Whale-y great day

 Here, as promised, is the card made with Sunshine & Sprinkles DSP. A large punch cut out an image and then mounted it onto glimmer paper and used Wacky Words to compliment the whimsy-feel of the card.

For the Munchkin fans:

 Here is Munckin visiting Wisley gardens a few weeks ago with my Dad.

 I'm guessing he took the first two photos. There were a number of photos that appeared that munchkin herself must have taken! Below are my two favourites:

12 Days of Christmas - Day 10

 Today's project: a Soft toy owl! I found this tutorial online which is only for personal use but I thought I would share the link with you. This would make a lovely a gift for adults and children. You could fill it with rice to make a heated owl or lavender for a yummy scent.

 I printed out the template provided on the link and then cut out my Spice Cake fabric.

 The first sewing job was to join the tummy to the rest of the body. Each side of the belly was sewn on and then the gap at the top was sewn up.

 Turned out the right way it looked like a rather unpromising pyramid!

 The beak was folded down and I embroidered with orange floss to secure the bright beak.

 I filled the inside using an old (clean) fleece dressing gown. It's great to reuse things and stuffing is pretty pricey in my opinion.

 It was then possible to sew up the bottom. I ran a running stitch all the way around and then gathered the cotton to pull everything central.

 Lastly was the base. This had been cut from fabric but needed a card insert. I punched a piece of Soft Suede cardstock (to match the fabric) with the 1 3/4" circle punch.

 This was glued together using the self-adhesive sheets. I stuck the glue to the fabric so that it was really easy to fold up the excess onto the top.

 This was hand sewn on to give a solid base for the little owl to sit on and hide the gathered bottom.

 Finally some button eyes were added (from the Neutrals button collection). Voila! A simple and quick soft toy. You could always make the eyes from felt if you wanted to make the toy for a young child under three.

It took less than an hour to make this little owl, including gathering and setting up materials and my sewing machine. Lovely!!

12 Days of Christmas - Day 8

Hello and Happy Saturday! It's already the 8th of December and preparations are in full force around here.

Today's video is a quick make using a Bigz Two Tags die to make a gift card holder.

 Inside is a Very Vanilla panel with a penguin stamped and, although you can't really see it on this picture, there is gold shimmer too.

12 Days of Christmas - Day 7

Good morning! Such a gorgeous sunny day outside and it's lovely to be in the warm getting festive. Today's gift features 1" wide cello bags. I love these as you can get creative with what to fill them with: chocolate balls, tictacs, pencils, small sweets etc.

This little reindeer topper is nice and simple to put together with some punches.

 The owl punch makes the reindeer head. Just cut off the feet!

 Here are all the punched pieces laid out. On the left are the antlers punched using the leaf part of the Bird punch.

Here is the finished piece! Nice and easy to sit and make on cold winter evenings!!

 

What would you put in yours?!

 

Check back tomorrow and Sunday for two new videos!!!

Spirograph inspired

One of my Dad's favourite activities as a young boy was playing with his spirograph, which is what inspired me to try this technique of wrapping Island Indigo bakers twine around a large scalloped circle.

 This was layered on a Pool Party base and a Top Note cut out on the Big Shot in Soft Suede.

 Here is a close up of the central image.

The Thank you sentiment was embossed in Silver.

Not long now til Christmas preparations go wild!!! So many great projects to share with you starting on Saturday 1st December!!!

Whip up a favour

Here are some little gift packaging I made up the other day. They would be perfect to contain a cello bag with sweets, biscuits or even buttons as a small gift when going out for drinks or to go with a birthday card.

This is the first one made with Pennant Parade and the co-ordinating punch.

 

The next is using Owl Occasions and cute little Vintage Trinkets.

 

 The last one uses Papaya Collage and a paper daisy.

I could not wait to use the little bird image. It's so sweet!

Sorry about the absence this week. Munchkin has been unwell while DH is away on business so it's been exhausting nights followed by dragging days... Still, I'm back on form now!!! Keep your eyes peeled as my 12 Days of Christmas series starts on Saturday 1st December with quick cards, gifts and decorations!!!

