Just a quick one

I thought I would very quickly show a couple of the cards that I made over the past few weeks. The first was one made for the daughter of my DF boss, who was described as very girly and into horses.

I found some images of horses on the internet (thank you whoever took them!) And of course i'd just ordered the Tea Party DSP which covered the 'girly ' element brilliantly.

It turned out that this particular horse was virtually identical to the horse she currently kept, and so i kept it full colour and changed my mind immediately to make an aperture card framing it. Cutting round all the different shapes was quite labour intensive, and if I were making multiple cards I would have thought twice, but as it was a special one off I went full steam ahead.


I made one boo boo though and so an extra little flower was cut out to hide the smudge of elegant eggplant ink that made it onto the sentiment panel (stamp from the Cheers and Wishes set). Finishes it off though? I also trimmed down the flowers on the front to the edge of the main card, allowing it to stand. They loved it, and I was very glad!





The other card was the happy result of an unexpected flash of early morning creativity - one cup of tea and the Bird on a Branch stampt set later and I was rather pleased with it.


I added just a subtle bit of glitter behind the bird, darkened with elegant egglant inking under the heat and stick powder.


And also double inked the sentiment with a light and dark colour (using the faithful Stamp-a-ma-jig) to produce the shadowed effect, which
on the Basic Grey background works beautifully.
Finished of with a liberal daubing of Versamark
around the edge and a frame of black to make the
colours pop out and I was very pleased.


And of course, a bit of Elegant Eggplant grosgrain ribbon, because i'm obsessed.



One day I will have a go at producing a range of items featuring no EE colour at all - as an exercise in restraint!

Exciting News!

For August, Stampin' Up! are promoting the Two Step stamping sets, including the very lovely Bird on a branch, which I shall do my upmost to aquire and show soon, as it has been on my wish list from the start! The 20% off means its a fantastic time to host your party, as you'll get even more from your rewards than usual!

See the flyer for more details and if you have any questions do feel free to contact me via my email!

Getting up and running

After a far longer than planned gap I've decided to show you a little of what i've been doing since I first discovered Stampin' Up! and the wonderful world of papercrafting.

So I shall start with the pretties!

These were inspired by Katou's lovely gift boxes, complete with these folded dahlias made from Tea Party designer series paper (which I literally just got and I'm completely in love with!)

They were printed using the Bella Toile background stamp and the large flourish from the Baroque Motifs set. Stamped on vellum in the new season shade Rich Razzleberry - which I'm in wonderful danger of overusing - they have a lovely old time look and finished with a Rhinestone Brad they have just a little bit of sparkle to finish them off.

I'm not so pleased with the strips of paper in the middles though - apparently if you catch vellum on a bad day you will never get it to curl!

But I'm endeavouring to learn the secret and will share when I do.

The Dahlias are made from squares of your chosen paper, folded into a cone to form each 'petal', they are then glued to a scalloped circle, to form the shape. More detailed instruction are on Katous site, with the English translation under the French.

The smaller of the two was made to the original sizes (2" and 1.5" squares, with the only difference being that I rounded the outer corners first with a punch and finished by sponging Rich Razzleberry onto the outer edges to darken them. The second was made with 3" and 4" squares, again with rounded corners but no sponging - letting the Baroque Motifs speak for itself!

Incidentally I found that a lovely life-like petal colouring was achieved by sponging the (still flat) paper first in 'wiping' gestures off the edge of the paper, then in 'dabbing' gestures afterwards.
(holding the petal between your thumb and forefinger with your thumb pointing toward the rounded corner gives it some support so that it doesn't crease) You could also build up a very dense amount of colour, giving a dramatic effect.







The picture below shows this a little, but the flower that shows it best was adopted very quickly by my partners mother - photo's when I get it back, I promise.
Before I sign off i wanted to show these, which I saw and had to have a go at, again I've given them just a bit of sparkle with a rhinestone brad. They are originally by the amazing paper flower maker Joanne and there's a great video showing you how to make them here.















Next time I'm hoping to post the cake box templates I've made. Why more cake boxes with the plethora available on line already? Well I couldn't find one with a rounded outside edge, and something in me just needed a rounded outside edge. I've also done them in three different sizes, for easy tiering.

Some of the other bits I've been doing, including the voucher wallet made for my dear fellas birthday today are conical favour boxes, pop up cards for a friends daughters birthday and hopefully, lots of invitations for a wedding fair stall coming up in September, which i'm doing with Caroline who is very good at them -so watch out for them.


Until then, have fun.