Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator

Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator based in Nottingham but willing to travel - available for workshops, classes and individual orders. Tel 07891476636 or e-mail tracy147@hotmail.co.uk









Friday 30 March 2012

I can't believe we are still having this lovely weather yet I haven't sat out in it at all, what a waste...lol.  In my last post I showed you all the birthday card I did for my daughter for her fiance.  Well today I'm going to show you another card that I did for him.  Now the funny thing is I can't remember if we gave him this card or my other daughter, Kirsty, did as I didn't take a photo of the other card... how daft is that?  I've asked Nic to look and see which one is Kirsty's and to take a picture for me so I can put it on here. I am pretty sure this is the one that we gave him... well I hope so....

The colour combination is Concord Crush, Peach Parfait, Pear Pizzazz and whisper white,  I just love the Elebration stamp its soooo cute.  I've used the markers to colour the cake and balloon, I've tried to match the balloon to the ones he got on his Birthday...lol.  The other products used are the big shot, Scallop Circle die, Lace Ribbon Border punch, alphsbet simple numbers die, Rhinestons and corner punch. The birthday sentiment is from the very versitile hostess set Happiest Birthday Wishes.

Thanks for stopping by and having a look.  Please leave a comment as I love to read them.  If you would like to buy any of the products or become a demo please get in touch and I'll be happy to chat to you about things.

Hugs
Tracy -x-

Wednesday 28 March 2012

21st Mocha Morning card

Hello everyone,

Today is my future son in law's 21st birthday and I was tasked to make his cards from both my daughters.  Here is the one I made for Nicola, his fiancee, to give to him.  I wanted it to be different from ones he would normally recive so I made this......



I have glued two  5" cream cards (not SU) together to give the concertina effect.  I just love the Mocha Morning speciality papers as they are ideal for male cards.   Below are close up of the pages. 


On the front page I have used Soft Suede card as the base and added Very Vanilla card that has been embossed with the Square Lattice embossing folder.  I have used the black satin ribbon to cover up the join of the paper and card.  Lees name has been spelt in Basic Black card using the Timeless Type Junior Alphabet dies with Rhinestones on the L to highlight it.

The middle page is again Soft Suede as the base card and then I have used the reverse side of the Mocha Morning Paper that has been used on the other pages with Very Vanilla on top.  The same alphabet set used to spell "Lee" has been used for the "Today" letters but the 21 is spelt using the Aphabet Simple Numbers dies.  Again Rhinestones have been added to highlight the 21.

 The final page is the same as the front only reversed.  The edges of the Basic Black card has been created using the Scallop Trim border punch.  The sentiment is from the Hostess set, Happiest Birthday Wishes,  which you could earn if you hold a workshop and have sales above £150, and then punched out using the Decorative Label punch.

I was pleased that Nicola liked it and so did Lee when he received it today. We all went out for a meal last night but Lee thought it was going to be a nice romantic meal with him and Nicola so it was a big surprise for him that when he got to the restaurant there was me, hubby, Kirsty and Alex all sat waiting for him lol. Here is one of the pictures of Lee last night.....


.

Believe it or not when we left the restaurant he tied the balloons to his trousers and walked to the pub with them like that, it was so funny as he still got asked for id at the bar....lol

I'll be back tomorrow to show you another card made for Lee., I'm off now to make mine to give him later, Kirsty's is already done thankfully !!!!

Hugs
Tracy -x-

Monday 26 March 2012

Hello card

Yesterday I had to send a birthday card to Plymouth for a friends daughters birthday. Initially it was our friends parents that we met on a lovely holiday to Tunisa 15yrs ago so I thought I would put in a little "hello" card to give to our friends and this is it...


Inside I have put some photos of my girls and little Leo as we haven't seen one another for quite a few years now and are hoping to get down this year to see them.  Sorry its not a good picture but I did take it last night about 10.45...lol.  I have used the My Friend set from the Spring mini (remember this finishes on the 30 April), Island Indigo ink and some Rhinestones.  I thought it would be a quick and easy card to make but it took me about 3 attempts to get this one, I was so tired as my grandson had worn me out...bless him.

I hope you like what I've done.  

Hugs
Tracy -x-

Sunday 25 March 2012

Create a Cupcake

Yet another beautiful day.  Did you all remember to put your clocks forward?   I did but I don't think my grandson did.  We had a family night last night so little man stayed here rather than be woken at a late hour to go home.  Nan only got 6 hrs sleep, thanks Leo...lol

I've finally managed to make the first of the 8 cards I need for this week. This ones got to go to Plymouth so it needed to be done first. Its one for our friends daughters birthday on Thursday so needs to be posted tomorrow. We haven't seen them for ages so I wasn't really sure what she is into so played safe with the cupcake set. Next decisions was what colours to go with!!!!! I finally decided on two of the In Colours for 2012/13 with Wisteria Wonder and Lucky Limeade.  I punched out 1" circles to make a fake embossed look. This is the finished product....

