Need a reason to smile?

Need a reason to smile? The weather this summer hasn't been perfect so let me make you smile with the lovely offer this month (August 1-31st 2012):

Place an order for £60 and get this exclusive stamp set FREE!

Here is a card made with the stamp set using the Triple Stamp technique. I hope to create a video to show you this technique soon. It's really simple but gives a great effect.

 The card was made from Riding Hood Red and Newsprint DSP. The sentiment comes from Petite Pairs set. There's a strip of vintage lace and an antique brad plus a tiny heart from Tiny Tags to finish it off.

If you'd like to take advantage of this offer and get yourself this fabulous stamp set, I'd be happy to place an order for you: blueangelcrafts at gmail dot com

Pink delight

Bonjour from France! We're having a lovely time in the warm surrounded by mountains, although we're missing dear hubby!!

Today I have a card I made to show off the papers from Lap of Luxury collection. There are shades of pink, Concorde Crush and Very Vanilla - delish!



The punch adds interest and allowed many designs to be shown at once - perfect of you have one of my papershares! The sentiment is from Tiny Tags punched with the Jewelry Punch and attached to a yum-o piece of Concorde Crush ribbon.

Just for those missing us in the UK here is Munchkin with her Boyfriend!

Back to nature

Happy Sunday! Today I have a card to show you that used Nature Walk at the retreat day I ran yesterday. It was a fun day in a great venue (thanks Diane!). The ladies were all lovely and came up some original twists on my original designs!



The birdcage was embossed in gold and added a sentiment using Tiny Tags stamp set.

Today was for relaxing. Well, it was for me once the roast dinner had been made. Anyway DH and my father-in-law made this all day:



Cool huh? I'm so excited that we'll be able to grow salad all winter long. All we need to do now is add the glass to the frame!

Next to the greenhouse we have a couple of raised beds with a few edible plants:



Love having it all in rows as it makes me feel like a professional (hahaha)

Whilst the men were working Immy and I ran off to Starbucks:



Just LOVE that cute little face. Hope you've had a great weekend too!

Another beautiful sunny day! This card is quite masculine but I guess the sentiment looks a bit feminine!!

The colours used are Night of Navy, Chocolate Chip and Very Vanilla. I used a little Crumb Cake for contrast that matches the delicious seam binding ribbon. Mmmm. The main image was stamped in Chocolate Chip and comes from the set, Nature Walk. A little patterned paper (Botanical Gazette) and a few Tiny Tags and voila!

We had a fantastic day out in the sunshine, playing with the chickens and eating out of doors. Lovely!

Sew Lovely

Did ya miss me? Apologies for the gap, my camera was taken for a walk by some sticky little fingers and has only just been retrieved! To make up for it I have two projects to show you, both using Sew Lovely stamp set from the Spring Mini. The above card was totally CASE'd from SCS except that I used the ruler stamp instead of the frill that the original design had. Don't you just love those bright colours?

This card was also CASE'd and features the same stamp set, but as you can see, the look is really different. I'd never made a stepped card before and decided that I didn't need a tutorial to do make mine - BIG mistake! There are so many creases and folds it's not even funny!!!

Hope you are looking forward to a fun-filled weekend. We're hanging out at home and hoping for a quiet one.

Valentine Class

It's that time of year again when our thoughts go to LURVE!

So this is the Valentine class I am running this year. You make a card and this gorgeous (even if I do say so myself) gift box.

The class is running tonight at 7.30pm at my house. If you can't make it tonight I'm also running it on Saturday 5th Feb 10-12noon and Saturday 12th Feb 1pm-3pm so email me to book if you'd like to come! blueangelcrafts@gmail.com

You can also see photos of all classes (forthcoming and past) here.

Munchkin's going to play with my cousin's little girl this afternoon while I attend a meeting and she is really looking forward to it. Fingers crossed she'll be worn out from playing and will sleep brilliantly tonight.

Owl-tastic

Hello All! Apologies for the gap between posts - both Immy & I have been struck down with various ailments. I think we're over the worst of it and we're just hoping that DH doesn't catch anything.

This card was inspired heavily by one on SCS. It uses Certainly Celery patterned paper from the Subtles DSP stack. Fantastic value pack! This was laid on a Marina Mist base and then contrasted with Rich Razzleberry satin ribbon.

The owl stamp came from Fox & Friends and the sentiment is from Tiny Tags.

Hope you like-y!!

CASE'd Shelli

Shelli Gardner is the Co-Founder of Stampin' Up! and I was lucky enough to see her crafting on stage at the European Convention. She showed a version of the card and couldn't resist having a go myself.

The base of the card is Real Red. The Crumb Cake layer had the Fancy Flower punch out of it. Underneath that layer I use a piece of scrap card and covered it with Sticky Strip. (This is super-sticky tape) I was then able to adher 1/4" grosgrain ribbon strips onto the base card, the colours I used are Real Red, Certainly Celery & Marina Mist. Shelli actually used taffetta ribbon but I wanted a brighter look.

The Crumb Cake layer and the Real Red card base sandwiched the ribbon layer to create the card. I then embellished with a little button (sadly retired) that was knotted with linen thread. The leaves were punched from Pear Pizzazz CS as I couldn't lay my hands on a scrap of Certainly Celery using the Two Step Bird Punch.

I stamped a little greeting in the corner using Early Espresso ink with the Tiny Tags stamp set. Easy and cute!!

Hope you are having a good week. I am working on a video tutorial at the moment - just a slight hitch getting the video from the camera to the computer but as soon as I can I'll be posting my first one!! Keep your eyes peeled...

My Baby is One!

Yesterday was Immy's first birthday. I really cannot believe a whole year has passed! Unfortunately DH and I both had to work so we didn't see the Munchkin much but we thoroughly enjoyed every minute in her company. She's soooo much fun nowadays.

