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!)

OK so it was ME who went to Dubbo! And ME who did the layouts!! Hooray for me!!

Anyone who knows the slightest thing about me knows that scrapbooking does not come easily to me… which may explain why, nine years later, our wedding photo’s are still in a little $2 flip folder…. oops.

We went on a bit of a short road trip after Christmas, and met up with some of our Queensland friends - Dubbo was the middle point on the map, so that’s where we headed. Thank GOODNESS I had the presence of mind to pack the photo’s and a Simply Scrappin’ kit, because it was like Hell’s inferno SO DARNED HOT up there. I sat in the cool of the airconditioning and made these 7 pages in about an hour. (I had to kill some time waiting for an acceptable time to go down to the pool for a swim and a little drinkie, tee hee)

I haven’t really used the Scrappin’ kits before, but everything came together so easily - I grabbed some coordinating ribbons, and scissors and adhesives, and it was all I really needed for the job! Oh and it helped that we were married on the island of Erakor in Vanuatu, so the Secret Garden kit was perfect….

The photo’s of the layouts aren’t brilliant, and I haven’t done any journalling or titles or whatever other things you are supposed to do with scrapbooking, but I have left the photo unadhered along the top (look Ma! I made up a word!!) so that I can slip journalling behind the photo if I want to later, and use some of those cool tab things that come in the kit.

Note how young and innocent we look, now we’re old and jaded…. sigh.

OK so they’re only 6 x 6 pages, but it’s a start people!!

And Gabbie, I am so not hooked LOL!

Thanks for looking, now to finish my customer and downline newsletters….. oops!