Bethinking

Cards for kids

At the start of the year I always find that I'm in desperate need of children's cards. All of a sudden birthdays pop up everywhere, as though they've been on hold for the holidays and now they're allowed to be celebrated!

With this in mind, my next class is a stamp-a-stack where you can make 10 cards, 5 each of the 2 designs pictured here. Princesses and Dinosaurs are always favourites with girls and boys, so you'll be able to create a stack of cards to keep you going for a while.

Class Date: Thursday, 23rd February

Time: 7:30pm

Venue: My place in Turramurra

Cost: $20 (includes all materials)

RSVP: 20th February.

If you'd like to come along, please let me know so that I can save you a spot!

Our Family

Many people have commented that the photo on my Blog of my family only shows two children. In fact, we have three children, and have done so for over three years now. Clearly it's time to rectify the omission of Annabelle from our family photo!

So, here's my new scrapbook page of my family, using my favourite Sale-A-Bration product, the Everyday Enchantment designer series paper. I've also used some of the gorgeous coordinating ribbons & brads, and the Elementary Elegance stamp set, which makes a lovely journalling block for a scrapbook page.

Scrapbooking Alice

I've really been enjoying scrapbooking through January - so much so that when I tried to make some cards the other day I was a bit lost about how to start!

Duck's work Christmas party had an Alice in Wonderland theme this year. We had some great costumes to wear {thanks so much, Sylvie & Nat for the loans!} but because it was so dark inside the venue the photos weren't fantastic. I still wanted to use them, though, so decided to print them quite small. This sketch from Big Picture Classes worked well for them, and I stamped and embossed some hearts on the background paper, then sprayed and spritzed over the top of that with Smooch Spritz and a marker. I also used the Artistic Etchings and Notably Ornate stamp sets to create my journalling panel and a few embellishments. This page was a little bit different for me, but I loved how it turned out!

Sale-A-Bration is here!

Sale-A-Bration is Stampin' Up!'s best promotion of the year, and it runs from now until the end of March. Why is it so good? Because during Sale-A-Bration Stampin' Up! gives away free stuff - that's always a good thing, right?

This year there are 4 stamp sets, a pack of designer series paper, or an embellishment pack to choose from if you qualify for a SAB reward. To qualify, you can spend $100 on anything from any of the Stampin' Up! catalogues. Or, you can host a workshop to earn free SAB products. If you decide to join Stampin' Up! as a Demonstrator during SAB, then not only is the Start Kit discounted to $249, but you can also choose an extra stamp set of any value (up to $79.79!) to add to your kit - it's a fantastic time to join us!

The card here was one I made for a Demonstrator swap recently. I've used the SAB stamp set Elementary Elegance, as well as the patterned paper "Everyday Enchantment", which is my favourite product from this year's choices. If you'd like to see the SAB brochure yourself, then please let me know and I'll put one in the post for you, or you can have a look at it online here.

An Enchanted Garden

Miss Emily recently turned 5. She decided that for her birthday party, she wanted a fairy party exactly like Annabelle's had been. I wasn't so keen - I've done the fairy party, so I wanted something different. Also, Annabelle only invited girls to her party - I wasn't sure that Emily's friends-who-are-boys were going to be so impressed by being asked to dress up as fairies and dance around with ribbon wands.

So, instead, we went for a Garden Theme. Emily could still be a fairy {because we all know fairies are found in gardens, right?} and everyone else could dress up as some type of beetle, bug or butterfly. We set up an enchanted garden area, made some ladybugs for craft, and ate lots of crazy food like "worms in dirt", mud pies and birds' nests.

All the decorations that I made were done with the "Everyday Enchantment" designer series paper that's available from tomorrow as part of the Sale-A-Bration promotion. It's my favourite paper ever, so I need to get some more because I used it all up on Emily's party!

That's enough rambling from me - enjoy the pictures!

Christmas Gifts

With the end of the year fast approaching, I really need to think about all the gifts that have to be organised within the next week or so. I'm not meaning the toys for the kids, or the what-on-earth-will-I-give-my-husband-for-Christmas type gifts, but what to give the ballet teachers, school teachers, pre-school teachers, music teachers and the girls' school friends!

