Showing posts with label Pinkies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pinkies. Show all posts
I always enjoy designing and making swaps and the best thing about these swaps, is that we got to swap in person. Check this out!!
My upline, the Pinkies team leader Michelle Last arranged our first team get together since the Coronavirus pandemic started. It was so lovely to see everyone on Sunday however, it was bittersweet as there were lots of the team missing. Still, it was a great first step into crafting as a group again and there were many precautions in place to keep each other safe.
Pinkies Creative Challenge #05 - CASE Your Favourite Designer
Tuesday, January 12, 2021 United Kingdom
I love being part of the Michelle Lasts Pinkies team of Stampin' Up! demonstrators. I was honoured when Michelle asked me to be the Challenge Coordinator for the Pinkies Facebook group last year.
We now have two challenges that take place every month and to keep it fresh, the theme is different every time.
We are already on challenge #05 - Case Your Favourite Designer.
I'll admit I've been looking forward to this one. I always aim to create and share original card designs so it was a bit of a treat to choose a beautiful card, recreate it and make it my own.
One of my favourite designers is Teneale Williams and the card I've shown below is not the first card I have CASED of hers.
Teneale's photography is simply stunning - I always recognise her cards through her papercrafting style and her photography.
I love the items in the background, which usually coordinate with some of the colours in her card - I couldn't help but wonder if she has transferred all of her ribbon to these wooden or if she puts them together for every card she creates. If you are reading this Teneale, I'd love to know!
Two weeks ago I spent a lovely three days in Birmingham with my fellow Stampin' Up! demonstrator friends. We spent the first day in the Bullring shopping centre and the next 2 days at a venue just across the road from Selfridges. My upline Michelle Last organised 2 days of crafty fun for us all which included a lovely project, 6 make and takes and a range of classes. It was such a good weekend and I can't wait to go again next year
There were 43 of us and as always, we all made swaps. I decided to make notebooks again and I was very happy with these. I felt this was a big improvement from the notebooks I made the previous year, take a look here to see them.
I made 9 of each colour way, which left me a few spare. Keep on reading to find out how to get how to get your hands on one of these.
These are my favourite and they were made using Blushing Bride cardstock, Blushing Bride ink and Sweet Sugarplum ink.
I used Mint Macaron cardstock and also Mint Macaron ink and Island Indigo ink for these.
Whilst these flowers are a shade of Rich Razzleberry, I chose to use Perfect Plum cardstock, Perfect Plum ink and Blushing Bride ink.
My second favourite - these were made using Island Indigo cardstock, Island Indigo ink and Crumb Cake ink
And finally, for these I used the new Sweet Sugarplum cardstock, Sweet Sugarplum ink and Perfect Plum ink.
I will be giving away one of these notebooks in a week's time. All you need to do is leave a comment and subscribe to receive my blog notifications. I will then pick a winner at random and will post the notebook to you, anywhere in the world. Good luck x
Stampin' Up! held their UK event called Onstage Local in Telford at the weekend, over 380 demos attended and it was truly an amazing day! We got to see the new catalogue and get an idea of what products were retiring. To see the retirement list, scroll down to the end of this post.
If you are a new follower or a new crafter, let me tell you all about what swaps are. Swaps are hand crafted card fronts or 3D items that you make multiples of to swap with others. The objective for this event was to use current product and showcase these in a design that others can use as inspiration or as samples to show to customers or take to events. At the same time you get to meet and mingle with lots of demos. Its such fun but its not compulsory! You get exactly what you put in, so if you make 100 swaps, you will come home with 100 swaps.
On the Friday before Onstage I attended an event in a hotel that was arranged by my upline Michelle Last. It was a lovely afternoon crafting, playing games and catching up with old friends and making new ones. For this event I made 25 of these swaps, one for all 24 demos attending and 1 for me to keep.
Most of the products I have used in this project are now retiring and I will be very sad to see the Timeless Elegance DSP go.... BUT I knew that would happen as all DSP retires every year. I know I have used it in my of my projects lately, one reason was to use up what I had left but the other reason was simply because I love it so much.
I'm actually quite excited to use the new DSP coming out and come up with some new designs! I am sure you will like to see something new from me too!
I really hope everyone liked my swaps. When I got home after a long drive on Saturday evening, I spent an hour looking through the swaps I received. My husband was after the chocolate that was contained in some of them but I am leaving them where they are at the moment as I am thinking of doing my first Youtube video to show all the swaps I received over the two events. Would you like to see them? Scroll down and leave a comment if you would like to see the swaps I received.
