Being a demonstrator for Stampin’ Up! I make many sample cards to share at demonstrations or with my loyal blog readers like yourself.  I have quite a few more cards than I need so its nice to throw one in the mail and send to someone ‘just cos I can’ and its always lovely to get one back – how excited do we get when we see an envelope in our letter box that does NOT have a window??

I know I get very excited as do the girls – they want to know who its from and why they sent it to me.

Now being that I’ve been with Stampin’ Up! now for nearly 4 years – ooo its my Stampin Up! Anniversary next month! I’ve met many lovely people and many of them have become friends.  One of these ladies is the lovely Leonie Newman – who also happens to be in my awesome downline – well she’d have to be great with a name like Leonie wouldnt she??

To my surprise Leonie sent me a little gift last week – she had told me during one our online chats that I should keep an eye on my letter box.

This is what I received ….

Leonie did tell me that she saw this Coffee Sleeve and thought of me immediately — not sure where she gets the idea I’m powered by coffee?!?! I do appreciate the thought as how often have you bought a coffee from a take away and its too hot to hold??

Now the card ….

I love the colours and paper Leonie has used.

This type of card is called a ‘swing’ card as the top swings up to reveal the message or greeting as shown below.

If you would like to learn how to make one of these swing cards then contact me today to arrange your demonstration or class

To Leonie – thank you for blessing me with your friendship and your gorgeous gift!

Now if you’d like to become a demonstrator and join my awesome Stamp A Latte team then please contact me as soon as possible if you want to save $65 on the Starter Kit.  This promotion goes until 31st July which is this Saturday and I’d love for you to join my team and reap the rewards (and all the new friends you’ll make) just as I do!

Benefits of joining my team this week are ….

• Save 20% on the starter kit price – you pay only $259 (a saving of $65)
• Earn 30% commission on your first order within 45 days of joining (use this on items in the new catalogue or Big Shot!)
• Join my wonderful team of over 100 demonstrators
• Pre-order from the new catalogue before it goes ‘live’ on 1^st September
• Get a bonus gift from me when you join my team (to the value of $35)
• Gain access to my Stamp A Latte Team forum
• Gain access to the ESAD forum and network with over 500 demonstrators
• Gain access to the Stampin’’ Up Demonstrator website
• attend my team meetings

If you would like more information or have any questions please dont hesitate to contact me.

Thanks for stoppin by

Welcome to the ESAD Christmas in July Blog hop!!

I do hope you’ve come prepared for a wonderful ‘Christmas’ journey so if you havent got your cuppa and some biscuits you’d better go get some now … I’ll wait till you get back to continue.

What is ESAD?

ESAD stands for Extra Special Australasian Demonstrators and it is an online group just for Australian and New Zealand demonstrators for Stampin’ Up!®

We so love what we do and not only do we love to share it with our customers, friends, and wonderful blog visitors but we share our love for what we do with each other as Demonstrators. We run swaps, challenges, tutorials, product know how and cyberstamps and we are always there to help and support each other when its needed. There is also the online chat networking that is available whenever youre online.

So if you are a Stampin’ Up! Demonstrator located in Australia or New Zealand then please feel free to click here to join our wonderful group.

You should have come here from Clare’s blog but if you havent dont worry … just keep hopping until you get back to me.

Now, like all good bloggers, we all LOVE comments so please be sure to leave us a comment as we just thrive on them!

I have had one of these Simply Scrappin’ “I Wish” kits for eons – maybe even last Christmas and I hadnt pulled it out to use so I thought I’d better take this opportunity and use it before its retired.

Here is what I created ….

We have ….

• A Christmas planner
• A Gift box with toffees inside
• A Gift Bag
• 6 Christmas Cards with matching Envelopes
• 8 Christmas Tags

Now all of these things I made with just half of one of the kits – oh and I had quite a bit left over that I didnt use including adhesive die cuts, cardstock and patterned paper.

So I could still make a bundle more cards, tags and even a scrapbook layout if I wanted to – or I might even dress up a canvas for the Grannies for Christmas.  So just imagine how much you could make with a full kit!

The Christmas Planner

I love the idea of these planners so when I was making projects for this blog hop I thought I’d love to make one of these so I went looking online for ideas and maybe a tutorial.

After spending half a day (I kid you not!) of looking and not really finding what I wanted I sat down and decided to design one myself!  So I did and I love how it turned out!

The Planner takes one sheet of 12×12 cardstock to create then I’ve just added pieces of the Designer Series Paper and adhesive die cuts from the kit to decorate it.  Easy!

Here are a couple of shots inside the planner ….

