Stampin' Up! Blendabilities and ahem Christmas!

Good morning - as predicted it's raining. Still my boys school are the eternal optimists and have said they will make a decision about sports day going ahead or not this afternoon at Midday. I can predict it for them, it's going to be postponed. If I'm wrong I'll be doing a mercy dash at around 1pm to take the boys trainers in and feeling a bit silly.

Right then onto the crafting, again I make no apology for my creation using the same  colours as my last couple of posts. I'm tidying them away today so if you love them - sorry they're taking a break. Here's what I made:

The card base is Coastal Cabana with a layer of my best friend Crumb Cake. I stamped the pattern from World Treasures in Versamark ink then heat embossed with Pool Party Embossing Powder.

The peacock was stamped with the soon to be available Memento ink and coloured with our fab Blendabilities Pens which you won't have to wait too much longer to get your mitts on! I added a few Candy Dots in matching colours to finish off. 

Now if you're offended by the mere mention of Christmas as this time of year I don't mind if you finish your reading here. But for those of you who like to get your Christmas crafting done early, I should let you know that some one the carry over products from the last Stampin' Up! Autumn Winter Seasonal catalogue are still available for you to order until 27th of August.

You can see them all by clicking on this link. 

They are all available to purchase in my Stampin' Up! Shop

Whilst you're there please remember there are literally only a few days left of the Stampin' Up! Retiring products from the current catalogue and they really won't be available to you after the end of the month.

I'm off to clear my desk now, I've been creating so much I can't see my work top - oops!

Hugs

Victoria

xxx

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Stampin' Up! Technique Tutorial

I can't believe we're already at Thursday, this week is going way too quickly for me, the boys have sports day tomorrow and I need to get their outfits sorted. Seriously, why on earth would you pick the first Friday of the Glastonbury Festival to have a school sports day. It's notorious for poor weather and sure enough the forecast for tomorrow in Nottingham is ....rain and thunder! I think I'll be packing rain macs for the Mini Beasts then!

On to the crafting. As you know I'm not one for tidying my desk very often so when something is left out I kind of want to carry on playing with it. So if the colours look spookily the same as yesterdays card - you got me!

I saw an amazing card whilst surfing the other day - you can see it HERE. I thought it would be a great technique to try with Stampin' Up! products so I gave it a shot and here's how I did it:

Take the circle stencil out of the retired Build a Banner Kit from the Autumn / Winter Stampin' Up!  Seasonal catalogue. If you don't have it - don't panic, there may be some stencils in the New Stampin' Up! catalogue next month *winks*. Pop a layer of Crumb Cake card under the stencil and hold in place using a little Snail Adhesive. Rub the Whisper White ink pad over the stencil until you're happy there is enough ink on the card.

Remove the stencil carefully and wash and dry it. Either leave your card until dry or help it along with the heat tool.

Next reposition the stencil so it's slightly off set from the original and stick down again. Pick your colours, I've used Melon Mambo, Coastal Cabana and Wisteria Wonder. I've used Finger Daubers to splodge the ink onto the stencil in colour bands. Ignore the Marker - that's out from another project I'm working on!

Heat set the ink again and then layer on a card and decorate. I liked the card I CASED this from so much I also used her idea of stamping and heat embossing the sentiment onto vellum, something I've not done in a while. I've of course stamped a cupcake with the RETIRING THIS WEEK stamp set Create a Cupcake. Please don't miss out on the products that are retiring - you can see and order them all HERE.

Hope you like- and do pop over to see the original technique, cards and video too!

Hugs

Victoria

xxx

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Stampin' Up! Blendabilities

Ooooooh-eeeeeeeeeh! I'm so excited to tell you that Stampin' Up! will soon be selling their own brand of alcohol ink pens - Blendabilities. 

I used to be such a fan of colouring in - kind of takes me back to a happy place, lose my thoughts and watch a picture develop in front of me. So it gives me great pleasure to say Jelly and colouring in - we're back in business!!!

Want to see what I made?

I've used a mix of Stampin' Up! products here, something new - the Blendabilities, something current - the Flower Shop stamp set and something retiring - the Sweet Essentials stamp set.

The Blendabilities pens I've used are in Rich Razzleberry and Coastal Cabana. I LOVE blending not just the tones within a set but with other colours too. Of course we are also going to be selling Momento ink in Black in the new Stampin' Up! catalogue too as you need this type of ink as it wont bleed with the alcohol inks. I've done my stamping and colouring in on our Whisper White card too - well chuffed I am!

I've even coloured in some small Self Adhesive Pearls with a Daffodil Delight Blendabilities pen - bye bye Sharpies! Wondering about the white dots? never just happy to colour in I like to add more so used the White Stampin' Chalk Marker to pretty it up.

Video tutorial coming soon!

I'm happier than a erm, hang on I don't want to be rude here.... I'm happier than a kid in a sweet shop!

