Christmas in July with a Santa Box

For this month's Paper Dolls I put on a BUMPER month to celebrate Christmas in July (and also so now we'll finish in Sept before the arrival of our new little one!!)
I asked my wonderful down-line Kim to help me out and make 2 projects and a hostess gift as well! It was super and I love her goodies!! (will get photo of them soon....)
I wanted to show emboss resist as the technique for the month and show off the glitter paper and fabric too!
There is always a "hostess" gift and then 2 projects to follow.

 I found while surfing the net THIS awesome Santa Box and Reindeer box (i've forgotten to add the antler's before taking the pic! OPPS!!) And then found THIS one too!! As Christmas isn't all about Santa in my family, i went looking for a Jesus box and found THIS amazing card that I made into a box!!

I'm really enjoying Punch art and so thanks to the clever SJ's Santa tag I got last year each lady went home with this cool tag.....

a close up of the Frost white shimmer paint we put on Santa's beard!

 Sooo cute!!

And then here is the card.......

We had the best night, dressing up in red and green and listening to some very early Christmas music!! Kim and I get to do it all again tonight for my last Paper Dolls club for the month!
Ummm what to do next month.... perhaps THIS from Bron.... I love the searching to find just the right goodie to make, makes what I do even more interesting and FUN!!!
Hope you like my early Christmas ideas, be sure to say hi if you pop on in!

Just Add Ink Scrapping Page for July #7... Add hidden journalling

There is something wonderful about scrapping your memories! I'd lost the art there for awhile, in fact YEARS!! It was much easier and quicker to "whip" up a card!! But once you've scrapped it's hard to ignore forever and so I've found myself wanting to do it more and more in recent times!!
For this month with my Paper Dolls stamp club our theme was "Christmas in July!" I wanted to have a sample of a few things for my display and thought I'd join in on this month's JAI scrap challenge! YAY!!
The idea is to have some hidden journalling or memorabilia and so this is what I came up with!!
The technique used is Emboss Resist which I did with a wheel and I chose the colour combo from the lovely, Christmassey fabric SU sell (in the current catty) called Deck the Halls. Always Artichoke, Cherry Cobbler, Soft Suede and some vanilla and crumb cake.

I love this picture of the children, their excitement factor at the mere thought that ANY MOMENT they were picking off lollies and eating this long awaited for Gingerbread house!! It was sooo cool.

My hidden journalling is simply pulled up with the "something nice" tag above the pic. Then it was just super fun adding this.... sparkles, ginger bread man, fabric, faux stitching, spritz, tree, vintage tag, ribbon.... the list goes on..... kinda like all the lollies on the house!! he he!

 

I hope you like my take on the challenge this month, hopefully I can join in some more.....
Happy Christmas In July day (after all it is the 25th!!)

First EVER Perfectly Rustics Stamp Camp

I held my FIRST EVER stamp camp just on a month ago for my wonderful friends and customers! I had a 2IC: the fabbo Kim Butterworth to help me with basically EVERYTHING and together with my team we pulled off a very, fun and successful camp!! It was held in Port Sorell over 2 nights and we scrapped and carded and chatted and laughed and stamped some more!!! Here is a collection of pic's from the weekend, including some very cool "demo" photo's from my team who showed us a project and then we all had a Make n' take to do after wards! YAY!! It was AWESOME!!!!!

 The first night, just getting set up

 Kim (my 2 IC was the first Demo WOW for Saturday morn! 

Here she is showing how to use re-inkers

Everyone was totally WOWED with all she did, 

it was BRILLIANT!!!

 The finished card!

 Next up on Saturday was the lovely Sarah who made a little note card holder 

and showed us how to make paper beads!

The colours in this project were many but they all worked together soooo wonderfully!

Another super project and WOW!

 Lastly on Saturday arvo we had the beautiful Sandra showing us what we could do with 

the Milk carton die for the Big Shot!

It was tricky I have to admit but the boxes were gorgeous 

and looked sooo oriental, it was great!

 Ta DA! The finished box!

 Throughout the days of presenting these two super fabbo women made us laugh
A PLENTY!!! They were so great together and really enjoyed growing their friendship!
Love ya guys!!!

 One of the most talked about activities for the camp was the 

Perfectly Rustics TRIVIA!!!

Kim and Colin (Kim's hubbie) put LOADS of work into 

this very fun, challenging, super

MEGA QUIZ!!!

We had prizes for the winner as well as random

Spot prizes throughout each day!

Everyone went home with at least 2 prizes!!

 Then Fresh and ready for Sunday morning was my demonstration.

I was using the very smelly (in a good way) scented powder for 2 projects, 

a male and a female birthday card.