In this photo I've tried to capture the glitter effect of the butterfly and sentiment but as usual its so hard to capture in a photograph. You can just about see the glitter on the butterfly in this photo. To achieve this look I have used the Wink of Stella glitter pen in clear on the Sahara Sand cardstock after I die cut the butterfly. For the sentiment I used my brayer to stain the wooden sentiment with Basic Black Archival Ink, allowed it to dry and then added glitter, again using the Wink of Stella glitter pen in clear. The whole effect is very sparkly. I also added glitter to the edges of the cardstock, for this I used the Wink of Stella Glitter pen in gold around the edge of the Basic Black cardstock
The retiring products from the 2015-16 Annual Catalogue and Spring Summer Catalogue are now live and showing in my online shop!
Every year products are retired in order to make way for brand new shiny products. I will be selling my retired products in June so if you are interested in seeing what I've got, please leave a comment or subscribe to my blog.
Now, if I could give you once piece of advice, it would be to have a look through the retiring items straight away and place an order for anything that you have had on your wishlist. Its important you do this as soon as you can as they can sell out very quickly and they are not manufacturing anymore of these items.
Last year I was going to order some transfer (adhesive) sheets and I waited a day and they were gone. Needless to say I have used the sheets I had left over very sparingly and when I run out I will be very sad as they are fab to use with intricate die cuts.
To go to my online shop and view the products click here, or click on one of the buttons below.
If you have any questions about the retiring list or how I made these swaps, leave me a comment or contact me directly using the social media icons.
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| Click here to check out the new Sale-a-Bration freebies |
Oh my gosh, I have been crazy busy in the last few weeks - what with making swaps for the team training, visiting family, shopping for my husbands birthday, preparing for my first craft workshop (making mothers day cards and gifts), welcoming my first team member Aimee and also having lots going on in my day job, there just hasn't been the time to post about anything I've made. I didn't even get the time to make my husband a birthday card, how awful is that?
First of all, let me tell you we have some NEW Sale-a-Bration freebies that you can earn when you place an order of £45 or more, just click on the image above to have a browse. I've just got to get the glitter tape, it looks amazing!
If you've been building up a wish list of things to order, now's the time to place it as we only have a month left of Sale-a-Bration then its not back again until next year. There are still other items you can choose from the first Sale-a-Bration Catalogue too!
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| Click here to check out the new Sale-a-Bration freebies |
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Now for the swaps - if you remember, the challenge was to swap in smaller groups, using a specific stamp set and spending more time on the swap to make it more detailed. What a great idea and while I found it more challenging than usual, it made me stretch myself outside of my comfort zone to come up with this.
Here are the pictures of the swaps I received, under each picture is the name of the person who created it and a link to their blog. Please visit their blog to check out their work as they are all so talented!
Aren't they all amazing?? Thank you ladies for swapping with me, it was a pleasure.
Next time I'll be sharing pictures from my very first workshop that I held for four ladies on Saturday and what we made for Mothers day. It was such fun and it was also another new challenge for me.
February was a month of firsts for me, earning a stamp set and free attendance to a crafty afternoon for reaching a sales target, recruiting my first team member and organising my first workshop. So exciting! I also booked to attend the On Stage Local Event in Telford in April where I'll get to see the new Annual Catalogue (available in June) and be able to play with some of the new products.
There is only 1 month left to take up the offer that's only available during Sale-a-Bration where you get to choose a whopping £160 of items from the current catalogues to go in your starter kit, for £99, that's £61 of free product only available until 31st March. If you want to know more about joining Stampin' Up! and the benefits available to demonstrators, please do get in touch.
When we all get together, we always make swaps. Usually we all make a card or 3D project using Stampin' Up! products, we would make enough for each person attending (we have 47 attending today). We then would spend 30 minutes or so swapping our makes with each other and talking about what each other has made. Its great as you get inspired with new ideas and techniques and we also then have samples of stamp sets or designer series papers that we might not own ourselves that we can show to our friends and customers.
For this event Michelle wanted us to try something different. What we had to do was put our name against stamp sets Michelle had chosen from the Spring Summer or Sale-a-Bration catalogues. There were 6 slots under each stamp set and I chose the Birthday Blooms stamp set. Our task was to make 6 swaps using our chosen stamp set and other Stampin' Up! current products of our choice. We then had 5 cards to swap with the others in the same group and one to keep for ourselves. I can't wait to see what everyone has made!
There are so many wonderful cards on Pinterest using this stamp set (click here to have a look) and I could have easily CASED one (copy and share everything) but I wanted to come up with something original.
