Frosty The Snowman Hat from Stampin' Up! UK Demonstrator Sarah Poulton

Good morning crafters and a happy wet and grey Bank Holiday Monday to you from a very rainy Isle of Wight. What better excuse to stay in and craft than wet weather? I am in the middle of a series of cross stitch Christmas gifts so might put on a good film with the girls and have a bit of a stitchy day.

I have another festive project to share with you today. This was inspired by a Connie Stewart video I happened upon on Youtube. I love the simplicity of creating the hat simply with strips of card and the Circles Collection Framelits.

A couple of tips for you if you want to have a go. It is definitely worth having a tin of beans or bottle of water to hand to help loosen the fibres in the main body of the hat as you curl it round. And also, I found that if you don't have the spiral border punch (now discontinued) you can simply cut little notches up to your score line to make little tabs to glue to the circular base.

To create this hat gift box you simply need Basic Black and a contrasting strip in either silver or grey (or any colour/pattern of your fancy). 

For decoration I used the Flower Shop Bundle to create this layered flower. I stamped and punched two main red flowers and then punched the centre from Hello Honey to create a contrasting middle. I curled the petals to give a little dimension and secured it all to the hat with several glue dots.

I filled my gift box hat with a sachet of festive mocha and a little packet of mini marshmallows. A perfect little place setting or neighbour gift.

Thank you for popping by today. Please let me know if you have any questions about Stampin' Up! or our products. I would love to help. All items can be purchased online via my shop or get in touch directly and I can order them for you to be delivered direct to your door. I'd also love to Demo for you and your friends at a crafty party. As the hostess you earn lots of lovely freebies and you all get to make a fun crafty project too (no crafting experience necessary!)

 -XXX-

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A Berry Merry Christmas from Stampin' Up! UK Demonstrator Sarah Poulton

Good morning crafters. I am super excited that we are only 4 days from the launch of the new Stampin'  Up! Autumn Winter catalogue. So many ideas and lovely stamps and accessories contained within its pages.

I have another little sneak peek for you today. This card was inspired by one I saw on the live stream of the US Stampin' Up! convention. It uses a new stamp set called Berry Merry which contains two larger fancy sentiments and then lots of little elements (fir cones, bows, holly, berries, leaves and flowers) to embellish your design. 

It is such a versatile and fun stamp to create with. This is another one of my 'love of stamping' sets. These are stamp sets that I love to make with purely for the enjoyment of stamping and having fun with the process. 

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I matched the Berry Merry stamp set with the matching Boughs and Berries Textured Impressions Embossing Folder (available together as a great value bundle costing £18.50).

To create this card I heat embossed the Joy with gold embossing powder then created elements with Garden Green and Cherry Cobbler inks. I layered Whisper White over Champagne Glimmer Paper and attached to a Cherry Cobbler card base. 

Thank you for popping by today. I will be back next week with lots more festive fun to celebrate the launch of the new Autumn. Winter catalogue. Please let me know if you have any questions about Stampin' Up! or our products. I would love to help. All items can be purchased online via my shop or get in touch directly and I can order them for you to be delivered direct to your door. I'd also love to Demo for you and your friends at a crafty party. As the hostess you earn lots of lovely freebies and you all get to make a fun crafty project too (no crafting experience necessary!)

 -XXX-

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An Among the Branches Sneak Peek from Stampin' Up! UK Demonstrator Sarah Poulton

Good morning and a happy wet and rainy Wednesday to you all. To celebrate the weather and the changing of the seasons (although I haven't quite given up on summer just yet!) I created this card using some of my lovely sneak peek Autumn Winter products.

This card was made using a fantastic upcoming bundle; the Among the Branches stamp set coupled with the Woodland Textured Impressions Embossing Folder. Such a great bundle at £19.25. Available from September 1st.

To anyone that knows me, they'll know how much I love owls. So this set was a must for me. I loved being able to add the owl silhouette to my embossed forest.

To create the contrast I embossed the trees and then used Soft Suede ink and a dauber to darken the tree trunks.

I added linen thread and a gold heat embossed sentiment (this is taken from the Among the Branches stamp set). The added embellishments are new Into the Woods Elements (£6.00).

I am absolutely loving all the new products. I would love to share the new catalogue with you. So if you would like a copy on your door mat please drop me a line on poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk with your address and I'll happily pop one out in the post to you.

As it is Wednesday that means new Weekly Deals. Click below to see the new products on offer this week.

