Sale-a- Bration Blog Hop 2011

Welcome to my blog today - if you have never visited before - Welcome! and if you are a returning visitor - Welcome back!


The posting today is part of a blog hop organised by the lovely Pat from the In Love with Stamping forum, and if you are taking part in that - you may have come here from Alison's blog, and at the end of this post I will hand you on to Kim! However there are 40 Demos taking part in the hop today so keep an eye out for links to the other 3 groups (I have added the links to the start points on all 4 below)  and just see the lovely things we have all created for you!


Anyway - the reason for the blog hop today is to showcase some of the lovely projects we have made using the FREE stamp sets on offer as part of the Sale-a-Bration promotion which runs until the end of February. Spend £45 on catalogue goodies and you can choose any set for FREE and you get a free set for EVERY £45 you spend - why not collect them all?


Anyway here are mine

First up is a little boxed set of cards using the Bliss stamp set - I can see that flourish being very useful.... and the butterfly... and you should see the other stamps in the set that I haven't used here! The box is made from Pretty in Pink cardstock, and the topper is made from Basic Black and Whisper White. I stamped the flourish with Old Olive ink using the stamping off technique, then used Pretty in Pink ink to stamp the butterfly on top- I then stamped the butterfly in basic black, cut it out and mounted it on dimensionals over the darkest flourish. I added some pearls from a pack of basic pearls to the body and the dots of the i's in the greeting (which comes from the So happy For you set), punched out using the modern label punch!

Next up is the little 3d favour box I made for the training session swap last week. This was made from Real Red cardstock, with a belly band of Whisper White and a patterned paper from the Love Letters DSP pack tied up with the organza ribbon.. The tags were stamped using the Punch Bunch set and - you've guessed it - punched out using the matching punches!

My final one is a little card showing off the big stem stamp from Sweet Summer - but also showing how you can make a very effective vase from the bauble punch. The little 3D roses I made using one of the techniques Natalie taught us last week - and the centre is finished with a pearl! The greeting is another one from the So Happy for you set

I will hand you on to Kim now but look out for links to the other 3 circles as well - if you can't find them here are links to the starting Blogs in all 4 circles.

Group 1 - Sara's Blog
Group 2 - Theresa's Blog
Group 3 - Keren's Blog
Group 4 - Kirsteen's Blog

Why not nip off and grab a cuppa and settle down to a creative morning with us?


If I can help you with orders or you would like to book a workshop (Have car - will travel!) please do get in touch on ExStitch@aol.com or 07973 969153!

Would you like a FREE set (or two ) from the catalogue?

Hah!

That caught your interest didn't it??

But its not an empty offer - it can really happen at the moment as there is a very special offer for new demos who sign up to Stampin' Up! during the Sale-a-Bration period. If you sign up now - the fabulous starter kit (typical example below!) will cost you £119 including shipping to your door.....

 As you can see - it contains no less than FOUR stamp sets already (3 wood mount and one clear mount) along with a standard wheel. That is fantastic value by any measure you use! Sign up during January and February and you can pick any set you like from the catalogue (yes - even the most expensive one in there - Broadsheet alphabet which is £44.95!) to add to your starter kit order!

The starter set on its own is worth £230, but the Sale-a-Bration offer adds up to another £44.95 which means that you get £275 worth of goodies - and if you choose me as your upline, I will give you ANOTHER set of your choice which means you can start off your demonstratorship with over £300 worth of lushness and SIX stamp sets for just that initial outlay of £119!!

Already got some of the items pictured? No problem as unlike a lot of Direct Sales companies, Stampin' Up! allow you to customise the starter kit, and you can substitute ANY of their suggested stamp sets for another of equal or lesser value, and likewise, you can swap out the cardstock packs, designer paper, and inkpads for colours of your choice - so your kit is guaranteed to contain things you like and can start working with straight away!

Fancy the kit but don't want to be a demo?

