

I'm not wittering much today because unlike the chirpy sentiment on today's card I am feeling neither merry nor bright. See you tomorrow for Three Minute Thursday though.

Have yourself a Merry Minis Christmas

Aaaargh! The only problem with making Christmas cards at this time of the year is that you get Christmas songs stuck in your head! Yes, I've been cracking on with my Christmas cards, inspired by Less is More where Mandi and Chrissie are asking us to combine three previous challenges (they're listed handily on the top bar of the blog); and CASology where the cue word this week is White. Come and have a look:

I 've chosen white on white (wk14), embossing (wk15) and Let it Snow (wk 45 for my Less is More themes and of course there's plenty of white going on here for CASology! The basis of the design is a predominantly white panel with lots of texture, mounted on a pristine white card base.

I started by masking off a horizantal strip with post it notes and heat embossing in white then layered on this stripy organza ribbon and some gorgeous Cherry Cobbler bakers twine.  It needed a bit more interest, so I added the line of piercing. The simple rounded sentiment was a perfect fit - it's from For My Family, a sentiment set for personalising cards for all the family - and teacher too!

Those fabulous trees are made with my new Merry Minis stamp set and coordinating punch. The trees were stamped, embossed or glittered and made into tiles by pasting onto a stack of glued-together punched trees. The bling is one of the Basic Rhinestones coloured with a permanent marker.

Here's what you'll need to make today's card
Stamps: Merry Minis, For My Family
Ink: Real Red
Card stock: Whisper White
Other: Merry Minis punch pack, Cherry Cobbler bakers twine (coming soon!), organza ribbon, Mat pack and piercer (retiring) Basic Rhinestones, versamark and white embossing powder, Dazzling Diamonds glitter, stamp-a-majig

I'd be delighted to order any of these items for you and have them delivered straight to your address in the UK. I'm committed to providing excellent customer service and am always happy to offer help and advice. To place your order, just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593. Click here to view my regularly updated lists of retiring stamps and accessories, some at up to 40% discount. 

Talking of getting songs stuck in your head, guess what we were singing when we visited this lovely location on our holidays? There was no stopping my daughter and I doing our best Vera Lynn impressions at the tops of our voices! "There'll be bluebirds over... the white cliffs of Dover..." I'm afraid the males of the family were terrified that someone might hear us and have us carted away, but we were there pretty early so there was no-one else there. And if you're wondering whether I was blown away, yes I was - but not literally!

My tummy tells me it's lunchtime and I can't understand why the Ravening Hordes haven't mentioned it yet... Enjoy the rest of the week and I'll see you on Monday,