I’m struggling at the moment, like many others in Victoria and Australia, to deal with the devastation that has occurred with those fires that started on the weekend. I’ve donated, and I’ve registered to start giving blood again, and thus far I don’t know of anyone personally who has been affected. I’m not sure what else to do right now to be honest.

I’ve been trying to design some cards over the weekend for my next Stamp-A-Stack, but my heart hasn’t been in it - please be patient, they’re coming! If you receive my customer newsletter it should be with you by the end of this week, for the Stamp-A-Stack designs for Sat 28th Feb.

In the meantime, here is a simple card I made with the free Sale-A-Bration set Botanical Blooms. It’s very simple, but I like it.

The colours are Rose Red, Certainly Celery, Brocade Blue and Pretty in Pink.

The sentiment is from Occasional Greetings.

Hope you like it, keep safe everyone!

I’m on fire!!

(Kidding! The kids go back to school on Monday though, so I should have a heap more time to post here and keep things updated.)

I can’t believe I haven’t even told you about Sale-A-Bration yet - I’ve posted catalogues to my customers, but if you’re out there and don’t have a catalogue or your own demonstrator, drop me a line and I’ll get one in the mail for you.

Sale-A-Bration is my favourite time of the Stampin’ Up! year - when everyone gets a chance to earn a free stamp set for spending just $100 on Stampin’ Up! goodies. How easy is that!! The Sale-A-Bration freebie sets can be seen here, along with all the details on how you can earn more free goodies.

One of the other benefits of Sale-A-Bration is for new recruits…. you get to choose an extra set (up to $79.95 in value) from our delicous catalogue for FREE to add to your kit during Sale-A-Bration. It’s already a really good deal, but this makes it even better! Let me know if you’d like a recruit pack and I’ll get it in the mail.

Now I didn’t make the effort to come on here to blather away about Sale-A-Bration (although I could go on!). I have actually made a tiny space on my craft desk to create a card for a friend of David’s birthday. I struggle with male cards like a lot of people do, and I don’t really have any blokey stamp sets either *gasp!*.

Here’s my effort, copied shamelessly from the current Summer Mini Catalogue, and using the Friendly Flowers stamp set (yes, Friendly Flowers, for a blokey card!).

I swapped the Guava for Soft Sky, and the Friend greeting for Happy Birthday from Eat Cake, otherwise, it’s exactly the same! I do hope my creative juices start flowing once the kids go back to school, but for now it’s fantastic that Stampin’ Up! provides me with such great samples to use!!

Now when I say exactly the same… I will confess that I made a bit of a boo boo when I scored my base card. The back of the card was 5mm shorter than the front! How the heck…. never mind, I fixed it anyway …..

I trimmed even MORE off the inside of the card, then used the Scallop Edge punch to scallop the Choc Chip cardstock. Then I placed a piece of Textured Soft Sky cardstock over the whole back of the card, like I had designed it that way in the first place. Muahahahahahaaaaaa! It’s not a mistake - it’s a design feature! Hoopla!

And as if the guy was going to notice anyway!

So I used…. Friendly Flowers, Eat Cake and the new Lots of Dots Jumbo wheel, a piece of Afternoon Tea DSP, Choc Chip, Wild Wasabi, Soft Sky and Whisper White cardstock. Stampin’ Dimensionals of course, and a Pewter brad from my Hodgepodge hardware.

Thanks for looking, I’m going to go back and finish my prep for my Stamp-A-Stack this Saturday. I’ll pop back later today if I get finished, and show you what we’re making. More cards using OTHER cards as inspiration (told you my creative juices had jammed up during the school hols!)

Yahoo! Santa is only three sleeps away, and I can’t wait! I love Christmas morning when the wrapping paper goes flying and the kids are all squealing with excitement over what they’ve found under the tree for themselves -  must remember to charge the video camera up to capture it all!

I thought I should try and get at least one more card up here before the big day, and I’m rapidly running out of time to achieve everything I should!

This is one that I made for Yvonne’s Summer Mini Launch - The base card is Pumpkin Pie, and I’ve used Tempting Turquoise grosgrain ribbon. That big flower is trimmed from the Bali Breeze DSP, and I used some of our circle punches to layer the centre of the flower, using some of the rest of that sheet of DSP. Wonderful Friend is from the set Wonderful Favourites, and I used the Paisley background in Pumpkin Pie on the base card.