Then we have the cards ….

These cards were actually made using the Stampin’ Up!® Notecards.  Using the Notecards made them so quick and easy to put together and they come with envelopes so I just stamped some snowflakes from the Snow Swirled Stamp Set and I was done! Easy!

A Box for the special someone with the sweet tooth!

How cute is this box?  These Acetate boxes are so easy to make and you can put anything in them from toffees to candles!  Oh if you are buying someone a gift card you could pop that inside and then fill it up with toffees or Werther’s Caramel Chocolates – now I did buy a bag of those but they umm disappeared … well one does have to do quality control do they not?? I do know that hubby took two of them – the hide of some people!

A Gift bag …..

How nice is this little bag?  Now you could put just about anything in here too … a CD, stamp set, punch, set of car keys, toy car even (being a replica of the new one in the drive-way maybe? please Santa???)

Not forgetting … the gift tags ….

Now these were fun to make and I will probably make a few more – but how cute is that Penguin??  I do so love Penguins   I’ve been eyeing off this Punch Pals set for a couple of years now and thought why not?? My customers need new stamps for their Christmas Stamp A Stacks!

Wow .. .I apologise this post is so long!  I didnt mean for it to be so if you’ve got this far I thank you from the bottom of my Christmas heart!  It does happen to be my favourite holiday and its a shame its all over so quickly.

Now before I go I do have to tell you that if you do happen to see those Werther’s Caramels to grab one bag for you and one bag for me cos they are D-I-V-I-N-E!

Now that you have got this far its time to hop onto the next ESAD Blogger in the Blog hop being the gorgeous Gardenia Pepworth

Now dont forget to leave everyone a comment

So this is what the girls made today as their make n take …

How sweet are these cards?

They are so so quick and easy to make. Its also a great way to use up some of that Designer Series Paper that you have in your stash. Actually the ones we made today used the 6×6 paper sheets from the Patterns Pack II Level 1 Hostess Gift. I also used the awesome Stampin Up! Notecards that come 20 to a pack with envelopes for just $9.50!  What a bargain!

These pads of paper are so versatile and great for card making or 6×6 layouts or matting.  In each 6×6 Patterns Pack you get and assortment of 5 colours in 60 sheets of double sided paper – and all for free – just by hosting a Workshop and qualifying for the Level 1 Hostess Benefits.

My cards above were inspired by a sweet card I received from the lovely Genelle Little which is here for your viewing pleasure ….

I met Genelle through the ESAD online forum I run for Stampin’ Up! Demonstrators from New Zealand and Australia.  Its a great group for inspiration and getting ideas from other demonstrators so if youre a demonstrator located in Australia or New Zealand click on the link and join today!

So I decided to utilise this lovely quiet time and make a couple of cards and continued on with the Christmas Theme from yesterday. Well the Christmas Classic set was still on my desk so why waste energy getting a new set out?

I remembered the pretty sketch challenge from Stamping 411 so decided to use that for my next card.

I do love to make cards from sketches as I find when I look at a sketch I can see so many cards with it whereas if I just go and pull out a stamp set to use I can deliberate for hours on colours, papers and layout.

You should give a sketch a try – use any of the ones I’ve done or just simply do a Google search on ‘sketch challenge’ and I’m sure you’ll be amazed at how many places have these challenges every week.

Here is my card ….

Recipe:

Stamps:  Christmas Classics, Baroque Motifs
Paper:  Baja Breeze, Ridinghood Red, Chocolate Chip, Whisper White, Ski Slope DSP
Inks:  Baja Breeze
Accessories:  Chocolate Chip Stampin’ Write Marker, Real Red Stampin’ Write Marker, More Mustard Stampin’ Write Marker, 1/4″ Chocolate chip grosgrain ribbon, eyelet border punch, stampin dimensionals, snail adhesive.

This is another very quick and easy card and a great one to make for christmas as you could do a few in no time at all!

Now I think I might take this aching body back to bed for a little nap and try and get over this flu.

This week’s sketch comes from you from the lovely Carol and my sponsors this week being Nespresso, Ease a Cold (cold & flu tablets) and the makers of Ibuprofen!

Yes I’ve come down with the dreaded flu and just when the kids are due to go back to school and I have a few bookings this week so I hope I am ok to do those and not have to reschedule any.

As soon as I saw this sketch I had a few ideas running thru my head – yes it got quite noisy in there!  Now those ideas were put on the back burner as I have a “Christmas in July” stamp a stack on Monday so thought I’d go with a Christmas theme today and had to use one of my new Christmas sets – Christmas Classics … well it is new to me!

