Those Little Extras

As promised here is a picture of the little extras I made for my ladies who joined me for my Day Event on Saturday. The bag is simply what holds their packed lunch ( most ladies do keep these lol) the Bunny is their table place marker and the little notepad, ruler and pen is their door gift as they come in.

I also make sets of spot prizes that I dish out during the day and there is one gift for each attendee ( this ensures that everyone goes home with a prize even if they do not win in the main raffle)

Spring All Day Event

Well here I am, back at last and sharing with you pictures of my projects from my first Day Event of 2011 which took place yesterday. I had 20 wonderful ladies join me for the day and we made the two projects shown. "Spring" was my overall theme for this first event of the year so I decided to use only our current Stampin' Up! In Colours as they just speak of spring to me.

The morning was dedicated to creating a 12 month Card Organiser and we used the often overlooked "Cottage Garden" stamp set to decorate the covers. We then used the matching Sunny Garden papers for the inserts and again used the Cottage Garden stamp set to decorate the month cards on each page. The designer papers contain Poppy Parade, Pear Pizzazz and Peach Parfait so worked perfectly with the In Colours I had chosen to use throughout the day.

The project I designed for the afternoon was decorated cards storage box with 6 cards ( the box could easily fit 12 cards) I chose to use the very beautiful Growing Green stamp set along with Curly Cute for the card sentiments. For the colouring we used In Colour Markers and aqua brushes. My ladies were horrified when I told them they had to stamp, watercolour AND cut out almost 45 flowers, ferns and leaves for the box and all the cards but all agreed that it was worth the effort to create the finished project. It was so nice to see how unique everyone's creations looked just because each person water-colours differently.

Come back tomorrow when I will show you the little table gifts I made for each attendee along with their other little surprises.

Team Challenge for March

Once a month my fabulous upline Jenny challenges our team to create something using a particular Stampin' Up! product. This month her challenge is to use glitter somewhere in our creation.

I decided I would use my favourite of all our existing glitters and this meant I immediately reached for Dazzling Diamonds. I teamed the glitter with Heat and Stick powder and a Versamark Inkpad and this is the gorgeous effect I achieved. Although this does look sparkly in the picture nothing can really do justice to how fantastic this looks in real life, diamonds is exactly the word you need to use.

Please bear with me this week for a lack of posts. I am busy preparing for my Day Event for this coming Saturday and still have a few finishing touches to complete.

Happy Birthday card for my downline

Today one of my downline team celebrates her birthday so I need to say Happy Birthday Jill, hope it's a good one.

Here is the card I created for her birthday card. I have used one of the stamp sets that I know Jill loves and made sure I used her favourite colour blue in my design. I was very tempted to go totally mad and make her a real "girlie" card in every shade of pink I could imagine but she wouldn't have been at all impressed so I thought she would much prefer this one.

Stampin Up Artistic Etchings

I am sharing three cards with you today that I have made with my brand new SU set "Artistic Etchings" This was one of those stamp sets that you know you like but take a while before you succumb to buying it for yourself. I saw this one and had it on my wish list from October when our new cataloue came out but there were other sets that were just that bit higher on the (very long) list so I have only just aquired it. Now I know I should have bought it sooner as it is so lovely to use and so versatile. These three cards were all made within a couple of hours of opening the stamp set and that shows it is one of those sets I will love to work with. Some stamp sets just do not always work easily for me so I am always excited by those that inspire me immediately.

The black and vanilla card uses just that one image stamp but have you noticed that it is virtually the same image as one of the patterns on the Designer Paper Stacks so it would be a perfect stamp set to use with any of the colour families. I love simple don't you ?

On the Baja Breeze card I have used crystal effects on the tower image and this has made it look like a glazed sticker which really lifts this card.

Finally on the Cherry Cobbler and Early Expresso card I have used my new favourite tool from Stampin Up and that's the Spritzer tool. It is amazing and I am totally addicted to it already. I love how it softens the look of every single card you make with it. I will be using this lots lol

What creative ladies I have in my classes

I am sharing something totally different with you this evening.

A couple of weeks ago I did a class here which featured, amongst others a twisted easel card. One of my very talented ladies went home from that class and decided she wanted to go that little bit further with the twisted easel concept. So here is Vanessa's very, very clever adaptation of that card design. She has made a simple easel into a two winged version and I LOVE IT ! ! ! I was so thrilled when she brought it to show me and the other class ladies loved it too and want to copy her idea. I will hold my hands up and say that I would never have thought of adding another easel section to the other side of the card but I will be trying this now for sure.

I was so pleased with Vanessa's creativity and just had to take a photograph today to share it with you all. I hope you can find time to leave a comment if you like her card design too.

Team Swaps for Fareham Stampin' Up Training Day

Last Friday I travelled down to Bournemouth to join my upline Jenny and a few other ladies in our Bloomin' Buds team ready for our Stampin' Up Training Day event at Fareham.

As always swaps play a big part of any Stampin' Up event and in addition to our general swaps to share with other demonstrators at the event we also made several other swaps for our team meeting which took place afterwards. We all had a wonderful day in Fareham and I will endeavour to share some of the swaps I received with you later in the week. After the training finished we all flocked back to Jenny's for our team gathering which was a riot. Needless to say a somewhat late night followed but boy did we all have a lovely time together. Thank you Jen for making sure I got to Poole for my 8.30am train on Sunday morning to come home.

These are my three team swaps. (I added 3 clear rhinestone brads just under the sentiment on the little box but must have taken the photo beforehand)

March Frenzy is here

Stampin' Up have today announced a special offer for this month (but only while stocks last) There is a huge discount of up to 30% on selected items from the main Catalogue and Idea Book. If you would like to know more then please email me.