WOYWW

I can actually post on Wednesday this week (thank you Blogger). Although I then realised I have very little of interest to share on my desk today. Most of my craft working this week has been done downstairs on my front room table. I'm still in the process of my months classes so the majority of my crafting bits are downstairs (they haven't migrated back upstairs to the craft room).

My sister is coming over today for a scrapbooking day so this will all be tidied in the very foreseeable future (you can also see I have stocked up on the essential Haribo for crafting in the background! What crafting day or crop is complete without Starmix?).

Julia has a guest blogger this week, Jan, so hop on over to Stamping Ground to see her lovely makes and craft desk. Now I'm off to visit some craft desks........

Wimbledon Inspiration

I saw this card a few months ago over on Mary Fish's blog. It is such an ingenious use of the Scalloped Heart of Hearts Embosslit. This inspired me to purchase the embosslit and have a go. I loved the result so much that I taught this in this months card classes.

It is such a summery card, perfect for any Wimbledon fan.

Uses:

Cardstock: Crumb Cake, Whisper White & Real Red
Embosslit: Scalloped Heart of Hearts
Punches: Boho Blossoms, XL Bird Punch
Stamps: Curly Cute
Accessories: Subtles Brads, Ribbon (Non- SU)

Happy Crafting ;0)

A very Glee-ful weekend

This is an entirely craft free post (and I also recommend that if you're not a fan of Glee you look away now!).

So yesterday I made the trip up to the O2 to see the Glee Live show with my Uni friend Lisa. Our birthdays are a few days apart and we wanted to do something to celebrate our 30ths. So we booked ourselves tickets for the Glee spectacular (both being huge musical fans. We studied Film & TV together at Warwick- Glee was our perfect present to ourselves!)

Well can I just say, WOW!!! I've seen a lot of concerts in my time, but this was possibly the best 1h20m of live music I've ever seen. It flew by and I was so disappointed when it was over (and I also wondered where my voice had gone to in such a short space of time!).

The set list was as follows:

1.Don't Stop Believin' (Journey cover)

2.Dog Days Are Over (Florence and The Machine cover)

3.SING (My Chemical Romance cover)
4.I'm a Slave 4 U (Britney Spears cover)
5.Fat Bottomed Girls (Queen cover)
6.I Want to Hold Your Hand (The Beatles cover)
7.P.Y.T. (Michael Jackson cover
8.Born This Way (Lady Gaga cover)
9.Firework (Katy Perry cover)
10.Teenage Dream (Warblers)
11.Silly Love Songs (Warblers)
12.Raise Your Glass (Warblers)
13.Happy Days Are Here Again / Get Happy (Barbra Streisand cover)
14.Lucky (Jason Mraz cover)
15.River Deep, Mountain High (Ike & Tina Turner cover)
16.Jessie's Girl (Rick Springfield cover) 
17.Valerie (Any Winehouse cover)
18.Loser Like Me
Encore:

19.Safety Dance (Men Without Hats cover)
20. Single Ladies (Beyonce)
21.Empire State of Mind (Jay-Z cover)
22.Somebody to Love (Queen cover)

All firm Glee favourites (and probably explains where my voice has gone too to!). I took about 300 photos as I was just loving it all so much. Here are some of my favourites:

My Chemical Romance- Sing

 Britney and Mr Schu having a chat-

 Mercedes popped up on a mini stage right next to us (not sure about the orientation? Blogger having a funny 5 again).

 Tina and Kurt getting their Gaga on-

 Glee wouldnt be Glee without Sue-

 Or the Warblers-

 Kurt and Rachel on the mini stage-

 All the Single Ladies-

 Kurt on the mini stage-

Right, I have to be on a bus in 5 mins so I better post this right now.

Happy Monday all ;0)

-X-

Card Class Makes Part 2

So here is how I spent my afternoon. I made this matching set of a card and Top Note gift bag using the beautiful Blueberry Crisp Designer Series Paper.