Well believe it or not - you can do that too! Sign up and take the kit now, and you have nearly 6 months to decide if you want to do any more. If you don't place an order or meet the minimum, by the end of June - you will simply drop. No hassle, no questions asked and you have picked yourself up the bargain of the year. But if you want to make it into a business - with a bit of work on your part you can do just that - and for those who do well (and I'll be brutally honest here - work REALLY hard at it!), there are some quite big rewards on offer like cash prizes and expenses paid trips to a luxury hotel - this year's winners are off to Prague in June and next year's trip is to Vienna!

And don't forget - there is always the middle road - sell SU goodies to your friends and family and you can fund your own hobby as you get a discount on everything you sell!

Want to know more? Well just give me a call on (01892) 724030 or drop me an email to ExStitch@aol.com and I will do my best to help you!

Productive Training Day!!

Well - I don't know about you - but yesterday I had a lovely crafty day doing some Stampin' Up! business training with Natalie and her Stamping Stars team down in Crawley Library. That's the nice thing about the Stampin' Up! demos - nearly all of of those who have got big teams are happy to allow taggers on like me join in their team training. Natalie is the nearest top 5 demo to me - and I go along to her training sessions as my own "SU Mummy" is a bit too far away from me (in Aberdeen) to get to the sessions she runs....

However as well as "business training" we do spend most of the day creating samples to use at our SU workshops, and this time we were concentrating on using the Sale-a-bration sets.

After I posted a Facebook status saying I'd come home with lots of pretty things, quite a few of my friends asked me to share what we made - so here they are.....

Let's start with the swaps!

Swaps are an integral part of SU meet ups - and this time - Natalie had asked us to bring samples made with the Sale a Bration sets and here is what I came home with!

So lets swiftly move on to the goodies we created on the day.... First up was this lovely card made using the Sweet Summer set......the card itself was designed by the very talented Jenny Moors who creates the most gorgeous things. Here the stems and beasties are stamped on a base of  the new Shimmery White cardstock while the flowers were stamped on another piece, then cut out and raised on a dimensional with the tiniest pearls being used as stamens!! The card base was made using a mix of cardstock and DSP before finishing with some Pear Pizzazz poly stitched ribbon and some more pearls. The greeting is from So Happy for You!

now onto another card - this time using the Bliss set

Here we stamped the flourish onto Crumb Cake cardstock, and topped it with the buterfly stamped in marina Mist onto white cardstock. This was mounted onto a Marina mist base, then a strip of the sheet music paper from the Newsprint pack was added and the card was finished off with a pleasted ribbon and the flower from Bliss  added on a dimensional. The butterfly and flower were  embellished with flatback pearls!

Now this set I just LOVE to bits .... it uses the Bliss and Punch Bunch sets!

This is a set Natalie suggests as a hostess gift!  Here we have used Sweet and Sour DSP as well as the ordinary DSP block as a background for a stamped and sprayed block on whisper white!
The white card was stamped all over with the flourish  stamp using black ink, before being spritzed using Rose Red. The greeting was stamped onto white and punched out and mounted onto a little frame of black and embellished with branches cut using the bird punch, and just look at those gorgeous little roses.... to find out how to make them - you will need to ask me along to do a workshop for you!!

And now - the piece de la resistance - the mini album......

The photos really don't do this lovely little book justice. Its made in black and vanilla with hightlights of Cherry Cobbler  and uses Newsprint papers. The stamp set used is the gorgeous Notably Ornate...... Here's the front cover....

Open it up and inside you will see.......

Lift up the right hand section and you get......

and finally..... open that one up and you get this....

Wouldn't it be fabulous as a wedding album??

As always if I can help you with supplies to make any of these gorgeous things please get in touch via email - ExStitch@aol.com, or via phone 07973 969153.

Hope you liked them!!

Sale-a-Bration is here! FREE STAMPS!

Well - its January - and that means just one thing in the Stampin' Up! Europe world - and that is the fabulous Sale-a-Bration promotion which runs until the end of February!

This is a fanatstic opportunity to get some gorgeous Stampin' Up! limited edition stamp sets - for FREE! Yes that's right - for FREE!

There are no less than FOUR fabulous sets for you to choose from - and here they are!

