Quick Customer Thank Yous

I recently demonstrated for a new group of crafting ladies. They were familiar with Stampin' Up! from the crafting publications but had never actually crafted with our stamps before. Their order arrived late in the afternoon and my partner had offered to deliver their box on his way to work in the evening. Which only left me a few minutes (in between cooking dinner and unpacking the order) to create some quick and easy stamped thank yous. I always like to give a handstamped thank you with every order as I appreciate each and every order from all of my customers.

Seeking inspiration I went up to my craft room and spotted a pile of pre cut Very Vanilla Top notes and the brand new unmounted Charming stamp set. I've seen this flower image stamped over the backing words stamp on several blogs recently and really love the effect. So I picked up my Pool Party (told you it was my favourite colour of the moment) and Elegant Eggplant and set about creating these quick thank you cards. I stamped a thank you on the inside with Wisteria Wonder and finished by embellishing the flowers with some tiny basic pearls.

Not the most complex of notelets but I managed to stamp them and write them just in the nick of time for my partner to deliver the order ;0)

Hope your week is treating you well so far.

Happy Crafting ;0)

-xXx-

Hostess Thank You

Here is a gift I made for my lovely new Hostess last week. I haven't made a sour cream container for a little while so thought it would be perfect to combine with the Everyday Enchantment Sale-A-Bration Designer Series Papers. I used the same papers to match the thank you card we made at last months card class. The small tag is punched using Tiny Tags and finished with a metallic brad. I filled the sour cream container with a mini Stampin' Up! starter collection (Dimensionals, buttons, ribbon, brads) as I wanted to showcase a lot of our lovely coordinating embellishments for a new group of crafting ladies.

And hoorah for some good light finally. So pleased I managed to get some realistic colour shots of these beautiful papers. They compliment the current In Colours so nicely (and Pool Party is my new favourite colour to craft with).

Happy Crafting ;0)
-XXX- 

Here are two versions of the make and take for tonights workshop.  This was inspired by this card over on Julie's blog. I loved her colour combo of Lucky Limeade and Elegant Eggplant but had to substitute for cardstock I actually had in. So for mine I used Old Olive and Rich Razzleberry.

I love the contrast of the Razzleberry stamped over the top of the Olive. Such an effective but simple stamping technique. I also liked Julie's idea of adding extra embellishment to another sample to show how you can bling the card up a little (simply through adding a bit of ribbon and rhinestones). The stamp set used for this card is exclusively available in the Stampin' Up! Spring Mini Catalogue which is only available until April 30th. With Sale-A-Bration running until the end of March, now is the perfect time to get hold of limited items available in the Mini. Just get in touch if you'd like any further information (poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 609249).

Happy crafting ;0)

=X=

Second scrapbook layout

Here is the second of this month's scrapbook class layouts:

Again this is centred around the gorgeous Spice Cake Designer Series Paper.  I used a sketch I found online to create this page using 2 inch squares taken from each of the DSP designs. I added a rosette made from Chocolate Chip and More Mustard cardstock with a giant More Mustard button to finish. The photo is appropriately of a table full of cakes at my friends wedding (all her family cooked a cake instead of one big wedding cake). I loved that the cakes matched the colours of the DSP.

This is a very simple but effective page which utilises all of the designs from the Spice Cake papers. It could easily be adapted to match any of the paper sets in the catalogue.

Thank you for stopping by today and I hope you'll pop back later in the week to see a lovely card I designed for a workshop I'm demo-ing for on Wednesday.

Happy crafting ;0)
-X-

February Scrapbook Class

I have just returned home from a creative weekend of scrapbooking at the Wight Craft Circle Retreat. I managed to tick off a lot of my crafting 'to dos' off the list. Although the list is still as long as my arm. But I did manage to create a few layouts that I've been wanting to spend some time on and have officially started my baby scrapbook with three layouts using scan pictures. I keep looking at the pages and they make me smile. I've done my usual trick of putting them all in my album with page protectors before photographing them though. Hopefully I'll get the chance to take pictures later in teh weekend.

