Journal Week 17

Here is my 17th (!!!! Where is this year flying off to???)  page for my week by week journal. I felt inspired by the Stampin' Up! French Filigree background stamp to create this black and white page.  I have been using my heat tool a lot to emboss recently and decided to give it a go on one of my pages. The 4 stamped images didn't quite meet in the middle, hence the positioning of my flower and summary block.

I know I have kept my monthly summaries uniform (I printed them all onto Crumb Cake in January).  But with the black and white theme for this page I decided to hand write this months:

In April I have been:

Listening to: Till The World Ends- Britney (repeatedly and LOUD)

Watching: The Cube & Red Riding Hood

Reading: Freya North's Chances

Visiting: My lovely new craft room

Since completing this page I have filled in the black and white blocks around the edge with journalling (in the contrasting colour).

Happy crafting ;0)

-XX-

Springtime Vintage Birthday

This is inspired by a card I saw over on Lisa Young's blog. I love how she created this basket by weaving 1/2 inch wide lengths of Crumb Cake cardstock and then running it through the Big Shot with the Top Note die.

For the flowers i have cut different sized and coloured flowers from a sheet of Springtime Vintage Designer Series Paper. I have then positioned and layered them to create the flowers in a basket effect. I have stamped the 'Happy Birthday' greeting from the new Level 2 Hostess Set Something to Celebrate. This has then been punched with the Modern Label punch and then layered over the Designer Label punch shape (Blushing Bride).

Any questions, please get in touch: poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 609249.

Happy Crafting ;0)
-XX-

New Baby card for a lazy Sunday afternoon

Here is my one and only make for this weekend. A new baby card for a school friend who had her first baby on April 29th (sharing the birth with the Royal Wedding!)

I'm hoping to hand deliver this tomorrow (and maybe meet little Lily too ;0)

Colours: Blushing Bride and Rose Red. Stamp sets: All in the Family and Jumble Alphabet. Accessories: Itty Bitty Button with a tiny heart punched using the Heart to Heart punch, length of Blushing Bridge Stitched-Poly Ribbon.

Also, do you like my new watermark? I got it from the very talented Karen Giron. I do love the little bird over the 'a' ;0)

Any questions about the Stampin' Up! supplies used, please get in touch.

Happy crafting all.

-XXX-

Happy Engagement Natalie and Ben

My lovely friend Natalie got engaged over the Bank Holiday weekend. So I sat down and created this card to celebrate her new fiance status. This is using an old favourite stampset, Love You Much. The greeting is from Cheer and Wishes. The images are stamped onto Stampin' Up's gorgeous Shimmery White cardstock in Rose Red ink. I embellished the heart with the tiny basic pearls. The background hearts are clear embossed to give the card more texture and depth. The scrunched ribbon is the new Rose Red Seam Binding ribbon from the Stampin' Up! mini catalogue. The photo has come out a little dark (I was losing light). But I am super pleased with the result. Now off to get this in the post.......

Happy crafting ;0)

-X-

Bank Holiday Weekend Makes

I haven't had a great deal of time for crafting this weekend but here are a couple of things I did manage to put together. I bought a newspaper on Saturday morning which had a Royal Wedding feature so that I could put together a page in my weekly scrapbooking journal. I loved the wedding so much that I wanted to give it a whole page to itself in my journal (breaking my rule of one page per week!!). This picture is so beautiful that I couldn't bring myself to cut their feet off so it is folded over. I have put the date along the fold to cover the folded over print (I also used an off cut of  the reverse of the Union Jack paper to create a backing). I have been collecting together Union Jack themed scrapbooking bits for a while. I thought I might use them for a London page sometime in the future. But the wedding photo seemed the perfect opportunity to use them.

I finally got to use my beautiful Union Jack ribbon which I've had in my stash for a year or so. I love it but can never find the right opportunity to actually cut it. The letters were cut with my Cricut (Don Juan cartridge) from Whisper White, Real Red and Concord Cruch spotted Designer Series Paper. Oh and i embellished with basic rhinestones to bling the LO up a bit.

I'm happy to have created a patriotic page to look back on in my journal. For me it reflects the pride and happiness I felt while watching the wedding.