Christmas boxes

A colleague at work runs a dance school and asked me to make little gifts for her students. As most of them are girls, I thought I would make quite feminine boxes using the Cracker die on the Big Shot. The colours of the boxes were inspired by the colours in the paper from the Autumn/Winter Catalogue called Snow Festival (pg10): Baja Breeze, Cherry Cobbler, Gumball Green, Primrose Petals and Soft Suede.

 Tags Til Christmas (pg11, main) is the stamp set used and was easily punched out with the scalloped square punch.

 The scalloped square was layered on a Large Oval punched out piece in a contrasting colour.

 The combinations are endless and by using a DSP pack you get lots of patterns that all co-ordinate together.

 It would be really sweet to have a basket of these filled with chocolates of Haribos by the front door to give guests as they leave.

Sorry about this last picture being blurry. It serves me right for taking the pictures with my daylight lamp instead of the natural daylight!!

Summer 's back?!

This card makes it feel like summer is coming back. It's inspired by one on Pinterest but I used Summer Silhouettes as the stamp set as I didn't feel there was enough stamping on the original design!

 

As you can see there are lots of nice floral images, which I can't wait to use. The background stamping was done with the border stamp in Crumb Cake to match the base card colour.

To make the patterned card to punch out the butterfly from, I used the arched blossom cloud to create a unique patterned card in Primrose Petals. This was layered on a large scalloped Tangerine Tango circle and a piece of Primrose Petals CS.

Tea gift holder

Another Pinterest inspired project... I followed this tutorial to make the basic sizes work. It makes a cute little gift holder that can hold a gift card, teabags and/or beauty product samples.

It was great to get out Tea Shoppe again. It's such a sweet set and really works on this kind of gift.

Here's a view of the inside. On the left is patterned paper featuring Baja Breeze. On the left are the gift envelopes cut on the Big Shot with cute buttons.

This shows the envelopes in more detail. Aren't they cute?

This would be a great gift to make en masse as it is super quick to measure and score but also easy to personalise with different papers and themes.

All yellow

Hi there, dear readers! It's been a few days as I have not had time to get my posts all ready for you, but fear not because the next 3 days or so are covered!

 

Today's card, as the title suggests, is all about yellow. It's based on one I saw on Pinterest but I have changed it quite a bit, whilst keeping to the general layout and cupcake.

 

Here's a close up of the cupcake:

It's all glittery! Such a versatile layout; I'm sure it could be adapted to fit other themes.

Scrapbook Club November 2012

Here is a short (incomplete and unedited!) video of how the page was created:

Below is the finished page:

 Here is a close-up of the bottom right corner. Am loving those buttons!!!

 To tie in with the patterned papers, a scrap is in the corner with some added bling.

 

So there it is. Just shows how versatile the Affection Collection stamp set really is.

 

Stamps: Affection Collection

Papers: International Bazaar

 

Check back tomorrow for another design with this fabulous set.

Covention Make & Take 2

This collage effect card was really quick and fun to make using Affection Collection. I was able to use nearly every stamp in the set layered up with different colours. It's best to do this technique by starting with the lightest colour first.

 

Up in the corner there is a little pennant and the heart is raised up with a Dimensional.

My convention swaps

This weekend I am at the 2012 Stampin' Up! Convention in Mainz, Germany. Very exciting!

 

One thing I had to prepare for the Convention was my swaps. There are 800 peope booked to attend, but I didn't feel that I could make quite that many! Instead I made a handful of these little sleeves that conceal some yummy sweets. My favourite swaps always contain an edible treat!!

 

 

Here's a view of how the sweets get in and out of the sleeve:

 

Here is a closer view:

The base is Crumb Cake cardstock. I used my lovely Scor-pal to score the lines for the folds before embossing on the Big Shot. The embossing folder is called Lace Brocade from the Autumn/Winter Seasonal catalogue.

To decorate the lovely punches came into use. The main scallop circle was punched from Very Vanilla card. Layered on top is a 1 3/8" circle of Tangerine Tango card. Raised on Dimensionals is a small scalloped circle punched from Pool Party spotty DSP. The stamped sentiment comes from one of the hostess stamp sets in the back of the Autumn/Winter seasonal catalogue. It is stamped in Tangerine Tango to match the larger circle.7 To finish a little bit of Victoria Lace was added.

I'm quite happy with them and can't wait to swap them at convention. I'll have to show you what I exchanged them for when I get home!