Thursday 6 December 2018

Project Catch Up!!

My goodness, we are in December and I haven't shown you the last 3 classes worth of projects! Time just flies this time of year what with the usual Christmas preparations plus I have been selling my cards and decorated boxes at several craft fairs (and done quite well so have been trying to keep up with replenishing stock!)

So here are just the photos of the various cards we have been making. For our November class, I gave my ladies a choice of cards to chose from to make and then could make any quantity that they wanted (obviously taking into consideration the class time).

So here are the cards we made in October:-



This is the selection of cards we made in November








For our Decembers class we made a small desk-top calendar and a decorated box with 4 mini gift cards. Unfortunately the light at the moment hasn't been good enough for me to take any photo of these so will up-date this post later.

We will be back to our card making classes in the New Year. These will be on Monday 14th January at Selsley Scout Hut and on Friday 18th January at Frampton on Severn Village Hall.
If you would like to find out more about my classes then let me know via email on trulymadlystampin@hotmail.co.uk

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

Wednesday 12 September 2018

September Card Class Projects

Hello Again! And here we have Septembers card class projects - I decided not to run any classes in August due to the holidays.
These first two cards were made using another of my favourite new stamp sets so you might be seeing more creation in the future using this set - Varied Vases! It is such a bargain with 34 (!!) stamps for just £24 plus you can buy a punch, Vases Builder Punch to go with the set. Even better if you buy the punch and stamp set together as a bundle you will get 10% off! There are outlines and in-fill stamps for the vases and flowers so you can make lots of quick cards.  Also being photopolymer, they are all easy to line up with each other.
So with this first card we used a piece of embossed Lemon Lime Twist using the Petal Pair embossing folder on a piece of Sahara Sand card stock. The outline of the vases were stamped using Basic Black Archival ink and coloured in using the stamp off technique in Lemon Line Twist and Berry Burst inks. The flowers were again stamped using Basic Black Archive ink and coloured in using Lemon Line Twist and Berry Burst inks - there is even a stamp for the flowers so no actual detailed colouring in required.  The greeting is also in the same set and was stamped using Basic Black Archival ink onto a piece of Lemon Lime Twist.  The shelf was stamped direct with Berry Burst. The matt cardstock is Berry Burst. A small bow of linen thread just finishes of the card!


And here is our second card using the Varied Vases stamp set.  This time the main colours used are Daffodil Delight, Night of Navy and Pear Pizzazz. The DSP is from a retired pack but any suitable colour DSP could be used.   This time the vases were stamped and then punched out using the Vases Builder punch so no fiddly cutting required! The flowers were stamped on to Whisper White cardstock and then colours in using a Daffodil Delight marker.  The white square was cut out using the Stitched Framelits dies and the backing square of Night of Navy cut out using the Layering Squares Framelits.  The greeting is also part of the Varied Vases stamp set.  The leaves were punched out of Pear Pizzazz cardstock.  Finally a piece of 1/4" Double Stitched Daffodil Delight ribbon was wrapped around the top layer.


Our final card for this month is a very basic one suitable for a male although by changing the colour scheme and patterned paper, it could be for any gender.  The colours used were Night of Navy, Soft Suede and Very Vanilla.  The DSP is from a retired set from the last catalogue.  The greeting is Stylized Birthday with is a single stamp but or so useful! I use it all the time.  The Very Vanilla square was cut out using the Stitched Framelits dies. The star was stamped using one from the Bubble Over stamp set and punched out using a 1" circle punch and retired 1 1/4" scallop punch.



July Class Projects

Hello and welcome to a catch up of posts! I always find that the summer months seem to fly by with my children home from school and try to fill our days with activites that my business gets abandoned!
So here we are with the projects that we made at July's card classes.
This first card was made as a celebration card for all those students who had recently taken their exams and hopefully got the results that they wanted. It uses the new 2018-2020 In-Colors of Lovely Lipstick, Grapefruit Grove, Pineapple Punch, Call Me Clover and Blueberry Bushel!  We used some retired products, the Stars Thinlet dies and Curly Cute greeting stamp set plus some sequins.  The background cardstock is Crumb Cake. The greeting was also heat embossed using Gold Embossing powder.



