One of my Demo team is so talented but she doesnt have a blog so I asked her if she didnt mind if I posted the gorgeous card (and matching envelope) she made for my new baby boy on my blog. I love how she made the card to match the colours in the beautiful blanket she gave him. Super Cute Jenny, thanks so much.
And another excuse to make cute baby cards. Our little William now has a cousin. My brother and his wife had a little girl on the weekend, little Ava Jessica. I have been wanting to make one of these telescope cards for ages. When I saw this, I just couldn't resist and what better way to show off the new Little Additions stamp set - I just love it! I used ALL but 2 of the 21 stamps in this set. So I got busy recreating just changing a few colours for a girl theme. Here is a link to the tutorial if you wanna make one, super easy but love the WOW factor. I really love the new Mini Silver Brads too - too cute!
Ok I know its been a while but I have a VERY VERY good excuse....I am happy to announce that our little baby William was born late July and hence I have been a little distracted of late. Motherhood is FULL ON! However, I am glad to be back in my craft room doing some creating. I have recreated this gorgeous cute box from one of the projects created by Martha Lucia Gomez over at the latest Inkspirations4U. I am a designer for this group that is run by the fabulous Madeline Morcelo. I put this project together to showcase some of the beautiful new Designer Series Papers, Stamp Sets and Big Shot Designer Frames as well as the gorgeous new seam binding all from the NEW Idea Book and Catalogue just released this month. The paper on the front panel is from the new Mocha Morning Specialty Papers, it has flocking on it and I soooooo love it! Can't go wrong with butterflies if you ask me, this little beauty comes from the new Creative Elements Stamp set. If you too would like to recreate this beautiful box, come join the Early Fall Edition of Inkspirations4U and enjoy many other great project ideas. Look forward to seeing you in there.
I have finally got these finished -YAY! Now to get them in the post before the baby arrives.... I have been thinking and planning the announcements and got distracted with them but I forced myself to get these out of the way today and now my reward is to do the annoucements - yay more work LOL! I have stuck with the Baja Breeze theme but I have used some retired DSP. Everything else is current. I used the scallop trim border punch and matching corner punch to complete the frame. The sentiments come from Sincere Salutations and Tiny Tags. I have used my absolute favourite ribbon - the White Organza Ribbon and embossed the middle panel with the Polka dots embossing folder. Once again I can't complete a project without using my Big Shot. In the centre of the rattle you will see one of the button embosslits and I embossed the rattle handle with white embossing powder as well as as the 'baby' tag. Lots of work here but all worth it.
I loved this instantly as anyone who knows me knows I LOVE PINK!!!! And.....I love the Elements of Style stamp set which is perfect for this technique The butterfly card she made was my absolute favourite. The ladies didnt make this one but I demonstrated it for them. Kirsty has a great little tutorial on her blog you can check out to make this too.
I CASED a couple of other examples for them to make. The sail boat one was here. They always want masculine card ideas. We did this one as a Father's Day card as I wont see them until after Father's Day now and the beautiful Manhattan flower card was one of Frenchies here. Frenchie also has a great video tutorial for her card. 
Some tips if you decide to try this technique, I used White King regular bleach in my aqua painter (label your aqua painter as bleach and dont use it for anything else). I tried the lemon scented one but it didnt work as well. Also, if you are not going to use your aqua painter for a while empty it out and use fresh bleach each time you use it to maximise the effect. Always try on scrap paper first, each colour of cardstock bleaches differently so try several colours to see which bleaches the most vibrant.
This technique has popped up a lot lately and I have seen it called 'Embossed Embossing' too. This is the technique my Stamp Club ladies did in May - yes I know took me a long time to post... Anyway I sought inspiration from my lovely Secret Sister from last year, Jane Norrish. Jane made a beautiful example that I couldn't resist to CASE. My ladies loved this example also. The first card uses the Vintage Wallpaper embossing folder and the second one uses the Elegant Bouquet embossing folder. For the first card we used Versamark ink and black embossing powder whereas on the second one (inspired by this card) we used the Versamarker and clear powder to show the two different options for this technique....
What a great way to spend the long weekend here crafting and creating. UStamp is having a FREE event this weekend. A lot of the talented designers have put together various projects for all of us to download. I fell in love with Lorri Heiling's project as soon as I saw it and I knew the perfect opportunity to use it. Two of my friends have recently moved into new places they bought and I thought these would make lovely housewarming cards.... Lots of punches used here plus my Little Leaves Sizzlit for the Big Shot. So get along to Lorri's blog and get hopping and you too can create these cute cards plus dont forget to check out all the other creative designers :)
On the weekend we had my baby shower and what a great day it was. It has taken me a couple of days to recover but it was so worth it. You may recall the invitations I made for the event, well in keeping with the theme I made the baby shower favors, the prizes, a banner and I am yet to do the thank you cards.... (now you know why I was so exhausted).
