Novembers Class (Better late than never!)

Where has the time gone? Christmas is now only 4 weeks away and I still haven't told you what we made at Novembers class! And to top it all our December class is a week early due to a busy venue so will now be next week! I had better get my skates on and start writing the post for that class now too (and I hope I won't be needing 'ice-skates' either!!).

 I gave my crafters the option of making either a(nother) Christmas card or a New Home card by using the same set of stamps and design with just a slight change in decoration.  The stamp sets used were from the Autumn/Winter catalogue, White Christmas and Holiday Home.  The DSP is taken from the Subtles Backgrounds DSP Stack amd the main colours are Early Espresso, Crumb Cake, Cherry Cobbler, Mossy Meadow, Soft Sky, Crushed Curry and Wild Wasabi.  The photo doesn't show it too well but Dazzling Details were used as snow on the trees, ground and roof of the Christmas card.

To take a break from Christmas cards, we made a general greeting card using Pictogram Punches and coordinating punch. The 'stars' going vertically down the side of the card were punched out of the top layer of Night of Navy card using the Confetti Stars Punch to show the Crushed Curry card underneath.  This punch is great for making confetti for shaker cards - watch this space for a future card design!!

 Our final Christmas themed gift for 2014 - a table centre piece tealight holder (don't worry, its a battery operated one and definitely not intended for use with a real candle!!).  This is such a simple idea that I saw being demonstrated at a recent Demonstrator team training (thank you Victoria McLafferty) and just had to share it with you.  We used Endless Wishes stamp set to decorate the Whisper White cardstock in Night of Navy, Marina Mist and Pool Party, and again using Whisper White heat embossing powder on the vellum cardstock in the centre of the circle.

That's all for now but will be back again soon with more designs and maybe some Stampin Up news I can share with you!!

Christmas Card Making Workshop

On Sunday 19th October, 10 lovely ladies came along to my Christmas card making workshop and made 20 cards and a gift box! They all received a goodie bag containing a set of 20 Stampin Up! notecards and envelopes, a reel of Lost Lagoon 3/8" Silky Taffeta Ribbon, a pack of Frosted Sequins, glue dots and 1/8th of a pack of All Is Calm DSP all for £30! I know the amount of  DSP doesn't sound a lot but I wanted to show my ladies just how far these paper packs go so are a very economical buy!
The cards used a variety of techniques:- heat embossing, dry embossing, Big Shot, free-hand cutting, punching, tying of bows (not everyone enjoyed this exercise) and the Envelope Punch Board.  The stamp sets that were used were Festival of Trees, Bright & Beautiful, Endless Wishes, Holiday Home and White Christmas. A variety of colours were used; Pear Pizzazz, Soft Sky, Real Red, Old Olive, Lost Lagoon, Pool Party, Smoky Slate and Basic Grey to name a few!  they were all proud to go home with all their projects completed in the 4 hours we had for ourselves.  Here are some photos from the day:-

Watch this space for future day workshops in the spring.

Start of the Christmas Season!

Well, with only something like 10 weeks to Christmas, I thought I would start to show off the lovely Christmas products form the Autumn/Winter catalogue. It is full of wonderful stamp sets, embellishments, accessories and ideas it was a struggle to decide what to buy. So this week I chose to demostrate the Festival of Trees and Bright & Beautiful sets to create a 3-in-1 project!

As you can see form the picture, we made a card with a circular cut-out using the Circles Framelits and then 'hung' a star from the Bright & Beautiful stamp set, embossed in silver and cut out using the Stars framelits.  The circle that was taken from the card was then stamped and again embossed in silver using a masking-off technique witht he greeting in the centre to make a gift tag.  A 'ring' of champagne glimer paper was used on the card to hide the bakers twine and the centre of this was decorated with a stamped tree from the Festival of Trees set to make a second gift tag!

Our second Christmas project this week was a mini treatbox in the shape of a birdhouse with a little robin.

This is an ideal 'thank you' gift for a teacher/neighbour/friend or a table favor etc and can be filled with a few Elizabeth Shaw mints. The stamp set that was used for the snowflakes (stamped in Whisper White Craft ink) and greeting tag (Real Red and Early Espresso markers) was Endless Wishes, another lovely stamp set with lots of  seasonal greetings and different sized snow flakes.  The box was made from Crumb Cake card stock and the roof from Always Artichoke.  The robin was made using the Bird Builder punch in soft suede.

Earlier in the year, Stampin Up! introduced Blendabilities. These are marker pens in 3 shades of several of the main Stampin Up! clolours and are used to create a subtle shading effect when colouring stamped images. So far I hadn't found time to introduce these new items into my classes so thought it was about time.
Plus it gave everyone the chance to indulge in a bit of colouring. 

This card uses two punches, the Pansy and the Dotted Scallop Ribbon Border.  The DSP was taken from the Moonlight DSP stack and the stamp set used was Flower Shop, stamped using Memento Ink to ensure that the ink did not 'run' into the Blendabilities colours. The two colours used were Daffodil Delight and Rich Razzleberry.  The Blendability pens can also be used to colour in Stampin Up! Pearl Basic Jewels (and Rhinestones) so that you can have matching emblishments to compliment your design.  The greeting was stamped in Rich Razzleberry ink using the Itty Bitty Banners stamp set.