Still here!

I thought I ought to post - I have been immersed in crafting for the past few days, finalising the cards we are going to make in the classes on the 26th Aug and 1st Sept... making gifts for the ladies attending class.

I've also been experimenting with 'stuff'.

You Little Furball was one of the sets I couldn't resist in the new annual catalogue.

I made a couple of cards with it the other day.

I used a masking technique and my Stampamajig to enable me to layer the flowers and get the little cat sat in amongst them (still LOVING the Flower Patch bundle)

Then I used my Stampamajig, again for this one... and some more masking.

Do you like the fact I turned this puss cat into a tabby with the Stampin' Write marker?

You'll also notice the Woodgrain embossing folder, new In-Colour ribbon and an old favourite, the Label Love stamp set and Artisan Label punch. Available as another great cost saving bundle!

I'll be back again soon - if you would like to see a video of any of these techniques - leave me a comment and I'll record one for you!

Paula xxx

You Little Furball Wood-Mount Stamp Set

£22.95

You Little Furball Clear-Mount Stamp Set

£16.95

Flower Patch Photopolymer Bundle

£37.25

Flower Patch Photopolymer Stamp Set

£22.95

Flower Fair Framelits Die

£20.95

Stamp-A-Ma-Jig

£10.95

Artisan Label Punch

£14.25

Label Love Wood Bundle

£30.75

Label Love Clear Bundle

£27.25

Label Love Wood

£21.95

Label Love Clear

£17.95

Hello Honey 3/8" Satin Stitched Ribbon

£7.95

Table by StampinBuddy. Try it FREE.

Blendabilities - Tutorial

I promised you a video today - and here it is! I literally just recorded it!

I will add a disclaimer - no two people work the same and there is no right or wrong way to use Blendabilities. This is the technique that works best for me and I wanted to share!

Here is the card I made.

And some more Blooms - the stamp is called Blended Bloom and is available in the new catalogue tomorrow - along with a selection of the Blendabilities - ask me for details as there is a limited initial selection due to demand! Yup - They're that good!

I don't yet have the Pumpkin Pie or Daffodil Delight pens so the centres were coloured with Stampin' Write Markers... not ideal as they smudge the Memento ink.

Here is the video...

Colouring Practice

Hi Guys,

Before I came away (it is darned hot here by the way!) I had a chance to play a little more with my Blendabilities.

I think I'm getting the hang of them now. I really do!

What do you think?

I only have the Cherry Cobbler ones at the moment - I used my Stampin' Write Markers for the other colours.

Again this is the new Hostess Set - I Like You - available from the 1st July - spend £150 and you qualify to get it!

The sentiment is of course Sassy Salutations.

Can't believe I'll be home soon! But it will be nice to see the animals!

Blessed Easter

Well we're over half way to the weekend! YAY!

Today I'm posting some cards I made Sunday evening... and there must be something in the air at the moment as fellow Pinkie - Lizy Bartaby used the very same stamp set on her blog today! Well you know what they say about Great Minds!

I love the stamps but occasionally I know straight away that I would prefer the sentiment and image to be separate, so what I did with this stamp was to carefully cut the sentiment away from the image and mounted one on each side of the block - so I have 2 stamps now and don't have to faff about trying to mask part of the stamp when I want one element!

Stampin' Up! really know what they're doing letting us mount the stamps ourselves.

Anyhow the stamp in question is Blessed Easter and here are the cards I made - I love them and hope you do too!

For this first card I teamed up Smoky Slate with Pink Pirouette, hand colouring the flowers with my Stampin' Write Marker. Did you recognise the En-Francais background stamp?

This second card I used Crumb Cake and Wisteria Wonder and Very Vanilla card stock. On this card I heat embossed the tulip heads with clear embossing powder before colouring them.

I'd love to know what you think so please leave a comment - and I love to see if any of my images get Pinned... I always wonder how many people have to Pin something before one of the people I follow Pins it!

