Last month, I was honoured and excited to be asked to present a workshop “wow” at the Stampin’ Up! Perth Regional Seminar – an experience that included being hooked up to a microphone, presenting on stage to an audience of over 200 of my stampin’ peers, all while having a dude with a camera hovering over my shoulder and projecting my stampin’ hands onto two big screens at the front of the room.

Five years ago, such an experience would have filled me with dread (and when I was asked to present for the very first time about three Regionals ago I truly was filled with dread and considered a polite “no thank you” response) but having had the opportunity to present at three Regional Seminars now, as well as once at the yearly national convention, I’m pleased to be able to say that I think I have conquered my long held and deeply ingrained fear of public speaking and can cross that one off my bucket list.

The projects that I presented this time around focused on the new Sticky Sheets and our range of fine Stampin’ Glitters.

The other star of the show – the one that allowed me to obtain the lacy, glittery look – was actually a length of doily, plastic-y, tablecloth-y type stuff that I got from my local haberdashery store.  That’s the only way I can think to describe it, and when I did so at the shop, the assistant knew exactly what I was talking about and took me right to it

The beauty of this stuff is that it’s reusable (the plastic-y nature of it peels right off the Sticky Sheet), it’s inexpensive and comes by the metre, so you can get as much or as little as you need, and because you’re effectively using it as a stencil, it doesn’t matter if it’s ugly gold trimmed like the one in the middle as it doesn’t actually feature in your end result.  Bonus!

The process of actually achieving this result is very simple.  Firstly you peel the backing sheet off the Sticky Sheet and adhere it to a piece of cardstock, the peel the top (red) layer off the Sticky Sheet and lay the tablecloth piece over it.  You don’t want to press it too hard, as the Sticky Sheet is super sticky and you want to be able to remove the tablecloth easily.  Pour your first colour of Stampin’ Glitter over the top and rub it gently with your finger to ensure it gets into all the tiny holes and sticks to the Sticky Sheet beneath.  Pour off the excess glitter, then peel off the tablecloth.  Now take your second (ideally, highly contrasting) colour of Stampin’ Glitter and pour it over the previous colour so that it sticks onto the exposed Sticky Sheet.  Pour off the excess again, then dust-bust your desk and fend off comments for the rest of the day about how you are covered in glitter (I did a couple of afternoon school runs after preparing my samples, so I can vouch for that from experience)

That’s all there really is to it, and the options as far as cutting shape with the Bigshot as in the butterfly example above are pretty much endless.

I had a second card sample that I handed in to Stampin’ Up! as an example of the technique that I showed and also a 12 x 12 scrapbooking layout that I created about/for my niece, so I will try and grab that back off her one of these days and snap a picture.

The fourth sample is my favourite and was created as a bit of an artwork feature for my girls’ bedroom…

This one was created using a 3D frame from the Happiest Place on Earth (Ikea for those of you unfamiliar with my Swedish furniture obsession) and this time I placed the tablecloth stencil right over the mat board and glittered directly onto it.

To keep the glitter as the star of the show and not make the whole effect too busy, I kept the centre very simple, with a chipboard butterfly from the new On Board Merry Medley set embossed with the new Melon Mambo Stampin’ Emboss Powder (let’s hear a big “YAY” for coloured embossing!!) and embossed the tiny stamped heart from the Create a Cupcake set over the top in Cherry Cobbler.

I hope you have enjoyed my samples as much as I enjoyed creating them, and that you can forgive the past two and a half months of deathly blog silence from me.  I will redeem myself, I promise

If you would like any further information on the technique I have described here, or to purchase any of the products required to achieve it, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

“Glitter Butterfly Card”
Stamps: Tiny Tags
Paper: Crumb Cake, Early Espresso,  Cherry Cobbler, 2010-11 In Color DSP Stack
Ink: Cherry Cobbler & Early Espresso (Stampin’ Write Markers)
Accessories: Beautiful Butterflies Bigz Die, Square Lattice Embossing Folder, Early Espresso 1/8″ Taffeta Ribbon, Jewelry Tag Punch, Antique Brads, Sticky Sheet, Dazzling Diamonds Glitter, Finer Supernova Glitter (Chocolate)

“Glitter Frame with Embossed Butterfly”
Stamps: Create a Cupcake (small heart)
Paper: none
Ink: Versamark
Accessories: On Board Merry Medley, Melon Mambo and Cherry Cobbler Stampin’ Emboss Powder, Sticky Sheet, Dazzling Diamonds Glitter, Fine Supernova Glitter (Olive)

This week – at least what’s left of it – over at Just Add Ink, there’s a funky sketch challenge for you to play along with…

I just love the simplicity of this sketch and envisage that I will be revisiting it again many times!

Here’s what I did with it for the challenge…

I used a similar technique as I did for the Just Add Vintage challenge a little while back, combining a couple of background stamps and some embossing powder.

If you’d like to play along with this sketch challenge, head over to Just Add Ink before midnight Wednesday and link up your entry!

