Don’t you love it when your kids ask you to make a birthday card at the last minute? The morning of the party!!!

This was one of those times.

So I asked the usual question, what does your friend like. The answer that came back was not much help. “She likes Black!”

Well anyone who knows me, knows that black is not one of the colours I am comfortable with. So I asked if there was any other colour she liked?? The answer “I don’t know”. Well that was a lot of help. It’s really hard to know with teenagers. My youngest has decided after all these years of being a pink fanatic that she doesn’t like pink any more. (Well she will just have to live with the pink bedroom for a while yet!!).

So this is the card I came up with.

My heart felt a lot easier when I pulled up to their house an hour later and there were black balloons on the fence and YES pink balloons as well. Phew!!

I embossed the black petals with black embossing powder and coloured in the petals with a pixie pink stampin write marker. I also embossed the happy birthday to you single stamp from the new mini in black. Stuck on a bit of black gros-grain ribbon and a button (not Stampin’ Up!I really wanted a shiny button to go with the embossing). And Voila a quick and pretty birthday card.

Well aren’t those winter colds frustrating! I have never had one that has kept coming back like this one has. It’s been 8 weeks now and I hope I’ve seen the last of it.

Here is a scrapbook page I did a little while ago. I took it with me when I went to convention in May and haven’t had a chance to blog about it since.

One of the themes in my presentation was about maximising the stamp sets you have and I just think that Baroque motifs is one of those versatile stamp sets that can be used for so many different things. On this page I have used it as the rose vine around Sleeping Beauty’s castle. The castle was hand drawn and cut out of chocolate chip card and the roses were made sparkly with supa nova fine pink glitter. That was a very messy process.

I did have some help with this page. Yvette, my oldest daughter, and quite an artist, drew the detail on the castle and she did a really wonderful job. I just think the page is missing something, but didn’t know how to put on a heading and some journalling. I’m still thinking about that. Any suggestions?

This Sleeping Beauty is my youngest Chantelle. I loved it when she was asleep . Now that she is a teenager her sleep patterns have reverted to those of when she was a baby. She seems to sleep all day and is awake half the night!!

I just love the names of these papers. Reminds me of dessert, and I loooooove desserts. It goes along with my love of chocolate I suppose. mmmmm chocolate…………

Anyway, continuing with the theme of Designer Series Paper, here are a couple more notebooks. The first one was made by Dawn at my Mother’s Day class and was promptly given away to a sweet friend of hers. This friend promptly ordered 3 notebook sets to give to her daughters and Dawn and I had such fun making them.

Can you tell that Dawn is a quilter? She has fussy cut out the flowers from the Raspberry Tart papers and they just look so sweet mounted on the whisper white card stock.

This next notebook is my favourite and I was nearly not going to part with it because I loved it so much. However I gave it to Shannon, from Stampin’ Up! in America who presented with me at Convention in Canberra. She was just so encouraging and sweet that I thought it was appropriate seeing as it is made with the Sweet Always paper.

I just love the chocolate spotty paper and thought it lent itself well to this design. I was trying to illustrate the versatility of the  stamp set Seeing Spots. This is simply made by stamping simply spots on whisper white card in the colours from the paper then punching them out with different sized circle and scallop circle punches. These were then layered with punched out designer paper. The leaves are just punched out hearts layered underneath a strip of chocolate chip card for the stem.

Don’t miss out on ordering your papers. Remember when you buy the first three you get the next one for free. You can email me your order by clicking here. (I hope that works)

Well this month is all about paper. I love paper. I didn’t think that I would when I first started Stampin’ Up! because I wasn’t really into scrapbooking. However with all the wonderful designs and the quality, I get really excited and want to have them all. Then I find I have heaps of things I want to make with the paper.

(another set made with the always, Inspired by Nature sets and Urban Garden paper, this time using basic grey)

This month Stampin’ Up! have a special offer that if you purchase three packs of desigener paper from the list below then you can receive a fourth pack of paper free. That’s a saving of $16.95 and means that the paper works out to be about $12.70 per pack or just over $1 per sheet (with postage about $1.10 per sheet). Here is the list

And here are some of the lovely note sets that my ladies made at my Mother’s Day class.

This was made with the Haiku paper by Linda. I just love the way the flowers punched out nicely in the circle punch. The papers also looked lovely on the simple card made by using up left over strips of paper. So cool! Stay tuned for more!!

Wow! what a ball I had at convention. I would just like to say thank you to all those people who took the time to come and have a chat. You were all so generous and encouraging. Thank you. It was great to meet so many people and hopefully make some new friends along the way.

This is one of my favourite projects that I had on Display and is one of the projects I made as a sample for my recent mother’s day class. So seeing as it is Mother’s Day today and the first time I’ve had to sit down and play since convention I thought it appropriate to post this set.

I just love the Always stamp set and the Inspired by Nature stamp set is my new favourite. (Watch out for it in our workshops this month). And aren’t the filigree brads just beautiful. I have colour changed the ribbon with the Baja Breeze ink pad and a sponge dauber then fed it through the hole in the brad so that there was a lump while I inserted the silver brad in the centre and then pulled the ribbon tight around it. But before all that I had to stamp the image, so I Versamarked the Always bird and then embossed in silver embossing powder. The grass from the Inspired by Nature stamp set was stamped over the top with Baja Breeze ink I and the excess ink was wiped off using a tissue. It was really very simple but turned out lovely.

Can you tell the blue is my favourite colour? When I saw the Urban Garden Designer paper, it just screamed at me to buy it. I have used nearly the whole packet so far!!

I’m planning on putting up some of the other ladies notebooks soon to inspire you with our current designer series papers. And stay tuned for a post on this month’s promotion. It’s all about paper!!!!