Here is the finished Male card!

 On the last day (Boo hoo) I went around and took photo's of 

each lovely lady present and their working station!!!

Which one do you think is the messiest???

What a super awesome bunch of people they all are!!

 

 Yvette (top)

Trish (bottom)

 

 Sandra (top)

Bec (bottom)

 Heather (top)

Jayne (bottom)

 Annette (top)

Kim (bottom)

Note: Kim's page... she sewed that Eiffel Tower! AMAZING!

 Vanessa (top)

ME (bottom)

Well as you can see it was certainly a time to be had! We have all talked about it soo much since our return and look forward to (very much) next year when we can (hopefully) do it all again!!!
Thanks to each one of you wonderful ladies that made this weekend such a treasure of a memory!!

Just Add Ink challenge #126

I made some "free time" to make a card today for the recent JAI challenge! YAY!! I'm holding a team meeting on Saturday night to catch up with my wonderful ladies.It was suggested by my good friend Kim that perhaps we should have a little challenge and bring some show and tell to the meeting! That got me thinking, I try to never make a card without looking at the latest challenges and so with this great sketch and a weird and challenging colour combo from my Colour Coach .....
This is what I came up with.....
Always Artichoke
Crumb cake and
Bashful Blue!
Not as scary as some of the combo's but I was trying to think of a range of colours that my team would have in their collection.

I've also been doing a bit of emboss resist lately (well for stamp club this month) and went with that for the focal point of my card. Then I had to add one of the gorgeous double bows I've spotted many times over on SJ's blog HERE and did a bit of searching for a TUT on line! SO LOVE THIS BOW!!!!!! To create the two different panels in the background I chose two of my fav embossing folders and rubbed over some crumb cake ink to give them some depth. You might not be able to see from the pic but I also added some shimmer to the background and that lovely reader was that!!!
Hope you like my card and take on the sketch, I'll be back soon with some pic's of a recent camp I held and also hopefully, before it's August, show you my Paper Doll projects for this month! We were off with a bang celebrating Christmas in July!!!
Until then

Corner Bookmark June's Paper Dolls

For this month in my Paper Dolls stamp club I wanted to try the lovely corner bookmark. I've seen many a design and so searched the Internet and found THIS great bookmark with a card! Awesome!So on Monday  night I demonstrated it to my ladies and showed off the very pretty new PROMO set Reason to Smile, yours with only a $125 purchase FOR FREE or just simply buy for only $35.95!

I'm sooo loving the colours from the Twitterpated DSP range and so kept with that theme, here's what we made...

This is the front of the card with the bookmark on

This is the card front with the bookmark removed

The flowers in the Reason to Smile set are really lovely and a great 2 step stamp set, simply use the markers to separate the flower and stem colour. Have you seen the seam binding ribbon?? Oooooo soooo pretty! 

This is a great project to do on the weekend, let me know if you try it, I'd love to see it!

Male birthday cards

I have a Male stamp-a-stack on Thursday night (still a few more places if you'd like to come along!!) and this is one of the cards I will be demonstrating! The image is from the groovy drawn set called Need for Speed. I've stuck to blues and greens with some of my fav Grey in there too! The way I've done the background is just by stamping the ink pad directly onto the card stock, you can make as much or as little rough looking marks as you wish! I love this technique as it's sooo super easy! Male cards can be tricky to make, how do you do yours?? Is there a favourite set that you turn to??
Love to hear from you, hope your weekend has been super, thanks for popping in!

Holiday's mean stamping time (for me)

The holiday's have been sooo lovely thus far! I've been enjoying the more relaxed days and the catching up with friends. Just the other night I was able to stamp with 2 very dear friends whom I've not stamped with for... well perhaps a year! It was soooo wonderful to have a chat and of course share in our love for stamping! I was actually at Bronwyn's home, she's this super talented stamper whom I always get inspiration from (check out her fabbo blog HERE!)
She took some pic's of the cards I made, as she has one of those cool little photo boxes that you can take a pic in anytime of the day!! I love it!! Sooo much better than the bench I use!

This card I made as a Thank you to all of my special friends who attended my birthday party a few weeks back. Hugely simply but effective I think, I love the softness of Sahara Sand and with the Marina Mist, I think it's a great combo! The flower there Bron showed me, it's just with tissue paper and scrunched, I used the new flower punch from the mini for that.

Then this card is a belated birthday card for my step sister, I saw the bicycle set on Bron's shelf and so inked that up to play,

So nice to have the time to colour and play, it was really wonderful!
Thanks heaps Bron for having Amanda and I, we had a super time!! Hope to stamp again with you soon.