A shameless "Paige-Lift"

I printed this photo from the John Lewis Partnership website. This is my sister Natalie, proudly modelling some posh Waitrose cheese on the Deli where she works. We've been teasing her about being the face of Waitrose as her photo appeared on the front page of the site. (We tease her, but we are all actually incredibly proud of how well she is getting on at work ;0). 

This LO is an shameless scrap lift of a LO Paige completed for the WCC Challenge. I was looking for a bit of inspiration for what to do with my photo. I had picked my Waitrose colour inspired cardstock and papers but didnt quite know what to do with them. This has turned out perfectly. I embellished with a crown from the On Board Mix and Match set from Stampin' Up!. The colour scheme is Old Olive and Night of Navy. Note sure where the papers are from. They were just tucked away in my paper stash. And I finally got to use my Colour Spritzer Tool on the background of the LO (I do so love splodging ink everywhere!)

This is my creation for the Week 41 Wight Craft Circle challenge- Space. I do have difficulty leaving large areas unembellished on my LOs. And I did still have to splodge a fair bit of Night of Navy around on the Old Olive. But I'm really pleased with how it has turned out ;0) Thank you for the inspiration P.

-XXX-

Shimelle's Sketch of the Week

I know I said this before. But I am loving following these sketches. For someone who had been suffering with serious scrapbookers block I now have 3 new pages in my album that I love ;0) And to top it all off, my last weeks LO was included in Shimelle's round up of peoples sketch interpretations, see here. That made me smile all day when I saw it as it gave me a bit of a confidence boost.

I've kept this weeks LO quite simple. I thought the sketch lent itself quite nicely to letting the papers and photos tell the story. I've had a stack of photos in my photo folder from my year in New York and I've not really known what to do with them. But when I saw the sketch was for two 4x6 pictures I instantly knew which two pictures to use. I just love all old style street lamps like those in the photos. I have so many pictures that I have taken around New York and Central Park of just the street lights. So now I can finally document this love. I had such a fun day the day I took the photo of my NY friends Francesca and Lizzo swinging round a lamp post. It used to be one of our favourite Sunday post-brunch activities (not quite as exciting as the Toys R Us Ferris Wheel though)- walking round Central Park come rain, snow or shine ;0)

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Mum's Birthday Cards

It was my Mum's birthday yesterday so I thought I would share a couple of hybrid Cricut/Stampin' Up! Birthday cards my sister and I made.

For the first card I used my favourite Sweet & Sour Papers to layer up the Hibiscus image. I also used Rose Red and Pumpkin Pie cardstock for the letters and main card base. I accessorised with Basic Rhinestones and Crystal Effects.

 The second card was made by my sister using Pear Pizzazz, Tempting Turquoise, Garden Green & Wild Wasabi (although you can hardly tell the difference between the last two greens in this photo!). We covered the Wild Wasabi turtle shell with Crystal Effects (I seem to be using this a lot at the mo). The flowers are from a US Stampin' Up! DSP stack. I've got my fingers crossed we might see these in our catalogue soon.

Thanks for stopping by. Just wanted to share how I've been using my Christmas pressie and putting my SU stash to very good use.

If you have any questions, or if you would like to take advantage of my Free P & P offer (above), please do not hesitate to get in touch: poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 07830 343830.

Happy crafting ;0)

Sale-A-Bration Good Luck

Been working on a few cards and LOs this evening. I made this card for two colleagues who are leaving the office next week. Wanted to make something from the office to wish them well with their new venture.

For this I used Wild Wasabi, Concord Crush and Pear Pizzazz (including the In Colour DSP stack). I also used the Punch Bunch and So Happy For You Sale-A-Bration stamp sets for the owls and sentiment. (The red is my table cloth and not part of the card!)

If you'd like any further info about Stampin Up or Sale-A-Bration, please do not hesitate to get in touch: poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 01983 609249.

Happy Crafting ;0)

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Sale-A-Bration Blog Hop

Well here is my first contribution towards a blog hop. I've seen so many and been inspired by projects I've seen on others that when the post went up on In Love With Stamping about a Sale-a-Bration themed hop, I couldn't resist joining in. So hello to everyone joining in and to everyone that has arrived here from Julie's blog, Julie's Japes. For regular readers of my blog, you will probably understand my excitement at being next in the hop from Julie as I have linked to her blog many times previously. She was a huge inspiration to me when I was starting out as a Demonstrator and she is incredibly creative (if you're reading this Julie, a big thank you to you!).

