Birthday card

A pop up birthday card for a special chap who turned 10 this week.

I spelt out the name with the little letters Thinlits. They don't include numbers, so I used the 'O' for a zero & the '1' from the file tabs Thinlits set, cut down slightly. That set contains numbers 1, 2, 3 which, conveniently, is the age bracket all my son's friends are just hitting, so I'll get good use out of them for a few years! 

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Pop up Valentine's card

 

Valentine's Day tomorrow.  I was going to give Mr B the card I made as a sample for my Valentine's card classes. To some, this will seem cheap. However, thrift is a quality my husband finds strangely arousing in a woman, so I was onto a winner! But I smudged ink on it & it couldn't be saved. So I made this one instead. Hearts, flying at your face from all angles! 

 

To get the fancy edge I took the large Framelit from the Apothecary Accents set, placed it against each edge of the card & just ran it partly through the Big Shot, so that it only cut half the die.

 















The I heart U stamp is from the Pictogram Punches set - I forgot to add that in the links below.

Have a fun & smoochy Valentines Day, whatever you get up to. And if it should turn into a washout - if he's sat there picking his feet & watching Match of the Day instead of gazing lovingly into your eyes - why not console yourself with a spot of craft shopping? Click on any of the pictures below to hop through into my shop. And remember, there's free product to be picked from the Sale-a-Bration catalogue if your order tops £45.

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Birthday pop up!

 

Fiddling around with the new Celebrate Today stamp set & Balloon Framelits & I made this. It's going to form the basis for February's card class (link in the side bar).

 

You can buy the stamp set and Framelits separately, but if you buy them together as a bundle you save 15%. Coordinating dies and punches make your stamp sets go sooo much further & I really recommend you buy them together if your budget allows.

 

I seem to have been making Christmas stuff for ages (since last August in fact) so it's a relief to finally play with softer, pastel colours!

 

 

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

A quick flip

A thank you flip card for one of my son's teachers featuring the Elegant Butterfly punch overstamped with the Dictionary background stamp in Coastal Cabana. The flip die featured isn't the Stampin' Up! one, but it's very similar. I've posted a link to the Stampin' Up! one below or you can make your own with any symmetrical die using the technique shown in my Banners Framelits flip card tutorial.

Label Card Thinlits Die

£29.95

Elegant Butterfly Punch

£14.25

Decorative Label Punch

£15.50

2013-2015 In Color Sequin Assortment

£4.50

Crumb Cake A4 Card Stock

£6.25

Dictionary

£12.95

Table by StampinBuddy. Try it FREE.

Flipping heck!! Banners Framelits flip card

Have a look at this flip card, made with the Stampin' Up! Banner Framelits & coordinating Perfect Pennants stamp set. 

I love flip cards. Once you get the hang of them you can make them with any die using the method shown in this video.

The card measures 6x7". I scored at 2.5 & 3.5". I used the second largest Framelit to cut out the banner.

Products featured:

Banners Framelits 132173

Chevron Border punch 132154

Word Window punch 119857

Decorative Label punch 120907

Perfect Pennants stamp set 133230

Simply Stars stamp set 130892

Hip Hip Hooray card kit 134998

Polka Dot Parade DSP 126902 (Marina Mist, Daffodil Delight, Real Red)

Crumb Cake cardstock 121685

Banner punch - available July 2014

Arrows Textured Impressions embossing folder 132187

Ink - Daffodil Delight, Real Red, Pacific Point 

Big Shot 113439 

Remember - spend £60 in a single order before the end of May and get a free Polymer stamp set

Quick & easy birthday card (& a video)

This colourful card shows how you can create an impact with minimal effort by punching or die cutting the front of you card to see the element on the inside.

 

Watch my walk through video. I've got a fancy new overhead adaptor for my camera now, so from now on all my videos will be dead dead artistic & good, I bet.

Products featured:

Make a cake stamp set

Postage Collection stamp set (hostess set)

Decorative label punch

Artisan label punch

Word Window punch

Polkadot parade DSP

Brights cardstock in Melon Mambo

If you like this, please take a moment to like my video & my Facebook page. Thanks! 