The card is made with the Always Elegant stampset. The colour scheme is Not Quite Navy, Very Vanilla and Pacific Point (ink). I have embellished the beautiful flourish with basic pearls. Other tools used: Scallop Edge Punch, Oval Punch, Scallop Oval Punch.

 The matching set:

 I made this bag using the Big Shot Top Note die, Scallop Circle die and to embellish I used a designer button and a length of Baja Breeze Seam Binding Ribbon. Again the papers are the stunning Blueberry Crisp DSP. I cannot believe I have had these in my paper box unopened for a couple of months. I am so in love with them now. I have already planned my weekly journal page using these papers.

And I would have used a crafting circle of velcro to hold the flap down, however, I remembered just as I finished the project that I had used them all to suspend my glitter glues upside down in my craft room, so a dimensional works just as well ;0)

Happy Friday Crafting to you all. Hooray for the weekend I say ;0)
-XX-

A new class make

 Right, well I know Julia's blog invites us to share our workdesks on a Wednesday but Blogger and I had a disagreement yesterday, so I am posting my workdesk photo today instead. Yesterdays photo shows the crafting I have been working on for Saturdays card class. You can see the card on my cutting mat that I was prepping. I did sort of have to push everything to the edges of my desk to do this. Otherwise I end up losing the bits I am cutting.

I dont get to join in with WOYWW every week. But I do so love hopping round seeing everyone elses desks and creativity. But now I have a fully functioning craft room, I am hoping to participate a bit more often.

And as I haven't been able to post anything crafty all week I am posting this close up pic of the card from above (this was meant to be todays post anyhow! Now I am running behind with my weeks blogging- cheers Blogger!). This was inspired by a card I saw over on Lindsey's blog. I just loved the colour combo (Riding Hood Red and Not Quite Navy). I also think the Sail Away stamp looks beautiful paper pieced. This is one of the cards I will be teaching on Saturday. Please get in touch for any further info: poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 01983 609249.

Build a Blossom Fish Tank

I hadn't even thought of creating a fish using the Build a Blossom stamp set until I saw Peg's recent blog post over on Pegcraftalot. What a fantastic idea!!!  So here is my attempt.  I used several of the Blossom stamps to make this combination of little fishes which I then cut out and stuck onto my tempting turquoise base with dimensionals.

This card is my Father's Day card for Dad. I attempted to make it look like a postcard (using non SU stamps from my stash) as he will be away on an exciting road trip through Canada with Mum and my littlest sister on the actual date of Fathers Day (Happy Fathers Day Dad if you are reading this!). I made this well in advance so Mum could tuck it away in her luggage and give it to him today.

I've been looking at a few challenge blogs recently and came across Simply Stampin' yesterday. Their theme for the week is 'You've Got Male' and I thought this card would be perfect. Although not classically masculine in colour or design, it is perfect for any fish loving Dads or partners out there. I chose this design for Fathers Day as my Dad has just built himself a gorgeous little pond in the garden and he loves all things fishy ;0)

For this card I used:

Cardstock: Glossy White, Tempting Turquoise, So Saffron
Stamps: Build a Blossom, Plane and Simple (Greeting) and Just Believe (for the seaweed)
Ink: Peach Parfait, Poppy Parade, Pumpkin Pie, Old Olive, Night of Navy
Other: Dimensionals

Any questions about Stampin' Up! or their products, please get in touch: poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 01983 609249.

Happy crafting ;0)
-x-

Wedding Acceptance Mark 2

So yesterday I sat down to create a wedding acceptance card for my dear school and Uni friends Natalie and Will. A few months ago I sat down and created them 75 wedding invitations with an Autumnal/Harvest theme. So to RSVP to their wedding I thought I would use the offcuts from their invites to make them a matching acceptance card.