Here is my card …

This is a simple and ‘easy to put together’ Christmas Card with minimal colouring but colouring those baubles is so easy and they turn out so nice dont they?

I still have some of the gorgeous Ski Slope Designer Series Paper from last year’s Summer Mini Catalogue and I so so love these colours together. I should just have enough for Monday’s Stamp A Stack too.

I do hope you like my little card and now its time for you to skip along to the next Sketchy Saturday Diva being the lovely Ruthie B. So pop over to Ruthie’s blog to see what she has created.

Now if you get to a blog that hasnt got their challenge card up then you can view all those in the Sketch Design Team at the Utah Divas International Blog.

This month we have a swap for a Technique Book which I’m a part of.  All the participants had to choose a technique different to the other participants and make up an instruction and sample page for each participant. So I had to make 12 instructions & samples for this swap and the technique I chose was Collage Stamping.

I love doing Collage Stamping as you can make it your own and create lovely effects and it gives the look of your very own designer series paper.  Now while I was making my samples the other day one of my daughter’s friends was staying over and she asked why I was putting butterflies on the patterned paper – I then explained what I was doing and that I’d stamped all the images on the cardstock myself.  She then exclaimed “Wow how cool!!”  Now this does boost one’s self esteem to no end!

Here is the sample I made for the swap ….

After deliberating for what seemed like days on what set and style to make I decided on this gorgeous “All a Flutter” stamp as the main focus and then popped in some flower stems, leaves and script.

I really do love the final sample and I do love that butterfly!

I’ve coloured my piece using the Stampin Pastels. I love the soft muted tones you can get with the Pastels and they also blend so well!  Now to ensure that the Pastels dont keep rubbing off I’ve given them a light spray with my hairspray.  This just helps to set and protect your artwork from rubbing off.  You dont need an expensive fixative – just the  cheapest hairspray does the trick.

Now as part of the swap we also had to make one card or project using our technique so I thought I’d use my sample and do one of the challenges from the Cards and Things Challenges Blog run by the lovely Krista Driessen.

Here’s my card …

I love how this turned out and I’ve added another butterfly over the top of one to give it more dimension and make it that extra little bit special.

Recipe:
Stamps: All a Flutter, Organic Grace, En Francais
Paper: Very Vanilla, Chocolate Chip, Pumpkin Pie, Blush Blossom
Inks: Chocolate Chip, Soft Suede, Mellow Moss, Versamark
Accessories: Big Shot, Scallop Circle Die, Circle Scissor Plus, Stampin’ Pastels, Sponge Daubers, Crimper

Here’s a close up of the layered butterfly …

Starting September I will be starting new Technique Classes so if you’d like to book your spot please email me today.

After deliberating for what seemed like hours (which was really about 20 minutes or so) on what papers to use I finally gave in and went with the gorgeous Cottage Wall Designer Series Papers.

As much as I love the Tote-ally Tess set and ‘had’ to have her I’ve struggled to use her in cards.  So I’m challenging myself  to use Tess more so I hope you will see a few different “Tess” cards over the next few weeks.

Why dont you make a card with Tess too and pop a comment with the link to your blog post or online gallery?

This one is simply a “Birthday Tess” carrying a little cupcake. Looking at the card now I could have added a little gift bag as well – I might even still do that and send through a photo once its done.

Recipe:

Stamps: Tote-ally Tess, Short and Sweet
Paper: Rich Razzleberry, Orchid Opulence, Whisper White, Cottage Wall DSP
Inks: Basic Black, Rich Razzleberry, So Saffron, More Mustard, Certainly Celery, Pretty in Pink, Regal Rose, Ridinghood Red, Going Gray.
Accessories: Big Shot, Lots of Tags sizzlits, White Taffeta Ribbon, Aqua Painter, Stampin Dimensionals, Snail Adhesive, Mini Glue dots.

One of my favourite ways to colour is to use my Aqua Painter and the ink pads to water colour and I was pleasantly surprised at how well the Certainly Celery top went with the Rich Razzleberry pants. 

So who’s for a cupcake?

I could go one right about now!  Why not treat yourself to one today and why not grab a Latte at the same time to wash it all down! In honour of all the birthdays we’ve had lately of course

My apologies for posting late (sorry Carol) we had a spanner thrown in the works last night with a call to let us know that an ambulance had been called for my Mother in Law.  She has had a bad cold and ended up with chest pains last night so everything was just dropped while we attended to her.

Here is this week’s sketch from the lovely Carol.

Diagonals?  What am I supposed to do with that?  So as I do I deliberated and deliberated and then …. I deliberated some more!

