Tremendous Trimmer

Whoops of joy rang out across the crafting community on Saturday! Why? The new Stampin' Up! Trimmer was available and Oh! boy did my fingers fly to the keyboard to place my order just as soon as I heard the news. So today my box arrived - thank you Mr UPS driver for skating down our icy lane to deliver my goodies - and I could hardly contain my excitement to give my new trimmer a work out.

Stampin' Trimmer

Well here she is with the catalogue open at page 180 where all the details can be found.
So this very well designed piece of kit (Stampin' Up! will only put their name on things that are the very best quality) cuts with out mashing, catching, squeeking or tearing. The scoring blade is stored right on the cutting rail (no fiddly changing the blades over) and both blades go right past the 12 inch (30cm) cutting point.
The bed is marked with a grid to ensure everything is straight with both metric and imperial scales top and bottom. The cutting arm locks closed (great for transporting) and there is an extension arm (with its own foot for stability) that swings out to make the whole trimmer over 12 inches square.
Everything has been thought of. There is even a handy storage compartment underneath to take your bone folder, paper piercing tool or embellishments!
This lovely trimmer will make an ideal Christmas present for the crafter in your life or why not treat yourself! Email me to arrange an order and delivery!

 

The picture also shows a new stampset that I ordered at the same time: ready for my last batch of Christmas cards. This one is Snowflake Soiree and I am planning some cards that really show off the precision of the stamps and the beautiful blue inks that I have. Baja Breeze is the palest then Marina Mist and finally a punch of Midnight Muse - this look is inspired by the recent snowfall we have had and seeing the big snowflakes swirling past the outside lights as we watched from the warmth of the settee last evening. Sometimes ideas and inspirations come from the most unexpected quarters.

 

What inspires you? Where do you seek out ideas for new projects? I would love to know.

 

So I am off to the studio (through the snow!) to play with my new trimmer and stampset. I will try to post a photograph of the result tomorrow.

A glimpse of Paris

It may be nearly Christmas and we may be swathed in green, red and glittering gold but the ladies in my Monday class this week requested some girlie cards. This is one of the cards that  we made and it was really nice to get a break from all the seasonal colours for an hour or two.

I apologise for the quality of the picture but hope you can see the gorgeous way that the pink tissue flower ( cut using the Stampin' Up! blossom punch through 5 layers of tissue, fixed with a brad, stuck with a dimensional then just scrunched up) complements the Primrose Petals pink card and our favourite neutral Crumb Cake. The images from the Artistic Etchings stampset were stamped on Very Vanilla card (clearly my second most favourite!) using Sahara Sand and Crumb Cake, edges inked in sahara sand and the whole thing finished off with a ribbon and punched border. Have you used this stamp set yet? I have found it to be very versatile and have even used the crowns and keys in Christmas card backgrounds. it is next door to Established Elegance in the 2012-13 catalogue (pages 124 and 125) and blends with that beautifully. I have my eye on making a series of cards with a dress making theme, using thread, buttons and sewing to embellish the card. What do you think? I love taking from one medium and using it in another! And the whole dress making theme fits in with our romantic notions of Paris, high fashion and elegance.

 

 

 

Maybe if I leave the card out my husband will take the hint and book a romantic weekend break in Paris for a post-Christmas treat!

 

 

Introducing The Butterfly Belles

I was thrilled to add a new member to my Stampin' Up! team this week. Welcome Michelle.

The only thing was that we now needed a team name and its pretty difficult to find a good name that has not already been taken. I love names like The Paper Dolls, The Tartan Stampers and of course Monicas Passionettes. I also wanted to create a name that went with our personalities and linked with this blog name. It was fitting that Michelle came up with Butterfly Belles and Karen rapidly approved. So thats what we are: The Butterfly Belles.

 In honour of our new name I made this tag from a few bits and bobs that I had lying on my crafting table - it is sometimes good to be a bit messy!