So here are my Sale-A-Bration creations:

A 6x6" mini scrapbook page using the 'Bliss' SAB set. My colour combo is Not Quite Navy, Baja Breeze, Pear Pizzazz and Poppy Parade (with a touch of Peach Parfait thrown in for good measure). I used paper from the In Colour DSP stack and accessorised with flower brads from the Brights collection. To finish off I added texture/dimension by covering my letters (cut on my Cricut) with Crystal Effects. For this page I tried to pick up on the colours of the watermelon and use this as the colour theme. And 'Bliss' just about sums up how my dog looks when she is eating a treat like this ;0)

 A mini desk calender using 'Bliss' and the In Colours. I used the stamp off/stamp on technique to give the faded image effect on the pages of the calender. This colour combo is one of my favourites: Peach Parfait and Pear Pizzazz. DSP from the In Colour stack. Accessorised with Regals brads, self adhesive Pearls and Gems.

Thank you all for stopping by. Now click on over to Hayley's blog for the next step in the hop.

Happy crafting ;0)
-XXX-

Shimelle's Sketch of the Week

Over on Shimelle.com the latest Scrapbook Sketch of the Week has been posted and I had the luxury of a night all to myself. So I decided to sit down with my Christmas photos and have a go at the sketch. Once again having the sketch as a prompt really helped to get me into a scrapbooking frame of mind.

I loved this sketch as it allowed me to use this gorgeous paper. I've had this for a while and not known what to do with it as I didnt want to cover the bird. So this was perfect. Having recently packed up all my Christmas accessories and embellishments and put them away for next years Journal Your Christmas, it was quite a treat to get them out again so soon and craft with them again ;0)

This also fits beautifully with the Wight Craft Circle's Week 44 Challenge to create a Christmas LO. I've got so many copies of these photos that I'll probably be scrapping them in some variation all year. But they are so joyful that I cannot resist keep using them.

Thank you for stopping by and happy crafting.

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My new weekly project

My Mum gave me this lovely Paperchase Kraft 10x10 album a few months ago. I decided to save it to start a weekly 2011 journal. I loved Journal Your Christmas so much and knew I'd miss the routine of regular journalling. Plus when it came to journalling about 2010 I found my memory failed me so I wanted to keep a regular picture and word journal of this year. And the bonus of it will be that it'll remind me to take more photos. I am going to keep my embellishments simple and try to create more one layer pages so as to not overload the binding (and hopefully it'll sit nicely on my bookcase).

So here it is. I inserted an acetate page in first for my title page. I used the Stampin' Up! Sweet & Sour Papers for my title pages (I so love this colour combo! I would never have put Rose Red and Pumpkin Pie together). I punched a circle from the lower right of the acetate and created a window for the '2011' of the title. You can also see I'm getting to grips with my new Cricut ;0)

 I backed the title page acetate with another layer of Sweet & Sour DSP and inserted a recent photo (Christmas Day) of me. I dont usually like to scrapbook photos of just me. But I wanted to use a recent image of myself just so I have a point of comparison for when I look back at the end of the year. This is me playing with my Christmas Cricut on Christmas Day. Please note how I tried to colour match my top with the scrapbook page *lol*. 

 This is my intro page and my plans for the journal.

And here is my first photo page (using the retired Night and Day SU DSP). This reflects how my family and I welcomed in the New Year sending our 2011 wishes into the sky on Chinese Lanterns. I used this sketch on Shimelle's website as the inspiration for this LO. Using the sketch really got me into a scrapbooking frame of mind again. I did use quite a few layers of paper for this LO (and i would have LOVED to have used some of my new chipboard shapes but could not layer it up too much! I definitely learned that lesson with my JYC! I have 50 more weeks to scrapbook so I cannot afford to overfill the album). I wanted splashes of colour to reflect the flames of the lanterns. I didnt use all the elements of the sketch. But enough to make me happy with my LO.

I did create another page which was solely journalling (I spiralled my journalling out from the centre of the page). However, it was all a bit personal for photographing. Its so therapeutic writing it all down and putting it out there. Fingers crossed for 50 more pages of excitement and a great year ahead......