Now whilst I liked what I had done I thought something was missing so I decided to add some Pearls to the little flowers but that didn't look right either.  I then swapped some Pearls with some Rhinestones and asked hubby what he thought and, like me, preferred the Rhinestones so all the Pearls were duely swapped and this is the end result...

I think I looks much nicer.  I also like to put inserts into my cards whenever I can so I decided to stamp a cupcake on that as well.
I hope you like my project, please leave a comment if you did as I love to read them.

If you would like to purchase any of the  products listed below please get in contact and remember, the cupcake stamp set and punch are only available from the Spring Mini catalogue that ends on the 30 April so don't wait too long if you want this set.

Thanks for stopping by

Hugs
Tracy -x-

Materials used:
Create a cupcake stamp set
Cupcake builder punch
Wisteria Wonder card and ink
Lucky Limeade card, ink and ribbon
Rhinestones
Word Window punch
Modern label punch
1" circle punch
Scallop edge boarder punch
Flower brad

Thursday 22 March 2012

ONLY 10 DAYS LEFT TO EARN YOUR FREE EXCLUSIVE STAMP SET OR PAPERS..... I'M PLACING AN ORDER THIS WEEKEND SO DON'T DELAY GET YOUR ORDERS IN SOON!!!!!


Good morning everyone,

What a beautiful morning, I hope the weather is as nice for you as it is here.  Its still a bit chilly when you go out but we have lovely sunshine which I think makes everyone feel a little happier :)  Today I'm going to show you the card I made for mothers day.  For once I was not last minute.com, I had it all finished by Saturday night ready for delivery Sunday morning so feel quite proud of myself...haha

Here is the card that I did for my Mum, unfortunately Dean's mum passed away several years ago so she was in our thoughts on the day.


I have layerd card and paper onto a card base and attached the sentiment.  I have then attached some vellum over the top and added the flower to the front.  This not only adds decoration but you can put some glue on the vellum underneath the flower to hold the vellum in place on the card.  I have also put 2 tiny bits of snail tape on the top corners on the back to hold it secure also but you can hardly see the snail tape.   Below is the insert and I have used my markers to create the different colours on the flower.


Now I needed to make something to put mum's pressie in so I made this little bag thinking the gift would fit inside, some of it did and some of it didn't...lol

I've coordinated it with a similar flower to the one on her card,  this was made the same way as the ones in the photo frame post,  and used the top note die as the flap to close the bag.  These are the pressies we brought her, guess which one didn't fit in?


Yep you're right it was the necklace and earrings that were attached to it ...lol  The bracelet and fridge magnet only just fit in as well ...lol   The magnet said, " Mums are like Buttons, they hold everything together" which I thought was so true.  I knew that my mum loves the jade colour and when we went out on Monday she wore it and it looked lovely and really suited her.

As you know I'm now the proud grandparent of little Leo so when I brought mums magnet I saw another one that I could not resist as it said " A grandparent is someone with silver in their hair and gold in their heart"  not that I've got a lot of silver in my hair...lol but I thought it was so sweet I had to have it.

Well I hope you've enjoyed looking at my projects again and will  leave a comment for me to read.  Now I'm off to try and make a start on the 8 cards I need for next week !!!

Take care

Hugs
Tracy -x-

Monday 19 March 2012

Leo's Christening keepsake

Wow, two days on a run and I've posted.  I have been unable to post this before as, like an idiot, I forgot to take a picture of it before I gave it to my daughter but, as you read on you will understand why.

Last Sunday, 11.3.12 little Leo was christened and the reception after was being held at our house as Nicola and Lee moved house the day before so you can imagine how hectic it was for them.  Anyway, when Leo was born my lovely upline, Victoria, made me a fabulous keepsake book with some photo's I had sent her of Leo when he was born, you can view it here.  I thought it was such a brilliant idea and keepsake that I decided to do one the same for Nicola and Lee for Leo's christening.

By sheer coincidence the double sided papers I used, Nursery Nest (pg 99), was similar colours to the one Victoria had made for me.   Despite knowing the christening was imminent you know how it is, sometimes you just can't get your head into gear to craft, plus I had to sort out the catering for the guests so again it was a last minute.com job and I really do mean that.   Having spent all Saturday cooking and cleaning I finally sat down at 8pm on Saturday night to start the book.  Luckily I had managed to prep little bits like print and cut the pics and paper but that was about all.

