Beautiful You

Stampin' Up! Spring/Summer catalogue is just bursting with wonderful products. Its so difficult to choose your favourite BUT I have to say that Beautiful You (p24 # 143004 on woodblock mounts, 143637 in clearmount) is a stunner. In todays class we teamed with the Mediterranean Moments (p 29 # 143188 on wood, # 143191 in clear), did some very easy masking and water colouring and hey presto! Fabulous.

Our next project (after coffee and cake of course!) was this beauty......

We made it using the

Birthday Blast Bundle - page 11 in the Seasonal Catalogue order number 144715 in woodmount, 144716 in clear mount. As you can see we really did Blast It with three sprays of stars and used the lovely coordinating stamp to decorate the envelope.

isn't it nice to get "Happy Mail" with a pretty envelope - especially cheering on these dull days of January and February.

Bookmarking your Favourites

 Its a very odd time, this gap after Christmas but before Spring really starts. Don't you agree? Its often a time for planning and organising and I think you can see what I have been planning! Yes! The perfect reading material on a chilly day has got to be the Stampin Up! seasonal catalogue together with its Big Sister - the annual catty and its fab little sister the SAB.

Let me tell you a bit about the SAB....it stands for Sale-A-Bration and features the FREE - yes FREE (worth shouting out twice) goodies that you can get for every £45 you spend from either of the two other catalogues during January, February and March.

I made some bookmarks to help mark where my favourites are and featured the funky chicken (isn't that a dance?) from the FREE Hey Chick stampset (# 143328 p 17). We have 6 hens at home and I think I will be decorating up the cute 4 place mini egg cartons (# 142776 p18 Seasonal catty) to give fresh eggs as little gifts. My baking friends tell me that our happy hens lay lovely eggs and they always happy to have some. That led me on to adding "Perfect Mix" stamps (p 35 Seasonal catty) to my wish list since it features all things baking. with those two and a pack or two of card I will be eligible to pick another FREE item from the SAB catalogue ....hmmm..... "Avant Garden" stamps (p5)? or another pack of "Carried Away" paper (I've used up the first one I got - its gorgeous!)

Do you need catalogues to help you browse and choose? I can send you all three - just drop me a line.
Want to come and play before you choose? I hold two classes a month - check out the events page.

Oh - and how could I forget - during SAB Stampin' Up! have a fantastic joining offer - you can choose £130 worth of goodies from either catalogue and only pay £99 And you can chose two stamps sets from either catty FREE - yes I'll shout it again - FREE. Now that really is a great offer. Phone me! Text me! Email me! Send a pigeon! Lets talk about it......

Take your designing to the next level

We are planning a very special Saturday class for 11th February 2017. 

Many of the ladies who come to both card making and scrapbooking classes seem to struggle when it comes to adapting designs or planning from scratch.

Now that might sound daunting - you know the feeling when faced with a blank page and asked to "just draw"on it. So we have carefully put together some basic but beautifully artistic guidelines that can be followed to get you started. We have recorded our own designing journey to get to the projects we will be making to highlight the process and show the ladies (hmmm nice to have some men!) one way of doing it. 

This whole day class is aimed at all crafters who would like to move their creativity to the next level. We will be teaching you some of foundations of what makes a design pleasing and how to adapt an idea to use the materials you have to hand.

We will be showing how one sketch can be transformed into several different formats, can be altered with use of colour, contrast and texture and re scaled to create different projects. We will “walk you through“ the whole process and give as much support as you need to give you the confidence to carry on at home.

Included in the class will be:

·         Option A : The “Lift Me Up” stamp set, the matching “Up and Away” thinlit dies, a  full pack of “Carried Away” designer series paper and Tombow glue all to take home with you at the end of the day. All these products are from Stampin’ Up!

·         Option B : The “Lift Me Up” stamp set only from Stampin’ Up! to take home with you at the end of the day.

·         All the other tools and supplies that you need to complete the three projects :

o   a large greetings card

o   a multi-fold greetings card

o   a 12” display or scrapbook page

·         Full small group tuition

·         Design and tutorial sheets

·         Tea, coffee and cake

·         A light lunch

When:         Saturday 11 February 2017   10.30 – 3.30

Where:       Bicknacre Village Memorial Hall

Cost:         Option A £75 per person 

                  Option B £56 per person  

Back on the Blog

Hello World! I'm back on my blog and apologies for a long period of inactivity. Let's knock that on the head right away.
Been busy busy this week with Stampin Up! On stage at Telford with hundreds of other talented demonstrators sharing ideas and creativity. I can't wait ( but I have to) to share the NEW Spring Catalogue and the fabulous Sale-A-bration offers with you. We are sworn to secrecy until they go"live" but as Stampin Up demos we get ours early......and yes I have made a pre order already. If you want to be included in this fabulous "upgrade" as a demo ( and get discounts to boot) then CONTACT ME and join the Butterfly Belles team.

This blogger loves to travel......

Please don't think we spent the whole time eating and drinking !

I don't know if it's the Spring sunshine or the lighter evenings but this time of year turns my head to plans of future travel. We have a big trip coming up next February - a month in New Zealand - so of course that entails of lot of reading guide books, asking friends and examining maps spread out across the floor ( always fun helped by dogs!). Many of my scrapbook pages concern past travels. We were in Budapest last year and although the weather was "mixed" ( that means rather chilly and damp!) it was a great week.
Here is the page.

I am at the lovely Linden Rosams Scrapbooking class tonight and will share a picture of what we make later in the week.

Welcome Spring

Our scrapbook challenge continues - here is my page for this week and I am so glad that I had my camera at the ready to capture the beautiful crocuses fully open.
The photograph does not do the gorgeous green of the Stampin Up! DSP justice nor does it show the two green used to double mat the photos. In fact it's a pant picture! The stamped sentiment doesn't show either! Oh well, you will just have to come to my next class, on  Saturday 11th April, and see the page in person!

Monday Musing on Tuesday!

So - my aim is (was) to post a blog entry every Monday and then again later in the week. I should have posted yesterday but events overtook me (note to self: write scheduled posts in future!) If you have come here from Michelle's Doodlebird designs blog then please don't let on that I have not done a scheduled post (she does them!). Go and have a look at her blog by clicking here.
One of the joys of living in a village is that we help each other: powercuts are quite common, when it snows the hill becomes impassable and we are "cut off" and two of the three roads flood after heavy rain. We know our neighbours and offer help to get each other through. On Monday two of my neighbours locked themselves out and while waiting for the person who has the spare key to come home from shopping they came in to my house to keep warm, use the loo and have some company.
The scrapbook page I made last week was sitting on the table so they enjoyed looking at that even though they are not themselves papercrafters.


Another of my friends has won an amazing trip to New York and I made her this Bon Voyage card.



The paper is a retired Stampin Up one and it really reflected the excitement of going to NYC. It was lovely to be able to wish her happy travels with a unique, handcrafted card.

Do you love fancy fold cards or find them a bit difficult? Michelle and I are planning a whole class on them as part of the Papercrafters Paradise luxury retreat in October. message us if you would like to come!