I'm a curious soul! I also have a large box from UPS sitting in my craft room so am off for a play!

Sunny Sunday - World Map v Open Seas and Friendship Preserves v Harvest Blessings!

I don't know about you but I have woken up to gorgeous sunshine this morning. I finally stopped crafting at 3am and discovered lots of other crafters were still on-line. Are we all insomniacs?

I did get lots done and I have 2 cards that will just make it into the challenges for this week by the skin of their teeth!

I have been doing a lot to promote my Stampin' Up! business the last few days and I am amazed at how far and wide you all are. The US, Australia, Malta, Germany, France, the Netherlands... I just couldn't say how many more - I just want to say a huge thank you to you all for following me and I hope you share my posts with your friends - that would be awesome!

The first card today is for the Freshly Made Sketches challenge, as soon as I saw the sketch an idea began to form - it uses one stamp I hadn't opened yet and one I hadn't used for a long while - and I created a masculine card... always useful!

I started by stamping the World Map on Crumb Cake card stock, then dabbed various colour stamp pads on the same stamp and stamped that on Very Vanilla. I cut out a circle with my Circles Framelits and stuck it down. I decided to put it not quite central so I could add the ship from The Open Sea.

Lastly the band is Soft Brown Sugar with Very Vanilla and the sentiment from Blooming with Kindness stamped in Baked Brown Sugar too. Here is the Sketch -

The second card is for the Pals Paper Arts challenge and will hopefully appeal to my American friends - we don't really celebrate Thanksgiving here in the same way, though the churches and schools celebrate Harvest Festival.

The two stamps I used were the 'Hello' from Friendship Preserves, cut out using the co-ordinating framelits and the pumpkins and apples from Harvest Blessings.

The image is coloured using my Stampin' Write markers in Pumpkin Pie, Pear Pizzaz and Baked Brown Sugar.

The textured mat is Baked Brown Sugar cardstock run through the Square Lattice folder which I think has a suitably rustic look. Especially when combined with the strands of Linen Thread.

Another card suitable for either gender.

I'm off to do some household chores now including de-frosting the freezer as 'someone' didn't shut the door properly yesterday (he hates it when I say 'someone' as 'he' knows it's him!).

Enjoy your sunday!

Paula xxx

Hostess Only set...

Today's post contains some really simple single layer cards, all made using the Hostess Only set - Simply Sketched. These Hostess sets are only available to be purchased using Hostess Pounds or On-Line Rewards.

This particular set just ticked all the boxes for me - I will just say - you are not limited to buying Hostess sets with your rewards... you can spend them on anything from the catalogues.

I'm not going to write very much more as I think Simply Sketched speaks for itself...

This first card is the most complex - I heat embossed the poppy on Vellum, dry embossed the top and bottom edges of the Vellum using the Needlepoint Border embossing folder and my Big Shot.

This second card, I coloured the poppy using my Stampin' Write Marker and used the sentiment from Million to One.

This card I coloured using ordinary coloured pencils to follow the Sketch theme.

This is another where I used Million to One. I just love the big bold sentiments in the set.

Finally the little bird was also coloured using my markers and a Blender Pen.

Hope you'll pop back for another post soon!

Paula xxx

Floating Butterfly Card

I'm off to play with a new stamp set in a minute - but I didn't want you to feel neglected!

I got the idea for this card from good old Pinterest... And with my new found love of Window Sheets decided to make a version myself.

You adhere a piece of window sheet to a single layer of card stock so the fold of the card is between the two... Does that make sense? It doesn't sound like it so here's the picture so you can see...

Then when you adhere your element - it could be a bird/bee/flower, anything. It looks like it is suspended in mid air.

I used an image from the Best of Butterflies set and coloured it using my Stampin' Write markers and a blender pen. The flourish is from Flowering Flourishes.

Here's a picture face on.