I like to make some of the gifts myself, or if I can't make the gift, then at least make a cute box in which to place the gift. This year I've made some Christmas wreaths. I think that these will be for the school teachers and pre-school teachers. I made them using the Stampin' Up! fabric, in 3 different varieties: Deck the Halls, Candy Cane & Timeless Portrait.

Each wreath has a few rosettes made with ribbon that's scrunched around a circle cut from our Sticky Sheets. An Antique Brad in the centre holds the rosette together perfectly.

For music and ballet teachers, I'm thinking a box of handmade gift tags. Everyone needs some classy tags to identify whose present is whose, after all. Hopefully these will be useful as well as looking good!

 

And for the girls to give their friends, I'm trying for something that's not lollies or chocolate this year {although my kids don't know that yet}, just as a change! I've made some festive pencil boxes, using the Scallop Envelope Big Shot die, and for close friends, some notebooks, which are stamped and decorated on the inside as well as on the cover. Hopefully everyone will love their gifts - now I've just got make my list and check it twice to make sure I've made something for everyone!

Trick or Treat!

Last year on Halloween we went Trick or Treating for the first time. It was pretty memorable due to the torrential rain that completely soaked us, but still fun!

The best part about it, from a papercrafting viewpoint, was the fact that it meant I had some photos to scrapbook, so I could use some of the Halloween themed stamps and papers that I've got, which don't normally see a lot of action. The papers that I've used here are called "Frightful Sight", and I've used those for the background patterns and also to create the title banner. I stamped a few little pumpkin accents and added some leaves and paper curls to those. The other fun thing was using some doily paper as a mask to spritz on the journalling block - it gave it a silvery cob-webby kind of feel. The page was based on a sketch from a class that I'm doing over at Big Picture Classes, with Nic Howard and May Flaum.

Stamps used: Button Buddies, Got Treats, Just Perfect Alphabet.

 

Some Favourites

I know I say that I have a lot of favourite stamp sets, and here is yet another one! The thing is that different sets are my favourites for different things. This one is my favourite for two step stamping, and for elegant or pretty cards. It's not my favourite set for Christmas cards, or kid's birthday cards. Just saying, so that you know why I have so many favourites!

I wanted to try stamping this card straight onto some DSP - the First Edition paper, and I was really pleased with how it turned out. I used Pool Party (definitely my favourite colour!), Island Indigo and Early Espresso (my favourite shade of brown). I also used my favourite new ribbon - the ruffled ribbon, this time in Limeade.

I could keep going on about more favourite things, but I won't - you can just look at the card instead, and feel free to let me know what your favourite stamps and colours are!

Circus Party

Felicity had a circus themed party earlier this year, so it's fantastic that Stampin' Up! have circus themed papers and stamps in their new catalogue! This was a really fun page to scrap. It's based on a sketch for a class that I'm doing {Double Take with Nic Howard & May Flaum} over at Big Picture Classes.

I'm loving creating banners on my pages at the moment. It's really easy using the Petite Pennant Punch, which can cut out triangle pennants & scallop edged pennants together.

Supplies Used

Stamps: Sweets for the Sweet, Under the Big Top, Just Perfect Alphabet

Paper: Whisper White, Under the Big Top dsp, Domestic Goddess dsp, Flirtatious dsp.

Punches: Petite Pennant, circle punches

Accessories: Vanilla Smooch spritz, brights buttons, glimmer brads, ribbon, colour spritzer, glitter

Stampin' Up! fabric

I'm very excited about one of the new products in our Stampin' Up! catalogue - fabric! Now I'm no sewer, but I often see fabric used in papercraft projects and think how great it looks. Stampin' Up! has 5 fabric ranges, and seeing as how our old dining chairs were looking very grotty, I thought that we could recover them to show off some of the fabric.

The two ranges that I've used are "Timeless Portrait" and "Beau Chateau". Each box of fabric comes with 3 "fat quarters", each in a different design that coordinates with other Stampin' Up! products. As I said, I'm not one to sew, so thank you to my mother-in-law and husband for actually doing the required sewing and staple-gunning to get these finished. Our chairs look so much better now!