Wood you be my Valentine?

Hi there inky friends, I hope you all had wonderful Valentine surprises over the weekend.
I was up early on Saturday in order to get off to my Scrapbooking class I was teaching, but as I went to put the kettle on for my morning cuppa, I found a beautiful Valentine's card from my gorgeous hubby. Of course I had made one for him too and I'm pretty sure he was quite impressed.
 Some of you may know that my hubby is a design technology teacher and often teaches wood work which he has a real passion for, so I thought the new Stampin'Up! set called "Wood you be mine" was rather appropriate for making a card up for him,I found inspiration for this from my usual source on Pinterest and the original was designed by J Tink. I did a fair bit of fussy cutting but I think the end result was worth it, I used blendabilities to colour in the image along with some  Stampin' write markers, I also used a piece of designer paper from the new paper stack in the occasions catalogue called Adventure Bound. If you have any questions on how this card was made please feel free to leave a comment below and I will endeavour to answer it for you.

Thankyou for stopping by, please visit again sometime soon, inky hugs from......

Butterfly love.

Hello there inky friends, I hope this finds you all with inky on your fingers. I have had a busy few days and enjoyed a wonderful team meeting last night with my gorgeous Paper Charmers team, such a friendly bunch of ladies and filled with paper crafting talent which they freely share with each other. We all swapped cards with the theme of 'Open' using anything from the new catalogues, I love receiving swaps especially when its using a set that I have but would never of thought of using it that way, its a great way of learning new tips as well.
 I'm really looking forward to welcoming any new team members and would love you to join my happy little team, so please feel free to contact me any time for more information on the great benefits of being a part of the Stampin'Up! family. I will leave my contact details on the bottom of today's post but you can always find them on my website as well.
 Todays card uses the beautiful Butterfly Basics set and of course the fantastic new matching butterfly thinlits dies. this is a copy of the sample card in your occasions catalogue on page 26, I've changes a couple of the colours a bit but it's essentially the same..Why change something if its already beautiful right!

The base butterfly is made from our pretty gold foil card stock and the top one using whisper white, then sponged the edges with some calypso coral ink. I would love to show you and some friends how to make this card at a workshop/party, so why not book a  get together with some friends and I'll bring along all the materials and tools need for a fun time with inks and paper crafting tools.
 Tel: 040 232 0779, email: charmaineblack@y7mail.com I'm looking forward to hearing from you, lots of inky hugs from........

Swinging by to say hi!

Hi there friends, I hope your Sunday was as fun as mine. I had the pleasure of doing a workshop with some stampin' buddies north of the river and it just so happened to be a birthday get together too so that made it even more special.
 I'll post the cards we made tomorrow but for now I hope you enjoy seeing another creation using the Sheltering Tree set, I just love this set as you know and I particularly like the fact there is so many extra little stamps that you can change the look of the tree with. Instead of using the big canopy of leaves to fill this tree, I used one of the smaller stamps with only a few leaves on it and coloured it with different inks to make it bright and Summery.

Thanks for stopping by and please come back to visit again soon, lots of inky hugs from........

Four Seasons with a Sheltering tree.

Hi there inky friends, I've had a lovely day  with my stampin' buddies today and we created some pretty cards using the set called 'Sheltering Tree' which can be found on page 22 of the new occasions catalogue, its such a versatile set and could be used for so many different occasions, for male or female cards.
 Friday get togethers are for KISS cards, (keep it sweet and simple), so these are definitely made keeping that in mind and could be easily stepped up if you wanted to spend a bit more time on them etc. I found my inspiration for these cards through my usual source on Pinterest, the Winter, Autumn and Spring were inspired by Patty Bennett who is an amazing Demo in the US and the Summer card was inspired by Jacquii McLeay, I have changed them from the originals somewhat and really had fun creating them using lots of different techniques, such as dry embossing, heat embossing, thumping technique, direct to rubber and a few others. If you would like to learn some of these techniques, you are welcome to come along to one of my classes or perhaps book a party and I'd be happy to share some stamping tips with you and some friends.
 just contact me for further details by leaving a comment on here or go to my "Shop" and you will find my phone number and email address.
                                           All four seasons.