Don't worry I had help....
Recently one of my friends from work (who is also in my Stamp Club) celebrated her 40th Birthday. I wanted to make her something special and I remembered that she mentioned earlier in the year that she wanted to learn how to make an Accordion Album like in the Current Stampin' Up! Catalogue and Idea Book on p.115. I thought I would try one out and make one for her instead. So I asked her what her favourite DSP was and away I went to work. I had lots of fun creating this and found Kylie O'Brien's tutorial on her blog very helpful. Colours used include Concord Crush, Pretty in Pink, Very Vanilla and of course the Lap of Luxury DSP (her favourite). I also used some Big Shot products, cant really make much these days with using my Big Shot, I love it so much. I used the emblosslit buttons, the scallop envelope die, the beautiful wings bigz die, various embossing folders, top note bigz die, blossom party bigz die, scallop square punch, photo corner punch, itty bitty punches, and my letters sizzlits. Thanks for visiting my blog today.
This month's project was a HUGE HIT! My stamp club ladies are still talking about this session. At the start of the year I took a wish list of what they would like to do during the year and a OSW (one sheet wonder) was one of the topics so I went to work and created this collection. I must direct you to Clare Daly's page as she has a great FREE tutorial for this project. I didnt have the stamp set that she used so I improvised and used Fifth Avenue Floral and used Elegant Eggplant, Old Olive and Rose Red for the colour combo. I must admit I was really happy with how these turned out. The sheet actually would make approx. 8 cards but we made only 4 on the day. The technique was crayon resist. This technique is lots of fun. All you need is a A4 sheet of glossy white card and a cheap white crayon (crayola) a Stazon ink pad, some ink pads and some sponges. The first thing you do is stamp your images at random all over your glossy white card in Stazon ink trying not to leave too many blank spaces, then outline parts of your image with your white crayon. Next you sponge various colours over your stamped images then buff the whole cardstock with some paper towel to take off any ink from the crayon, this will make your outlines really 'POP'. Then simply cut up accordingly and assemble on your cards.
Last week I attended the annual Stampin' Up! Convention in Melbourne. I had an absolute ball and even though I have been a demonstrator for four years now I still find so much new to learn each year. It's a great opportunity to catch up with friends that I only see once a year or so plus 'swap' our creations and buy special company merchandise. We received some awesome stamp sets (sorry cant reveal until next month), made some cute projects with them and got some sneak peeks as to what is on its way later in the year - you will LOVE it all! I prepared two swaps this year. I made some special swaps for the ESAD dinner I went to and made another 50 or so of another style using the cupcake punch and stamp set from the Autum/Winter Mini Catalogue. My ESAD swaps had a baby theme cos I am kinda baby crazy at the moment. I made a collection of Baby Card Candy in four subltes colours - Bashful Blue, Pink Pirouette, So Saffron and Certainly Celery. Please dont ask me how long it took to make them - I lost count of the hours and hours way before I finished. I hope the recipients will use them to make cute cards though - all the pieces are stuck to a sheet of acetate so they can be pulled off easily. I got the idea from this project. My card swap was inspired by this one but since I am blue crazy at the moment I made them all in Baja Breeze. I will post some more pics tomorrow of all the swaps I received back plus some of the goodies I bought.
This week my creation was featured on Inkspirations4U. It is the first time I have designed for this group and I have enjoyed getting to know the girls on this site. It's a great site that you can subscribe to that runs for a period of a few weeks where you can get lots of inspiration with talented designers sharing their projects centered around many themes. Madeline Morcelo runs the site and shares lots of projects and videos to inspire you daily. One of the themes for this round was Father's Day and I decided to go with this choice mainly to challenge myself as I always find male cards and themes very difficult. This is what I came up with - it is a desk set for a dad which includes a 'toolbox' holding a business card holder with calendar and a notebook & pen. I got the inspiration for this set from my dad as he is a 'chippy' otherwise known as a builder. I used my Big Shot for the letters. I enjoyed getting this Totally Tool set out as I havent used it much and the Woodland Walk DSP worked perfectly for this project. Thanks for visiting my blog.