I used strips of Cajun Craze, More Mustard, Crumb Cake and off cuts of the leaf stamped Whisper White to make a woven pattern which I then embossed with the Square Lattice Embossing Folder for the Big Shot. I then ran the embossed criss cross papers through the Big Shot again and cut a Top Note shape. I then mounted this onto a More Mustard card base. I tied a length of Early Espresso satin ribbon through the top of the card and tied in a knot to theme with the tie around on their wedding invites.

To finish I created the 'Accept' using a small sheet of Vellum and the Jumble Alphabet with Cajun Craze ink and attached the writing to the More Mustard layer with Cajun Craze brads.

 Here is the original invitation I made for them. This used a leaf stamp from a retired Hostess set stamped randomly in So Saffron, Cajun Craze and More Mustard. I used matching cardstock to create the base layer and wrap around sleeve. I used the Schoolbook Serif and Just Perfect Alphabets to create the monogram and punched with the large oval punch. The 'You're Invited' is stamped from the Cheer and Wishes stamp set and punched with the Modern Label punch,

Hope you are all having a lovely weekend. What happened to our beautiful sunshine in the UK? I need to book a holiday I reckon just to get a little Vitamin D.

Happy weekend crafting ;0)

-XX-

Wedding Acceptance

Here is a simple wedding acceptance card I have made for my friend who is getting married in August. I saw a similar card on Julie Kettlewell's blog and thought I would adapt it for my acceptance note. I had to add the hearts raised on dimensionals as I had an inkage issue (I somehow smudged the P down the white C/S). I am going to have a go later at making another version of this for a September wedding I am going to (I also made the wedding invitations for the September nuptuals so I am going to tie my acceptance in with the invite theme).

Uses:
Colour scheme: Poppy Parade & Not Quite Navy
In Colour DSP Paper Stack
Basic Rhinestones
Stamps: Broadsheet Alpha, Just Perfect Alpha
Punch: Heart To Heart
Other: Dimensionals

And to tie in with the Poppy Parade theme of this post here is a picture from my garden. These poppies started sprouting up in the gaps between my paving. I didn't have the heart to dig them out so left them to grow into these beautiful (if not massively huge and space taking up) flowers.

Happy Friday Crafting ;0)
-xxx-

Botanical Gazette Scrapbook Layouts

I finally got around to photographing my finished layouts for this months scrapbooking class. I themed this months pages around the Botanical Gazette Designer Series Paper and Nature Walk stampset. I tried to decide on a central 'technique' for the evening and I ended up choosing homemade embellishments as the focus. This gave me the perfect opportunity to showcase the lovely Stampin' Up! Bevelled Window Panes framed with Baja Breeze Glass Glitter.

Now when I first got my hands on the Bevelled Windows from the Stampin' Up! mini catalogue I am not afraid to admit that I didnt have the foggiest what to do with them. But now I have had a bit of a play and started trying different effects with them I am slightly hooked on using them. I have exclusively been using them to highlight specific areas on my scrapbooking LOs and havent even started with cardmaking (I can feel another Window Pane order coming on....).

The first LO features a Cherry Cobbler base layer and uses elements from several designs from the Botanical Gazette DSP. I have also stamped the matching butterfly image from the Nature Walk stamp set and framed this within the Bevelled Window. I have created embellishments with my Blossom Punch and Basic Pearls. And the title was stamped with my Just Perfect Alphabet and matching sized circle punch.

 The second LO was created using two 4x6 prints. The handmade embellishment element on this page is the chipboard tree. I will be teaching the paper covering technique to my ladies in the class and showing how effective creating perfectly matched chipboard embellishments can be in scrapbooking. The Nature Walk bird has been heat embossed in gold and cut out. I have raised this with dimensionals layered on top of Old Olive ribbon and a branch punched with the Bird Punch. I have stamped the title in gold on Very Vanilla and Cherry Cobbler.

Any questions about Stampin' Up! or to book your place on any of my monthly classes, please get in touch: poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 609249.