Happy crafting all

-XX-

Weekend crafting

Wow, another weekend has flown past! I just wanted to show you a beautiful card I made this weekend. This was inspired by this stunning card over on fellow SU Demonstrator Julie Kettlewell's blog. I thought this was such a fantastic use of the Sale-A-Bration Bliss Butterfly I wanted to give it a go myself. Unfortunately, the products/colours used for my version of the card are now retired. However, the fantastically versatile Curly Label punch and Thank You Kindly stamp set are available from the current catalogue. And the card would work in any colour combination.

To receive the Bliss stamp set for free. All you need to do is place an order for £45 from the current catalogue and receive a Sale-A-Bration set for free. And you'll also gain an entry into my Sale-A-Bration promotion to win a Level 1 Hostess Set and £15 of free product (as well as free P&P if your order is collected from me). Just drop me an email: poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or give me a call on 01983 609249 or 07830 343830. I look forward to helping you with your order soon ;0)

And lastly, just a quick photo for those that asked. Here is the reverse of the journalling card on my earlier layout (see here). These are the pictures of the '5 Things I love right now'. As you can see, I wasnt entirely sure what to do with the pictures, hence their hidden on my finished LO.

Right, back to crafting for the last few hours of Sunday! I have a few LOs to share with you in the upcoming days as well as a Sale-A-Bration Blog Hop on Saturday.

-XXX-

Stampin' Up's Sale-a-bration is here - Free Stamps!!!!!

The most anticipated special offer of the Stampin' Up year has arrived. Sale-a-bration runs from now till 28th Feb and for every £45 you spend you can choose a FREE stamp set - yes a whole unique stamp set that have never been available before and won't be available for purchase ever! And its a free set with every £45 you spend so if you spend £90 you can choose two FREE sets!


If you host a workshop during sale-a-bration and the product sales come to more than £300 not only do you receive the super generous hostess benefits of £35 of free goods and a level 2 hostess stamp set but you can also choose an additional sale-a-bration set absolutely free! I would love to come and run a workshop in your home with your and your friends so get in touch to book a date.


You can choose from four stamp sets in the Sale-a-bration leaflet and they are all gorgeous.


Here are the details of the FREE stamp sets which are all available in wood and clear mount.

The set below fits all our punches too so you can stamp and punch - quick and easy.

NB Please note that the owl punch is not available at the moment but will be available to purchase later in the year.

We all need more sentiment stamps and these are perfect for so many occasions.

 I cannot wait to get my hands on the set below. I just love the 'Bliss' and the butterfly stamp. Samples to follow....

Also, if you decide to become a demonstrator with Stampin Up during Sale-A-Bration, you can also choose an additional stamp set up to the value of £44.95 from the main catalogue as well as receiving all the free goodies in the starter kit all for £119 and no delivery charge.  I have some more information on my team blog (The Wight Stampers- I've had a team rebrand!) or you can call me or email me for more information and grab this fantastic offer.

If you have any questions or would like to book a workshop or place an order, please get in touch: poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk, 01983 609249 or 07830 343830. Please leave a message and I'll always call you back.

Happy New Year Crafting ;0)

WCC Challenge Week 42

I spent another lovely crafty evening out last night. I went with the sole ambition of completing my 'Year in Review' LO for the Wight Craft Circle scrapbooking challenge. Part of me really wanted to scraplift the LO completed by Sam and Paige for this challenge (see here) but I dont have a 1 inch square punch and I'd already printed the 12 photos for my LO. And yes I do realise the deliberate mistake. I had printed the 12 and then realised I had one portrait and 11 landscape photos. What a wally I am! Anyways, easily solved, I just turned the photo on its side. Looks a bit weird. But I'm guessing most people won't notice unless I point it out *laugh* The background paper is a retired SU paper from the Night and Day collection.

This LO was near impossible to photograph at 7am this morning. I tried it all over the place trying to get enough light. The camera want having any of it. But I hope you get the idea. I wanted to go for a black and white theme with a splash of colour with the journalling tags at the top and the same colour mini butterflies scattered across the LO. I think there are a couple of things I would change with the position of the wording if I did this again.  But all in all I'm pretty pleased with it and it looks lovely in my album.