 

The embossed section and the two butterflys were made using a scrap of experimentally embossed, inked and spritzed whisper white card. I used the butterfly punch (surely going to be one of my favourites now) and the jewelery punch to make the hanger. That word window punch is so useful - it may look a bit dull in the catalogue but once you own it you will wonder how you managed without it.  Lace scraps, pearls, ribbon along with stamped crowns and the sentiment complete the look.

I was pretty pleased - what do you think?

I would love to see your favourite tag designs. Post some pictures! Have alook on the gallery page to see some more tags that I have been making.



Here is a Victorian Scrapbook image of a beautiful butterfly. Look at the superb quality of the multi colour printing.

 

Hand Crafted Christmas

Someone  said that you can tell an awful lot from the words that people use to describe things. I couldnt agree more when it comes to calling something "Hand Made" rather than "Home Made". I know that in essence the two mean practically the same but hand crafted conveys all the love and affection and individuallity that goes into a special gift made with your own hands.

The first is the Mason jar pincushion. Mason jars are a type of preserving jar with a two piece lid. I am going to make my jars with Stampin' Up! fabric for the pincushion part, fill the jar with threads, buttons (SU of course) and so on. Then i will be able to make a pretty tag and tie it on to the jar to complete the look. The ribbons, paper and buttons will all coordinate beautifully and it will make a lovely little sewing kit to sit on the recipients desk or work table.

Here are some of the ideas that I will be adapting this year as Christmas approaches and I need some little gifts for special friends.



Mind you there are lots of other things you can do with jars - Mason, Kilner or any other type. Have a look at these these cuties.

Write a message on the outside of the jar with your glue gun and then decorate with ribbon and tags. Fill the jar with sweets, biscuits or what ever you fancy.
Use your Big Shot to cut out letters or shapes and adhere to the outside or inside of the jar. What about personalising with a photo of the recipient (or their dog - fill the jar with dog treats in this case....)

I would love to see what you make from your jars. Please post photos in the comments section so we can admire your handiwork (not homework!).
More ideas next time!

Mittens from Michigan

The state of Michigan is the shape of a mitten (if we ignore the Upper Penninsula that is...) and we have been having a bit of fun using the Make a Mitten stampset and matching punch while I am here in Dearborn, just outside Detroit. Thats roughly where the knuckle of your left thumb is when you look at the back of your hand. Hmmm easier to explain on a map!
Have a look at some of the things we made:

Do you see the mittens punched from glimmer paper that have been used to decorate the pine cones? You can also see that  always travel with my bone folder! As I have said before it is one of my essential crafting tools and I tucked it into my case along with the stamps and punch.
Which tools would you make space for when going on a trip away from home for a week?

Making Cookies USA style

Cookies and Cupcakes have crossed the Atlantic although we still really prefer to call them biscuits and fairy cakes! Of course here in Michigan where I am staying at the moment if you talk about biscuits they think its a breakfast dish served with gravy - yet another example of trans-Atlantic language complications. Anyhow - back to the cookies. We had fun making these double chocolate and sea salt cookies.

 

Want to make these at home? Here's a link to the recipe on a blog where we found all kinds of delicious cookie ideas.

At the Stampin' Up! European Convention in Mainz last month we were able to buy some lovely seasonal cookie stamps - not stamps to use with ink but silicone stamps that make fabulous patterns on the cookie dough. Here is a the information on them from the seasonal catalogue. See how nice they are - ideal for making a batch of cookies and presenting them as a gift in a cello bag with a hand crafted topper or what about using the Season of Sweets designer kit?

And by the way did you realise that you can also use these stamps with salt dough and have fun with children making everlasting cookies for dolls and teddies to enjoy! This is certainly on my list of great crafting things to do over the Christmas holidays with the grandchildren.

What are you planning to do with little ones during the Christmas period? If you have any great ideas I would love to hear about them.

 



 

 

Crafting away from home...

