A couple of cards

I am busy preparing for the second fundraising workshop for Cherrybrook Nursery and Preschool! After a very successful Valentine's Day themed workshop in February, we are having a Christmas in July theme this time around. I am having lots of fun with the gorgeous Wintergreen Designer Series papers and Christmas sets. At least I will have my designs worked out in great time this year! If you're local and would like to come along and help raise funds for this Council-run Preschool on the evening of Friday 4th July, please contact me for details.

Here are another couple of cards I have made recently -

Faux tearing - this is a card we made in my Intermediate class held recently. Faux tearing is a great way to add textural interest, giving the look of layers without the bulk and weight. Typically, I didn't think about taking step by step photos until I was nearly finished, hopefully I'll remember next time! Rather than using a floral or paisley background stamp, I chose the great Canvas background, as it is so simple and elegant that you can combine it with any other accent stamp you choose! Here I used the gorgeous berry sprig from the Level 1 Hostess Set "Oh So Lovely" Furthering the use of masking techniques in this class, the long stem of the berries stamp was masked off so it would fit on the landscape card. This set is fantastic for quick watercolouring, here I used aqua brushes and the ink pad puddle technique, plus a marker in Old Olive for the stem. The amazing Life Definitions set was used for the greeting, stamped in Old Olive. The base card is River Rock, the watercolour panel is on Naturals Ivory, and the mat is the delicious Groovy Guava.

eScape Bundle card - This is one of quite a few cards I have made with the June promotion "eScape Bundle" - circle of friendship stamp set, 1 1/4" circle punch and Love Notes card set. I've given most of them away though! But that's entirely the point :) This little note card was made in minutes using some scraps of Le Jardin Designer Series paper and Bayou blue cardstock on a Vanilla Love Note. I have layered the 1 1/4" punch with the 1" punch and the 1 3/8" punch to create nested windows. They are attached with Stampin' Dimensionals foam dots. I made a matching accent for the back of the cutest little envelopes that come with the Love Notes cards. Give me a quick yell if you'd like to purchase one of these bundles for yourself, the great discounted price on this package closes June 30.

June Promotions - Yes! there are TWO! Part TWO

The second promotion Stampin' Up! are running is the "Extra Extra" promotion, from 1st June till 15th July. When you host a workshop with orders totalling $700 or more, you will receive and ADDITIONAL $50 to spend on catalogue merchandise, on top of your usual hostess benefits!! What an incentive to pull out all the stops and host a great workshop! I still have a few dates available in late June/early July, so contact me now to book your workshop!

June Promotions - Yes! there are TWO! Part ONE

Stampin' Up always have great promotions, and they have outdone themselves this month with some great packages and incentives.

The first is the eScape promotion bundle of products to get you stamping from scratch at a fabulous discount price! SU have designated June 25th as " eScape day" - a day to forget about email and other forms of electronic communication, and get back to the personal and intimate with hand-written notecards - Why? Because your Grandma is probably not on your MSN contact list, and she may well believe Email is just a whitegoods manufacturer. There are probably lots more people in your circle of friends and family that are deserving of a little time for a note to say hi, and just think about how you will brighten their day when they open their mailbox to something OTHER than a pile of bills!

Here is a link to the relevant section of the Stampin' Up! website, but in a nutshell you receive a versatile 1 1/4" circle punch, a pack of 20 mini notecards and envelopes and a stamp set with something for every occasion you can think of, all for 25% off the usual catalogue price, just $58.80 +p/h! Excellent for beginners and experienced stampers alike, so tell your non-stamper friends, you never know, they might send YOU a hand made card! Just contact me to order a set, delivered to your door! This promotion runs until June 30th 2008

My eScape Event - Wednesday 25th June

To celebrate eScape Day, I will be holding an informal day of stamping at my home in Cherrybrook. I'll still be a bit sore from my upcoming surgery, so it will be a casual non-structured day, with a bit of help and advice thrown in if you need it. Come along with your supplies (cardstock and adhesives) and use my stamp collection, inks and tools to create a flurry of hand-made sentiments, or bring your scrapbooking projects along instead, or both! Light refreshments and good company provided. Cost $10, redeemable against an order of $50 or more from the Stampin Up catalogue on the day.
Date: Wednesday 25th June
Time: 10am till 4pm

RSVP: 9484 9447 by Monday 24th June to get location details

Found them!

Ah, such is the wonder of digital photography... I think? I take an awful lot more photos these days, knowing the duds can be deleted in an instant, but it seems that I end up keeping all but the very worst anyway! They sit on my computer (and are backed up for good measure) and are stored and 'organised' in a cascading pile of Picasa folders. These particular photos ended up in a folder named 'development objection' for some reason, unbeknownst even to me, but I did find them, eventually!

The top one is another Crayon Resist card using the Basics Outline wheel. But, the colouring technique is a little different. Instead of sponging colour patches all over the glossy cardstock stamped image, sponge daubers are used to add colours to elements of the image. Here, leaves got mellow moss, flowers got apricot appeal or groovy guava. There is some white space in between the elements, but that's OK too. Note to self, and to anyone else new to this technique - soy based crayons WILL NOT WORK for crayon resist, you need good old fashioned petrochemical wax crayons. I didn't know that IKEA crayons are soy based until too late with the predecessor to this card... The greeting on this card is from the Occasional Greetings sets, and I used Old Olive, More Mustard and Pumpkin pie markers to colour the stamp. The finishing touch is a faux bow made with the double rectangle punch - there is a post about it somewhere below, and I am in the process of labelling the posts so you can find things more easily.

The middle card is a copy of one designed by Jayne Mercer, one of my uplines, at a recent training/stamping day she held for us. It uses the Faux Metal technique of embossing, and it is quite easy to create metal-lookalike embellishments for your cards with just metallic powder, versamark ink and a heat gun. Lots of fun too! I'll be holding a class soon to explore this technique in more detail, stay tuned for dates and details. The other stamps on the card are Bud Basics , and it is stamped in Close to Cocoa, Rose Red and Certainly Celery. The greeting is from the Everyday Flexible Phrases set.

The bottom card is the reverse colourway to the crayon resist card in the previous post - Purely Pomegranate cardstock with sky blue band. It uses a wheel again, because they are simply the fastest and easiest way to stamp for this technique. This time it is the gorgeous "So Swirly" jumbo wheel that goes with the Priceless set, and the greeting and extra flourishes are also from Priceless. Again, couldn't help myself with the glitter...

I hope you like them! I'm taking a break from the computer for about a week, see you when I get back!

oh dear... It's been a while!

Sorry everyone, I've had a hectic couple of weeks. I've managed to squeeze a bit of stamping and creating in, but finding the time to photograph, upload, watermark and actually post them here has been just too much. Here are a few of my latest creations - more crayon resist here. The top one was a bit of an experiment with two of the new '08 In Colors - Sky blue and Purely Pomegranate. I was quite surprised how it looked, so you will probably see more of this striking combination. It uses the Baroque border wheel that goes with the Baroque Motifs set. The swirls work very well for this technique, you can highlight as much or as little as you like. The great greeting is from the "Priceless" set. I have also added some Dazzling Diamonds glitter to the crayon panel, with two way glue, for a bit of extra sparkle!! It's a very easy way to jazz a card up in a flash :) The second card uses probably my very favourite combination of colours - certainly celery and sky blue, using the 'Scribble This' set, with a greeting from the very flexible "warm words" set. More cards to come, when I remember where I stored the images...DOH!