A Very Merry Christmas Treat

If you're stuck for a Christmas gift this year for a crafty friend. I have a perfect solution for you.... a Stampin' Up! gift voucher. I can provide these all year round for Christmas gifts or birthdays or as a just because pressie.

Here are two of my new style Christmas themed vouchers tied with our lovely Stitched Grosgrain Ribbon and using our fab Snow Festival Designer Series Papers.

 

 

I created this embellishment with the Snow Flurry Die and the For the Birds stamp set (and a bit of Cherry Cobbler glittery bling for the hat).

 I created this embellishment with the Scentsational Season stamp set and matching Holiday Collection Framelits. The sentiment is from the Come to Bethlehem stamp set.

 A view of the inside of the vouchers.

 And lastly, here is a quick crafty project I made recently. I had seen some lovely paper piecing cards on various blogs and wanted to have a go myself. I used the trees from Polar Party and stamped on different patterned Christmas papers cutting each tree separately to create this effect. I think it is such an effective technique for a quick and easy stamped Christmas card.

If you'd like to order a gift voucher or find out any more information on Stampin' Up! please get in touch on poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 01983 609249.

 

Happy Crafting ;0)

 

-X-

A crafty catch up

My poor blog has been neglected over the past week due to a house full of cold and bugs. First it was me and Summer and now my other half has it. I think we might've given it to my poor family also. So all in all its been pretty hectic trying to get us all better.

 

But on a positive note, I have been able to get some crafting done while we have been house bound and Summer has been napping.

 

Tomorrow is my monthly card class and it will be the last until the New Year for two of my regular class attendees. So I have created a couple of extra projects for us all to complete together. I always like to create a special fun chocolate gift bag for my December class but have moved it forward to this month for all my ladies. For this project I have used one of the glassine bags from the Ghoulish Googlies Designer Kit in the Autumn Winter catalogue and embossed it with the Petals-A-Plenty embossing folder. I cut a snowflake using the Snow Flurry Bigz Die and layered that with a stamped circle (the penguin from Polar Party) and a circle of Red Glimmer Paper. The banners are cut from the Be Of Good Cheer Designer Series Paper.

 

This bag is filled with lots of lovely chocolately Christmas goodies.

 

To make up for my quiet blogging week I will also share with you three cards I made at a Christmas showbox swap with 3 fellow Demonstrators on Thursday. We each brought enough supplies for each to complete each others card design. It was a lovely couple of hours and great to have a catch up and chat Stampin' Up! Here are the three cards I made provided by Sandy, Lorraine and Jane. It was lovely to get inspiration and see what different projects we all made. Look forward to seeing them all again soon (and Lorraine will have a new addition to celebrate too ;0)

 

Hopefully I will get a bit more time to blog this week and share all the lovely card class projects I have been working on.

 

Happy Autumnal Weekend Crafting to you all ;0)

-X-

 

Lovely day for an Isle of Wight Open House

Thank you to all the lovely ladies that came along to my Isle of Wight Open House yesterday to celebrate the launch of the Autumn Winter Seasonal Catalogue. I had a lovely time chatting about all the lovely new products and showing all my samples and swaps.

 

We made the card above, inspired by this card on the talented Jill Hilliard's blog, using the fabulous Scentsational Season stamp set with the Sugar and Spice scented embossing powder. The little pennants are cut from the lovely new Snow Festival Designer Series Paper. I had my Teeny Tiny Wishes set out on the table so that guests could choose their own greeting as this design works well for many different occasions (by interchanging the greeting it could just as easily be a Get Well Soon or Hello notecard). We embellished with one of the fab Brushed Bronze Designer Buttons.

 

I had a really lovely day yesterday and it was lovely to share the new products (and a tiny sneak peak of new main catalogue too) with crafters just as excited about them as me. Really looking forward to next month's workshops with Charlotte and Sharon.

 

I also have another quick project to share with you this fine Sunday morning. I saw this lovely tags over on my lovely Demo friend Gill's blog a liitle while ago and decided to have a go myself using the new Dazzling Details glitter glue. I love the Polar Party stamp set  as it lends itself beautifully to being coloured using ink pads with a blender pen.

Thank you for stopping by today. I hope you are all enjoying the lovely weather and having a great weekend.

 

Happy Crafting ;0)

-X-

JYC Days 3, 4 and 5

Good morning JYC-ers and festive crafters.

Oh how I wish for a better camera or at least some basic knowledge on how to get the best out of the one we have already (although my partner and i have put a shared pressie of a new camera on the Christmas list this year. So hopefully we'll get a bargain in the sales after Christmas ;0) So once again, these are not the greatest pictures (largely due to being taken at 6am this morning before the sun had reared its head so I could edit, write and schedule this post before work!).

Here is a picture of my Stampin' Up! stall from this weekends craft fair (it features again on my JYC page but in a much smaller form). I was really pleased with the fair and how it went and my Snowman Soup and Reindeer Food went down a treat ;0) Thanks to Angie and Fiona for hosting the day and putting it all together. A hugely enjoyable festive afternoon (followed by a trip to the cinema to see Arthur Christmas!).

 Here is my JYC for Days 3 and 4:

Again I have used the reverse page of the pockets insert. I like this style as it has taken a lot of the 'worry' out of my creating. How can 4 rectangles of pretty paper ever look bad? And embellishing each page with an advent window makes it all the more Christmas-y.

 I am especially enjoying creating the central embellishment for each page. This one features Arthur in all his Christmas jumper glory ;0) 

 Here are my two advent windows. I am trying to keep a bit of consistency across the days by using a felt embellishment and matching papers to cover the outside of the windows.

 For my journalling for days 3 and 4 I decided not to tuck it away inside the pockets as with Days 1 and 2. As the Dec 3rd prompt was about Christmas cards I decided to make a duplicate card of one I created for my 'Due in May Facebook Group' Secret Santa. We were all tasked with finding some lovely little Mum to Be bits for our recipient. I had seen a card similar to this on the Convention inspiration boards and knew it would be a perfect Christmas card for another May Mum. So I set up making two, one for my SS and the other for my journal. I love using mixed stamp sets in unusual ways. I would never have thought to combine Polar Party with Bundle of Love. But the effect of doing so is lovely and Christmas-y ;0)

I created this with Real Red, Garden Green and Whisper White cardstock and matching Stampin' Write markers. For the icy ground I tore strips of Whisper White card and then finished with Tombow and Dazzlin Diamonds Glitter. The sentiment is stamped from Polar Party. 

And finally, as I am very conscious of my last years journal ending up too thick and straining at the rings holding it together, I decided to create a smaller Day 5 on the reverse of the Christmas card above. A simple page that speaks more about the journalling than the embellishments (and yet another example that one should not craft when exceptionally tired as you end up with a rather mish-mashy result!! Still in the spirit of keeping things simple, I wont be beating myself up over it. Today is a new day and a new page so I shall move on and create something different which may inspire me more).

So thank you for popping by for another installment of festive craftiness. I am loving looking at all your creations too and will hopefully pop by to leave comments later ;0)

-XXX-