So here I am in the USA at Katherines house, Dearborn, Michigan and trying to prepare a couple of card designs for us to make this evening. I brought my Make a Mitten stamp set and the lovely matching punch and a small kit of tools ( they fit into a pencil case!) and figured we could buy the other supplies here. Those of you who have been in the States will know Michaels and Joann as well as a plethora of Indy craft shops - sorry - stores! Well there is nothing like having to use non-Stampin' Up! card stock and paper to make you really really appreciate the quality of Stampin' Up! products. Yes - we all know they are great but you kind of get used to the beautiful colours, the accurate printing and heavy gauge of designer series papers. But after trying to use locally bought paper and card I am even more convinced of the value of using SU. And as for crafting with 5 tools and the contents of the kitchen drawer....phewee - how good is it going to be to be back in my studio with everything to hand. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. It is wonderful to be here though - and all Katherines friends are fabulous. Very enthusiastic and welcoming. We are taking part in a sketchbook project and I have started on mine. The downtown area of Detroit has had a very tough time with several areas effectively abandoned. They are talking about bulldozing whole blocks and maybe turning the land back into farmland. The Detroit Institute of Arts runs a lively programme of activities, which are free,to try and encourage people to come into the city more often. I will try to post pictures of my sketchbook when I get home and on to a bigger computer. I had better finish prepping for our group this evening - hmmm I can use a fork to help tie bows, maybe a cookie cutter as a template for card and the corkscrew to ...... well open a bottle of wine of course!

Very chic and not so shabby

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I'm an Artist

Don't rattle my cage today because I'm in a very feisty mood! I'm fed up with apologising for 'just being a paper crafter' or hearing myself trying to explain scrapbooking and making it sound like something a Jane Austin girl would do to pass the days before a husband came along. No more! I am re-badging myself as 'An Artist' whose medium is mainly paper based. OK as a Stampin Up demonstrator we design projects that will work nicely in class for people who need quite a bit of guidance because they are just starting out but that doesn't make us less artistic - in fact more because we are looking at the potential of the gorgeous products and pushing them to the max. Just yesterday I saw an idea for using the word window punch to make a great finger tab. And I don't want to drown my femininity in order to give some gravitas to my artistic/ crafter title. I'm not usually a frothy type but if I want to wear flounces and frills, big jewellery and great make up - I jolly well will. If I prefer to use words like gorgeous, beautiful and yummy then I will continue to do so when describing cards, boxes and albums. So if you feel like I do then please don't be an apologist for your love of making beautiful things and sharing your creations. Phewee - I feel so much better for saying that! I'm off to the USA tomorrow for two weeks and as part of that I am participating in a Sketchbook and Journalling event in Michigan with my daughter. It will be very stimulating and I hope to incorporate some of the designs in a scrapbooking page when I get home. I will post pictures so you can see how it turns out. Thanks for listening.

Christmas Creations

Here are the cards and decorations we are making at The Loft, Tollesbury, this evening. This first one is using the Snow Flurry Bigz die for the Big Shot. Oh my how I love my Big Shot and doesnt this card look clean and stylish. I am sure there will be lots of snowflakery going on this evening!

Now this is a kind of pyramid shaped box that can be filled with sweets or any small gift ( or diamond rings if you like!) and I just know that it will look so cute hung from the tree. The Simply Scored will be working overtime when we make these really quick but super effective ornaments. I love the use of the stamp and framelet to make the tag.

And finally these textured tags are pretty enough to be used as card toppers in their own right. I am putting the  Chevron folder into use straight away because we loved how it was used at the Stampin' Up! Convention and geometrics are a very hot trend right now. I also used baubles from the same stamp set so we could make one run through the Big Shot do three projects! Clever stuff eh?

If you are thinking of asking Santa for a Big Shot do remind him that if he orders from me I will include a half day Get To Know Your Big Shot individual class for free and always be on hand to give advice or ideas on how you can use this most versatile of tools.

What was Convention really like?