All you have to do to get hold of one of them is place an order with me for a minimum of £45 before postage and packaging and you can choose one of the sets above to add to your order - for free!

And that's not all - you can get more than one set as you get one for every £45 you spend....

Spend over £45 - get ONE set free
Spend over £90 - get TWO sets...
Spend over £135 - get THREE sets..... and
Spend over £180 - get ALL FOUR sets for FREE!

Hold a workshop (ring me for details of available dates) where your guests spend over £300 and you get a Sale-a Bration set for FREE (as well as any you might earn yourself!)

And even better.....would you like a free stamp set (up to £44.95 value) of your own choice from the 2010/11 catalogue?

Well if you sign up to be a Stampin' Up! demonstrator during the Sale-a-Bration promotion - you get exactly that!

As well as getting the fabulous Demo starter kit which contains over £230 worth of goodies from the current catalogue (most of which you can choose yourself) - for just £119 - you will be able to choose another stamp set  - even the most expensive one on offer - absolutely FREE - so your starter kit could be worth over £275.....

*And if you sign up with me - I will match the stamp set offer so you can get ANOTHER set worth over £40* - that means if you sign up during January or February, you will get well over £300 worth of gorgeous Stampin' Up! goodies for just £119.

Lets face it - the Starter kit would be a fabulous crafty gift to buy yourself with your Christmas money.... Stamps, cardstock, inkpads, markers, adhesive everything you need to get started..... and you can just get the starter kit and run (no obligation to continue as a demo) or you can make it a business... Get in touch for more details!

ExStitch@aol.com
07973 969153

* I will send you your free stamp set once you have submitted your first order!

I definitely had a White Christmas!

Well what does one expect when one is spending Christmas at a ski resort high in the Norwegian mountains!!!

Mind you after the shenanigans we had getting here it was a blessing to see the gorgeous Dr Holms hotel in Geilo last Tuesday evening!!

With the bad weather we'd had on the weekend of the 18th 19th, we were worried about actually getting out of the UK on the evening of Monday 20th.... and despite being assured by the lovely lady at Norwegian Air Services that the flight was running and on time when I called at 2pm, by the time we arrived at Gatwicj at 3:45, we saw the dreaded word CANCELLED against our flight.... yes we weren't going anywhere that evening so we headed back to the house we had locked up only a couple of hours before and got on the PC and rebooked everything! We were lucky to get offered a flight early the next morning from Stansted, so grabbed it - and then went and prepared what Roger called the "Umbrella syndrome" - he got the snow chains on the car and I booked everything else...

So 4am on Tuesday saw us heading for Stanstead - on snowchains, which thankfully we were able to remove once clear of our own road! Once on the main A21/ M25/ M11 we were fine and we hit the airport at 5:45am and handed the car over to the valet parkers and headed into chaos!!!

Our flight was showing on the boards but with no details of where to check in or anything against it.... so we found a convenient spot - and waited.......and waited.... Finally - Roger gave up and went to look for something for breakfast and no sooner had he vanished into the crowds, than the announcement came over the tannoy (at 6:45) to go to the furthest  check in desks and what looked like half the airport started charging towards the desks.... Rog came rushing back and we shoved the laden trolley after the crowds..... We finally got into a queue of sorts, at the nominated desks, and indeed there were 2 desks with Norwegian boards above them - but no - one to check in the passengers....

So we waited....... and we waited...... and we waited......finally at 7:30, someone appeared and even then spent another 10 minutes chatting to his colleague on the upper level. What was annoying was the fact that although there was no check in happening, the tannoy kept calling people to the unmanned desks so people were obviously thinking that they were late and kept trying to push into the queue. Anyway - after an hour of waiting check in finally started at 7:45 (remember the flight was supposed to take of at 8:20)......and we finally hit the desk at 8:15 to  be allocated seats right at the back of the plane....