My fabulous upline Mel has let me plagiarise her site so that I can fulfill my legal obligations to give recognition to the Stampin’ Up! copyright and trademark registrations for the products that we sell. Thanks Mel!

Aqua Painter-TM

• Bold Brights-TM
• Color Coach-TM
• Color Caddy- TM
• Crystal Effects- TM
• Definitely Decorative-TM
• Earth Elements-TM
• Embossing Buddy-TM
• Forget-Me-Not Keeper-TM
• Greetings Glue-TM
• Hodgepodge Hardware-TM
• Powder Pals-TM
• Rich Regals-TM
• Simply Scrappin’-TM
• Simply Sent-TM
• SNAIL Adhesive-TM
• Soft Subtles-TM
• Stampin’ Around-TM
• Stampin’ Dimensionals-TM
• Stampin’ Emboss-TM
• Stampin’ Glitter-TM
• Stampin’ Ink-TM
• Stampin’ Memories-TM
• Stampin’ Mist-TM
• Stampin’ Pad-TM (or Stampin’ Pads-TM)
• Stampin’ Pastels-TM
• Stampin’ Scrub-TM
• Stampin’ Spot-TM
• Stampin’ Write-TM
• The Tearing Edge-TM
• Two-Step Stampin’-TM
• Two-Step Stampin’ Logo
• Watercolor Wonder-TM
• Thanks for your time.
• Happy Stamping
• Alison

Well the time has finally come for us to start getting used to the idea that the catalogue is ending and we will be losing some of our favourite stamp sets and accessories ready for the introduction of the new catalogue in April.

The retired list can be viewed here.

Below is a table of items that have already sold out. I hope to be able to update the table every day. So please check below before placing an order.

This time I’m sharing with you my favourite colour combination. I just adore Chocolate Chip and Soft Sky. Add a touch of white (and some of the Pretties Kit) and it just looks so elegant.

I made this box for a friend who wanted a $10 secret santa gift. I found this tin at a scholastic book sale of all places, so it was a one off find. I was so excited about them, when I got home I had to check if they fit a C6 card in them and was jumping up and down when they did.

These cards were made with the same colour combination of Soft Sky and Choc Chip. I am so sad that soft sky will be retiring at the end of March.

The flower on this one is from the pretties kit. I dampened the flower with a little water and then put some chocolate chip ink on it and left the ink to spread and dry.

For the beautiful Baroque Motif’s swirl, I first inked up in soft sky and Versamark, then stamped and embossed. I then used my stamp-a-ma-jig to place the stamp slightly off the original image and stamped in choc chip, to create a shadow effect.

If you have a look at the Baroque motif swirl you will notice that there’s only one little flower on it. I have been really naughty and cut the flower off my stamp and mounted it separately. This is how I created this card with its soft sky flowers. The chocolate chip dots are some left over 1/8″ circles that I was going to throw in the bin, very carefully glued on.

This card is similar to  the top of the box. It does look so much better in real life. I took a white piece of card and then sponged on some soft sky. I didn’t make it even, just blotches over the card. Then I sponged on some Choc Chip again in blotches. The swirl was stamped in Choc Chip from either corner of the card. Just a really simple card.

Well I hope the lady enjoys it as much as I enjoyed making it.

Happy Stamping!!

My apologies for the long absence. But hopefully I will be back on a regular basis with some more crafty stuff.

I made some lovely card tins for secret Santa this Christmas. I was involved in only one, but someone asked me to make a set for the other one.

This set was for the Patchwork and Possibilities group held at the local church here in Dapto, where I go along to do some cardmaking. I wanted to make a set that refelected the work that goes on at the craft group and that patchworkers would appreciate.

This is the first card I made. The top of the tin was also similar to this. It uses the Priceless stamp set. Colours are Wild Wasabi, Very Vanilla, and Purely Pomegranate. I just love the wide satin ribbon.

This card was also a gift card holder.

This second card was made using strips of background card, the trimmings off the previous cards background and also some background card I made by swiping the wild wasabi stamp pad over the very vanilla card. Then I found some buttons in my button box and added some felt fusion flowers to the centre. I loved this card, looked just like a patchwork piece.

This next card again used off cuts of the previous cards and I tried to make it look like a triangle patchwork block. That faux stitching is done with the white gel pen.

This is the last card in the set and I wanted it to look like applique. The card is Wild Wasabi with Designer Series Paper in Purely Pomegranate. The four squares of patterned vanilla are offcuts from the original sheet of card I made using the Priceless swirl stamp. The leaves and centres of the flower are from the Wasabi swiped Vanilla card. The flowers are interesting because I stamped I inked up the solid flower stamp in White then inked up the Priceless swirl in Purely Pomegranate and kept kissing it to the flower stamp till I was happy with the depth of colour and then stamped it onto the vanilla card. The button hole stitching is done with a rose red Stampin’ Up! marker.

I had a ball making these. I hope the recipient enjoys them as much as I did making them.

It I think I am just hoping that spring will come sooner rather than later and I have been doing a lot of spring-like cards. This is one of them. It was based on a sketch that was sent to me as part of a Swap Blog I am on called First-Swap-Blog.

It has something like 10 layers, and Australia Post didn’t believe me when I was sending it to my swap partner for the week, that it was only a card.

Don’t you just love the new Pretties Kit!! I dyed the silk flowers by folding them up so the middle of the flower was to a point and repeatedly dipped the tip into the So Saffron stamp pad. I also put a drop of water onto the flower to help the ink spread. I let the ink spread and dipped again, till I had achieved the colour I wanted. It is really great that you can customise the colour of your flowers to match what you are doing. You can also colour the flowers with Stampin’ Pastels.