And here is my other lovely make for the weekend. My sisters 21st birthday cake. I havent baked a cake in AGES and here I was making 5 separate layers for this huge mountain of a birthday cake (I created 5 separate layers- each one a different colour to create a rainbow effect inside once the cake was cut). It was a family affair in the end, Mum helped me bake the cakes, Natalie provided the chocolate topper and Sam bought the 'Happy Birthday' candles. It was far from perfect (and we ran out of vanilla icing) but I loved making it and Sophie seemed happy with the overall multicoloured effect.

 And here is the newly 21 Sophie enjoying the cake and her 'S' sparkler too.

Happy crafting ;0)

Sisterly Birthday Greetings & My First Alteration.....

Fingers crossed this will be live come Monday morning. I am scheduling this in advance as I will be at Mum and Dad's celebrating my littlest sisters 21st birthday today as you read this.

I wanted to share a couple of birthday projects I have been working on for Sophie. The first was a joint project with my Mum. Mum had been inspired by the configuration boxes out there in blogland and that we had seen at a recent craft fair. So we decided to have a go. Mum had a perfect box for the job which had originally housed Waitrose dried fruit and nuts. To cover it we scoured the local charity bookshops for a book of Shakespeare quotations (Soph loves her Shakespeare). Mum tore the book into strips and vintaged the pages up a bit with daubers and antique-y ink and then used these strips (glued with PVA) to cover the box. And then here is where I took over. I poured through all of my embellishments and scrapping bits and bobs to find all the lovely little things to put into the compartments to make it a proper 21st birthday box.

  For all you eagle eyed Stampin' Up! lovers you'll spot all  the SU touches I've managed to get in to these compartments (the key is stamped from Artistic Etchings, a filigree brad, the chipboard birds and a couple of brights buttons). I can't make such a lovely pressie for my sister without a little bit of Stampin' Up! ;0)

This second project is my card for my sister. I picked purple, gold and vanilla as my colour scheme (Soph loves purple). So for this card i combined Concord Crush DSP, Elegant Eggplant & Very Vanilla cardstock, gold and silver embossing powders, basic rhinestones and metallic brads.

I heat embossed 'Sophie' using my Stampin' Up! Broadsheet Alphabet stamp set, Versamark, silver embossing powders (and of course my trusted Embossing Buddy).  I wanted a more higgledy piggledy effect so guesstimated where to stamp without my Stamp-A-Ma-Jig or a ruler. I layered the embossed lettering onto Vanilla which I'd already edged with a gold pen. I punched holes into the four corners and poked gold brads through. I then raised this whole layer onto the main card with dimensionals.


I created my corners by clear embossing the circle pattern stamp from Artistic Etchings onto Elegant Eggplant. I then punched two of the medium sized hearts from the embossed design using my Heart to Heart Punch. I finished off with one of the big sparkly Stampin' Up! rhinestones.  I also gold embossed 4 of the Artistic Etchings keys (I hadnt even mounted this stamp until this week. I never thought I would use it and then my sis turned 21 and boom I've used it 5 times in a few days!) and cut round them carefully to create this corner design.

I even managed to vaguely tie this card into my previous project (purely by accident). I hadn't realised the text on this years Stampin' Up Designer Series Paper is Shakespeare. I typed in a section of the text into Google and it brought up the sonnet that the quote is from. So once again Sophie has a Shakespearian birthday card ;0)

One final photo for more of an artsy angle of the embossed Broadsheet Alphabet.

What a huge photo heavy post! As you can see I have been busy recently.

Hope you are all enjoying your long weekend (and thank goodness for 4 day weeks too....).

Happy crafting ;0)
-X-

Happy May 1st and a Happy Birthday to my Dad

In celebration of May Day and my Dad's birthday I am sharing the birthday card I've made him today. This is scheduled as I'll be BBQing with my family to celebrate (hopefully we're still enjoying lovely weather). We have my grandparents visiting as well as my sis home from Uni for the weekend.

I decided to keep Dad's birthday card quite simple as he wouldn't have appreciated the fuss of a highly decorated floral card *laugh* And as I haven't used my Owl Punch in a while I decided to give this an outing (along with the lovely Woodland Walk Designer Series Paper which I recently purchased but havent used). So here it is:

I've used the wood pattern paper with an oval punched out to represent a hole in the bark. The sentiment is stamped from the Level 2 Hostess Set Something to Celebrate in Chocolate Chip. I've punched the Owl from Chocolate Chip cardstock with his chest punched from coordinating paper from the Woodland Walk series. To finish I punched a leaf branch from the Two Step Bird punch.

Happy May Day Crafting ;0)

-X-