Hostess Club Meetings

Well firstly, it sure had been a while! Over a year since I posted on this blog. I won't ramble on with another apology, I'll simply get stuck into my blog post and hope that I can continue to blog regularly this time ;-)

I wanted to tell you about my new Hostess Club!  I've tried to get one going for a while now, waiting until I had 6 interested people so we could make it work...but it just never seemed to pull together at the right time.  I finally bit the bullet and decide to go ahead, whether I had 6 people or not, and what do you know??  We have 6 people! :-)

The 6 ladies came over to my place yesterday for their first club meeting. We had coffee and nibbles (supplied by our first Hostess Gayle) and I even treated them to some yummy salted caramel macarons to celebrate the start of our 6 month club.

Then we cracked on with our 2 projects for the day - our focus this month was on HEAT EMBOSSING.

The ladies made these 2 cards:

This layout for this Christmas card came from Rhonda Griffin's blog. I have used a different technique though - Rhonda had used the Gold Encore ink, whereas we used Versamark Ink and Gold Embossing Powder.

Can you guess how we make these raised gold bubbles in the centre of the Poinsettia flower??  The answer will be revealed tomorrow!

This card was cute and simple.  Black embossing powder for the stamped image and then coloured in with Ink Pads and Blender Pens.  I love the effect of black embossing when colouring in - prevents colours from running together and gives a lovely raised image. A bit hard to capture the shiny raised look in the photo, sorry...

If you would be interested in joining a Hostess Club, please do register your interest with me.  I currently have a couple of people keen to start a second club but do need at least another 2 or 3 before we can start.

Hostess Club is great because you have a ready and willing group to craft with every month for 6 months!  Its spreads out your craft spending AND you get to be the Hostess on one of the months and receive at least $50 in Hostess Dollars to spend! :-)

Kindy Father's Day cards

Here's a pic of the Father's Day cards I will be helping my youngest son and all his kindy friends make tomorrow:

I love doing my roster days at the Kindy and spending time with Owen and his teachers.  They do such a wonderful job with our children so I am grateful to be able to help them out by taking the job of Father's Day cards off their to-do list. :-)

I'm using the Dinoroar stamp set and the Happy Father's Day sentiment stamp is from Teeny Tiny Sentiments.  I'm sure the kids will love using the punches and stamps :-)

Cards for free

With so many of my card samples no longer "current" (I'd better get cracking on making new ones!) I decided to have a clean out and send a box of hand made cards to work with my hubby.  I figured the guys (and girls) at his workplace might appreciate a free card to give their loved ones.  Every workplace could use a little morale boost I think and freebies always cheer me up!

Retiring List Update

Items sold out so far include:

Stampin’ Scrub Replacement Pads
Peach Parfait ink refill
Dotto refill
Concord Crush ink refill
More Mustard Marker
3/16″ Gold Brads
Pear Pizzazz ink refill
Poppy Parade ink refill
Stack & Store Containers
Circle cutter replacement blades
Christmas Greetings stamp
Confetti White CS A4
Blushing Bride ink refill
Blushing Bride CS
5-petal flower punch
Color Caddy Extender Kit
Stampin’ Around Wheel Storage – Standard size
Timeless Type Junior Alphabet Dies
Concorde Crush CS A4

3D flower from Blossom punch

Here's a quick photo tutorial on how to make a 3D flower from the blossom punch.

Back from Scrap Camp!

I've just spend a great weekend at a scrapbooking camp, mind you, I am feeling pretty tired now!  I really need to sleep more when I go to these camps. :-)

I don't have any photos of the layouts I created just yet, I hope to get time to take photos of them tomorrow.  But here's a pic of my bags packed and ready to go on Friday! Packing is the hardest part, deciding what to take with me as there's just not room to take everything ;-)

My strategy is to do a bit of preparation before I go.  I choose the photos I want to scrap and gt them printed. Then I put them into 12x12 packets with some DSPs and card stock that I think will work with each set of photos.  I don't spend too much time working it out - just grab what I think will work with the colours.  Then I pack all the rest - matching card stock, accessories, tools etc that I will need to go with those packets I've put together.  This prevents me feeling like I need to take everything.

The great thing about camps is there is bound to be someone else there who has just the right stamp, piece of card stock, embellishment etc if you have not brought yours.  Its a great caring and sharing environment :-)  I was very pleased to be able to give a few people something from my stash that could help them with their pages on the weekend.

Pretty Pinwheels

Recently I held my annual Hostess Evening and part of the little thank you gifts I gave them was a set of pretty paper pinwheels.  Lots of people commented how much they liked them so I thought I'd share some pictures here with you.