Sale-a-bration, Spring/Summer Catalogue, Valentines - its all happening at Stampin Up!

Well, Stampin Up! have certainly been busy with producing a new seasonal catalogue for Spring/Summer as well as our yearly Sale-a-bration period (where you can redeem free products for every £45 that you spend from either of the current catalogues).You can see these new catalogues by clicking on the images on the side of this page.
For Januarys class, I thought I would introduce one of Stampin Up's! Sale-a-bration stamp sets that is a 3 stage design, Lotus Blossom.

 This proved a bit tricky to get the hang of but does create some fabulous images.  The flower, a lotus blossom, is created by building up layers of contasting ink to highlight the details of the petals.  The first main part of the flower was stamped using Soft Sky, then the larger detail of the petal was stamped in Lost Lagoon using the stamp-ff method and the edges of the flower were stamped using the Lost Lagoon (full intensity).The stems were stamped using Pear Pizzazz.  The DSP on the card is taken from the Moonlight DSP Paperstack and if you wanted to make this design, to buy all the prodcuts would cost you £45 hence you would get the stamp set for free!
As our next class will be after Valentines Day, I thought we could make a card suitable for a Valentine, or birthday or wedding/anniversary.  I found this design on Pinterest and as I enjoying created projects using punch-art, couldn't resist using it our class. Even though I have had the Hardwood Stamp for a while, I hadn't actually got around to using it and thought it created a great 'floorboard' effect for the mice to sit on. The Real Red hearts were punched using the Itty Bitty Accents heart and the Owl Builder punch.  The  mice were made using the Sweetheart and 1 3/4" Circle punches.  The main colours are Crumb Cake and Very Vanilla.  The greeting is taken from the Itty Bitty Banners set.

And finally we couldn't not make a mini treat holder for our Valentine! This Ferror Rocher holder uses such a small amount of card stock and is very simple to make.  We also used the Hearts Mask set which is great for backgrounds. The greeting was made using the Label Love stamp set and punched out using the Artisan Label Punch.  The main part of the box (just a long rectangle) was punched either end with the Scallop Tag Topper (one of my favourite punches as it has so many uses).  Finally the project was tied up with some Whisper White Organza ribbon and Real Red Satin Woven ribbon.