Stampin' Up! 2014-2015 Catalogue Launch Party in Welington, Somerset!!!

I can finally reveal details of the highlight of the year!! 

I'm holding my catalogue launch party on Sunday 29th June, at the Community Centre in Wellington, Somerset. The Community Centre is just a short walk from the Longforth Road (ASDA) Car Park, which has free parking on a Sunday!

So

What's this all about?? Well, I need to clear space for all the new wonderful stash i'll be acquiring over the next 12 months. So I'll be selling my old stock, stash, tools. Some will be used, some will be brand new - there are some great items in there. 

However, here is the twist.....for every £ you spend on 'old' items, you get that to spend in the new catalogue!! 

The new items can be collected from me on/around July 12th or for £4.95 can be delivered directly to you as soon as they are released.

Tickets cost £5 and can be purchased by contacting me. Included you'll get your own copy of the brand new catalogue. You'll get the opportunity to play and create with the new 2014-2016 colours. 

Book your tickets before 11pm on Sunday 1st June for an additional free gift!!

Another Six Sided Sampler Card - May's Selected Stamps

Sometimes its really difficult to decide which of our lovely colours to use when creating. When I get stuck, I turn to the colour coach, it's a great product as not only does it show you an accurate representation of every colour, it also gives you two three-colour combinations and for some colours, their two step stamping match. 

The colours I have used here are Island Indigo, Rich Razzleberry and Crushed Curry. Remember, if you order the six sided sampler stamps through me during May, you get a free card making kit sent directly to you! 

Here are the product's I used to create this!

Six-Sided Sampler Clear Bundle

£28.25

Rich Razzleberry Classic Stampin' Pad

£4.95

Crushed Curry Classic Stampin' Pad

£4.95

Island Indigo Classic Stampin' Pad

£4.95

Island Indigo A4 Card Stock

£6.25

Card Stock A4 Crushed Curry

£6.25

Whisper White A4 Card Stock

£7.50

Stamp-A-Ma-Jig

£10.95

Sponge Daubers

£9.95

Statement of the Heart in Subtles - Stampin' Up! UK Regional Training 2014 Swap

Today is my first big Stampin' Up! event. It's the UK Regional Training day, which means demonstrators from all over the UK are gathering in Telford to celebrate all things Stampin' Up!

When ever a group of demonstrators get together, our favourite thing to do is Swaps! Everyone is invited to create and take something along and swap it with everyone you meet. It's a great talking point and a fantastic oportunity to come away with lots of inspiration and ideas. We all have different styles and skills and it's great to see what different personalities do with the same supplies! I knew I wanted to make the most of this oportunity but I just didn't have enough supplies to create very many items. I decided that creating an image on My Design Studio would be the best way to go about creating lots and lots, without lots of cost! 

As Stampin' Up! demonstrators, we have a mission statement which is known as the Statement of the Heart.  Here is it, 

This sums up everything that Stampin' Up! means to me, I love what I do, I want to share what I love, not only craft supplies, but memories and emotions. Not everyone likes to create, but everyone has the ability to enjoy the creativity of others. If I live my life in this way, celebrating and sharing love, my life and the lives of those around me will be different.

To every demonstrator, the statement of the heart means something different, but it does mean something. By creating a postcard for everyone I meet today, I'm sharing what I love and hopefully giving them something they can love too.

Now that you know why I created this, why not come back later in the week to find out how I created this!

Thanks Much - Six Sided Sampler Card

The six side sampler set is really really great because it's so versatile! Last week I showed you one of the stamps that have been designed for two step stamping, or adding words inside, and today is the turn of the other.

I've used the 'thanks much' phrase that comes with the stamp set, inside the dotted hexagon. I've used whisper white cardstock throughout this project and stamped with island indigo. I used the stamp-a-ma-jig to ensure my pattern was evenly spaced. I punched the thanks much out using the coordinating hexagon punch and securing with a stampin' dimensional to give it depth. 

MDS #100happydays ... a long way to go.....a long way to go...

Family time is such a big part of being happy! Sometimes though, friends are just as important in creating that happiness. The photo's on these pages are all from days out, near and far. With regards to MDS and creating these pages, I used two page templates, deleted the suggested placement of the photos and added photos where I wanted them. I then changed a few things, added a journaling block and wow, it has a completely different feel.

Do these pages look familiar? They should do, I've used this page template before! There are 24 different page templates in the 'delight in the day' photobook, with 100 photos to include, I'm looking at my final book being at least 30 pages. This means I'll be repeating some of the templates, but that just helps the books coordinated look. 

Here are the pages, that I previously used this template for, you can check out the full blog post here.

They were the first few pages I did. I used the templates exactly as they appeared, and chose photos to match. As I progress through the book, i'm starting to choose photos first, and then adapt a template to fit. Is there an obvious difference? I would love to hear your opinions on how the two compare...

Hello sweet friend - six sided sampler card

I've had a lot of fun playing with this months selected stamps, it's even better because you can get a coordinating punch that takes away lots of the stress of lining up patterns and positions if you have a spacific design in mind.

For this card I wanted the stripes all facing the same way, 

Punching the hexagons out also meant that I could give the 'petals' more shape. The central part has been created using two of the stamps from the set. I love how the phrase stamps, hello sweet. Friend, thanks much and my friend fit inside not one but two or the hexagons. Look out for the other example later on in the month!

The stem and leaves come from one of my favourite sets in the 2013-2014 annual catalogue, Betsy's Blossoms (In Wood 131995  £25.95 or in clear 126006 £20.95 )

The colours I've used here are crushed curry, island indigo and Whisper white, I love the subtle effect of crushed curry ink on crushed curry card.

I'd love to know your thoughts on this card....