I have just found this YouTube video which will give you a flavour of what it was like to be part of the 2012 Stampin' Up! Convention in Mainz. Totally crazy great time...... See if you can spot me! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIWwA5GDoXg

Simply Scored

This is one of my "Go To" tools. The Simply Scored with it's stylus and the diagonal scoring plate are right at my elbow in the studio. It's another of those tools that you can't believe how useful it is - once you've had one you will be unable to think how you crafted without it. So here is a quick tour and some fab ideas to get you started. The Simply Scored takes paper or card up to 12" x 12", it has inch rulers both horizontally and vertically, it's own dual tip stylus and handy markers to make multiple projects easy. There is also a metric plate if you prefer to work in cm and mm. The diagonal plate allows really easy - well diagonal - scoring with total accuracy. I use my Simply Scored to make crisp accurate folds in card stock and paper to make two cards from a sheet of A4 really easily. Today we are making boxes and the Simply Scored is ideal to score the card for the sides - just score score and flip score score again and we are done. Totally accurate and parallel - don't you just hate it when things go wonky! Try using Simply Scored to make a smart double score on one edge of a card - try it the other way round so you get an outy line. That could be coloured up or distressed or left very minimalist. Love it for male cards. Do you brayer? Well try making a lattice or checked pattern then brayering on top - where the scores are you will be left with uninked areas. It looks so nice with Whisper White or Very Vanilla card stock. How about using a great background stamp as well - experiment using crumb cake on the brayer and sahara sand on the background stamp ( Mmmmm French Foliage, Postage Due, clockworks, Very Vintage stamps all spring to mind). I also find that the dual tip stylus - which is available to buy on it's own too - is fantastic for pressing things like flower centres, for curling paper or card for petals, making impressed lines on leaves, squishing down rhinestones or sorting out tiny bows. It doesn't leave a mark like the piercing tool or you poor old fingernail will. Check out page 181 of the 2012-13 catalogue for the Simply Scored, the diagonal plate and the stylus. Contact me if you would like to try out the Simply Scored before you buy!

Hello from Convention 2012

Just a quick note because I'm so excited to share some of the latest trends and ideas from Stampin' Up! European Convention 2012 here in lovely Mainz, Germany. What an action packed three days! You can only imagine the noise and energy that 700 SU demonstrators create when shown lovely new ways to use stamps and inks and dies and papers and card stock .... So here are just a few highlights which I will make and photograph and share when I get home. The first is a big trend to use geometric patterns in both pares and in textures. I particularly liked - well loved- the new chevrons embossing folder that allows Big Shot to make anything textured. The convention bag ( Mmmmm a gorgeous gift to all the demonstrators attending convention) is chevronned ( is that an actual word? OK - it is now!) and fresh in White and yellow. Then there are the butterflies, birds and bees - yes really - we know how we all love the florals and nature based stamps- so now we have more butterfly stamps and punches coming soon - great for layering, gesturing and fluttering. We were also using lots of subtle spritzing, sponging and brayering where you can really individualise your project so that it really reflects your style. So watch this space for some great new ideas using the Stampin Up products that you know are the best! Byeee from a rather rainy Germany!

Learning from each other

I just wanted to share some of the great things that came out of my "Cards and More" Stampin' Up! class from yesterday. All my classes are small so that everyone gets the advice and support that they as individuals need and one consequence of this is that it works a bit like a nice dinner party (Hmmm I like the way that sounds) where one conversation can include everyone. So we were using the gorgeous textured impressions holiday frame ( see it on page 7 in the Autumn catalogue)and just a little gleam provided by the .I had inked the edge of my base card with Crumb cake - my current favourite - but one of my adventurous ladies decided she wanted to see what the textures would look like with crumb cake ink as well as gleam on the textured whisper white cardstock. The result was a bit dirty looking so rather than throw it away she added some cherry cobbler on top and the result was stunning - a kind of burnished old gold on the accents! So out of a potential oops moment came a lovely look. Another lady then treated her textured frame in the same way but using gumball green instead of cherry cobler and the result was equally stunning - a very chic look which was rich rather than brazen. So thanks ladies for giving it a go and inventing two new looks from my existing stock of inks. Stampin' Up! has a statement of the heart and I know that with this class it is true - "To love what we do, and to share what we love, as we help others to enjoy creativity and worthwhile accomplishments - in this we make a difference". I'm now heading off to the studio to recreate these two effects and take a photograph which I can post to show you (although I know that gleams and sparkles are very difficult to photograph!) Happy crafting everyone and take a hint from these ladies that all oopsies! have the potential to be wonderful with a bit of work.

