After making so many masculine cards (or that’s the way it feels, it wasn’t actually THAT many!) I was in the mood for something a little more girly.

I have been checking Karen’s blog waiting for her to post up the next Sweet Sunday Sketch Challenge #28, and when I checked last night, there it was! As my regular readers will know, I love to do sketch challenges. Colour challenges too, but sketch challenges more so. The ideas seem to come to me much faster with a sketch challenge!

Anyway, this week I deviated slightly from the challenge. The purist in me would have stuck with circles, and probably eyed up the ones in the challenge to make sure I had the scale right (sigh, yes, I know, I’m a detail nut…). But I have been looking for an excuse to play with my new Heart to Heart punch from the catalogue and this was the perfect opportunity, to use hearts instead of circles for my entry. Even better, I had one lonely leftover embossed heart from the Always stamp set which I had used in one of my SENZ classes, it was just crying to be used up! I got out my sponge daubers and sponged it with Pink Pirouette and Riding Hood Red ink to tie in with the Candy Lane Designer Series paper that I used.

I love the embossing resist technique, it’s so easy and this heart looks glorious I think with the fine detail highlighted in white. The smaller hearts were just punched from cardstock with the Heart to Heart punch. I did play around with that punch using several different colours before settling on the ones I used, so now I have a few extra little hearts to find a use for, he he! Watch this space….

All three hearts were raised up on Stampin Dimensionals, and I used the Best Yet hostess stamp set (my favourite, it’s so versatile!) for the greeting at the top.

Hope this has given you a little inspiration to use up something from your craft stash, or to get out that new product you’ve been drooling over, and use it! And if you want any of the items I’ve used here, you can always just e-mail me to order it, LOL!

Happy Stamping,

Thanks so much to those of you who came to the SENZ show on the weekend and visited our stand, we hope you went home with a little inspiration! A special thanks to those who attended one of my classes, you helped to make my first teaching experience at SENZ a real pleasure!

Congratulations to Judy Honey who was the winner of our door prize basket – hope you enjoy that Judy! I can’t believe I didn’t take any photos of the stand, how silly was I? We had a fabulous stand (in my humble opinion!), thanks so much to the others in my team who put most of it together while I was off teaching my class. Karen, Denise, Kelly, Jacque – you rock!

As requested by some of the visitors to the stand, I will be offering my Masculine Cards class again – at home this time, I am just trying to sort out a few dates (well actually I’m catching up on a lot of lost sleep and I’m also sorting out my house – having moved in a few weeks ago and then rushing off to do the SENZ show, we’ve still got boxes everywhere!). If you’re interested in attending this class, click here to e-mail me and let me know, as spaces will be limited!

In the meantime, here’s a wee creation I threw together last night, as an entry to Janet Rossi’s Corrosive Challenge. I love sketch challenges! I seem to be on a roll with Masculine cards lately – those of you who have read my previous post or attended my class will recognise the colour combination and the DSP I’ve used. I love Windsor Knot for masculine cards!

Anyway, this card design started with the new wide oval punch. So then I sized everything else to fit in with that. Which equals one cute little card, don’t you think? There’s a lot of hardware from the Styled Silver Hodgepodge collection on that baby, too!

Happy stamping!

Hi everyone,

Well we’ve finally got our internet connected at the new house so YAY I can get back to blogging! Not that I manage to do it terribly often as my regular visitors will know, but that’s not because I don’t want to, it’s because I lead a pretty full life and that gets in the way sometimes!

Anyway, as promised, here’s a couple of pics of the items I decorated to use as my door prize at our Creative Inkers Extravaganza on Saturday. On the left is a covered Post-It note pad and I decorated a small jar that I later filled with silver cola ball sweets (they’re not my favourite in terms of the way they taste, but they look fantastic!). I took these photos before I packaged them up in cellophane with ribbon to tie it closed. I was thrilled that one of my lovely customers, Rachael, won my prize (yes, we have the same name, how cool is that?!). Rachael I hope you like it!

To decorate these I used the gorgeous Raspberry Tart Designer Series papers with the Sweet Stems stamp set, and the Best Yet hostess stamp set for the greeting, punched with the Designer Label punch. Best Yet is my favourite hostess set this year! I love embellishing my projects with something a little special – so with the jar I used a silver hodge podge frame that I bent around the jar so it fit snugly, tied on with Pretty In Pink grosgrain ribbon. That’s the beauty of those frames being metal – you can bend them if you want to! On top of the jar I used a couple of gorgeous felt flowers and a rhinestone brad to finish off, I’ve taken a pic of that from a different angle so you can see how pretty it looked from the top.

I love making gifts like these – if you’d like to learn how to decorate everyday items like the jar and notes to give as handmade gifts (or keep them for yourself!), contact me to discuss class options, click HERE. I’m happy to design a class exclusively for you and your friends – heaps of fun and you’ll have some great gifts to take home at the end! If you would like to place an order for any of the products I’ve used, drop me an e-mail and I can arrange that for you too.

Until next time, happy stamping!