Merry and Bright

Hello and Merry Christmas and best wishes for a wonderful New Year! It has actually been Merry and Bright here in Tassie for once, the best Christmas Day weather we have had for years, and it continues to improve! New Year's Eve promises to be quite hot, which will be a real treat. I thought I would stop in and share with you some of the fabulous Happy Mail I have received in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

One of the great things that has happened since I became a Stampin' Up! Demo is that the number of hand made cards I receive at Christmas has increased hugely. Here are the wonderful creations that I have been grateful to recieve. Thank you so much to the people who took the time to create them.

From Barbara and from Christine

From Kirsty and from Lisa K

From Lou and from My Mum!



From Sarah

I hope you like them as much as I do, why not leave a comment and let these lovely ladies know that you appreciate their inspiration!

Thanks for stopping by. I will be back soon to share the wonderful Christmas gift I received from my Secret Stampin' Santa. A busy few days coming up though with Number 1 son's 11th birthday and a big New Year's bash to attend, so I will get back when I can!

Cheers

Claire

Mojo-a-gogo!

Goodness, I have just realised it has been 3 weeks since my last post! How terribly slack of me, my apologies to those of you that check in on me regularly to see what I have been up to. The answer to that question is of course - not much! Well not much crafting to be more precise. I have come to the conclusion that since becoming a Stampin' Up! Demo, I hate the month of March! There is so much hype around the retiring list and the new Ideas Book and Catalogue arriving, that my crafting mojo goes into hiding. I have sat down at my desk a few times in the last week or so, but with images of stamp sets yet to come looming large in my head, suddenly the old ones don't seem so inspiring.

Anyway, rather than disappear of the face of the earth entirely, I thought I would share with you some swap cards that I made. These swaps were made to send to a sister demo in Canada. The idea was to make 3 complete cards (preferably from sets that they don't have in their catalogue) and post them to your swap partner. I received three gorgeous cards from Cathy Jonstone a very talented SU demo in Canada, you can check out her blog, here. I will post them later in another post, it is too dark and gloomy today to get good pics.

Here are the three I made to send to Cathy (thanks to Lynda for the loan of the All Aboriginal and Happy Christmas Mate stamp sets!). I can post them here now, as Cathy has received them.

Card Recipe:

Stamps; Ocean Commotion, Baroque Motifs

Cardstock; Ballet Blue, Gable Green, Ruby Red, So Saffron

Inks; Whisper White, Gable Green, So Saffron

Acessories; Antique Brass Hodgepodge Hardware, Crystal Effects, Stampin' Dimensionals

Card Recipe:

Stamps; Happy Christmas Mate

Cardstock; River Rock, Real Red, Dashing DSP, Watercolour paper

Inks; Stazon Black, Old Olive

Techniques; Markers direct to watercolour paper

Accessories; Markers, Aquapainter, Corner Rounder punch, Double Slot punch, non SU circle cutter, Ribbon

Card Recipe:

Stamps; All Aboriginal

Cardstock; Chocolate Chip, Brocade Blue, Ruby Red, Old Olive, Pumpkin Pie, Spring Break DSP

Inks; Versa Mark, Chocolate Chip, Pumpkin Pie, Ruby Red, Brocade Blue

Techniques; Emboss Resist

Sketch: Makeesha's Sketch Challenge No. 5

Accessories; Markers, Clear EP, White Gel Pen

Hope you like them. Please leave a comment and let me know you stopped by. It's alway nice to know who has visited. My preorder of goodies from the new catalogue has finally arrived, so I will have some new creations to share with you soon.

Thanks for stopping by!

Claire

A CASE card

Hello again,

Back at work last week, so not much time to create. However, as my collaboration with Lynda Moss (StampInkins) is about to kick off for 2009, I have spent a bit of time combing the web looking for ideas for class cards. Keep an eye out here, or on our Inkydivas blog for class details, if you are living in Southern Tasmania.

One of the classes we will be running regularly throughout the year is a Christmas Club, so that our club members can build up their supply of handmade cards and gifts gradually, instead of in a big rush in November, December. You can contact us via links from our Inkydivas blog, if you are interested in joining up.

Whilst looking for ideas for this class, I came across this card, and I just had to CASE it.

Here is my version.

I am sooo hoping that the Season of Joy set is in the new catty in April! The next couple of months are going to be very busy I think, with Inkydivas up and running again, the retired list coming out in March, and of course a brand new catalogue to drool over in April! Lots to look forward to… lots to share!

Card recipe: (All products used are Stampin'Up! unless otherwise stated)

Stamps: Season of Joy (Spring Mini)

Cardstock: Real Red, Wild Wasabi, Whisper White, Vellum

Ink: Real Red, Wild Wasabi

Acessories: Jumbo eyelets, Ice Rhinestone brads

Thanks for dropping by. I love to hear your comments.

Claire

Frantically Festive!

Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year to everybody! I hope you all had a fun and fabulous festive season. For me here, every day since Christmas Eve there has been an event to go to, or friends and family to catch up with. It certainly has been a social whirl and lots of fun! Just a little exhausting though …

Not much time for crafting I'm afraid, though I did find time to make a birthday card for my DH (darling husband) who celebrated his birthday on Christmas Eve. Here it is:

It is a double challenge combo, as it combines the Faux Silk Pop , technique lovers challenge and the sketch challenge number 188, on Splitcoast Stampers. It was VERY nice to have a break from Christmas projects!

Card recipe:

Stamp sets: Ocean Commotion (from the new Summer Mini), Polka Dots and Paisley
Cardstock: Bordering Blue, Night of Navy, Mellow Moss, Really Rust
Inks: Bordering Blue, Mellow Moss and Really Rust
Accessories: Vintage Brads, Stampin' Dimensionals
Techniques: Faux Silk Pop and Masking.

I also wanted to share with you some of the gorgeous handmade Christmas cards I received from some of the wonderful people I have spent time with this year, in my capacity as a Stampin' Up! Demo. It was really lovely to receive these in the mail, thank you so much to the people who took the time to create them and send them to me. I really love them! Here they are:

Finally, I would like you to meet one of the new members of our family. My little guy received a Fish Tank for Christmas. So, for his birthday (30^th December, I told you we had been busy around here!!) he received some fish to go into it. Here is one of the new additions – his name is Felix. Felix had three other companions in the tank, unfortunately the move was too much for Whizzer and he joined the big aquarium in the sky this afternoon. The others are still going strong, and in a week or two they will hopefully have some brightly coloured companions!

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you had a wonderful time over the festive season. I'm looking forward to sharing more crafty ideas with you in 2009.

Claire

Spinning into Christmas!

Hello!

Back again, thought you'd never hear from me again, didn't you! I just wanted to share a card with you that I have CASE'd from a couple of others that I saw whilst cruising for inspiration on the net. Apologies to the people I cased from, I can't remember where I saw them.
This is a spinner card, the little disc at the bottom spins around when you tilt the card from side to side. It can be quite mesmerizing!

Card Recipe: (All products used, are of course from Stampin' Up!

Stamps: All About Christmas Jumbo Wheel

Cardstock: Old Olive, Real Red, Very Vanilla, Gold Metallic

Inks: Old Olive, Real Red and Certainly Celery, Versa Mark (for embossing)

Accessories: Stampin' Dimensionals, Gold Embossing Powder, Heat Tool, Embossing Buddy, Small Star Punch

After I embossed the All About Christmas design on my Very Vanilla Cardstock, I used sticky post it notes to mask of sections of the design. Once I had masked of a section I sponged ink into it, to create the mosaic type look.

Hope you like it. Let me know what you think!

Thanks for stopping by.

Claire