Laying on the layers

When do you do your thinking? I find that either gardening or walking the dogs gives me a good chunk of headspace time to sort out the day ahead or consider life in general. Not huge life and death issues but the kinds of things that niggle and need sorting out. I often find that while walking Meg and Tess in the woods behind our house - the same woods that I can see from my studio - I think about a card or scrapbook layout for a particular occasion. Then by the time I've fed the girls and made my coffee when I get home I am ready to jump in and make my layout. Yesterday I was thinking about some cards where there were lots of layers and textures but not so thick that they needed to be posted in a box! It came to me that describing the way we build up a card or scrapbook is kind of like a piece of music - some are very clean and simple like a solo voice and they rely on the beauty of the paper and colour of the card ( like the timbre of the voice and accuracy of the note ). The look I was trying to achieve could be compared to a rich orchestral or choral arrangement - full of detail and depth but without becoming confused and muddied. It takes the skill of the conductor and the composer to avoid jarring clashes - that's the crafters skill in choosing colours and patterns that compliment each other and giving some subtlety rather than just throwing it all together! How about comparing the tiny "ting ting" contribution of the triangle to those two brads that just balance a corner or the composer adding the flutes along with the other woodwind section for particular emphasis being like our beloved inked edges. You are hardly aware of it but it adds a certain ping! So maybe get some inspiration for your next page or card from listening to your favourite music and translating it to our lovely medium of paper and card. Let me know how you get on!

Seasonal Colours

Autumn is really here. Ive just been walking the dogs in the wood and their orange coats blended wonderfully with the gold and russet leaves. It made me think of the lovely tones in the Comfort Cafe designer paper pack that Stampin' Up! have in the new catalogue. Go to the products tab and leaf through (oops sorry about that) both the main catalogue and the Autumn seasonal catalogue to see the beautiful tones that are available. Personally I'm loving putting More Mustard, Pumpkin Pie and Basic Grey together. Have a look at the "male" card that we made in class last week - very smart I think.
So dont think that you have to go all red, green and gold for Christmas just yet - make the most of the colours of this season!

Welcome to Beyond the Greenhouse

Welcome!
 My new blog, which lovely Elaina has helped me to build, takes you to the world beyond the greenhouse - namely my crafting studio!
I am the luckiest person to have a dedicated craft space with all my gorgeous stash of Stampin' Up! papers, stamps, inks and punches ready to hand. With the radio and heater on I am lost in creativity all morning only surfacing for lunch or to walk dogs.
Elaina and I were discussing our favourite Stampin' Up! products and I thought it might be fun to take one tool or consumable product every so often and explore what it can do.
I'm going to start with the modest bone folder. A simple yet totally effective tool that means your creases are firm, crisp and un wrinkled every time. No more sore fingernails, no scuff marks on your card creases or bestof all no more wonky folds (grrr dont you hate that!). Once you have used a bone folder you will never go back. You can also use it with your Simply Scored board for precise scoring and folding - for example to make the pretty rosettes that are showcased on the Autumn catalogue front cover. I advise anyone new to papercrafting to use a good quality bone folder. What about putting one in the Christmas stocking of the papercrafters that you know?

Never too early to...

 So we are back after a great summer holiday - very hectic with visiting lots of great places and fitting in some Olympic events as well. Now my thoughts turn to planning the projects for my Autumn and Winter classes. This includes the Christmas Card Club as well as our regular Papercrafting and More (at Tollesbury), Scrapbooking (at Little Baddow) and Cardmaking (at Bicknacre). Hence me saying its never too early to start making your festive cards and decorations. And as a Stampin'Up! demonstrator I'm privileged to get a sneek peek at the lovely Seasonal Catalogue ahead of its official launch on 1st September. I have been using the stamps and gorgeous papers to try out the ideas for the first class (on 31st August at Bicknacre) and even though I say it myself, I'm thrilled at the rich effect of using two shades of green and two shades of red card with the festive papers ....cant wait until the ladies try them out. I'll post pictures later today.