A Sparkly Special Card

When one of my customers work colleagues contacted me to ask me to make her a 60th birthday card, I knew it would need to be special.

The birthday girl in question makes all the cards for every other occasion they celebrate, so this card needed to be up to her standard! It got me thinking, what makes a card 'special'? 

To make a card special, you could pick colours they like? A theme that incorporates their likes and life style? but when creating for a cardmaker, special to me means different to my 'usual' style. This is what I came up with...

I nearly always make straight forward folding cards, I find the pleasure in designing and decorating rather than cutting and folding, so this was my first idea - I'd create something more 'difficult'. After a little while on pintrest, I found a tutorial on how to make a central step card on great blog by a lady called Grace, you can find the original tutorial here. Her instructions were brilliant, and she even had pictures which helped me translate the inches into cm, so I could use my Stampin Trimmer and not have to get the knife and ruler out!

I then decided that glitter was definitely needed! When creating a card that's traveling around a workplace, through many hands before the recipient recieves is difficult with glitter. You don't want everyone to be covered in glitter, or the birthday girl will suspect. Equally, you don't want the glitter to have all come off before it's recieved and spoil the affect! Luckily our Glimmer Paper is ideal, it doesn't rub off and it even comes in 'Champagne' which just seems fitting for the occation!

In choosing the colours, I headed to the In-Colour groups, they only hang around for two years, so they are pretty special too! I originally thought of Strawberry Slush, but it was too bright for this sophisticated lady, so Crisp Cantaloupe was perfect. I added in a strip of Baked Brown Sugar Ruffle Trim, before adding butterflies cut from the Beautiful Wings Embosslits. I cut the card base, and butterflies from Very Vanilla Cardstock as it complemented the champagne glitter brilliantly. 

In my central step section, I matted and layered using the Labels Collection Framelits Dies and Stampin Dimmensionals. I finally cut the numbers from the Typeset Alphabet and created an envelope to fit this unique card using the Envelope Punch Board.

I'm really pleased with it, I'd love to get your feedback! 

Six sided sampler - May's selected stamps!

This month's selected stamps are the very versatile six sided sampler stamp set.

You can get them in Wood (item 130953 £23.95), Clear (item 130956 £18.95) or Digital (134801 £3.95) You can even get them as a bundle with the Hexagon punch for a 15% discount!

Order through me or via the website www.stampinup.co.uk with me, Katy Freeman, as your named demonstrator during May and you'll receive a free card making kit to make sure your inspired! 

Crossing the half way point! Journaling a really important experience..

Today's layout marked the crossing of the half way point through my 100 happy days photo book. I loved the experience of being happy for 100 days, and in part that was probably due to the experiences I had in my life during those 100 days. 

 

At the beginning of February, I visited America for the first time. That alone, was a very big deal for me as it's something that's always been too far outside of my comfort zone. But what made this trip even more difficult was leaving my twin boys, not in the care of their Daddy, who unfortunately couldn't get the time off work, but to his wonderful parents. You can not imagine how hard looking after toddler twins is, particularly ones that don't sleep through the night, until you are faced with it. I honestly didn't know who I was more worried for! As things went, we all had an amazing experience, exhausting for many, but amazing none the less. I fell completely in love with America and my little niece Tabby. I can't wait to take the boys out there to meet her and experience the joy that American's have for making sure your alright!

Anyway, here is the layout

Does it look familiar? I've used the same right hand page earlier in the book, but it looks very different when the left hand side is changed.

Simply drop and drag - great results with mds!

This weekend has been a busy one! I went to my monthly scrapbooking crop in Exeter on Saturday, completing six 12"x12" pages! I was very very pleased, as my pile of to be finished layouts has been growing recently! Then yesterday i spent the day updating the website, writing documents and scheduling classes. After spending much of the day on the computer, I really wanted an easy drag and drop page for my mds album and this one was perfect! 

Even though it's simple, it's still really beautiful and most importantly fits perfectly in my album! That's 8 more photo's done!

Pinkies Blog Hop Sale-a-Bration Banner Post-it note holder

 Thank you for joining us on another Pinkies Blog Hop! We're showcasing lots of gorgeous projects using new Stampin' Up!® products that you can earn free during Sale-a-Bration. Simply use the buttons at the end of each post to keep hopping!

Welcome to Stamp in Somerset! I am so excited to be taking part in my first Sale-a-Bration, it's been quite difficult to decide which of the beautiful products to showcase - so I cheated and am showing two!

Yes, we have a stamp and coordinating punch available for FREE during Sale-a-Bration 2014! Banners are amazing accents to any project, they work for all occations! Here I have used them with the Yippee-Skippee Stamp set, which are my selected stamps of this month to decorate a post-it note holder.

Using the two-step stamping technique (a stamp-a-ma-jig is definitely a worthy investment if your getting the wood stamps for this one!) I stamped a banner border and star in Tangerine Tango on So Safron Cardstock, before punching the banners out. I also punched out three banners from some stunning designer series paper *Spring/Summer sneak peak* before mounting on stampin' dimensionals onto some bakers twine.

The box has been created using So Saffron cardstock. The "you can never have too much happy" stamp is one of my favorites from the Yippee-Skippee set, and has been stamped again in Tangerine Tango. I punched two holes in the front, creating a tie-closure with bakers twine so that it is safe in the bottom of my handbag. I've finished the project by adding some washi tape *another spring/summer sneak peak* around the box and a pencil that fit's nicely inside with the post-it notes.

If you want more details on creating this post-it note holder and to see some different examples please come back next week. Thanks very much for stopping by, it would make me very happy if you would leave me a comment :)

Enjoy the rest of your journey!

Love Katy x