Then we had a mad rush through security and onto the wee train to take us to the gate (we didn't have to as there were dozens of people in the queue behind us but try telling that to a stressy husband!) where we sat for another eon waiting to board! We finally took off at 10:20, and were very grateful that we had allowed ourselves a cushion of 4 hours to catch the train up to the mountains!. We landed safely in Bergen and having grabbed our luggage, jumped into a taxi for the station.....

Roger had managed to nip to the Duty Free in Stansted to buy the celebratory champers for our wedding anniversary on the 22nd, and the big day... and he put the bagg with the precious bubbly in the boot with the bags.... only to see it go flying when the driver pulled one of the bags out at the station..... we watched £25 worth of vintage Veuve Cliquot pour over the cobblestone.....Fortunately the second bottle survived!

We stashed the bags in left luggage and nipped out to get some lunch.before heading back for the train...... check out these super comfy seats - eat your heart out SouthEastern railways!!!!!!

`Anyway - 3 hours later we were met at the station by the hotel minibus to take us up to the hotel! We checked in - and headed straight for dinner

.

The big event in Scandinavia is always Christmas Eve... the shops and skilifts all shut early to allow everyone to get home for the Julefest. We had the most sumptous hot and cold buffet  with loads of choice of cold meats and seafood and the traditional meal of roast pork and lots of lovely desserts including rice pudding (YUM!!!). After dinner - we got a visit from a certain person with one of his friends....

Santa sat in the lobby dishing out presents to the younger guests - I was able to get up close and personal with his reindeer who was very tame and didn't seem to mind being pawed, petted and photographed by all and sundry!

See those Antlers??? They tell you that this is a lady reindeer as the males shed their antlers in the winter - proof positive that Santa relies on a team of ladies to get him round all those houses on Christmas Eve without getting lost!!!

Anyway - we had noticed in the ballroom that the Christmas tree had been moved into the centre of the dancefloor, ready for the traditional dancing and singing round the tree. Here are some of the dancers, and notice the beautiful national costumes which a lot of our fellow guests were wearing..... lots of them - and every single one was different!

Anyway - we finished our drinks and headed to bed....unfortunately not to wake up to presents as they had to be left in England..... can't wait until we get home to whether I made the nice list this year!!

Merry Christmas and happy new year to you all!

How to make the Christmas Tree Advent Calndar...

Following several requests.....

The basic instructions for the Christmas tree advent calendar are on my other blog... complete with a link to the template for the twist box "crackers"

Scrapaholic at Large

Merry Christmas to you all!

Advent Calendar Christmas Tree

As many of you know, there was a Cyber crop on UK Scrappers last weekend, and one of the challenges was to take a mystery kit and create a WOW project using just the kit (and the packaging it came in) and a very limited range of extras. However, due to the crummy weather delaying the post and some of the ordered kits, the mystery kit wasn't included in the points totals or voted on until everyone had a chance to submit their entries.

Anyway, cutting to the chase, the galleries opened last night - and I can at last share my creation with you! I'm actually a bit cross as I rushed to finish and upload this by the original deadline, so the finishing touches and the photographs aren't too good.

First of all - I made the 25 little crackers using my (contraband) SU candy wrapper sizzix die and whisper white and basic black cardstock, held together with sticky strip. These contain an assortment of sweets and chocolates. Then having worked out how to make the pyramid shape I needed - I satrted cutting up the pizza box the kit arrived in to make the tree and the base.

The cardboard was painted using black acrylic paint, then sprayed with a mica mist to add some sparkle, before being assembled. and decorated using chipboard snowflakes, patterned papers and bling along with some snowflakes (cut with another piece of SU contraband - the snowflake punch) cut from mica misted whisper white cardstock

The crackers were decorated with patterned papers from the kit and the tags were punched from card and paper using my trusty SU circle punches. Finally the filled and labelled crackers were all popped onto the shelves of the tree

At the moment it is proudly displayed as part of my Christmas decorations but come putting away time,  I will probably remake the tree using foamcore board, and taking a bit more time as the whole tree is very usable for next year.

If you would like to check out how I am doing in the voting, you can find my entry in the Fairies gallery along with those from the 16 other Christmas Fairies who entered!

Hope you enjoyed this