It certainly stands out in a crowd, so I recommend viewing with sunglasses on

Hoorah!

I’ve just been sifting through the dreaded spam list, and deleted 246 spam messages for delightful medications that can assist with bedroom drama’s, or help me advertise my business, or even help me out should I be inclined to be on the ‘different’ side when it comes to activities that are not stamping related .

Sigh.

I wish the spamsters would get a life!!!

Any old hoo, I have been frantic with work, and getting ready for Christmas, so I hope my absence is excused!

Here are is a card I made using a brand new Summer Mini Catalogue set, called Big on Spring. The colours are Cameo Coral, Apricot Appeal, Certainly Celery and Tempting Turquoise. This is a favourite colour combo of mine. I’ve also used the new Lots Of Dots jumbo wheel in the background, which I think will come in handy for lots of stuff!

Hope you like it!

Hopefully I ‘ll be back soon with another creation, but no promises made…. I have a date with the image consultant…… I’ll tell you more next time!!

Oh dear, this seems to be happening a bit now that I’ve discovered Rub-Ons! Never mind, they make for quick easy cards, and would make the beginner cardmakers creativity flow, and get them hooked into cardmaking quicker, whereupon they would expand into stamping as well, and I would have created another addict! Muahahahahahaaaa!

Oops. Did I think it, or did I type it?

Doh!

Anyway, back to the subject at hand - another card I finished at my team play day on Saturday…

Gosh it came up HUGE! Never mind, you can see the detail better - pretend I made it big on purpose.

Yep - still using up the ol’ Blooms Diecuts, and Summer Picnic DSP. The Rub-On is from the Cherished set, and I’ve finally almost used it all up, with the help of my downlines on Saturday. The Blooms diecuts on the other hand are still going strong! I’m tellin’ ya, if you haven’t got yourself a pack yet you will KICK yourself for missing out at the end of November, they’re only $16.50!

Cardstock colours are Old Olive, Real Red, and Bashful Blue - and that’s the 5/8 inch grosgrain ribbon there too, in Old Olive.

Phew another one down, back again tomorrow!

Ooh, as promised, another quick one that I did while I was away in Echuca.

For this one I used my markers in Real Red and Old Olive to ink up the apple image from Tart & Tangy. I stamped onto scrap paper first to get rid of most of the ink, and then inked the outline and stem again with the markers to stamp onto the Whisper White. I didn’t want the whole apple to be as red as the outside, if that makes sense.

I’ve used Real Red and Old Olive  cardstock, and just added a little piece of the Olive apple DSP underneath the main image. A tiny piece of Real Red 5/8 inch grosgrain ribbon and another rubon, and it was finished!

Now some of the products I took away with me are from the Spring Mini catalogue, which finishes up at the end of November… so there’s not much time to get hold of them!

As I had so much fun with just a few products myself, I thought it might be nice to offer a little ‘bundle’ of goodies for ordering, so you can have a play as well….

Tart & Tangy Bundle

• $21.95 Tart & Tangy Stamp Set
• $16.50 Blooms Diecuts
• $15.96 ANY Rub-On pack of your choice
• $4.95 Bashful Blue Stampin’ Write Marker
• $4.95 Real Red Stampin’ Write Marker
• $4.95 Pumpkin Pie Stampin’ Write Marker
• $4.95 Old Olive Stampin’ Write Marker
• $11.95 Summer Picnic Designer Series Paper
• $21.00 ANY two packs of single colour cardstock (Real Red, Bashful Blue, Old Olive or Pumpkin Pie.

This lot would normally cost $107.16, but you can have it for $100 even, plus postage ($5.95), and I will add an extra pack of one of the suggested single colour cardstock packs! That’s nearly an extra $18.00 worth of product for no cost to you!

You can also expect a little ribbon sample in the mail as a gift from me too, with the Bashful Blue Striped Grosgrain, Real Red 5/8 inch Grosgrain, and some 1/4 inch Pumpkin Pie grosgrain too, to help you complete your cards.

Feel free to swap Stampin’ Write Marker colours if you already own these ones, but you must order by the 30th of November to take advantage of this deal. After that, those products will be GONE! Email or phone me to order, on jenni.oliver@hotkey.net.au or 0403 023707

You’ll have to check my other post today, to find out about the promotion for November, and the reason I can offer the Stampin’ Write Markers individually, and the Rub-On’s at a discounted price too!