Summer, using heat embossing and Blushing bride embossing powder, as well as White embossing powder used with the 'Wood grain ' background stamp. The frame is a Framelit die from the set of dies called 'On Film', the beautiful faceted button from the Vintage faceted designer buttons on page 209 of the main catalogue. The hearts from the 'Owl Builder' punch.

 Spring, the bicycle frame and sentiment were heat embossed using cherry cobbler embossing powder.

 Autumn, uses the thumping technique to create a multi coloured stamped image.

 Winter, the hearts border punch, we used the direct to rubber technique to create the look of bark on the lighter tree.

I hope you enjoyed today's post and come back to visit soon

I hope you enjoyed today's post and come back to visit soon, I appreciate the time you have spent with me and would love to see feed back in the comments box, if there is a technique or particular set you would like to see me post, then please feel free to make a suggestion, I will endeavour to post your requests.

Thanks for stopping by, lots of inky hugs from ........

Mini treat bag.

 Hello to all you craft loving friends out there, Today's project is made using the new "Mini treat bag Thinlits die" which can be found on page 9 of the new occasions catalogue. This little treat bag is so versatile and can be made for all sorts of great gifts but with a little manipulation you can alter it to be a gusseted bag to hold bigger gifts.
 So the one I'm showing you today is the altered version but you can see the original being made before your very eyes on the great video that will be posted at the bottom of this post.
 Have fun creating and let me know if you'd like to see a copy of the new cataloges available at the moment, don't forget it's Sale-A-Bration time and there are so many awesome free gifts for you to choose from when you place a qualifying order with me, so please contact me for details or just click the "Shop" button on the right hand side to visit my web site with all the specials and projects for you to browse whilst sitting in your PJ's enjoying a cuppa.

I've also used the new "Spring flowers" textured impressions embossing folder which can be found on page 19 of the occasions catalogue.
check out this great video showing you some more ideas for using the mini treat bag:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFJTczcQfDk
lots of inky hugs from .......

butterflies galore.

Hi there fellow inky friends, I have been busy visiting my mother in law who is having a stay in hospital, she fell down on Australia day (before having anything to drink, I might add!) and broke her hip. So she has now had a full hip replacement and is in rehab till she is able to be more mobile again.
 This of course has played havoc with my crafting and blogging etc. so I hope to make it up to you over the next couple of days.
 To start with, here is one of the projects I helped some friends to make a couple of weeks ago, we used the new butterfly thinlets dies as well as some Stampin'Up! water colour paper, it was a lot of fun to put together and stands as an easel card when opened.
 I found the original version of this on Pinterest and it was pinned by L. Bauwin another talented demo from the US.
                                                     card open:

                                                  card closed:

I hope you like it, let me know what your favourite new tool or stamp set is from the occasions catalogue. Take care and stay inky. lots of inky hugs from..........

New stamps!

Hi everyone, I've been having lots of fun with the newly released stamps and tools in our Stampin'Up! Occasions and sale-a-bration catalogues so I thought you may like to see some of the creating I've doing. Here's one of many to be posted over the next few days, it's been made using the stamped image called 'Love is kindness' its a single wood mounted stamp and lends itself to all sorts of occasions, I've gone with the theme on the image of the flowers being wrapped in news paper and used some of the typeset designer paper to complete the look.
 I've used the one of the newly released Blendabilities colours which is Pink Pirouette and outlined the flowers in the lightest pen from the Coastal Cabana set. I must say I'm really enjoying using these new pens from Stampin'Up! and look forward to offering some speciality classes using these great alcohol based colouring tools, so if you've always wanted to have a go with alcohol pens and live in Western Australia I'd be happy to give you more information on joining my small classes or perhaps you would rather get a group of friends together for a workshop at your place.

 

Inky Hugs.....