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Sweet Summer and Crop Make

This evening I decided to sit down and have another play with my Sale-a-bration sets and mix them up with my new Cricut cartridge. I cut the square and tree with my Cricut then mixed these elements with stamped and hand cut images from the Sweet Summer stampset. The leaf border is also from the same set. The colour scheme is Wild Wasabi and Garden Green with a hint of Pumpkin Pie and Baja Breeze (mainly just for a square border on the inside). The greeting is from another Sale-A-Bration set, So Happy For You. The felt flower embellishments are now sadly retired so I use these sparingly, but felt my card needed a bit of colour to brighten it up.

 Here is the LO I completed on Saturday at the WCC crop. The challenge for week 43 was '6 Things I Love Right Now'. Well for some reason I only printed 5 photos. Then when it came to lay them all out I couldnt make them make sense. So instead I decided to mix it up and make a LO with hidden photos! The pics are on on the back of the DSP insert. I used some lovely Stampin' Up! retired DSP for this LO (the Sweet Pea Designer Series Paper Stack) embellished with cut out doilie shapes from a printed sheet of acetate I found in my mixed papers (no idea where it came from but glad I have now found a use for it).

In case you were wondering, the 5 things I listed/pictured on the back of the journalling insert are:

1) Cee Lo Green's album 'The Ladykiller'

2) My new multi coloured coat bought in the Jan sales

3) Frazzles! I love them. I'm having a retro snack moment ;0)
4) My Cricut

5) The Night Sky app on my android phone.

I haven't scrapbooked properly for a while so I had fun playing with my embellishments and papers again. I have my eye on a couple of LOs I might have to have a go at. Hopefully I'll be back in the swing in no time....

For any questions about Stampin' Up!, Sale-a-bration or to place an order, please do not hesitate to get in touch: poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 01983 609249.

Happy Crafting ;0)

-XX-

A big crafty catch up

Today has been a busy day crafting wise. I spent the day with my lovely WCC friends in Binstead working on finishing my JYC and catching up with 'Scrap With Us' challenges. So I have a few things to upload and show you this evening (and a few other items I've been working on that will be uploaded on January 23rd for a blog hop I am taking part in!).

First things first, here is my first Sale-a-bration sample! I have seen so many beautiful projects out there on blogland using the SAB sets. Mine only arrived yesterday so I've been itching to get on and have a play with the lovely sets (which you can receive for free with any £45 Stampin' Up! purchase!). For this card I used Sweet Summer. This is a card inspired by Pam Morgan's presentation on stage at Convention. She demonstrated the white crayon/brayering technique and i've been searching high and low for a white crayon (you really wouldnt have thought it was so difficult would you?) so that I could try my own version of her card. I used the Colour Coach for my colour inspiration- Riding Hood Red, Baja Breeze & Peach Parfait. I love the extra touch with the PP Poly Ribbon and gemstones in the centre of the flowers. I will be teaching this card in next Saturday's class for all my lovely card class ladies. If you'd like to come along and learn this technique also, I have a couple of spaces available for my Wednesday January 19th class (7-9.45pm) so please get in touch (poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 01983 609249).

 And now on to the final pages for my Christmas Journal. The prompts ran right up until January 6th but sadly my folder just couldn't fit any more pages in. Plus the week between Christmas in New Year was so chilled that I am pretty sure I would have fallen behind with the daily prompts anyhow. I will however be joining in again next year and I will be working on using some of the prompts I missed then.

I summarised Christmas week in just 2 layouts. I included info on all the things I got up to with my family and Sam including a trip to see Burlesque with my sis, a trip to see Paul O'Grady in Panto with Sam, a walk on the beach with my family and lovely dog. Its all a bit jumbled but captures all the important info and emotions of the time I spent with loved ones over Christmas. I tucked my journalling away behind the Burlesque postcard (I just kept running out of space on my pages for everything I wanted to say- note to self for next year- focus more on the words!).

 I printed out a long piece of journalling (a sort of letter to myself about 2010) which I placed in the envelope on the 'Year in Review' page. I had a lot of things I wanted to say and sort of emotionally close the door on and leave in 2010. So I poured it all into my letter and placed it in there just to round off my journal. When I was younger I always kept a daily diary and found it quite therapeutic writing everything down. I havent done that for years. But doing JYC taught me quite a lot about remembering things and the therapy in words. So I am starting up my own weekly journal for 2011 to help me remember what is going on (and encourage me to take more photos too!).  My final final page of the journal is a digital layout I completed the other night with my new scrapbooking programme. Its quite basic as digital scrapbooking goes. But I made it with a view to printing it for my final page. A look ahead to my hopes for 2011.