Tell ‘em I sent ya

“Just Add Ink Challenge #24″
Stamps: Baroque, Sanded, Upsy Daisy (greeting)
Paper: Soft Suede, Whisper White, Kraft
Ink: Versamark, Soft Suede
Accessories: Clear Embossing Powder, White Embossing Powder, Brayer

Many of you would already be aware that we are smack bang in the middle of the most fun time of the Stampin’ Up! year – Sale-a-bration!

Other than put a little advertisement up to the top right there, I haven’t done much in the way of shouting it from the rooftops, so I hope to rectify that today by sharing a couple of cards I made with my favourite of the stamp selections available in the Sale-a-bration brochure.

I loved all the stamp sets on sight, but my favourite one is Happy Moments.  I reckon you can’t go wrong with a stamp set that contains four images that could be used for pretty much any occasion, PLUS three greeting stamps into the bargain as well.

And it is a bargain, ’cause it’s free!

It – or any of the other three sets in the catalogue – can be yours for free with any order of $100.  Spend $200, choose two sets.  Spend $300, choose three sets plus the associated hostess benefits.

Spend more than that, and you and I need to have a serious chat about the Stampin’ Up! demonstrator opportunity…  Oh and did I mention that if you take up that particular opportunity during Sale-a-bration you get to choose a free stamp set from the Idea Book & Catalogue too…?

Yep, you do.

See I told you Sale-a-bration was fun!

Ok, onto the cards.  They both use the stack of gifts stamp from the Happy Moments stamp set, which I love because you can colour it all girly and pretty, or make it more boy-ish colours too – both of which I have done in the following examples…

This first card was for a little school friend of my big girl, whose 7th birthday party was just this morning.

The cutest thing was that when Hannah gave her the card, as she was ripping into it, she said “I know what this is – this is a card that your mum made”.

They’re onto me…..!

Here’s a close up of the watercolouring on the stamped image, and I also wanted to point out something else about this part too.

See the scalloped border around the edge of the circle?

Well that circle is the 1-3/4″ Circle Punch and we don’t actually have a corresponding scallop circle punch in the catalogue.  Check out this post on Marelle Taylor’s blog for a nifty little trick to get different sized circles out of your original Scallop Circle Punch…

“Happy 7th Birthday Madelen”
Stamps: Happy Moments
Paper: Kiwi Kiss, So Saffron, Watercolour Paper, Regal Rose Patterns DSP (Level 1 Hostess)
Ink: StazOn Jet Black, Kiwi Kiss, So Saffron, Regal Rose, Tangerine Tango, Baja Breeze
Accessories: 1-3/4″ Circle Punch, Scallop Circle Punch, Aquapainter, Tangerine Tango striped ribbon, Stampin’ Dimensionals

The next card was for the principal at school after I noticed a couple of weeks ago that his birthday was listed in the school newsletter.  It’s such a lovely school that my big girl goes to (and next year, so will the little one…!) with just one class for each year level and the teachers and the principal know each and every one of the kids by name.

Here’s his card…

The image on this one is also watercoloured, but this time I first stamped and embossed with White Embossing Powder, so it gives the image quite a different look.

So that’s just two simple examples of the many different looks that you could get out of this one stamp, never mind that you have three other image stamps in the set to play around with as well.

Sale-a-bration runs until the end of March, so get in on the free stamps action by contacting me and letting me know what you’d like for your $100 (or $200 or $300!) order

“Happy Birthday Mr Martin”
Stamps: Happy Moments, Short & Sweet
Paper: Chocolate Chip, Naturals Ivory, Kiwi Kiss, Watercolour Paper, Urban Garden DSP
Ink: Kiwi Kiss, Baja Breeze, Close to Cocoa, Creamy Caramel, Sahara Sand
Accessories: Chocolate Chip side double stitched ribbon, Aquapainter, Stampin’ Sponges, 1-3/4″ Circle Punch, Stampin’ Dimensionals

My word these weeks are passing quickly and it’s time once again for a new Just Add Ink challenge.

This time it’s another sketch challenge – love these – and here it is for your inspiration…

This one shouted “scrapbook layout” to me, so after I had asked it to please use its inside voice  (we don’t shout in our house… ) I set about creating a layout according to the guidelines of the sketch.

And here it is….

You will notice that I flipped the sketch around as there was more empty space to overlap the smaller pictures on the left hand side of the large one, but other than that, I stuck pretty faithfully to the original layout.

To the left of the small pictures, you will notice some little tabs…

These were created using the “left-over”  part of the Round Tab Punch as you can see in the following “how-to”:

These tabs have function as well as a decorative purpose, as they actually indicate that the photo’s can be lifted up to reveal the journalling underneath…

The journalling is divided between all three of the lift-up photo’s and following on from the first bit that you can see above, says:

A couple of days after Christmas, we got to work on creating a fabulous ‘do’ for her.  One hour and a very patient 6 year old later, she had a head full of bouncing barrel curls.

