How to make a wreath with hand made rolled flowers using Stampin Up supplies

Welcome today to Stampin' Up!s Spring/Summer Catalogue! It has finally arrived and has certainly brought some sunshine into my life on this grey, dull & rainy afternoon! I will be featuring projects over the next few weeks from the catalogue but last night I realised I still hadn't shown you some of the gifts I recently made for my friends for Christmas .. my take on a festive but all seasons wreath!

Using a half circle solid polystyrene wreath as the base and covering it with wrapped around (sadly retired) thick grosgrain ribbon,  I crafted some different sized paper flowers using the spiral technique using  variety of the current designer series papers and then stuck them down onto the wreath with the new Jumbo sticky rounds which were just perfect for the job (127852 £4.50 for 12).

I made the leaves and branches out of  from the bird builder punch (11791 £15.50) and from the Autumn Accents bigz die (127812 £18.95) in Old Olive cardstcok (106576 - 24 x A4 sheets for £6.25). Some common old garden string to finish off and voila!

Here they are ...

Sorry the photograph isn't great but here's a closer look .. .

I used Twitterpated fabric (125412 £8.95 for 3 x patterned pieces each measuring 68.6cm x 45.7cms) & paper (125406 £9.95 for 12 sheets of double sided 12" x12" paper) for this pink, greens, blues & greys themed wreath

This next one (my favourite!) features Comfort Cafe designer series paper (126898 £9.95 for 12 sheets of double sided 12" x12" paper) with the colour themes of chocolate, navy & yellow

and the last one features Patio Party designer series paper (126916 £9.95 for 12 sheets of double sided 12" x12" paper) with the accent of blues, yellows, coral colours - can you spot the cheeky little bird that has nested right into the Patio Party flowers? :)

My friends seemed very pleased with their new home decorations, and I was pleased with myself for making them with love for them :)

If you would like to order any of the supplies mentioned in todays projects please email me at lisa.barton@hotmail.co.uk and I will be happy to help! Don't forget that for every £45 spent during Sale-A-Bration there's a free product to be had :)

In the meantime, here's a quick view of the cover of the new Spring/Summer catalogue celebrating 25 years of Stampin' Up! - please join me again soon when we will be delving into all 40 pages of it!

Quick & easy hand made poppies & New Stampin Up Spring/Summer Catalogue 2012

Today is the last day for ordering from the Stampin' Up! Autumn/Winter catalogue which offered some gorgeous Autumn, Harvest, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Hannukah, Christmas & Valentines crafting goodies.

That's because as of tomorrow (!!) we will have the delectable new Spring/Summer catalogue to dip into!

I've had a sneak preview of the new products and they are just divine so look out for projects and photos coming soon!

However, to pay respectful homage to the retiring Autum/Winter catalogue I thought I would let you see a couple of cards I made using the Perfectly Preserved stamp set & matching Framelits Dies. I was a bit lazy and they are  all the same style of card as the birthdays are in 3 consecutive days, one was made for my Mother as she adores poppies and the other for my sister in law and mother in law - such a simple style which can be adapted to suit the recipients favourite colours :)

Here they are ...

The first card is made using basic black, real red & whisper white card layered with a few basic pearls & antique brads to finish. The jar image is from perfectly preserved stamp set as are the flower stems. The jar is stamped in chocolate chip and the stems in old olive. The card to make the flowers was crimped first to separate the layers, then scrunched and punched using the Blossom punch. They are affixed using stamping dimensionals to give extra height. The sentiment is from the Happiest Birthday wishes set which has sadly retired now as well.

The second card is made with one of my favourite colour combinations of crumb cake, pool party & melon mambo and the multicolour flowers from left to right use melon mambo, perfect plum, daffodil delight as well as crumb cake and pool party. The flowers are fixed again with a mix of antique brads & some glimmer brads. The ribbon bow to finish off is so saffron which I am looking forward to using more of in my forthcoming Easter crafting.

I hope you like them and the bonus is they only took about 15 mins each to make ;)

Will be back soon with new projects from the Spring/Summer catalogue ...

Sale-a-bration Freebies with every £45 order from today!

Hooray, hooray, today's the day! 

Stampin Up's Sale-a-bration returns! 

This fantastic annual offer from Stampin Up! returns TODAY and sees every £45 order made between 22nd January and 22nd March 2013 rewarded with a freebie from this fabulous range of 19 gorgeous products ranging from stamps, designer papers, buttons & ribbons, embossing folder, card kits, punches and other crafting tools you can see below .. 

What's so fabulous about sale-a-bration is that there's no limit to the number of freebies you can claim as long as any orders are in multiples of £45 ie £45=1 freebie, £90 = 2 freebies, £135 = 3 freebies etc etc.

Of course to add to the excitement, any order over £150 and the 3 sale-a-bration freebies plus it also attracts a pack of silver glimmer paper and Stampin Up's normal reward programme of £25 of freebies of your choice from the catalogue.