Now on to matters at hand. This week sees both my card class and scrapbooking classes. I spent some time over the weekend working on our two scrapbook pages. This is the first of our February layouts:

This page is inspired by the Spice Cake Designer Series Paper and matching Spiced Paisley stamp set. I used the DSP colour scheme (More Mustard, Very Vanilla, Soft Suede, Pool Party and Pear Pizzazz) to theme the page and tie in the embellishments.  The giant button is exclusive to the current Spring Mini Catalogue (Spice Cake Designer Buttons, Page 11 of the Mini) and the ribbons are Pear Pizzazz Seam Binding and Pool Party Ruffled. The tree is unfortunately not a stamp available in this country. I wanted to create a complimentary embellishment and this tree was perfect, but is not available in our UK Stampin' Up! catalogue at this present time.

I'm looking forward to teaching this layout as I love the unusual colour combinations and the paisley stamp set (which stamps beautifully). I also hope you all enjoy me sharing this delightful picture of me and my cousin as littl'uns (especially the snail horns that seem to be growing from my head in the photo). 

If you'd like any further information on Stampin' Up or the lovely craft products available exclusively in our main and mini catalogues, please get in touch on 01983 609249 or poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk. I'm happy to chat about workshops, Sale-A-Bration (free SU goodies!!), or just craftiness generally ;0)

Happy crafting ;0)

-XX-

Card class part two

Welcome back and thanks for visiting again today ;0)

Here is the first of my shares for today. This is the card that didn't make it into last months card class. I loved it and had started to prep it when I realised it was near identical to a card we had made before. I might have a go at designing a centre step card like this using different papers for February's class as I love this style. This card features Nature Walk and the matching retired papers from last years Mini Catalogue. This beautiful set is still available in the Main Ideas Book and Catalogue and remains one of my favourites to stamp with. The bird is one of my favourite images to stamp in Early Espresso and then colour with watercolour crayons.

 I always like to finish each  class with a quick and easy card (we're usually flagging after a 3D project and two more intricate cards). This was inspired by a lovely card I'd seen my upline Michelle make. I used different papers but kept the striking contrast between the black and bright colours. The DSP is Flirtacious from the main catalogue and the flourish and butterfly are from Creative Elements. I created the greeting to fit the circle using the Happy Birthday from Party This Way. I only coloured half the sentiment and stamped and then cleaned and coloured the other half and stamped.

If you'd like to find out more about any of Stampin' Up!'s products or would like to book a workshop to make the most of Sale-A-Bration and all its lovely freebies please get in touch on poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 609249.

Happy Weekend & Happy Crafting ;0)

-X-

Last month's card class makes

Apologies for my slack blogging recently ;0) I have been making lots of lovely things for classes and future workshops but seem to have run out of energy for sitting on the computer to update my blog. To make up for it I am sharing two cards today that I taught at January's card class (and i'll hopefully blog the other two tomorrow via the wonder of post scheduling!).

Here is the first of the cards we made (and my favourite of all my makes recently). I saw this card on the talented Jenny Moor's blog last week and knew my class ladies would love it. This was a last minute substitution for a card I had made but wasn't 100% happy with. This card is a Sale-a-Bration inspired wonder. It uses the exclusive (and free!) SAB set, Fresh Vintage and the strip of DSP is from the lovely free SAB papers Everyday Enchantment. The colour scheme is Peach Parfait, Calypso Coral, Pear Pizzazz, Very Vanilla and Pool Party. We used the fantastically versatile Stampin' Write markers to colour the stamp before stamping which gives this lovely detailed multicoloured effect.

 The second card I wanted to share with you today is another inspired by Peg. We have a whole series of family weddings this year and my Mum had seen this card and asked me to recreate it for the class. I created two versions of it, the second of which I was a lot happier with (my first attempt fell foul to an accident with a bottle of Tombow so I had to trim it to an odd shape and dimension).

I love this layered Whisper White look and the effect of using lots of different textures to create the layers. I used lots of different embossing folders, punches and Embosslits to create the textured layers and the stamping was done using a retired stamp set sadly (it was the only set I currently have featuring hearts). This will make a perfect wedding celebration card. And my class ladies were very keen to change it to an anniversary card by changing the tag greetings. It was finished perfectly with a glitter brad and three rhinestones.

 Here is my first version (the tombow spilt one) which I created from Peg's original, with a winter wedding in mind (hence the Serene Snowflakes).

Right, thats all from me today. Hope you enjoyed todays projects. Like i've said before, roll on lighter evenings so i can get some better quality photos again. I'll write another post now to share the other projects tomorrow.

Happy crafting ;0)

-X-