Over the Melbourne Cup long weekend, the whole family went to Echuca for a little holiday. I really wanted to take some ’stuff’ with me so I could make a few cards while David played golf on the Sunday, but I was a bit limited space wise to what I could take along. Sooo….. I grabbed Tart & Tangy, and Summer Picnic Designer Series Papers, some sheets of all four coordinating cardstocks and all four coordinating Stampin’ Write Markers. I snuck in a sheet of rubons and the Blooms flower diecut sheets, circle and scallop punches, a bit of ribbon,, and that was pretty much all I went away with.

I hadn’t used the rubons before (of course I HAD to have them when they came into the catalogue though), so it was a really good chance to go outside my ‘comfort zone’ so to speak.

This is the first of three cards I made that afternoon while the kids watched Annie on DVD…

This has Old Olive cardstock as a base, and some of the Summer Picnic Designer Series Papers (DSP). I layered some of the Blooms diecut flowers, and used a scrap of DSP to punch out the inside of a couple of the flowers to make my centres. A bit of Bashful Blue striped grosgrain and a white rubon from the Cherished Memories pack, and it was done! Even though I didn’t take any inkpads or daubers away with me, I found that just running the marker along the edges of the flowers really gave them some definition, which you probably can’t see in the photo.

Hope you like it, I’ll be back tomorrow with another one!

Bathroom cleaning day! Usually. Oops.

Instead I got sidetracked as usual and started cleaning up my stamping room, which lead to me creating a couple of cards.  It started off innocently enough. I went through the pile of stamped images I’ve created over the last year, and tossed the ones of retired sets into the kids craftbox for them to use. But lo and behold, there were some things in that pile that just HAD to be made up into cards RIGHT NOW.

I mean the bathroom grime will still be there tomorrow - but my Mojo might have packed up and left by then! Gasp! The risk was too great so I played it on the safe side……

Here’s number one….

It’s Polka Dots & Paisley which is a cute little set, colours are Lovely Lilac and Certainly Celery. The sentiment didn’t quite fit onto the larger Tag Punch when it was straight, so I had to go for the jaunty angle to fit it in. You can tell the images have been sitting around for a while - just look at that splodge of dirt on the corner of the tag, I think I might bung a celery brad there!!

And here is number two….

This one use A Touch Of Nature, Sanded, Linen and the greeting is from Occasional Greetings.  I’ve daubed and sponged all over the place to soften the look of this one. It was just too stark without the sponging.

I coloured the images using a blender pen and the Stampin’ Up! classic inkpads, the colours for this one are Purely Pomegranate, Blue Bayou and Soft Sky, with a little bit of So Saffron in the flower centre. The butterfly is trimmed close to the edge of the image, and popped up on Stampin’ Dimensionals to give it some height as if it’s hovering over the flower.

Hope you like them! Just don’t come here today and ask to use the bathroom !!

A couple of weeks ago I stamped out some images from Bloomin’ with Beauty while Kerri was here - and I finally got around to using it here!

It was a HEAP of fun to colour, and I used my Watercolour Wonder Crayons with an Aquapainter to do it. I stamped the image onto our Stampin’ Up! watercolour cardstock so I could really splash around with heaps of water.

The colours are Old Olive, Lavender Lace, Almost Amethyst and More Mustard. The little bee is Summer Sun and Basic Grey, and I added a little bit of shimmer to the wings with my Twinkling H2O’s.  The base card has been stamped with the Sanded background, and the Old Olive piece with the Linen background.

That little greeting is one from Fast & Fun Notes, and it fits in the Word Window Punch perfectly - I doodled a straightish line around the edge to match the one I did to frame the flowers. A little bit of twill and a flower brad from the Styled Silver Hodgepodge hardware tin, and it’s finished!

Thanks for looking!

Where on earth did the last two weeks go? Sheesh!

Here’s a quick card to make me feel less guilty about my poor neglected blog….

The colour is not quite true in the photo, as I was taking it too late in the day - it’s Taken with Teal and Whisper White. The flowers are from the Pretties kit, and I’ve lightly sponged the second layer with Taken with Teal. There’s a teal’ish Ice Rhinestone in the centre, and the rest of the card is very simple - the swirls are from a Christmas set, called Season of Joy - in the Stampin’ Up! Spring Mini Catalogue currently. The Happy Birthday is from It’s Your Birthday. The background is stamped with my old fave, Paisley.

Hope you like it, now it’s back to the coal mines for me!