Then it was time for the photo shoot…  Sophie hadn’t been too keen on the hairstyling thing, but definitely wanted in on the modeling action…

27 December 2009

To balance the page, I added a little embellishment in the top right, using the Eyelet Border Punch to create a pretty photo corner, then layered on some stamped images and small embellishments to fancy it up a bit more.

Truthfully, the main photo is just a tad pageant-ish for my liking, but since we were just messing about and playing hairdressers, I figured she could get away with being a bit of a diva for the camera just this once

So now it’s your turn!  Head on over to the challenge at Just Add Ink and see what you can turn the fabbo sketch into!

“Just Add Ink Challenge #6 – Stylin’ Layout”
Stamps: Framed with Love, Always
Paper: Close to Cocoa textured, Rose Red, Whisper White, Bella Bleu DSP
Ink: Close to Cocoa, Pink Pirouette, Whisper White craft
Accessories: On Board Lots of Letters, Eyelet Border Punch, Round Tab Punch, Flower Fusion and Flower Fusion Too, Button Bouquet, Pretties Kit, White Embossing Powder, Stampin’ Sponges

Aaarghhhh!  I’m late!

And I’m exhausted due to my big girl having started back at school today and all the fun and frivolity and fresh new stationery (mmmmmmm!) that comes with the last week of the summer holidays.

But mostly I’m late.  To show you my card for the current Just Add Ink challenge (that kicked off …….last Thursday!)

Chances are you have already seen my card on the JAI blog itself, and I suspect that a good many of you have judging by the many, many challenge entries that are flooding in!

The challenge this week….?  Just add HEARTS!

This theme suited me perfectly as we had an engagement party to go to last weekend, so this card was created, photographed, emailed to the Just Add Ink girls and given away, all in the blink of an eye!

‘Tis a pity that it wasn’t blogged with such speed and frightening efficiency…

I’m not sure if you can quite make out the detail of the heart image, so here’s a bit of a closer look…

The heart image from Simply Said was stamped onto Vellum Cardstock in Whisper White Craft Ink and embossed with White Embossing Powder.

Then I coloured onto the back of the vellum using markers to create the stained glass window type effect.

Then with the two different sized square punches and a goodly amount of stuffing about to get the layers to line up, I created the little see through window-ish type thingamy that you can see in the above photo.

Then some background stamping, ribbon and a rub-on completed the job!

If you’re keen to join the challenge for this week and you have a window of stampin’ opportunity to do so between now and midnight on Wednesday, I’d encourage you to jump on in!

“Just Add Hearts Engagement Card”
Stamps: Simply Said, Sanded background
Paper: Close to Cocoa, Whisper White, Regal Rose, Chocolate Chip, Vellum cardstock
Ink: Whisper White craft, Close to Cocoa
Accessories: Rose Red Wide Double Stitched Ribbon, White Taffeta Ribbon, Stampin’ Write Markers, Chit Chat Rub-ons, 1-3/8″ and 1-1/4″ Square Punches, Stampin’ Dimensionals, Stampin’ Sponges

As promised yesterday, here is the project I made using the most challenging (for me) of all the colours in the Stampin’ Up! colour families.

Several of you guessed it, and a few of you appear to be similarly challenged by it..

It’s Glorious Green!

This colour is not only not in my comfort zone, it resides a goodly number of postcodes away.

And in all likelihood it would have remained unscathed in my cardstock shelf had the gift that I was packaging not contained that very colour, so in this case, my fear of using this extremely challenging colour was overidden by my penchant for all things matchy-matchy!

Here’s the gift box from the outside…

I think you can kind of make it out in the first picture that I actually embossed the stars onto the vellum lid.  The ink can take a while to dry on vellum, and being the impatient crafter that I am, decided to hasten the process, as well as improve the overall look as it turns out, by throwing on some clear embossing powder.

Here you can see the little set of three pairs of shoe/socks that I packaged inside.  The colours..?  Ballet Blue, Real Red and Glorious Green!

I just realised that you can’t actually see the green pair in there!  I must have subconsciously stuck them at the back behind the other two…

The little gift is for the head coach at my big girl’s gymnastics class who just had her first baby about a month ago.

Here is the matching card…

So you can see that although the Glorious Green is most definitely the accent colour rather than being front and centre, it’s most certainly there!

Baby steps people, baby steps…

Although I should have learned my lesson by now, out of interest, I asked for Tim’s impressions of the box.

His response…?

“Now that’s Christmassy!”

#&%$(#@*&$!!

“Sock box and card”
Stamps: Nursery Necessities
Paper: Brocade Blue, Real Red, Glorious Green, Whisper White, Vellum Cardstock
Ink: Brocade Blue, Real Red, Glorious Green
Accessories: Real Red and Brocade Blue wide grosgrain, Wide Oval Punch, Crimper, Silver Brads, Linen Thread, 1-1/16″ Circle Punch, Stampin’ Dimensionals