Happy crafting ;0)
-X-

Hawaii Scrapping

I'm home from my camping adventure over the (rainy) weekend. I definitely need a holiday to recover from the long weekend. Although I have to say the weekend highlight for me was definitely attempting to take down the tent in the driving rain and wind. I don't think I have laughed that hard in ages. Although driving back to the island with soggy feet wasn't so much fun.

But back to crafting. Here are a couple of layouts I completed last week whilst at a local crafty evening. I was lacking in inspiration but went through my photo stack and came across these and then all of a sudden my mojo returned and I created two pages that I love.

Now these are Stampin' Up! but not that you'd know as they were given to me from the US catalogue last year. These lovely tropical papers were in the US mini catalogue and had a stamp set to match. I just adore them and keep hoping they might make an appearance over here so I can restock on papers (and get the matching stamps). These papers fitted perfectly with the Hawaiian theme of my LOs and I couldn't resist using them (they've been in my 'to be looked at only' pile for a while. I do so love to keep my favourite papers and just stroke them from time to time).

I used a base cardstock of 12x12 textured Whisper White for both LOs (sorry they've gotten a bit lost on the white background).

The first LO features a Bevelled Window Pane to highlight the gorgeous little Tempting Turquoise turtle. I've kept the embellishment quite simple to feature the papers as the LO star.

For this page I cut smaller squares from the tropical DSP and laid them as the background. I used a Melon Mambo cardstock layer trimmed to slightly larger than the 6x4 photo to frame the picture. I then cut the flowers from the matching DSP. I used an 'Aloha' charm from a broken keychain as an extra corner embellishment. I also used two lengths of In Colour polyribbon (Pear Pizzazz and Peach Parfait) along the bottom of the photo. Again, a simple but effective LO which makes a feature of both the photo and the beautiful DSP.

 And now for a few camping photos for Mum to see (she is currently off adventuring with my Dad and youngest lil sister). I thought I would share the highlights (which are sure to be scrapbooked very soon!).

Me and Kala keeping warm in the tent (on a very unsteady but old faithful camping chair). it was certainly chilly in the evenings.

 Sam, Kala and I took a sunset stroll on Chesil Beach.

The view of Chesil Beach from the campsite.

 Sam and Kala overlooking Chesil Beach from the hills of Portland.

Happy crafting all ;0)

Weekly Journal Catch Up

So I've had a major catch up with my weekly journal. I'd fallen 4 weeks behind with my pages and I'd collected together a few tickets and photos I wanted to scrapbook. So I sat down yesterday and created these pages in one go. I feel so much better for catching up and getting up to date. I had a list of things I wanted to capture in my journalling so it was important to me that I took my time to get each page just right.

Week 19: Water For Elephants

I loved the Sara Gruen book 'Water for Elephants' when I read it a few years ago. I wanted to dedicate a page in my journal to it as I finally got to the cinema to see the film. The elephant stamp is from a retired Level 1 Hostess Set 'Out of the Box'.

 Week 20: Dad's Pond
Dad's birthday pressie this year was a new pond built into Mum's old vege patch. Its taken a couple of weeks to complete but now its up and running its a lovely calming place to sit and watch the fish.

 Week 21: Pirates
There is a lot more to this page but I had to crop the photo to hide the jornalling. This page used a lot of old scraps of cardstock up. I used mainly: Tempting Turquoise, Elegant Eggplant and Night of Navy. I was trying to tie the colours into the Pirates of the Caribbean photo (and ticket colour). This week was also my May summary page.

This month I have been:
Listening to: Lady Gaga
Watching: Lady Gaga performing at Radio One's Big Weekend (spotting a theme here this month)
Reading: Angeology (cannot spell this title at all)
Visiting: The cinema

 Week 22: Lily's Christening
I have another page to post tomorrow for Week 22. But I also created this page as I thought it was a perfect opportunity to use the Nursery Suite Speciality Papers from Stampin' Up! I cut one of the die cut sheets in half and cut it again to to fit my journal page. I then created a pocket with a sheet of the rabbit covered paper in which to keep the service sheet and to layer a photo on top of. This wasnt the best photo and it was a bit blurry but I wanted a pic to capture the afternoon. I embellished with a butterfly which had been stood on the edge of the wine glasses at the post-Baptism celebration and a few pieces of the table confetti (a perfect match to the rabbits on the DSP). A simple but effective page.