Thank you for popping by today. I will be back Friday with some more festive sneak peeks from the new Autumn Winter catalogue. Please let me know if you have any questions about Stampin' Up! or our products. I would love to help. All items can be purchased online via my shop or get in touch directly and I can order them for you to be delivered direct to your door. I'd also love to Demo for you and your friends at a crafty party. As the hostess you earn lots of lovely freebies and you all get to make a fun crafty project too (no crafting experience necessary!)

 -XXX-

An English Garden Twisted Box from Stampin' Up! UK Demonstrator Sarah Poulton

Good morning crafters. I thought I would give you a little break from Christmas this morning (although I have lots of lovely festive projects all ready to share with you. I have gone a bit Christmas crafting crazy recently!).

I was surfing the crafty blogosphere on Friday and came across this fantastic tutorial to create these twisted gift boxes. I was looking for inspiration for my card class 3D project and thought this would be perfect. So I set about recreating it.

I used a Mint Macaron based and scored/cut according to Kat's instructions. I realised the tutorial needed to be slightly adapted to fit UK A4 (I simply scored the short edge at 2", 4", 6" and 8" leaving a slightly thinner tab for holding the box together).

I used off cuts of English Garden Designer Series Paper to decorate my box and wrapped a length of Pear Pizzazz Cotton Ribbon all the way around my box to keep it all together.

I created the tag with my Note Tag Punch and stamped the flower from Garden in Bloom with Old Olive and Pear Pizzazz inks. I finished with a Metal Rimmed Pearl.

This is a lovely little project to use a table favour or place setting. It would fit small amounts of sweeties or treats in perfectly. I love that this has the two compartments for fitting treats in to. You could also use it for jewellery or small gifts. 

Thank you for popping by today. I will be back Wednesday with some more festive sneak peeks from the new Autumn Winter catalogue. Please let me know if you have any questions about Stampin' Up! or our products. I would love to help. All items can be purchased online via my shop or get in touch directly and I can order them for you to be delivered direct to your door. I'd also love to Demo for you and your friends at a crafty party. As the hostess you earn lots of lovely freebies and you all get to make a fun crafty project too (no crafting experience necessary!)

 -XXX-

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A Festive Fireplace Easel Card Sneak Peek from Stampin' Up! UK Demonstrator Sarah Poulton

Good morning crafters and welcome to another Christmas-y Autumn Winter Catalogue Sneak Peek. This time I am sharing a project I came up with using the upcoming Autumn Winter Festive Fireplace stamp set and Fireside Framelit bundle.

As soon as I saw this stamp I knew it would be PERFECT for a vellum and battery tealight easel card creation. I am a big fan of using battery tealights for my special Christmas cards. They become a decoration in themselves and its nice to sometimes give an extra special card. So this is what I came up with.

 I found packs of battery tealights in my local pound shop and as a bonus they were the flickering ones giving the fire an extra realistic light effect. I deliberately photographed this card as it was getting dark to give you an idea of how lovely and warm the card felt with the glowing fireplace.

For this card I used a 10.5cm x 29.7cm (half A4 cut at 10.5cm). I scored the card at 14.8 and again at 7.4 (this formed the folded over easel part of the card).  This is a standard easel card in format. However, I had to cut the window through three layers of card using a craft knife to give the tealight the chance to glow through the fireplace. I started by cutting the middle of the fireplace out and using the middle rectangle as a template to cut the next two layers (I then carefully lined them up to adhere them together).  I stamped the fire on to a small piece of Vellum cardstock (slightly larger than the hole in the middle of the fireplace) and turned over to color the image with Stampin' Write markers. I sandwiched the Vellum between the layers before adhering the fireplace to the main card.

I used a Cherry Cobbler based layered with Crumb Cake and Very Vanilla. I stamped the fireplace on to Very Vanilla and coloured with Blender Pens and Cajun Craze ink. The Merry Christmas sentiment is from another new stamp set called Cozy Christmas. To help the easel stand up I used Candy Dots and jewels. It gives just enough height to help the card stand up.

Finally here is a view of the card from the side to show how I positioned the tealight to make the fire glow.

I think I have earned a cuppa and a sit down today. It is 11.37am as I type this and the girls had me up at 5am. By 7am we were out walking and enjoying the warm morning (I thought as the weather is so changeable at the moment it would be best to take advantage of the sunshine early). We walked up over the hill to Carisbrooke Castle and the girls enjoyed the sights and meeting lots of early morning dog walkers. We then came home and baked a cake, a quiche, painted Summer's nails and I finally found time to publish this blog. A cuppa is definitely now in order. Phew......