Our second card could have several uses :- Wedding, Anniversary, Get Well or Birthday and the ideal stamp set to use for the greetings for these occasions is Beautiful Bouquet. The stamp set for the flowers is Petal Palette and these were coloured in using Powder Pink and Pear Pizzazz inks.  This card is a stepped card design which is quite easy to make once you have your dimensions, cut and score lines in place. The Stampin Up! trimmer is the perfect tool to make it with.  The main card stock is Very Vanilla and the embossed panel are Powder Pink using the Petal Pair embossing folder.  The backing panel is a piece of Pear Pizzazz card stock.




Our final card is a cutie using the Bella and Friends stamp set and a gate fold card layout.  We used the Aqua painter the colour the background behind the stamped dog using the returning In-Color Mint Macaron. The other colours used are Basic Grey ink, Poppy Parade Marker (another returning In-Color), Mint Macaron and So Saffron card stock.  The greetings came from Happy Birthday Gorgeous stampin set.



Tuesday 19 June 2018

Card Class Projects For June

Good morning and it seems as though summer is finally here!
This month we have the arrival of the new annual catalogue from Stampin Up! It is full of new goodies as well as new colours and patterned paper. But this means that I have to find room for more of these new products to share with you and as my craft shelves are very full, I decided to use some retired stock on this months projects.
The first card we made uses two retiring colors, Wild Wasabi and Wistersia Wonder (which is one of my favourite and will be sad to see it go but we do have a lovely new Highland Heather that I am sure I will come to like as well!).  The stamp set Flourishing Phases is not retiring and just as well as it has a lot of uses with a good selection of sentiments and this lovely flower stamp that can be stamped off as we have done here to produce a lighter centre part. This set also has a coordinating dies set, Flourish Thinlets.  We also used a large clear faceted gem for the sentre of the flower.  The cream ribbon is also retired.  We used the leaf embossing folder from the Petal Pair set of folders for the 'trellis' effect.

Our second card again used retired card stock/inks, Sweet Sugarplum and Elegant Eggplant and a continuing stamp set Beautiful Bouquet.  This stamp set is another of my favourites with lots of beautifully scripted sentiments and flower stamps with a selection of leaves and stems all for £25 which I think is a good value set.  The set also has a coordinating die set Bouquet Punch which takes the stress out of 'fussy' cutting all the detailed flowers and leaves.  I used a mixture of green card stock scraps for the leaves and the retired embossing folder Brick Wall for the background (in fact I have only just discovered that this has retired and am quite disappointed!).  Finally we used some Pearl Basic Jewels on the centres of the flowers.
Our final card is such a cutie! I saw this on Pinterest and just had to share it with my class! The hedgehog is made using the Painted Harvest stamp set by masking off half of the image.  The colours used were Soft Suede, Crumb Cake and Pear Pizzaz.  The leaves were made using the Leaf punch and Pear Pizzaz cardstock.  The main card is Early Espresso with a Cajun Craze matt.  The DSP is from a retired set from several years ago but worked great with the hedgehog image!  We used the Stitched Shapes Framelits, Layering Squares Framelits, and Layering Ovals dies.  Finally the greeting was taken from Best Birds stamp set and a piece of 5/8" Burlap Ribbon was used behind the greeting and a piece of Linen Thread for the bow.



Friday 1 June 2018

May Class Projects



Hello. Well I think Spring is finally here and we are now at the end of the current annual catalogue and seasonal Spring/Summer catalogue.  The new annual one is going live tomorrow, 2nd June.  So time to say goodbye to a few old favourite stamp sets and this year we are also having a colour re-fresh.  We are losing 10 colours and re-introducing 5 in-colors and some fabulous new colors, plus a new set of in-colors.  The color families are also being re-defined, just to keep us on our toes!

Back to our card class of May, we made 2 cards suitable for males (seeing as Father's Day is not far off!) and a card that coudl be adapted for different occasions.




 This first card is an ideal one to use old DSP up on.  For this one we used the retiring True Gentleman DSP from the Spring/Summer catalogue with Night of Navy, Very Vanilla and Crumb Cake cardstock.  We used the Bow Builder punch to make the bow and the ribbon and greeting are retired items.


