Valentine's set

Next week I'm running a class to make this cute little set. It's a little unusual for Valentine's day, and I did struggle not adding more bling and pink hearts, but lets face it, we'll be giving these to our Valentines, who seem not to like as much pretty as us! 

Here is what I ended up with:

I chose black as the base, to let me use red and calypso coral without getting too pretty - my colour pallet was easy to choose -I matched it to the Stacked With Love designer series paper stack. I LOVE the new Mini Treat Bag thinlits dies! It's so easy to make these gorgeous little bags. Because I wanted some space to write a little message, I made a little pull out tag to fit inside the bag. 

I covered the Tiny Treat box with more designer paper from the Stacked with Love pack, which has both pretty hearts and graphic black and white designs. 

I'd love to make these with you - message me if you can come Friday 6th Feb, or pop over to my FaceBook page to view the event at 

Thankful for so much

Early in January I came across the lovely idea of keeping a Thankful Jar. I can't remember what the original idea was called, but I've now seen a few iterations around, all with slightly different ways of filling the jar. Basically you write down events or achievements that were especially good, cool, hard earned or that you are thankful for. You can do this as a "best of today" or as an occasional "this was fantastic, let's remember it". And then you put it in a (beautifully decorated, of course!) jar, collecting these wonderful memories until New Year's Eve, when you pull them out and remember all the special times of the past year, instead of failed New Year's resolutions. 

Here's my jar (a little late because I had to drink the coffee that was in here first). 

I re-used some of the flowers and hessian from my spring-wreath kit, and added some cool twine and natural ribbon, using hot glue to attach it all. I couldn't go completely girly, being the only girl in the house, but I'm hoping it's a balance of styles for all of us. 

I have a couple of Spring-wreath kits available, if you are interested in making a wreath, or in using your hand-made flowers for some other project.

Is a Thankful Jar something that would work for you too?

More flipping cards!

I do love making pretty, flowery cards, but having two boys, I also need to have cards for them and their friends. So after I made yesterday's flip card with flowers, I turned around and made a "boy" card to the same basic pattern. Come see:

Nothing fussy or "girly" here, but hopefully acceptable!

Flip card fun

Browsing Pinterest, I came across a cool idea for a flip card by Julie Davidson (http://juliedavidson.blogspot.com) who is a US Stampin' Up! demonstrator. Obviously, I had to give it a go straight away!

I changed the design up a bit, using different
punches, stamps and framelit dies, as well as changing from a US card size to an Aussie one.

When you open it up, it looks like this..

How cool is this? And as a bonus, it was really easy to make. I'd love to show you how to make one of these - contact me to organise a workshop or class for you and your friends.

Sheltering Tree Thinking of You

Recently I found time to play with a beautiful new stamp set called Sheltering Tree. It's a photopolymer set; you can see your image as you stamp it, so its really easy to place your stamped image exactly where you want it. It's got some great sentiments as well as the images, making it a really useful addition to your stash. 

I wanted a "thinking of you" card for a friend whose husband is sick at the moment and this is what I came up with:

Its' very simple, but the images are so lovely that I think they hold their own.

These are all the stamps you get in the Sheltering Tree set: 

It's called a "two step" set, meaning it's designed to place one stamp over the other. But really it's multi-step; I stamped the leaf image over the tree trunk twice to give depth, then added the swing. That's 4 (easy) steps for my simple card - imagine the possibilities if you really go to town and create a scene!

I think I'd like to try a spring or autumn card next.  

New Class Schedule

Hi,

I'm going to be running some classes over the next few months using Stampin' Up! products to make some gorgeous cards, boxes and more. This is my schedule of classes so you can plan ahead. Classes will be held at my place - if you are interested, please contact me for details.

I'll show you pictures of what I have planned for each class as we get closer.