Now I'm not the greatest colourer in (okay I know that's not a word!) and I definitely am not the best fussy cutter so I spent a couple of evenings in my craft room this weekend thinking of ways 'outside the box' on how to use this stamp set in a way that might not have been done before. By using just black and white in my project, this stamp set suddenly has a whole different look. What do you think?
This photograph really doesn't show just how sparkly the centre of the card is, so I'll describe to you how I made this section.
The oval is made up of three different layers. The bottom layer is vellum cardstock and I've used the clear Wink of Stella glitter pen to colour in the vellum for a sparkly but subtle finish. The next layer is an oval piece of window sheet with the flower stamped from the Birthday Blooms stamp set in black Staz On ink. I used my embossing buddy on the window sheet first so that the stamp didn't slip when it touched the window sheet. Stamping on the window sheet allows you to flip the image over to create a mirror image of the flower. The final layer was an oval border cut from basic black cardstock. I used two of the ovals in my big shot machine, to hold them in position I simply placed a post it note over the dies. I then used my clear wink of stella pen to give the border a glitterly finish.
If you want to check out what we are up to today, download the Periscope App on your smart phone or tablet and search for Michelle Last. Michelle is doing a live broadcast at 12:30pm!
Also, make sure you click here to subscribe to my blog updates as I'll be posting pictures from today including the five swaps I received.
Tomorrow I am going to the Quarterly Training event my upline Michelle Last holds for her first 3 levels of her downline. There are 30 of us going altogether so I've made enough swaps for everyone plus a few extra. I can't wait to go, we are going to have 4 make and takes, some additional classes and time to catch up with each other and share crafting stories.
I try to make something different every time I make swaps. Click here to look at my past creations which include gift boxes, notebooks, party favours & card fronts.
This time I decided to make some gift bags to hold some yummy sweet treats. I looked through my DPS stacks and chose 8 coordinating colours - Pear Pizazz, Blushing Bride, Wisteria Wonder, Soft Sky & Pool Party (Subtles), Smokey Slate, Sahara Sand (Neutrals) & Lost Lagoon (In Colour 2014-16). While there are 4 different patterns in these stacks, I decided to use the diagonal striped pattern and the large polka dot pattern. I love these patterns, especially for Christmas!
I followed instructions from the Chic 'N' Scratch blog where Angie Juda posts video tutorials on how to make the bags.
I love the internet for inspiration - YouTube, Blogs, Pinterest, Twitter - its really helpful that demos share how they make gift boxes & bags. I often go to other demos sites for the measurements (why reinvent the wheel!) but I always come up with the design myself.
I have used the Holly Jolly Bundle which includes the Holly Jolly Greetings stamp set and the Christmas Greetings Thinlit Dies. I love the sentiments cut out with these dies.
Here are all 8 designs, I actually made 4 of each - 32 in total!
Pear Pizazz, Gold Glimmer Paper & Gold Satin Ribbon
Lost Lagoon, Silver Glimmer Paper & White Satin Ribbon
Blushing Bride, Gold Glimmer Paper & Gold Satin Ribbon
Wisteria Wonder, Silver Glimmer Paper & White Satin Ribbon
Soft Sky, Silver Glimmer Paper & Silver Satin Ribbon
Smokey Slate, Black Glimmer Paper & White Satin Ribbon
Sahara Sand, Gold glimmer Paper & Gold Satin Ribbon
Pool Party, Silver Glimmer Paper & Silver Satin Ribbon
Here are the tools & adhesives I used to make this project
Today, I am spending the day with the lovely Pinkies. My upline Michelle Last is holding our quarterly regional training in Croughton and I am really looking forward to catching up with everyone and getting stuck into some crafting. I don't know what projects we will be making, so I am looking forward to the surprise!
As usual, we have made swaps to exchange with each other. There are lots of benefits to making and receiving card swaps and 3D swaps; you can discover new ways to use stamp sets, fall in love with stamp sets you've never looked twice at before, look at the effect techniques you've not tried before
and use the swaps as samples at your events. I simply love to receive swaps as it feels a little bit like Christmas - its exciting and you never know what you are going to get. I always try and think of something different to make so you will find my swaps have really varied from project to project. Last weekend I decided to make these swaps - 3D chocolate party favours!
I started off making a gold version then quickly decided that I needed to make a silver version too.
Most people are drawn to either Gold or Silver - I would love to know which is your favourite?
As you can see, each party favour contains a Ferrero Rocher chocolate. A little bit of fast fuse adhesive is strong enough to hold the chocolate in place.
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