 This card was made using the Bubble Over Stamp set and co-ordinating Bottles and Bubbles framelit dies from the Spring/Summer catalogue and is being carried over to the new annual catalogue.  This set is great for a male card as I am sure most men like a bottle of beer once in a while.  The Bubbles and Fizz DSP is a set from this years Sale-a-bration which matches perfectly with the stamped images.  The main colours used are Lemon Lime Twist, Early Espresso, Burmuda Bay and Calypso Coral.






I had to make a card using this fun set Bird Banter (which unforunately is not being carried over) and couldn't decide on an image to suggest my attendees to use so let them chose which one they wanted to use. I displayed a couple of suggestions, a birthday card and a wedding card.  This set also used the Bubbles and Fizz DSP from Sale-a-bration and the co-ordingating colours are Daffodil Delight, Calypso Coral and Lemon Lime Twist.  We also used the Scattered Sequins embossing folder.

March Class (Late Post)

As we are still in the Sale-a-bration season, we continued using the free products you can get at this time.  I decided to use the Epic Celebrations set for two of the cards and both suitable for teenagers (which I often hear are difficult to find a suitable card for).
This first card was inspired by a design on Pinterest and uses the new 1/4" Stitched Edge Ribbon in Pacific Point which goes perfectly with the trainers image stamp.  The 'happy birthday' greeting was taken from the Happy Birthday Gorgeous stamp set. Other cardstock used was Silver Glimmer Paper and Whisper White.  The images were cut out using the Layering Circles Framelits and the lace holes made using the retired 1/8" hole punch.




Our second card is suitable for the musician in your life! Again using the Epic Celebrations stamp set and a basic colour theme of Real Red, Smoky Slate and Whisper White. The back ground was stamped using the Sheet Music background stamp and the Stylized Birthday stamp for the main greeting.


One of my favourite stamp sets from the new Spring/Summer seasonal catalogue is Flying Home. It has several images that can be used for  variety of occasions.  The one we used at class could be used s a new home card or as a birthday card.  I teamed it with some Basic Grey Shimmer Ribbon from the Sale-a-bration offer.  I showed my customers two different ways of colouring the images so they could chose which they wanted; either using the Watercolor Pencils or Stampin Up Write Markers.  The main colours used were Whisper white, Soft Sky and Basic Grey.  The background was created using the 'dotty' stamp in the Beautiful Peacock stamp set in Basic Grey ink. The greetings were taken from various stamp sets and punched out using the Classic Label punch.

Thursday 1 March 2018

February Classes

For this month, I ran a few different things at my monthly classes.
At Frampton on Severn, we made this cute little box which has been called either a 'self closing' box or an 'impossible' box (due to trying to figure out how to open it). Although it looks complicated, it is one of the easiest boxes to make.  We made it using Real Red and Whisper White card stock, Real Red Glimmer Paper and some scraps of DSP suitable for Valentines.

As our Selsley Class fell during February half term, I invited the children of my crafters to come along. They each made 3 cards using the Sale-a-bration Party Pandas set which they really enjoyed.
I used some retired products as well.

The remaining projects were the same at both classes, and both suitable as a Mothers Day card!
The first was made using the Sale-a-bration set Lots of Lavender.  I found this design on Pinterest and liked the idea of stamping onto a coloured background and colouring in the flowers then adding the Stampin Up Chalk Marker to add some highlights to the petals. The greeting came from the Watercolor Wings stamp set and the main colours used were Crumb Cake, Soft Sky, Basic Black, Pear Pizzazz and some retired ribbon.

 The second card also used a Sale-a-bration set, Beautiful Peacock.  This is a lovely set that I can see being used a lot, just a shame we only have until the end of March though.  We used a couple of techniques on this one; the baby-wipe technique using Daffodil Delight and Tempting Turquoise inks, and heat embossing using Stampin Up Gold Embossing Powder.


Wednesday 24 January 2018

Time For An Update!!

Good Morning to you! I am sorry for the late posts, we have been busy with Christmas, School Events and our local Panto (everyone had a part whether on-stage or behind scenes!) and as it is such a dismal day today I thought I ought to spend some time on my blog!

