The New Autumn and Winter Catalogue......

Is just bursting with goodies!  It goes live on September and I promise you, you will want to sit down with a nice cup of tea as there are so many beautiful things in there.  I make a lot of Christmas cards as they are impossible to buy here in Beijing, so when the new catalogue came out I was delighted with the choice available.

I created the traditional card above and used the wink of stella pens to add a bit of glittery shimmer to the cards.  I love this image of Father Christmas and the fact that I can create the whole card with the one stamp set.

I then wanted to create something for my daughters to give out to their friends and the card above was super quick to make.  I am currently making the santa and the elf cards too which I will share with you at a later date.  I love this card for its simplicity and speed of make.

It has been strange making Christmas cards in August when the temperature is 40 degrees outside but if you turn down the air conditioning enough and put on some Bing Crosby it could almost be December......

Floral Phrases

Another of the new sets I love is a bundle ( I love bundles as you get so much more for less) It's called Floral Phrases and it comes with the most beautiful thinlits and stamp set.

The above card took literally minutes to make as its just two of the thinlits run through the bigshot and then stuck onto the white card.  I then cut out a flower and some leaves from the botanical blooms set.  I embossed the white Thank You for Caring sentiment to make it pop just that little bit more

The above card was created for one of my daughters friends.  Unfortunately, when you are posted to different places around the world you not only meet and make wonderful new friends, sadly they leave as well.  It can make end of school terms especially emotional

I made the thinlit cut out become an envelope to hold the card with the sentiments on.  It looks really effective and was, again, quick to make. I just hope her friend likes it.

Anyway, I'm off to check whether we're still part of Europe or not.

More of that Swirly Bird

Can you tell I'm loving the Swirly Bird Bundle?  It's so versatile!  On the above card I used it to create my own background paper, I can now create cards with a funky background in the colours I want.  This card was really quick to make but really effective.

This card took a bit longer.  My daughter and I are volunteers at our local charity shop here in Beijing and one of the things we help with is the donation of jigsaw puzzles.  My youngest daughter loves completing jigsaws so we get all the donated ones and make them up to ensure they are complete.  I was playing with the Swirly Bird Bundle whilst I was watching Summer put together a jigsaw and I was looking at the bits leftover from the wavy lines die.  I decided to put them back together on a card and the result is the card above.  I added a few swirly flowers and the lovely "You're in my thoughts" sentiment.

I am really pleased how they came out and hope that it shows to you some of the many, many was you can use this bundle.

I finished just in time as I hear the girls returning from school.  Why not order the bundle from my shop and post what you create?  I'd love to see

Until then

Sitting Here

This is another stamp set from the new catalogue and I love it!  I made this card for my Father n Laws upcoming birthday.  Her has a ginger cat called Honey so I coloured the cat in to match!

The cushions have been coloured in and cut out then I used my embossing tool on the back to give them some dimension and stuck them on with dimensionals.  I think this stamp set will be great for making the "dreaded" male cards.  There is also a dog and basket in the set so it's very versatile.

It's been very hot and humid in Beijing the past few days with temperatures in the high 30s so it's been a joy working in my air conditioned studio.  It's a perfect excuse to play with all my goodies from the new catalogue.

I'll be back soon with some more cards for you, until then

The Beautiful New Catalogue is Here!

This is one of my favourite times of the year as a Stampin UP! Demonstrator - the launch of the new annual catalogue.  I always get excited to see what delicious goodies they are giving us for the next 12 months and this year they have, once again, outdone themselves.  There's lots of wonderful new bundles and so far my favourite one has been the one used on these two cards called Swirly Bird.  I love it because it so incredibly versatile.  I managed to create a male birthday card and a totally different get well card from the same set.

The thinlets allowed me to add dimension to the cards really quickly and they look really effective.  I am going to be spending the rest of today playing with this set as it's very humid here in Beijing and about 38 degrees so I have no desire to leave my lovely air conditioned craft room!

You can see the gorgeous new catalogue by clicking HERE

You can also order any of the products by clicking the shop now button below.

Just For You

Firstly, as I live in Beijing, let me start this post by saying Xin Nian Kuaile which means Happy New Year.  Well, you can't live somewhere for 3 years and not learn some of the language!  It's very quiet here at the moment as most Chinese people travel home for New Year, so everything is closed.  This gives me a perfect excuse to hide in my craft room and make some lovely things to show you from the New Spring/Summer catalogue.

I love the new Botanical Gardens Bundle in the Spring Summer catalogue.  It comes with the most beautiful stamp set, designer papers and the beautiful framelits dies.  The even better thing is that if you purchase the bundle in my shop you will get the Botanicals for You Stamp Set absolutely FREE!!

The framelits cut out some of the flowers so that the petals are in 3D

They are so quick and easy and add such beauty to your card

You can bling them up with pearls and rhinestones

I then stamped some of the flowers onto Hello Honey cardstock and then used a new greeting to finish the card off.

As I was having so much fun as these colours are very "me" I created a cute bag for Mothers Day

I have a feeling this bundle is going to become a firm favourite of mine.  Let me know what you think

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Spring Summer Catalogue and the fantastic Sale-A-Bration!

Every new year Stampin up treat us to their Spring/Summer catalogue and if that wasn't good enough, they reward us for buying goodies by giving us Sale-a-Bration!  Sale-A-Bration is a mini catalogue full of wonderful stampsets and paper and for every £45 you spend either in the new Spring/Summer catalogue or the main catalogue, you can choose 1 item FREE from the Sale-A-Bration catalogue!

You can check out the new spring/summer catalogue HERE

And the Sale-A-Bration catalogue HERE

Of course I will be back soon to show you what I've created from these new catalogues and to give you some ideas.  You can shop from all the Stampin Up Catalogues by pressing the SHOP NOW button below.

Have a great day and

Project Life

Happy New Year!

Please excuse the quality of these photos.  No matter how I took them they all seemed to turn out wishy washy!

Before Christmas we were lucky enough to have the most wonderful holiday in Cebu in the Philippines.  We took hundreds of photos and I wanted to Project Life them while they were fresh in my memory.

These pages are of our eldest daughter taking her PADI open water diving test.  She had to learn in the pool and then complete some open water dives.  The sea was crystal clear and the fish were abundant.  Thalia loved every minute of it.

On this card I stamped the coral in calypso coral and then embossed the text in gold.  I promise it looks much better in real life!

I used the greetings thinlets to create this hello

I used the Happy Times set to create this little label.

I mounted this photo onto white card and then stamped the love This

I love the wooden embellishments and this arrow was perfect to make the point (see what I did there?)

Project Life is a quick and easy way to scrapbook your life and the choice of making your pages simple or full of embellishments is completely up to you.  I really enjoyed my afternoon creating these memories.  I hope it inspires you to have a go yourself.

Have a great day and