 So here it is. The monster that became my Christmas 2010! Thank you for all your lovely comments over the past month. I look forward to keeping up with all your blogs through the year now too.

Got a couple of challenge layouts that I completed today. I will upload these tomorrow. In the mean time, Happy crafting ;0)

-XX-

JYC Days 24 and 25

 I've finally got around to taking photos of JYC Days 24 and 25. I did a single page for Christmas Eve and 5 pages (we took a lot of photos) for Christmas Day. This leaves me with one page and the back cover to complete the journal. Shimelle sends optional prompts to take your Journal through to January 5th. However, this week has been so hectic and my journal is so thick already, I decided I would take it to Christmas with a summary of the year and then looking ahead to 2011 and call that complete ;0) Plus it has been such a relief to pack away all the Christmas craft bits (the pile started the month tidily in one box but began to take over my life and house!)

So here we go.... Day 24: Christingle and a tour of the local Christmas lights. I love my nativity stamp and dont get to use it enough so I was happy to have the opportunity to include it here. And the Christmas lights on Perowne Way in Sandown were so impressive I had to take a picture and include it here.

I used the Stampin' Up! Christmas Jingle Scrap Kit to create my Christmas Day title page which includes a lovely family shot of all of us before Christmas dinner.

I used an empty Gift Card envelope (and also included the used card as I thought it was so festive!) for my journalling for the day. The card already had a pull tab for removing the insert. So I created a frame on the back and wrote all about my family Christmas on this. I then used the back cover of the envelope for including a couple more photos. I made two pockets by using empty After Eight wrappers (what Christmas is complete without After Eights?) and slipped a photo of Kala and a photo of the Christmas table into these.

 The final two pages are photo pages. I loved that we managed to capture some gorgeous family shots and wanted these all included. As i'd already journalled in the gift card I didnt add any extra writing to the pages. The first photo below was captured for Mum's new scrapbook about her knitting makes. She had made us each a hand knitted scarf for Christmas and wanted a photo with us all wearing her makes.

Here is my first card made with my new Cricut and the ZooBalloo cartridge. It is my cousin's baby's first birthday this week and Mum and I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to try out the cartridge. I've spent the week using up little odds and ends of cardstock cutting out shapes and alphas. Its a little bit addictive!

And lastly, here is the layout in a frame I created for my friend Natalie for Christmas. I thought this fitted well with the Wight Craft Circle Week 39 Challenge, Scrap Your Friends. I took this photo on a day out together in Bucks earlier in the year and saved it to create a pressie LO. I left the journalling tag blank for her and Ben to write in themselves.

For any further information on Stampin' Up!'s products or to book a workshop please do not hesitate to get in touch, poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 01983 609249.

Happy New Year Crafting ;0)

-XX-

Happy New Year

Happy 2011!

Thank you all for reading my blog in 2010 and for supporting me in getting started with Stampin' Up! I look forward to seeing what 2011 has in store craft wise. I look forward to meeting new crafters and welcoming new demonstrators to my Stampin' Up! team too ;0) 

Here is how I spent my New Years Eve.... with the bestest of company playing Wii games (I am sooooo good at the film questions on Wii Trivial Pursuit). We finally managed to get a whole family shot (we are never all in one place at the same time!). So we have, (back) Dad, Mum, Littlest Sister Soph, Me, my other half Sam, (front) Middle Sister Nat, Kala the boxer & Josh (Nat's partner). I can feel a scrapbooking LO coming on ;0)

 

At midnight to celebrate the arrival of 2011 and also as its my 30th birthday, we each set off a Chinese Lantern over Queen Bower (they really do look like UFOs if you dont know what they are!). I sent off my wishes for the upcoming year and will be keeping my fingers crossed that 2011 brings us all want we are hoping for. 

Right, normal crafting service shall resume from now. I have a few projects to share so I will be posting these asap. I have the final few pages of my JYC to post as well as some projects I've been making with my brand new lovely Cricut I got for Christmas.

Happy New Year and happy 2011 crafting

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