Thank you for popping by today. Please let me know if you have any questions about Stampin' Up! or our products. I would love to help. All items can be purchased online via my shop or get in touch directly and I can order them for you to be delivered direct to your door. I'd also love to Demo for you and your friends at a crafty party. As the hostess you earn lots of lovely freebies and you all get to make a fun crafty project too (no crafting experience necessary!)

 -XXX-

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Altered Christmas Domino Decorations from Stampin' Up! UK Demonstrator Sarah Poulton

Today I am sharing my favourite project from my Christmas Craft Days this year, altered stamped dominoes.  I love the simplicity of stamping on to dominoes to create either a personalised piece of jewellery or a hanging Christmas decoration.

I searched Amazon for the ideal dominoes. I searched all the local shops and Charity shops and only found black dominoes. So I used these white dominoes. They worked well although I bought several packets and some were more yellow than white. But I discovered you could whiten them with White Staz On and then stamp over the top once dried (as with the middle domino below).

I covered the reverse of each domino in a small section of patterned paper (for these I used Merry Moment DSP) and then adhered a flat back jewellery bail (I used these from Ebay) so that my class attendees could either thread a ribbon or chain to make it in to a decoration or necklace.

My ladies were then free to stamp their domino with whichever stamps they wanted. Most ladies chose to use the three above as their inspiration. I created this trio of festive animals using the White Christmas stamp set. I stamped the images in Black Staz On. Once dried you can use a permanent marker such as a Sharpie to colour the image (I used a Stampin' Up! Chalk Marker for the polar bear). It has to be colour fast as once you glaze the domino any non permanent colours will run.

Once coloured I covered the dominoes with Crystal Effects glaze and sprinkled a little Dazzling Diamonds in to the glaze to give a little festive sparkle.

I have to share a few more of the samples I made (I got a bit carried away and made about 20 sample dominoes). The 'fa la la' one was my absolute favourite and it uses a sadly retired stamp set from many years ago. To this day Season of Joy is still my favourite Stampin' Up! set and I was super happy to give it another outing. I don't think I could ever be parted with my Season of Joy.

To finish each domino I coated the edges with gold foiling pen (non SU) and left to dry. This gives it a nice festive finish. So simple and so fun to make. My ladies came up with so many different variations. It was lovely to see so much creativity.

Thank you for popping by today. I'll have another new Christmasy project for you tomorrow. Please let me know if you have any questions about Stampin' Up! or our products. I would love to help. All items can be purchased online via my shop or get in touch directly and I can order them for you to be delivered direct to your door. I'd also love to Demo for you and your friends at a crafty party. As the hostess you earn lots of lovely freebies and you all get to make a fun crafty project too (no crafting experience necessary!)

 -XXX-

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A Cozy Christmas Sneak Peek from Stampin' Up! UK Demonstrator Sarah Poulton

Happy Weekly Deals Wednesday.  This week's deals feature sequins, a punch, embossing and ribbon. A great stash expanding series of discounts.

And now for some crafty sneak peekiness. As a Demonstrator I have the benefit of being able to pre-order from the new Autumn Winter catalogue a month before it is released. My box of festive loveliness arrived last week and I've loved getting started with some new Christmas craftiness.  Here is a card I created using some lovely new products from the Autumn Winter catalogue (*inspired by this card from For the Love of Stamping*). This card uses the lovely traditional stamp set, Cozy Christmas, paired with the new Hearth & Home Thinlits Dies.

I used Night of Navy to sponge the night sky background. I added pearls for snowflakes and jewels to embellish the sentiment. I absolutely adore this window framelit and the possibilities are endless for scenes to create outside the frame.

I cannot praise this catalogue highly enough. There are so many lovely creations and stamps. Would you like a copy posting to you? I would love to pop a copy over to you so you can browse in your own time (and having your hands on the physical copy is so satisfying to see everything in real size). Please drop me a line with your details and I'll get one straight out to you (poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk).

Thank you for popping by today. I hope you'll join me for the rest of my Christmas crafting projects that I'll be sharing throughout the week. I'll have a new project for you tomorrow. Please let me know if you have any questions about Stampin' Up! or our products. I would love to help. All items can be purchased online via my shop or get in touch directly and I can order them for you to be delivered direct to your door. I'd also love to Demo for you and your friends at a crafty party. As the hostess you earn lots of lovely freebies and you all get to make a fun crafty project too (no crafting experience necessary!)

 -XXX-