Easter gifts for teachers

Whilst I was at my team craft retreat, I created some baskets and cards for my boys' teachers. 

Stamps: Happy Easter Bunny, For Peeps Sake

Inks: Staz-On Black, Coastal Cabana, Calypso Coral, Crushed Curry, Crumb Cake

Paper: Calypso Coral, Crushed Curry, Whisper White, Crumb Cake, Best Year Ever DSP

Tools/Accessories: Berry Basket Die, Oval Framelits, Aquapinters

Team Retreat

I'm at my annual team retreat, having fun crafting with no cooking or cleaning to worry about! Even blogging from my iPad again!

I've decided to do a few sketch challenges to get the creative mojo happening (it always disappears at the beginning because of all the packing, planning and organising) so I tried this sketch from Freshly Made Sketches.

Stamps: Flowering Flourishes, And Many More

Inks: Pear Pizzazz, Blushing Bride, Early Espresso

Paper: Pear Pizzazz, Blushing Bride, Whisper White

Accessories: Vintage Faceted Buttons, Painted Blooms Cotton Twine

Weekly Deals

Here are our latest Weekly Deals. Pop on over to my online shop to take advantage of these bargains or simply contact me to place your order. 

I love that the Envelope Punch board is on special - definitely one of the most popular and most versatile tools we have! Check out the Box Buster at The Crafty Owl for help with making boxes on it too!

Ps. I'm very excited to be posting from my iPad today! 

A sketch challenge

Hi all, well its been a long time since I've blogged but with help from my beautiful friend Louise Sharp, my blog is getting a much needed facelift and I'm inspired to start blogging again!

I thought I'd start with a sketch challenge. I found this one over at http://freshlymadesketches.blogspot.com.au and had fun creating my card in under 7 minutes!

Here is my simple take on the sketch.

I've used:

Stamps: Starburst Sayings

Inks: Bermuda Bay

Paper: Strawberry Slush, Basic Grey, Whisper White, Confetti Celebrations DSP

Tools: Starburst Framelits and Big Shot Machine

Card Folio, again

I've probably posted these card folios on my blog before but certainly not in the last couple of years. So here it is again :-)

My Nanna's birthday is this week and I know she doesn't want any more "stuff" to clutter up her little unit so a set of handmade cards are a great idea I think!  A practical gift that she can use and it won't create any clutter.

In order to make the cards look like more of a gift, they needed a bit of packaging, hence my little folio.  My mum and I came up with these folios a few years ago - we wanted one that could be made from a single sheet of A4 card stock, rather than 12x12.  

The cards inside were made using the "Backyard Basics" stamp set and matching Framelit dies to cut them out. I stamped them in Staz-On ink onto watercolour paper and coloured with markers and an Aquapainter.  I've also used the "Beautifully Baroque" embossing folder in the background.

If you'd like more information about how to make the card folios, please let me know and I just might do up a little photo tutorial in the next few days :-)

3G technique - Golden Glue Globs! :-)

Hi all, well I didn't quite get time to take photos and make a proper tutorial so hopefully my written explanation will do for now!

I'd already posted this on my Stampinwithbec Facebook page so apologies if you are getting this twice.

*Using the tip of my scissors, I fold over a mini glue dot into quarters and then lift it off and put it onto the cardstock, kind of squishing it up. I did this to about 8 or so glue dots in the centre of the flower.


*Make sure you leave a little bit of room between each scrunched up glue dot. 

*Pour gold embossing powder over the glue dots and tip off the excess.

*Heat with heat tool to melt the embossing powder. This also melts the scrunchy glue dots and helps them form more of a rounded shape!! Don't heat too long or they will really melt and flatten out.

I hope you enjoyed hearing about how to do this and I would love to hear back from you if you try it out yourself!

Oops, forgot to mention that the name suggestion for this technique came from my mum! :-)

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! :-)