I’m Back!!
Hi everyone!
I’m back up and running, thanks to a friend of my husband who is a computer whizz and not only got us quickly set up with a nice new PC but managed to retrieve all of my files so I didn’t lose a single photo, yahoo!
There is a silver lining to every cloud isn’t there – now I am working on a much faster machine (loving that!) and in the “downtime” I figured out (with the help of my blog fairy godmother, thanks Karen!) how to do a few more things on here.
I’ve just updated the Specials page so please do check that out. Fancy 20% off the Simply Sent kits and some gorgeous Birthday stamp sets?? I did and am having a great time working with my new stamps at the moment!
OK now back to the business of posting pictures on here as that’s what I’m sure you’ve come here to see! Here’s a pic of the swaps I made for the Auckland Regional training that Stampin’ Up! held recently, that’s where I taught my coloured brads technique for the first time.
These were very well received by the other Demonstrators on the night, although whether it was the chocolate or the box that really appealed, I’m not sure!Now I must give credit here and let you know that I didn’t come up with the design of these boxes myself, I learned how to make them from Andrea Hayes who posted a great tutorial on her blog. I just changed the design ever so slightly so as to have a bigger flap on the base of my boxes, but it was a very minor change. You can learn how to make these here. Thanks so much for the inspiration Andrea!Here’s a closer pic so you can see more detail of these boxes and how I coloured them in. I used Old Olive cardstock as my base and added strips of the Dashing designer series papers (these are SO popular with my regular customers for their Christmas projects, we all need these papers for Christmas!). The stamped image is from the Tags for All set in the Spring Mini catalogue, I stamped it on Whisper White cardstock with Basic Black ink and then coloured it in using a blender pen and lots of ink pad colours, mostly from the Earth Elements colour family, as that’s the family that Old Olive belongs to and therefore the colours all coordinate beautifully. That’s one of the things that I really love about Stampin’ Up! – the colour families mean no more wasting time finding colours that work well together, and you know your ink colour will work with your cardstock!
After I’d coloured the tag in, I mounted it on Real Red cardstock and adhered it to my box. I added the chocolate inside and tied it closed with a piece of Real Red 1/4″ grosgrain ribbon. I love this ribbon – also great for Christmas!
Right, now that I’m getting the hang of this blogging stuff, hopefully I’ll be back soon with more to share. If you have any questions about any of the special offers this month, or about my projects or blog in general, feel free to contact me.Thanks for dropping by! 