Once I got going not only was it relaxing but I really enjoyed crafting again even though it was 11.45pm when I finally finished as much as I could.  The colour combo used was taken from the Nursey Nest papers which were Marina Mist card and ribbon, Pear Pizazz and Whisper White card stock.  Here is the finished result....  this is the front of the book and this photo was taken when he was only a few hours old


When you opened the book the next pages showed the proud parents, grandparents and aunty

This is the book fully open and the following pictures are close ups of these four





Now I had to be a bit sneaky when doing the last page.  When we got home from church I had to upload the pictures from my camera and print one from the christening itself.   I then had to ask Kirsty to get  Nicola and Lee outside on the pretence that she wanted a group photo of them with her and Alex (her partner)   Whilst this was being done I attached the photo to the back and got it in the pressie bag before they came back in.  As well as doing this I was also watching the food in the oven, getting guests drinks etc so you can image the panic I was in...lol.  Still I think the end result was worth it esp when I saw the tears in Nik's eyes when her and Lee were reading it, along with the laughter at some of the captions I had done (these were all done on the pc)

We got little man a lovely bible that had all his details on the front cover, name, date of christening and where, then on the back was a message from me and his grandad.  It was such a lovely day and our little man looked sooooo cute in his outfit as he had a little tie and waistcoat.   Ohhhh I could have held him all day but unfortunately had to share him with everyone else...lol

Oh dear, once again its been a long post but I do hope you have enjoyed reading it and if so please leave a comment as I do like to read them.

Hugs 
Tracy -x-

Sunday 18 March 2012

Mothers day pressie....

Oh my I can't believe its over a month since I last blogged, where does the time go???   I haven't been doing too much as my back hasn't allowed me to but I have made a few projects like my mums card for today and my grandson's christening keepsake for last Sunday but more of that another day.  One thing I was asked to do by my daughter was to make a 3d picture frame for my grandson's other mama, Julie, for mothers day.  She teamed up with her partners sister and they took their children to have a joint photo session so that I had one photo of all three to work with. 

Its difficult to make something for someone you don't really know as I've only met Julie three times and not really had the chance to chat with her too much.  However, her daughter said that the colour theme in her house was green and when she looked at my colour chart last weekend she said it was a similar collour to Old Olive so I had a bit of a starting point.

So I painted the frame with Gesso (not a SU product) and then, using a stamp from Vintage Vogue, I stamped around the frame in Basic Black.  I them used the smallest butterfly out of Flight of the Butterfly and stamped the image in Platinum shimmer paint.   I had a thin piece of rubber that came with my ink pad holder so I used the Beautiful Wings Embosslits dies with the big shot to make the smaller butterflies.  The shimmer paint was added using a dauber.  So that was the frame complete but I didn't get the actual picture until Friday so I wasn't sure what colours I was working with. 

Anyway once I got the photo I noticed that the main colours were dark blue and baby pink.  Now, using my colour coach I looked at what colours went with Old Olive and to my delight I saw that one of the set of recommended colours contained Pretty in Pink and the other set contained Night of Navy, how lucky was that!!!  Here is the end result.....



The base card was 12x12 Old Olive I then used a sheet of the paper from the Flirtatious Speciality Paper (pg 96) as the second layer and created the border with the Eyelet punch (pg116).  The next layer is Night of Navy and again I used the eyelit border punch.  The corners of the photo were created using the FancyFlower Punch (pg 118) and I cut a slit in the shape and put the corners of the photo through, this was a technique recently shown in a Demo magazine.  You can try it with any punch such as the curly label, square etc and see the different effects.  To make the flowers I followed a technique shown on another Demo's site here, where I stamped the sentiment En Francais on tissue paper.  I then folded the tissue paper 4 times and  used the 5 Petal Punch to punch out the shape.  I used some old olive card at the same time to give some stability as I punched the shape out, this was used as the base to the flower.  A brad was then put through the middle of all layers and the tissue paper crumpled up to create the flower.

The sentiment at the bottom was made using Very Vanilla card and Timeless Type Junior Alphabet die in conjunction with the big shot.  The little flowers were made using the Boho Blossoms punch.  Other materials used were buttons from the Regals collection, pearls and glimmer brads.

My daughter and her parterner were very happy with the end result as was his sister but the telling time was when they gave it to his mum as her present.   Luckily she liked it so I'm happy.   I'll be honest but whilst making it I thought I was missing out on something like this.... I need not to have worried as my daughters did a frame with 3 sections to it and the middle one was a photo taken of me and the girls last Sunday at Leo's christening and either side to that was little Leo.... I couldn't have asked for a better pressie, all my babies together.  I haven't taken a picture yet but when I do I'll show you. :)

Sorry for such a long post, I'll try and be quicker next time.  Til then take care.

Hugs
Tracy -x-