Card Making Magazine Offers

You know I like a bargain - so here are a couple that I have just taken advantage of - I have done it before, so I know they are genuine offers. 3 magazines for £1 - that's right just one pound for the lot! Of course there is a hitch - you have to set up a direct debit for the £1 and then the full quarterly amount every 3 months thereafter - so if you forget to cancel your subscription & direct debit after your first 2/3 issues, it's no longer a bargain.

But hey - with a calender (belt and braces, I'll set a reminder on my mobile phone too!) it's not too hard to cancel!

The first is £1 for 3 issues of Crafts Beautiful magazine - and they are also throwing in a free gift!
Go to: http://www.crafts-beautiful.com/qvc, (weird website, but it works) put in UK and ensure you check the £1 button. If it asks for a code, its QVC0108 and you will need to provide your bank details.

The second one is for Papercraft Inspirations, same trial offer, you just need to cancel within 60 days if you don't want to carry on, and its at: http://www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/qvc. Again bank codes needed.

Card Blowout Week!

Hi,

I've been kept busy this week as we had our monthly craft night - Hillview Creative Crafters - at church this week, as well as my running a Stampin' Up! workshop/class.

I can't find my stencilled cards at the moment, so will show those another time. So here are the 3 cards that we made last night at my SU workshop/party:

This first one is made with the Stampin' Up! 'Birthday Best' set - it's so cute and really quick and easy to use.

I've used the cupcake with candle stamp, along with the birthday greeting - with the Bold Brights colourways. It's nice and bright and cheery, which makes a change to all the dull and wet weather we've been having. It was really nice to be able to colour in the stamp to the same exact shade as the cardstock - I used black ink to stamp the image and then coloured it in with Rose Red, Green Galore and Only Orange Stampin' Write marker pens, with a thin red ribbon to finish off. I'm really into card tearing at the moment, so you'll see lots of my cards with that!

This next card was also nice and quick and easy, which is ideal for workshops - looks so elegant too!

I've used 2 different flowers from the Stampin' Up! 'Mixed Bouquet' set. The first is the solid flower inked with Versamark (a watermark inkpad) onto Pink Passion cardstock - and the flower centres are then glittered using a Gelly Roll Stardust pen. We stamped the larger flower with Pink Passion ink onto a scrap of Pixie Pink card. The inside inked lines of this flower were also drawn over using the Stardust Pen to add extra sparkle. It was cut out and mounted over a piece of organza ribbon, which finished the card off - have to say I changed the width of the ribbon for my ladies as the wider one looked much better than the thin one I used here. Matting the pink card onto a white card base gives the opportunity to wrap and adhere the ribbon to the pink card for a neater finish, before sticking the pink onto the white.

And my favorite Stamp at the minute is this Poppy one, using the Stampin' Up! Hostess Set called 'Oh So Lovely' - which it is!

We stamped the long background rectangle stamp twice on scrap paper to get rid of the excess black ink to give a lighter stamped background. Then stamped the Poppy in black on top of the background. It was very easy to line them up. Using a scrap of white card, 2 stamped images of just the poppy heads were made, again in black. Back to the main poppy flower, all the edges were roughly torn and this was matted onto a piece of Only Orange cardstock, and this stuck onto the white basecard - on the left hand side of the card.

3 of the poppy heads were then coloured in using Only Orange Stampin' Write marker pens. They were then cut out, and the edges gone over with a black marker pen to give a neater edge. The 3 poppy heads were then stuck onto their respective plain flowers on the main card, using 3D foam squares. A message of Thanks was then stamped to the bottom right of the card, using black ink.

And if you live in the Gloucestershire/Cotswolds or Swindon area and would like to host a free cardmaking workshop, do get in touch with me. You are sure to have lots of fun with your Friends learning new stamping techniques, making some cards and looking at all the gorgeous Stampin' Up! products.

I'm Back!

Well Christmas and New Year were like a whirlwind and I am only just getting back into the swing of things - hence my long absence, apologies!

But, in those great words from Independence Day - 'I'm Back' and I suppose my NYR should be to blog every day - we'll have to see!

Here are some of the cards that I made over the holidays:

I used the Cuttlebug D'Vine Swirls as the background and a cute House/New Home Stamp (Katie&Co) which I coloured with Gelly Glaze pens. Added a ribbon and some mats.