This is the card that I made for my lil one. It's Elegant Eggplant, Rose Red, Wild Wasabi and Certainly Celery. A bit Halloween-y, but I guess it is the season for it. My Just Perfect Alphabet helped me to make a personalised message, which I punched out with a 3/4" circle punch.

The darling was given a huge array of pretty presents and I wanted to send out thank yous asap. I used my All in the Family set to make a little picture of Immy! I stamped in Basic Black and then coloured it in with my In Color markers in Peach Parfait, Poppy Parade, Conchord Crush and Blushing Bride (cheeks).

I'm in love with my new sentiment set, Curly Cute, and got stamping in White Craft ink for a simple greeting. The fantastic thing about this card is that I get 4 from each A4 sheet of Poppy Parade card. I just cut 3" chunks off width-ways to make tent fold cards. Easy peasy.

Tiny Tag Friends

This is a card I have case'd from the new catalogue! I love these Tiny Tags stamps and the jewellery tag punch makes using them soooo easy. I love this colour combination of Daffodil Delight, Tangerine Tango, Whisper White, Crumb Cake and Chocolate Chip. So simple but looks really complicated. I think it took about 10 minutes to make from start to finish.

The tags are attached with Clear Rhinestone brads, silver brads, Daffodil Delight brads (from the Brights brad pack) and linen thread. I love getting all the embellishments out to play with!

I'm now just waiting waiting waiting for my order of new things from the catalogue. I can't wait to get creating!!

Insect-licious

Having seen a fabulous tutorial on Monica's site (you can see it here). I thought I should break out my Something Sweet stamp set. In the tutorial Monica used a cute ladybird chocolate but I couldn't find them down here. Instead my DH found these liquid filled jelly sweets at Tesco's on Saturday.

The base of the card is made from More Mustard CS with a layer of Old Olive retired DSP paper. The Whisper White card has little leafy prints on it in Certainly Celery and Old Olive using stamps from the Tiny Tags stamp set. The bugs heads on the card are free-hand drawn on and their bodies are sweetie stamps. The magnifying glass handle is stamped in Close to Cocoa (I'm really going to miss that colour when it retires at the end of September!)

These sets used are both on offer this month, with 20% off until the end of August 2010. This makes the Something Sweet stamp set just £19.16 instead of £23.95, and the Tiny Tags stamp set £15.16 instead of £18.95.

Hope you are having a good day. We're having a quiet one as the weather is so miserable. It's been a day for bulk baby food making!

Wedding samples

There's another Wedding Fair in the pipeline! After the success of the one in February it was too good an opportunity to miss. It will be held at the Guildford Holiday Inn on Sunday 5th September 2010. It would be lovely to see you there if you are looking to make your own wedding stationary. Above is a selection of 3x3" cards I have made to give brides to see what a fantastic job Stampin' Up! products do when making wedding stationary.
If this Vintage Vogue set had been available when I made my own wedding stationary I would definately have used it. I LURVE this set so much. To be honest when I look back at my posts my biased nature is evident. No matter, because these samples are so sweet. The above one is made with Very Vanilla base, Regal Rose flowers and Old Olive leaves and sentiment. The below one simply has Bashful Blue instead of Regal Rose. The centre of the flower has a small clear brad and the sentiment comes from the Tiny Tags set.

The technique used is called masking. You simply stamp the flower where you want it. On a separate piece of paper (a post-it note works well) you stamp the same flower image and cut it out carefully. The post-it note flower is then stuck over the original stamped flower providing a mask for when the leaves are stamped overlapping the image. When the post-it note image is removed you get the flower with the impression that the leaves are sprawling out from behind. Hope this explanation makes sense!

No such thing as a mistake!

My sister made this card for my Open House back in April. She's not a card maker usually, but fancied playing around with the supplies that littered my dining table.
I really liked the design, especially the vintage look. I guess the stamps helped (all those vintage ones!), but also the way that the sentiment has little black lines where the ink has rubbed off other parts of the rubber matting. I'm told that this was a mistake so she decided to continue the sentiment to make it look like she meant it to be that way, and I am super impressed! What a clever sister I have!!

Card: Close to Cocoa, Very Vanilla, Chocolate Chip, Bashful Blue
Ink: Basic Black
Stamps: Vintage Vogue, Very Vintage jumbo roller, Tiny Tags
Other: Jewellery punch, White satin ribbon, Linen thread, Random paper scraps

Bunny clip

This post is a bit of cheat really as I didn't make this adorable bunny clip. It was sent to me as a thank you for organising a swap on ILWS by Amanda. Isn't it just lovely? I am going to try and make some of these as I think that everyone would like to receive one.
Yesterday was a really great day. Immy had her first trip to London to see her Aunt & Uncle. We had a lovely day although it was exhausting! We thoroughly enjoyed having a Lebanese lunch and an Italian ice-cream. It's a wonder we managed to walk back to my brother's house we were so stuffed!

Shabby chic Mother's Day

This is the card I made for my Mum for Mothers' Day. It was inspired by a card I saw on Monica Gale's blog that she made for one of her Passionettes. The background of the card was stamped in Versmark with En Francais (it's really hard to see in the picture), then I used my new vintage jumbo roller in Gable Green over the corners. I couldn't resist playing with my Vintage Vogue set to make the flowers. The other thing I was playing about with was my Pretties kit. This is a beautiful kit, so beautiful in fact that I've had it over a year and never used it! I just couldn't bear to stick them down, instead I just stroke the flowers and beads and then put them away again.
Anyway, now I am back to a more sane state of mind I have realised how useful the Pretties Kit is. Hope my Mum likes her card!