The sentiment was stamped in Stazon and is from Blooming with Kindness. Hope you like it!

I have such a busy weekend - I'll hopefully be back to post soon. xxx

Pxx

Explosion Box

Hi there!

I've done another video for you today, though it isn't really a tutorial it just shows the explosion box I made.

Looks gorgeous just as it is doesn't it? I'm loving the new Stretch Ruffle Trim in the new In-Colours. It gets even better - just look at the decoration on the lid! The Quatrefancy, Speciality Designer Series Paper is stunning isn't it - You get two window sheets in a pack. But they are fancy ones, so best saved for box making rather than cutting down for this sort of project.

That butterfly is actually sitting on the flower! Held on with a glue dot it is light enough, and the vellum is rigid enough... I stamped the image from Flower Shop and coloured it with my Stampin' Write Markers, punched it out using the Pansy Punch - I call it something else in the video as my mind went blank... But I wasn't going to re-record! The butterfly is from Papillon Potpourri and punched out using the Bitty Butterfly Punch.

Here's my little video!


It's amazing how much seeing something can inspire you! I love using the Brayer and Blender Pens!

Here is the link to Caroline's video tutorial here. I'm so grateful for her inspiration!

Here is a close up of those gorgeous flowers... I just could not live without Vellum and Window Sheets!

Do let me know if you give it a try and I'll be back with something else really soon!

Paula xxxx

Dynamic Duo Challenge

Hi folks - I know... 2 posts in one day! Bet you can hardly believe your luck!

I have 2 reasons for posting again today - firstly because I have Agility training after work tomorrow and will not have time to post and secondly because as well as sharing my challenge entry I have some news!

I am starting up cardmaking and papercraft classes in Risborough - or in your own home if you wish to get a group of friends together. Here is the poster I made:

What do you think of it? I made it with the help of some software new to the UK - MDS (My Digital Studio) It is a Stampin' Up! product that will be available to you soon for the bargain price of just £13.95! It includes a fantastic selection of patterned papers and images from the Stampin' Up! range, including virtual card stock in all the colours so you can create photo pages, scrap books etc. I used the same software to create the video headers on my earlier video. Keep an eye out for more details coming soon.

And here is my Dynamic Duos challenge entry for this week. The colours were Summer Starfruit and Gumball Green, two of the in-colours from 2012-2014... so they're only available for another 12 months!

I have seen this stamp set used in lots of places and fell in love with it - it is called Blooming with Kindness and that blossom is just so stunning with amazing detail!

The stripes were just drawn on with a ruler and my Stampin' Right Markers.

Hope you like it and I'll be back Friday with another challenge entry.

Visit the Dynamic Duos blog here

Monday... Eugh

Well we were supposed to have torrential downpours yesterday and they didn't materialise so hopefully the weather is improving!

Hubby disappeared off to an open mike session at The Swan in Thame and left me to my own devices so I made a couple more cards for a couple more challenges!

This one is a MEGA simple one and once again I got to use my Simply Pressed Clay, some of the retiring Designer Series Papers and a different sentiment from Bring on the Cake. Please note there isn't a hint of Mosaic anything!

The two purple buttons were coloured by adding re-inker and then I put Dazzling Diamonds in the moulds... the pink one at the bottom I embossed with Melon Mambo embossing powder.

It is an entry in the Pals Paper Arts Sketch Challenge and you can visit the blog and look at the other entries Here

Here is my card - I forgot to say I coloured in the letters with my Stampin' Write Markers!

Hope you like it - It's a bright, fresh and fun card... ideal for a youngster!

Back tomorrow!

Pxx

CASE'd card

Many crafters are familiar with the term to CASE, if you aren't it means to Copy And Share Everything.

Last week I CASE'd the lovely Darlene DeVries, one of my very first customers was inspired by Darlene's work and contacted me to buy her Stampin' Up! products.