I'd love to stay but now I have to go and play with my project Life stash. It doesn't get more exciting than this!

Hugs

Victoria

xxx

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Stampin' Up! Create a Cupcake

OK so is anyone else  GUTTED that Create a Cupcake stamp set is retiring at the end of this month? 

What? You didn't know? Where have you been?

 Listen, Stampin' Up! are retiring a whole load of products and you only have until the end of this month to get your mitts on them before they are gone for good and they launch a whole new catalogue. So before it's way too late and you're left sobbing into your scrap box, here's a link to everything that's going in my STAMPIN' UP! SHOP

Anyway, being as it's going I thought I'd better get some more use out of it so I re-created a previous card of mine. Now don't go calling me lazy as this is quite a labour intensive card.

I had to show you the inside first because I have this theory that if you subscribe or get email feeds etc you'd only see the front and wouldn't find it all that exciting and might not read the whole post! I'm right though aren't I?

See the front just isn't all that awesome.

I can't tell you how excited I was when this stamp set became available along with the coordinating Cupcake Builder Punch which thankfully is staying put. It is a fiddly card to make but if you want to have a go and have lots of patience there is a tutorial in my right side bar.

I'm off to recover now with a cuppa and a browse through the NEW Stampin' Up! catalogue!

Hugs

Victoria

x

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Stampin' Up! Wedding Anniversary Invitations

Cor it's been a while. I used to run my own wedding stationery business but as I got more into Stampin' Up! I gave it up but i do still do the odd commission and when my sister asked me to make her Silver Wedding Anniversary Invitations I was more than happy to help. Especially when she told me the theme was to be a Cath Kidston style barbecue party.

I know I'm safe to post them now too as mine arrived in the post yesterday!!

OK - here we go. I've used Coastal Cabana card for the base with a layer of Crumb Cake (who knew!). the wording was all created on my PC and then I used some none Stampin' Up! papers ....don't shoot me for that, I had to match the theme and colours, punched out with our cute Bunting Punch. I sewed them all onto the card and yes I had to replace my sewing machine needle afterwards before adding punched flowers in Coastal Cabana, Pink Pirouette and Pistachio Pudding. Finished off with Self Adhesive Pearls.

For me there's always going to be something quite pleasing about seeing lots of things the same when they're all finished.

So much so that I re-arranged them several times and took LOADS of photos but luckily for you I'm only showing a few angles! Trust me you'd be here all day if I uploaded them all.

I had a super busy weekend too, I had a stall at the Great Notts Show on Sunday selling my fabric makes. Do you want to see a pic of my stand? Well I have to share it with you anyway!

I had an absolute blast! 

Hugs

Victoria

xx

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Stampin' Up! Flower Shop Tutorial

Ooh the weather has certainly hit the UK today, although so far we've been lucky and not had a storm yet - just rain, and lots of it! My boys are on hail watch and are disappointed not to have seen cricket ball sized hail stones yet (they saw them on You Tube!).

Anyhoo, wet outside means Jelly indoors and creating and I've combined my love of paper craft with my love of sewing for you today.

I've used Flower Shop stamp set from Stampin' Up! along with some fabric scraps. I haven't done machine embroidery since I studied Textile Design at university! Great to get back to it and something I'm definitely going to be doing more of. 

Here are a few close ups for you:

OK, here's  how to create the look

1. Iron on some fusible interfacing to the back of your fabric scraps - I cut the squares to fit over the image before I started. This makes the fabric a little firmer for sewing.
2. Stamp the flower image onto the right side of the fabric using StazOn ink.
3. Choose whatever colour thread you want to use and start stitching overt he stamped image. I've used a mix of stitches and messed around with the presser foot down and up. There's no right or wrong way to go about it - just have fun!

4.  I went around the flowers again in white thread as a bit of a contrast

5.  Cut the flowers out and pop to one side

6.  I cut a strip of fabric and sewed directly on to a layer of Crumb Cake card, again using whatever stitches you like and have on your machine.

 Once you're happy - just stick everything in place, I used Mini Glue Dots and added some Subtles Designer Buttons too. My sentiment is from Layered Labels which I'm gutted to say is one of the Stampin' Up! retiring products. 

You can view all the current Retiring Stampin' Up! products in my Stampin' Up! Shop

If you're a fan of combining crafts I'd love to hear from you - leave me a message with a link to your blog so I can hop over for a look.

Hugs

Victoria

x

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Stampin' Up! Weekly Deals

Ooh Wednesday which means more weekly deals from Stampin' Up!

This week the products on offer are:

 

 Wowser - check out that fabulous Twitterpated Digital set, think of the scrap-booking fun you can have with that!

Right I'm off to check out what's left on the Stampin' Up! Retirement List - who's coming with me?

Hugs

Victoria

x

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