June Card Workshop

Please click image to zoom in and read.

Kate's 21st card and gift

Remember a couple of weeks ago I posted pics of the invitations I made for a 21st party?

Here is the card and gift I gave the birthday girl Kate:


Kate is mad about elephants so the gift inside the box is an elephant ring.

I also made her a purple elephant cake with the help my of husband Matt who sketched out the design for me on my Stampin' Up grid paper! (please ignore the candles!! I forgot to get some and this was all we could find in the house! LOL!)Stamps: None
Inks: White Craft Ink
Papers: Perfect Plum, Pale Plum, retired DSP (can't think of the name)
Accessories: Dazzling Diamonds, Heat'n'stick powder, 5/8" Celery grosgrain
Tools: Heat tool


Stamps: None
Inks: Perfect Plum
Papers: Pale Plum, retired DSP
Accessories: 1/4" celery grosgrain, pretties kit flower (dyed with Perfect Plum ink), pretties kit half pearl, Small filligree brad, purple rhinestone brad (from the "ice" pack of brads)
Tools: Fiskar paper trimmer with scoring blade

Toby's Birthday

Oops, again it's been a while since my last post - sorry! The boys have been a bit sick this week resulting in a lack of uninterrupted time for me to stamp and blog.

Quick couple of pics from Toby's birthday:

All the lovely hand-made cards Toby received from friends and family.
The card I made him.
Stamps: El-cheapo Thomas the Tank Engine stamps - this particular one is HENRY, retired stamp set Typeset Numbers, Polka Dot Background
Inks: Green galore, Real red, Yoyo Yellow
Papers: Green galore, Real red, Yoyo yellow, Whisper White
Tools: Circle punches and scallop punch.
The cake - my version of Henry.


The birthday boy.The party bags/Easter baskets. Made with circle and oval punches for the bunnies.

Purple 21st

I recently made invitations for a 21st Birthday Party. The birthday girl is my brother's girlfriend Kate.

Kate wanted a purple party so here's what I came up with for her:





When mass-producing invitations I think it's best to keep it as simple as possible. Punches, wheels, backgrounds stamps, printing on the computer all help with this.

For this invitation I used punches and a background stamp. The most time consuming part was using the stamp-a-ma-jig to line up the 21 and the dots around it. Even so, this was still pretty quick to do.

Stamps: Polka Dot Background, Typeset Numbers (retired), Think Happy Thoughts
Ink: Elegant Eggplant, Lavendar Lace
Paper: Elegant Eggplant, Lavendar Lace
Tools: 1 and 1/4" circle punch, 1 and 3/8" circle punch, scallop circle punch

Baja Breeze - how do YOU pronounce it?

Another CASE from the new catalogue:

I don't have the "Friends 24-7" set so I used "Echoes of Kindness" which is a Level 2 Hostess Set (which I borrowed from Bell) instead.

I also don't have any of the new Designer Papers yet so instead I stamped the "En Fancais" background stamp on the lower half of the card.

Of course, if I don't have the papers I also don't have the new ribbons yet either! So I subsitituted some Whisper White tafetta for the Baja Breeze ribbon.

I really love this new Baja Breeze colour! I have heard a few interesting ways of pronouncing Baja already...how do YOU pronounce it? I say "Ba-ha" since I figure it is a place in Mexico and in the Spanish language the letter J sounds like the English letter H. Leave me a comment if you agree/disagree.


Stamps: Echoes of Kindness, En Francais
Ink: Baja Breeze, Kiwi Kiss, Whisper White, Staz-On Black
Paper: Baja Breeze, Kiwi Kiss, Watercolour paper
Accessories: Whisper White Tafetta ribbon
Tools: Aquapainter

Gum Blossoms by Mum

Here's a card made by my mum using the new stamp set "Blooms Away". I think she's done a fantastic job of colouring the gum blossoms.

Simply Said CASEd

Here's another "CASEd" card from the new catalogue.

Stamps: Simply Said
Inks: Certainly Celery, Not Quite Navy, Bashful Blue
Paper: Not Quite Navy, Very Vanilla
Accessories: Earth Elements Brads, Flower Designer Brads
Tools: Stamp-a-ma-jig

And here's the original:

Pick A Purple Petal

The idea for this card came from the following picture in our new catalogue:

The catalouge is such a great resource! You can copy the samples exactly or do what I've done here and use it for inspiration. I've copied the layout but changed it a little bit by adding the scalloped border instead of a piece of ribbon.

I also changed the colours. The colour combination was inspired by the Colour Wheel. The colour wheel doesn't have the in colours on it so I substitiuted them in for other colours. The colour wheel suggested a combination of Elegant Eggplant, Old Olive and Pretty In Pink. I swapped the Olive for Kiwi and the Pretty in Pink for Pink Piroutte.