Even better, a £300 order attracts a huge bundle of freebies such as silver glitter paper pack, the Madison Avenue stamp set in wood or clear, the Sycamore Street designer paper and the coordinating ribbon & button pack  and on top of all that you still also get to have another 6!! salebration products and of course the £50 worth of free items from the brochure and the 1 x half price item as well! Phew, that's a lot of goodies!

Music to a crafters ears ;) I for one will be hoping to have a few of these freebies to hand to craft with in the next few weeks!

Over the next few weeks I will be posting a variety of projects made with Sale-a-bration products to demonstrate the wonderful colour coordination of the products and how versatile they are for cards, tags, gifts, boxes, bags, 3D projects and any other use I can think for them! 

If you'd like to place an order then please click on the Annual Catalogue photo on the left hand of my toolbar to see the product range then email your order to lisa.barton@hotmail.co.uk. I will order for you and arrange delivery for £4.95 unless you are local to me in North Oxfordshire.

How to make a pillar post mail box using Stampin Up supplies

Good evening blog readers, hope you are warm and dry wherever you are? The snow has just started falling here in North Oxfordshire and is so pretty on the fields around us; one of my daughters caught a snowflake on her scarf today and it was miraculous looking at it closely!

On the subject of keeping warm, my monthly craft club met last night in one of our village pubs with the log fire roaring :) and the projects we crafted together were all Valentine and affection themed to keep our hearts as well as our fingers warm ..

Firstly we made three cards using a variety of Stampin Up stamps from the following sets (stamp set photos to follow):

• Affection Collection which is retiring at the end of January 2013 from the Autumn/Winter catalogue but is perfect for affection, frienship, valentines, love themed cards
• You are Loved page 24 of the annual catalogue
•  For my family page 38 of the annul catalogue
• Lovely little labels pg 105 of the annual catalogue
• Happiest Birthday Wishes sadly retired but a favourite of mine as so many useful sentiments!
• Thank you kindly, again sadly retired but so very useful especially this time of year!

We also used some of the gorgeous new dahlias, brads, ribbons and buttons on pages 172-176 to create accents and colour coordinated them to the card and ink we used, namely Crumb Cake, Baja Breeze, Pacific Point, Basic Black, Real Red, Vanilla & Whisper White, Primrose Petals pink.

Of course, being love and affection cards and projects where would we be without our heart punches? Both large and small heart punches were thoroughly used.

  
To finish off the evenings hard work we used the new thin cello sweetie bags which are a brilliant price of £2.25 for 50 and hold approx 20 smarties - I love these as they are soooo useful for the girls party favours or little surprise treats :) We filled the cello's with treats and punched a topper, and all vowed to not only keep them secret until Valentines but not to eat them on the way home ;) 

And as a finale, I gave the ladies a sneak peak at the Mon Amore designer series paper which is featured in the new Spring/Summer Catalogue available to buy from 1st February! It's a range of heart & amour inspired designs in delightful reds, pinks & light blues - prefect for Valentines Day. We used it along with primrose petals to create this really cute little mailbox housing some Hershey nuggets we recently picked on on our Florida travels. I was inspired by a creation I found recently on Pinterest by Gina at Gigi's Creative Designs & have slightly adapted it - I never knew what the flag on the side of the mailboxes was for until recently! As the Americans would say, how stinkin' cute is that!!


In the words of another famous American, that's all folks! Catch up soon with great news about this years SALE-A-BRATION freebie offers! 

Lisa B x 

Stampin Up valentine offer

Happy new year blog readers! 

I have a really positive feeling about the opportunities that lay await us in 2013 .. this was partly confirmed today when reading the Confetti wedding industry key trends for 2013 being DIY stationery, vintage themes, the colour mint and love birds as a theme - and guess what? Vintage Celebrations is on trend as we already hand craft celebratory stationery and gifts with those themes in mind! Happy days :)

Anyway, back to business and turning to Valentines Day in the not too distant future .. Stampin Up! have released this super cute little offer .. on purchasing a set of My Little Valentine set of 4 clear mount stamps for £9.95 plus p&p you receive for FREE a delicious Simply Sent set of 10 pretty envelopes with coordinating notecards, stickers and bakers twine! 

Now as a respectable married lady, I would of course only need 1 of these for my husband ;) but with 4 daughters I am sure they will be able to dispense with the remainder of the packet! However I intend to keep them for myself because I am sure they will be making perfect notecards to use throughout the rest of the year. 

This offer expires on 21st January and is unlikely to be repeated so if you would like this sweet and simple answer to choosing a Valentines card please let me know and I can order for you - I can be emailed on lisa.barton@hotmail.co.uk. 

In the meantime, we have yet to receive much snow here but have been promised it's on it's way for the weekend; I love to look at it but don't enjoy being out in it! An excuse methinks to get stuck into some crafting in the warm :)

Be back soon! 

Lisa B x