Darlene did a video tutorial and I decided that although I didn't have any watercolour pencils I could tweak it a bit and use my Stampin' Write Markers and a Blender Pen.

I also used white embossing powder for the flowers.

Here is my card, using the Secret Garden Stamp Set.

You can visit Darlene's blog here and watch her amazing video tutorial.

Thanks for coming back today and I hope you'll come back again soon to see what I have to share!

Paula xxx

Weekend eve...

... nearly the end of the week! Agility was great last night. Blaze is the sweetest and quietest dog but as soon as he sees the equipment he starts shouting at me. I shouldn't encourage him but it does make me laugh! Tomorrow I am off to Didcot for a training day and then a party in the evening! Sunday I'll be cleaning the house! Yeugh.

You know we hardly use our green food waste recycling bin for veggies - the dogs do that for us! Even the outer cabbage and cauliflower leaves are guzzled down! Anyone would think we starved them. Mind you - they are the only 'tit bits' the dogs get. You don't have to feed expensive diets and not feeding RAW doesn't make you a bad owner. All you need to do is make sure the diet is balanced and that treats are not fattening or excessive! Just like humans - the worst way of ensuring your dog is unhealthy and doesn't have a long life is by letting them get fat!

Anyhow - back to the crafting, and today I have a card to enter in the Paper Players Challenge. 

The flower is from Creative Elements and the butterflies are from Papillon Potpourri. To meet the challenge I had to use all four colours which I find is a lot of colours for one card! The little leaves were Lucky Limeade and to incorporate Early Expresso I just accented the stamps using my Stampin' Write Marker. I was going to lave the sentiment off - but it just didn't look right. The card definitely needed it!

If you want to join in or look at the other entries you can visit the blog by clicking the image below.

See ya tomorrow for another card using my Blender Pens...

Pxxx

Bordering on...

...something. But not sure what! I am on a course at work today, so it could be an 'interesting' day. You know how these things go. Sometimes you just wonder how anyone thought up a course on the subject. Now if it were a crafting course I would be much more 'up for it'.

Today's post is the first of 3 showcasing some colouring - it is an entry for Dynamic Duos challenge this week which is to use Pool Party and Lucky Limeade. I'm not keen on Lucky Limeade... so I hope this card is OK as it is definitely not a combo I would have chosen myself. If you click on the Dynamic Duos image in this post it will take you to the challenge blog.

So this is my take on the challenge.

I embossed an image from Bordering on Romance with pool party embossing powder on Vellum cardstock. I then coloured the images using a Blender Pen. Now I would like to have used my Stampin' Write Markers but don't have them in the 2011-13 in-colours, so how did I do it? If you squeeze your stamp pad gently before opening it you have a pool of ink on the lid. Dip in your Blender Pen and you can 'paint' with it. Awesome! I do love the way the ink takes on the Vellum, such a soft effect.

I love to hear what you think and love to see how you manage to use different techniques. Please leave a comment and if you like, a link to your own creations!

See you again tomorrow! xxx

Thursdays CAS Challenge Inspiration #15

I can't believe it is Thursday already! Where do the weeks go? Is it just me or as you get older does the time seem to go faster?

I've been really busy at work this week and am looking forward to Agility with Blaze tonight. Some 'us' time! I had hoped the earlier sunshine this week was a sign of things to come but it's definitely chillier again!

Today the CAS challenge is a colour challenge. I hope you'll join us and encourage your friends to too! The more the merrier and the challenge team do try and leave a comment on every single entry.

Here is my card -

I have used the Secret Garden Stamps and Framelits but also did a little fussy cutting on the flower at the bottom to give myself some layers. The little tag at the top used the Four Frames Stamp Set inked with my Stampin' Write Markers and punched out using the Decorative Label Punch.

Something really feminine and a versatile sentiment from Teeny Tiny Sentiments. Great for any occasion!

Join us at CAS Colours and Sketches! Just click here.