Stamps: Pick A Petal, Short and Sweet
Inks: Elegant Eggplant, Kiwi Kiss
Paper: Elegant Eggplant, Kiwi Kiss, Pink Piroutte, Whisper White
Accessories: nil
Tools: Word Window Punch, Scalloped Edge punch, Distressing Tool (Cutter Kit), 1 inch circle punch

Easter Cards

Easter is nearly here so I though I'd better show you a couple of Easter cards.I don't have ANY Easter Stamps!!! Well, except for the "Easter Wishes" greeting from the "Occasional Greetings" Stamp Set. So I had to make do with my punches!

My colour combination came from the Stampin' Up! Colour Wheel.

I have sponged around the edges of the card but it doesn't show up much in the photo. It is only light sponging.

Stamps: Occasional Greetings
Inks: Night of Navy, Sage Shadow
Papers: Night of Navy, Sage Shdow, Blush Blossom
Tools: Small and Large Oval Punches, 1/2", 1 and 1/4", 1 and 3/8" circle punches, scallop circle punch.
Accessories: Soft Subtles brads, sponge, black marker, googly eyes (not Stampin' Up)

This card is one that I made as a make and take at my Upline Liz's meeting last month. It is a half-sized card.

Stamps: Greetings Eight
Inks: Staz-On Black. Stampin' Pastels (chalks)
Paper: Barely Banana, Good Morning Sunshine DSP
Accessories: Bashful Blue 1/4" grosgrain ribbon
Tools: Paper Piercer and Mat Pack, Scallop Circle Punch, 1 and 3/8" Circle Punch, blender pen

Thomas for Toby

My son Toby LOVE LOVE LOVES Thomas the Tank Engine and all associated things!!

So for his 3rd birthday this year (which is on Easter Sunday) I have made him Thomas the Tank Engine party invitations. I got some el-cheapo foam-backed rubber stamps from eBay and got to work.

Now, these foam stamps were HORRIBLE to work with - absoloutely horrid! I didn't realise how great our Stampin' Up stamps are until I went back to cheap stamps! The image is not very deeply etched and is not trimmed nice and close so it was hard not to get those awful ink shadows around the image. It was also really had to stamp it evenly without patchy bits missing. Ugh.


I stamped the main image in Staz-On onto Whisper White. I coloured him in with a combination of markers and inkpads with an aquapainter. I used Ballet Blue, Real Red, YoYo Yellow and Going Grey. Ballet Blue was the closest we have to a Thomas Blue.

Colouring 15 of these darn things was quite a pain by the end of it all! LOL!

I stamped the same Thomas stamp as a background witht he Ballet Blue ink onto the matching Ballet Blue cardstock.

The "You're Invited" comes from the "Cheers and Wishes" stamp set.

Basic Birthdays

Here are some basic birthday cards I made reently for some of my son's little friends.


This one was for Evie. Her party was a Princess/Pirates dress up theme so I tried to make a Princess card for her. I used the "All in the Family" stamp set and got the crown from the now retired "Unfrogettable" stamp set. If I'd had the accessories set that goes with All in the Family, I would have had a perfect crown stamp, but I think this one turned out ok.

I had to use the Stamp-a-ma-jig for this card to line up all the separate stamps of the body parts and crown. Funny story, every time I stamped the left arm it ended up in the wrong place, even though I was using the stamp-a-ma-jig! I FINALLY figured out (after aout the 3rd time) that I needed to turn the stamp over and have a look - sure enough, the piece of rubber had MOVED on the block! I had previously made up image sheets on vellum but because the rubber had moved, it no longer stamped in the same position as the arm on the image sheet!! Ugh. Anyways, I got it fixed up in the end.



This card was for Ilani. She didn't have a dress up theme but her party invitation did have butterflies on it so I reached for the "Garden Whimsy" set. I used the rock'n'roll technique for the butterflies but used a darker marker around the edges of the flower and snail to get a similar effect to rock'n'roll.

Simple Thank Yous

Wow, is this the most neglected blog or what??? Sorry you guys, I promise I will get on top of this and get the blog happening more often.

Here are some simple thank you cards I made last month. This Bali Breeze paper is no longer available but of course you could use the same layout with some of the gorgeous new papers in the new catalogue!

The card on the left is made from a 1/4 sheet of A4 cardstock. The card on the right is a standard sized card - 1/2 sheet A4.

I used the 1 and 3/8" square punch for the card on the right. I layered the 4 squares onto a piece of Pumpkin Pie cardstock and the adhered to the Apricot Appeal card base. I then pierced a row of holes all the way around with the mat pack and paper piercer. The sentiment is from "Sincere Salutations" and is stamped in Pumpkin Pie ink.