Happy Crafting

-XX-

Nature Walk Gift Box

Its my favourite stamp set again, Nature Walk. I just cannot seem to craft with any other set at the moment.

For my recent workshop I wanted to create a matching set of a gift box and card, while teaching embossing techniques at the same time. So this is what I came up with. I used the Milk Carton Big Shot die to create the gift box in Very Vanilla. I then wrapped a strip of Botanical Gazette DSP around the box with a length of Chocolate Chip ribbon. The Nature Walk bird was then heat embossed in silver and stuck with dimensionals to the front of the box.

 I have recently taught myself the emboss resist technique. I wanted to try the technique out with the large medallion background stamp from Stampin' Up! For this I randomly stamped images in different colours from the Nature Walk stampset (I stamped onto a Very Vanilla cardbase). I then clear embossed the medallion over the top of the images. I then finished with my brayer and Early Espresso over the top. You wipe clean the excess ink from the clear embossing and you are left with the images showing through like this. I am definitely going to use this technique more and have some great scrapbooking ideas using this idea.

Any questions about Stampin' Up!, the products or techniques mentioned above, or of course, to place an order, please get in touch: poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 01983 609249.

Happy Crafting ;0)

-X-

Customer Thank Yous for June

Inspired by a challenge entry by Mandi over on Less Is More I decided to sit down and create my June customer order thank you notes. When I saw her version of this card I just fell in love with the bright bold colours. I adapted her design to make it into a small multicolored notelet rather than a full size card (this one measures 7.5cm square).

I picked out 6 bright bold Stampin' Up! colours (Tempting Turquoise, Pumpkin Pie, Daffodil Delight, Rose Red, Pear Pizzazz & Elegant Eggplant) and coloured the 'Thanks' individually with the Stampin' Write markers. I then used my Basic Black journaller to colour the rest of the stamp. I then layered the Thank You greeting onto matching cardstock layers. Each square layer is 0.5cm larger than the previous layer. This is such a fantastic and effective card to create. And brilliant for using up all those odds and ends of card stock.

Happy crafting ;0)
-X-

Nature Walk Workshop Make

Bet you were all wondering where my Nature Walk crafting had gone? I cannot get enough of this stamp set. I just love everything about it (and its matching Botanical Gazette Designer Series Paper). Its never off my craft desk at the moment.

I took my inspiration for this workshop make from a card I'd seen Monica Gale make over on her blog. I thought this would be perfect for my upcoming workshop with a lovely group of local crafting ladies. I also got to use my favourite Big Shot die, the Top Note, again.

For this card I used:

Colours: Cherry Cobler, Chocolate Chip, Very Vanilla, Always Artichoke
DSP: Newsprint and Botanical Gazette
Stamps: Oval All and Nature Walk
Top Note Die
Scallop Trim Edge Punch

Happy crafting all ;0)
-XXX-

Creative Embossing

I've been attempting a few new embossing techniques inspired by some of the lovely creations over on In Love With Stamping. I decided to give double embossing a go. For this card I took a piece of Poppy Parade Designer Series Paper and placed it into the Elegant Bouquet Embossing Folder which I had brayered with Versamark. Once I ran it through the Big Shot I then covered the paper with white embossing powder. It stuck only to the flat area, leaving the Big Shot embossed flowers sticking out.  I heat embossed the white powder to give it a glossy embossed sheen. I then finished with a Pear Pizzazz paper layer, a length of Pear Pizzazz Poly Ribbon, a greeting stamped onto vellum and then layered onto matching Poppy Parade DSP.

Not sure my explanation of the embossing method makes sense above, so please get in touch if you'd like further info: poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 01983 609249.