Sympathy Cards are always hard to make.

I used some notepaper from Sainsbury's as the background as it has a faint watermark type pattern on it - really lovely. I bought the block of paper thinking I wouldn't have to cut the squares down, but I did to get the brown card matt to fit onto the card! Used the Fiskars Imperial Corner/Photo Punch.

A Sizzix cut & emboss flower was highlighted with some pearlescent ink and the message is a Rubber Stampede one I have.

Changing from my brown theme, the Cuttlebug embossers again came in handy for 2 quick cards. The heart one combines a sizzix heart with a cuttlebug love embossing folder which just fitted the small heart. I guess I may make a few more like this one for next month!

I liked the way the Get Well Card eventually turned out. I'm still working on getting the colouring right on the embossed backgrounds. Here I used a waterpen with tri-colour Brilliance Pearlescent ink pad - as it matched the stamped greeting. I jazzed up the white card by notching the corners, using a small circle punch the wrong way. Looks good with the lilac scalloped matt.

Sisterhood of the Blogging Stampers-8

Hi - I decided to join this group after reading about it on another blog - looks great!

Getting to know me facts: I am Su, and I live in Gloucestershire in England with my husband and 2 children (9 and 7). I work part-time 2 days a week, as well as working from home with Stampin' Up! We got our first pet over Christmas - an African Land Snail! I am really into stamping, and just love stamps - as the saying goes 'I'm addicted to Stamps', as well as using my Big Shot, Sizzix and Cuttlebug stuff for making cards. I help run a monthly craft club (all cardmaking now) which is great fun, do the occasional demo at another club and am starting a Stamping Club in the New Year.

If you want to join in the fun, the link is http://sisterhoodofthebloggingstampers.blogspot.com - there are 20 in each group, and there is still space in group 8 at the moment.

Belated Christmas Card!

Yes - I am belatedly posting my final Christmas Card design - one that I was happy with for mass-producing - and it wasn't the one I previously posted! The last couple of weeks have been completely manic - but as always we had a wonderful Christmas, and I hope you did too.

I hope most people got theirs before Christmas - but no doubt some were late. (New year's resolution - to start my Christmas cards in August! LOL!)

I got the idea from Jacki (The Card Castle) who used the Baby Words Cuttlebug Embossing folder with a crib image - thanks Jacki, everybody has loved it! The scanned image doesn't do it justice really, but I am sure you get the idea - the crib stamp was from the nativity clear set from Lakeland.

I made around 60 cards in 3 sittings. A much reduced number due to sending an e-greeting to most people we know.

And yes the e-greeting contained an image of a crib, but also a link to our family Elf Show. If you've not yet seen one of these (I've been Elfed!) it's well worth a look - so hilarious, and you can custom-make your own: http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1452243874 (To get the right bodies, you need to upload your face photos in the following order: DW, DD, DS, DH.)

Daisy Card

I decided to change the Daisy Thank You card I made the other day - for a card challenge. I really didn't like the ribbon bow on it - so I took it off and what a difference.

Just goes to show that too much really can be too much! LOL! My only excuse is that I was trying to follow the challenge instructions and it said buttons and bows!

What do you think - is it better without the bow?

Pay It Forward

I agreed to do the 'Pay it forward' exchange on Jacki's blog today.

PAY IT FORWARD: handcrafted items - a bit like swapping ATC's with a twist! I will send a handmade item to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this "Pay it Forward" exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you probably won't receive anything before the year is over but I promise to get something in the mail by January. In order to participate, though, you must 'pay it forward' by making the same promise on your blog. Jacki's blog can be found at http://thecardcastle.blogspot.com/ and just like her cards, I thought this idea was great.

So basically, if you're one of the first 3 people to leave a comment on this post, joining this exchange, I’ll send you something crafty that I’ve made! Once you sign up, copy and paste the above paragraph on your blog - you'll get something from me via snail mail and then three other fortunate people will be recipients of your handmade work. So spread a little handmade cheer!! This will be great fun... I can't wait to see what Jacki is going to send to me - and I've now got to get my thinking cap on to make up something lovely for my exchange!