As always with the beginning of a New Year, Stampin Up! have brought out a new catalogue, the 2018 Spring/Summer which you can download by clicking on the image on the left of this page.  And to tempt you further to treating yourself to some new products (maybe using some Xmas money), Stampin Up! have their Sale-a-Bration event where for every £45 you spend from the annual and Spring/Summer catalogues between the 2nd January and 31st March, you can redeem a free product from the Sale-a-Bration catalogue (which you can download by clicking on the image on the left of this page).

So for our first class of the year, I made use of two of the Sale-a-Bration products, Party Pandas and Happy Wishes.  For the first time, Stampin Up! have introduced a few exclusive products that can be redeemed during Sale-a-Bration for a £90 spend, Happy Wishes is one of them. It was very versatile set with several different greetings that can go with the main 'happy' and best'.  For this card we used a mixture of the current 2017/2019 In-Colors in ink format and from the Fresh Florals DSP Stack :- Berry Burst, Lemon Lime Twist, Fresh Fig and Tranquil Tide.  We heat embossed using White Embossing Powder as well as Tranquil Tide ink for the greetings

The second set we used from the Sale-a-Bration catalogue are these cute Pandas from Party Pandas. They can be used for all sorts of celebrations, here we used them to make a birthday card suitable for all ages.  You could turn this into a new baby card by changing the colour theme too.  The ribbon is also from the  Sale-a-Bration catalogue and comes in a pack of three different ones :- Basic Grey (6.4mm wide), Bermuda Bay (3.2mm wide) and Calypso (1cm wide).  The main colours used in this card were Daffodil Delight, Bermuda Bay and Whisper White with Basic Black ink.  The Panda is 'juggling' a selection of Enamel Shapes.  We also used the Starburst Embossing Folder to give some texture to the card and the Layering Circles Framelits to cut out the circles.  The greeting is also from the Party Pandas set and was punched out using the Classic Label punch.
With Valentines Day not far off and wanting the excuse to use the stamp set I got given at a recent Stampin Up! convention form the new Spring/Summer catalogue, we made this card. The stamp set is Heart Happiness which has 15 different heart themed stamps in the set for just £15.  This card can be adapted for an Anniversary or Wedding card.  The colours used were Berry Burst, Sahara Sand and Crumb Cake.   We used the 'stamping off' technique to the create the background seen through he 'heart' aperture.  The ribbon is also new and from the Spring/Summer catalogue; Berry Burst 3/8" Metallic Edge Ribbon.  The greeting came from Teeny Tiny Sentiments (such a good set to have in your craft room!!). The heart shapes were cut out using the Sweet & Sassy Framelits and the greeting punched out with the Classic Label punch.

December Class Projects

Good Morning
Just a short post to show you what we made at our last classes for 2017.
The first was a desk-top calendar using the Colourful Seasons stamp set and matching Seasonal Layers Thinlits (a lovely set well worth having!).  Each side of the calendar (it has four sides) depicts a different season.
For Spring we used Berry Burst ink with an Aquapainter to 'wash' over some Powder Pink cardstock for the background and then some Whsiper White to cut out some flowers to give a shaded colour effect.  The side pieces were taken from the Color Theory DSP Stack.  The year and season and punch were made using retired products.
For Summer we used a piece of So Saffron at the main backing then layered torn strips of Pacific Point, Marina Mist and Sahara Sand to create the beach/sea.  The 'sun' was just a dauber with Daffodil Delight ink rubbed into a circle.
For Autumn we used a piece of Soft Suede for the main backing and the using the 'babywipe' technique created the leaves using Cherry Cobbler, Pear Pizzazz and So Saffron inks with the leaf stamp from the Colourful Seasons stamp set.

For Winter we used Soft Sky ink with an Aquapainter to 'wash' over some Soft Sky cardstock for the background and then some Whisper White to cut out some Snowflakes from the Seasonal Layers Thinlits using the  to give a shaded colour effect. 
Here is a photo of the calendar when in use.

The other project we made at this class was a set of gift cards and decorated Pizza Box using the Painted Harvest stamp set. The colours used were Pumpkin Pie, Daffodil Delight, Soft Suede and Pear Pizzazz.