 

Remember - get one of the new polymer stamp sets FREE if you place an order over £60 before 31 May 2014.

In praise of Color Coach

I laughed my leg off when I first saw Color Coach in the annual catalogue.

It's billed simply as a "Swatchbook with a card for every colour in our collections". What's the point of that? You'd have to be an SU fan of stalker-ish proportions to pay £13.50 for what is essentially an advert for more things you can buy from SU. 

Anyway, having now played with it, it turns out I was wrong. Color Coach is actually an immensely useful little tool, particularly if, like me, you're a bit 'chromatically challenged'.

I have a problem putting colours together  & the process can often take over an entire crafting session. I've got a colour wheel & a very good book on colour theory, but none of it has sunk in. I need a system which basically tells me what to put with what. Colour for Dummies. Color Coach is that system.

What you get with Color Coach is a swatch book, with a page for every colour SU currently features across its product ranges. The really useful bit is that when you flip each card over, printed on the reverse are 3 suggested colour combinations featuring that particular colour. So, if you've got a particular ink or DSP you want to work with but you don't know where to go next, Color Coach acts as your jumping off point.

You don't need to own the entire SU range to use it (imagine that, though...). If you've not got the colour specified on the card, try substituting a similar one. 

In the card below, I wanted to use up some green Old Olive paper from Polka Dot Parade DSP (126902). I wasn't seized by the colour combinations on the back of the Old Olive swatch card, so I flicked through the pack until I came to the reverse of the Pool Party swatch card.

This suggested mixing Old Olive with Crushed Curry & Pool Party. I didn't have any a crushed curry or Pool Party cardstock, but I did have Daffodil Delight & Coastal Cabana. They were similar enough to substitute &, after throwing in a bit of Real Red to make things pop, I ended up with a very pleasing colour combination that had taken minutes to put together. 

 

 

I won't need Color Coach for every project. But when I'm short on time & inspiration, I know it will guarantee great results in minutes.

Products featured 

Color Coach

Polka Dot Parade DSP in Real Red & Old Olive

Make a Cake stamp set (126742)

Ink pads in Coastal Cabana, Daffodil Delight, Real Red

Postage Collection stamp set (happy birthday sentiment - hostess set)

Coastal Cabana DSP from 2013-15 in Color pack

Daffodil delight cardstock

Arrows textured embossing folder 

Decorative label punch

Scallop trim border punch (cut into snippets & used to frame label)

Word window punch (sentiment & pinwheel)

Mini book pics & a video

I finished my Mini Memories Simply Created album kit. It's a lovely little book. I've mainly used smaller photos (Pogo prints, passport side and Moos). The album covers were Kraft colour with a clear embossed pattern. I painted them in white acrylic paint then wiped it off while it was still wet, as I wanted white covers.

I used pictures from when my boys were little. It was lovely to complete. My boys are still children, but older now. It was nice to look back at a time when they enjoyed my company & would chatter away to me. These days they only communicate through a complex system of grunts, mostly based around wanting to know what's for tea.

If you currently have small children, do make sure that you photograph the living daylights out them now. Once they hit high school they'll start moaning about privacy and personal space and your pool of scrap-able photos will diminish rapidly. So until then, let them never have an undocumented moment!

Here's a video walk through of the album. (It features my usual high quality video production values, ahem)

And here's some close ups in my Flickr album.

If you want to buy the kit, you can find it here. Colourwise, it coordinates with Baked Brown Sugar, Pistachio Pudding, Crisp Canteloupe (those are all 2013-15 In Colors btw), Read Red and Summer Starfruit, so you might want to pick yourself up some coordinating elements while you're there.  And this is the clearance rack Tulle I was talking about - £2.35. Bargain!

Decorative Label Punch tip

A quick tip on how to get a bracket shape from your Decorative Label Punch.

(the video features a page from the Mini Memories Simply Created Album, which I'll be sharing later this week. When it's finished, lol.)