Then it dawned on me … pockets.

I have quite a bit of Designer Series Paper that I need to use over the next 2 months so I tried to think what paper I havent used for a while and I grabbed my Candy Lane Papers.  You dont see these pack used so much and I think its really lovely – or maybe I just dont go to the right blogs!

Here is what I came up with …

I’ve modelled this card on the Diagonal Pocket card but I’ve just used it for the pockets on the front so only used 1/3 sheet of 12×12 for the front pockets instead of using the whole  sheet as in the tutorial.  I’ve also added a bit of elegance using the Eyelet Border Punch on a piece of Very Vanilla.

Now here’s the card showing the insert.

I couldnt go past doing my “Latte Stack” on the tag with my gorgeous “Share A Cup” stamp.

I’ve left the tag mainly blank so you can put a little note or even attach a gift card for your favourite Coffee Place like Gloria Jeans or The Coffee Club.

Here is the inside of the card for you to write a message to your friend

Now I’ve added the Eyelet Border egde again with some of the stripes from the Candy Lane Designer Series Paper pack for continuation from the front.

Now I could have put another tag in the top pocket but after grabbing my little Pun Fun Latte stamp I thought what better than to put in a sachet for a Latte.  Its a nice way to say hello to a friend and give them a cuppa

I do hope you like what I made for this sketch and now all I have to do is to find someone to send it to!  Maybe you??

Now its time for you to skip along to the next Designing Diva being the loverly Ruthie Burkey so pop over to Ruthie’s blog and see what she has created for this week’s sketch challenge

Thanks for stoppin by

You might remember in my last post the card I cased from the lovely Lynda Shrimpton – well Lynda is such a lovely friend she let me case a couple more cards – aint she sweet.  Most of my cards are my own creations and as I do many Stamp A Stacks I like to give my customers a few different choices when choosing what cards they wish to make so sometimes its nice to not have to think too hard – especially during school holidays!

Here are a couple of very easy cards using the Vintage Vogue stamp set.

How pretty and delicate is this card?

The flowers just trail down the card a bit like Jasmine on a fence or anything that stood still too long and too close!

This has to be one of the easiest cards I’ve made and the ladies on Sunday enjoyed making it too.  It is one of those cards that could be used for any occasion.

Recipe

Stamps: On Your birthday, Vintage Vogue
Paper: Pretty in Pink, Mellow Moss, Whisper White
Inks: Pretty in Pink
Accessories: Mellow Moss Stampin Write Marker, Pretty in Pink Stampin Write Marker, Large Oval Punch, Scalloped Oval Punch, Stampin Dimensionals.

Now for the second card – another lovely soft card but in blue ….

This card is the same layout and design as the other just in the landscape orientation. I’ve also added a row of the lovely leafy edge image at the top and bottom of the panel in versamark.  The top and bottom of the white piece is daubered in Bashful Blue and a simple little sentiment from the Teeny Tiny Sentiments set.

Dont you just love the Soft Subtle range?  well if you answered yes and your a regular Stampin’ Up! customer you will know that many of the the Soft Subtle colours are retiring at the end of August.  However we have had a few colours start to run out already so if you’d like to grab some soft subtles before they are all gone I’d suggest you get your order in sooner rather than later.

If the single colours sell out dont forget you can still buy them in the mixed family packs!

Would you like to make these cards?

I still have a couple of places available for my Stamp A Stack here on Saturday 10th July so if you’d like to come contact me today to reserve your spot. Its just $20 for 9 cards – oh and some very yummy coffee … and I’ll even make you a cup in my new coffee cups!

Thanks for stoppin by

I even got some new coffee cups I’ve been after for a while so a good morning in all.

As its Saturday its time for another Utah Divas Sketch Challenge from the lovely Carol.

Now when I first saw this one I thought ‘hmmm ok’  but then it dawned on me what I could do and what sort of a challenge would it be if I didnt change it any?

So me being me gave it a good old rotation and this is what I came up with ….

I really do love this Rose is a Rose set and will be sorry to see it retire in 2 months however if you dont have this set and would like to get it before it goes then you can and if you buy it before 31st July then you can get it at 20% off!  Pretty good deal huh?

Now I did hear from the lovely Max today and she said she cant participate in this week’s sketch – something to do with her mother visiting from England and leaving on Monday and wanting to spend every waking minute with her.  Max I hope you have a wonderful few days and Mum has a lovely trip back home. So this week the next stop on the Utah Diva Sketch Hop is the lovely Ruthie Burkey.

So skip on over toRuthie‘s blog and see what she’s created for this sketch.

Thanks for stoppin by