JAI #102 - Kathy Tanner Tribute

Coincidence is a funny thing. I was looking around for some inspiration for boys birthday cards, and I was going back through the archives at Stamping Still (Kathy Tanner's blog). Not trying to give her a big head, or anything, but I love Kathy's style and I think her cards are just gorgeous. Hers is one of the first blogs I turn to for inspiration. I found this card, and thought it was a perfect CASE for my theme. Imagine my surprise, when later on I head over to Just Add Ink and see their theme for this week is CASing Kathy!  It's taken me a few days to get to, but tonight I finally did it! Here is my version of Kathy's gorgeous inlaid embossed card:

I think I may have to re-do the Elebration stamp - I'm not quite happy with my dodgy stamp placement (note to self - you bought the damn Stamp-a-majig, USE IT!!), or even dodgier watercolouring ;)


So that's it for me for this month! Head over to JAI and see what the other creative minds have done with Kathy's creations :)

How could I forget....

SALE-A-BRATION IS HERE!!!

A very exciting time in the SU calendar - you get awesome bonus items when you order!
Have a squizz at the  Sale-A-Bration brochure online. 

Spend $100 on SU products, and you get to choose one of the lovely new products released just for Sale-a-bration! Even more bonuses for being a hostess too... let me know when you'd like to have a workshop ;)

We're aliiive!

We survived! 2 tired, frazzled, overwhelmed adults and 4 loud, whiney, screaming, fighting, tantruming, gorgeous, adorable children all survived our latest family holiday intact! More or less. It was a challenge at times, but for the most part  I think everyone enjoyed themselves. If they could have, I'm sure the boys would have spent all day in the pool, except Wil... he doesn't seen to be quite as keen. I must say though, it was very nice to get back to our own bed! Hotel beds are never comfortable, and having Max's portacot in our room wasn't exactly helpful in getting a good night's sleep.

Now all we need to get through is the rest of school holidays!

Things have been so busy, with outings, playdates and general goofing off, that I haven't had much of a chance (or inclination!) to get the craft supplies out. The other night a couple of friends came over and we cracked open a bottle (or 4!) of bubbly and we went crazy! My bud Jo brought her Silhouette machine round, and we did a bit of creative mish-mashing, and we're pretty proud of the results!

Here they are:

A bit of cute, simple and combo goodness!

Silhouette onesies, and Michelle goes crazy with the pink and green!

Dinos rule! And my quilted masterpiece ;)

I'm so proud of this one, I thought it needed a close up! (Can you spot the pretty new Sale-a-bration DSP? Huh? Can you??)

 Loving the versatility of the Stocking punch, and am totally in love with my cute little dragon!

Working on my watercolour skilz  with the help of the cutest little elephant in the world! And no post would be complete with out some owls :)

Butterflies part two

Here is a quick post, just to show the rest of the present I made for Ollie's friend's birthday.


First, the easel card to go with the present:

If you look veeeeeeeery closely, you might be able to see a sneak peek of one of the awesome items available in the upcoming Sale-a-bration! (How about the first person to spot it and comment will get a special gift from me...ready, set, go!)

Next we have the totally gorgeous (modest, aren't I ;)) gift bag to put all the goodies in. I found the very easy to follow tutorial for this bag on Jenny Hayward's blog. It was very simple to put together, and I think it looks so cute! I can see myself making loads more of these in the future.

And finally, a group shot of the loot :)

Ta-ta for now... I'll be back with more pretties after our little family trip - if we all survive!

Beautiful Butterflies

I am going to be ooooohhh so naughty today, and I'm going to try to have a rest while the twins are asleep and the big boys are playing Harry Potter! I know! How incredibly decadent of me to try to have a sit down in the middle of the day! Don't care though. Some days you just need to put your feet up and relax for a while. But before I get to go and do that, I must post about butterflies!! (well, hopefully... it may take a while typing on this clunky old keyboard. Apparently caramel lattes aren't good for laptop keyboards... who knew?)

One of my boys has a birthday party to go to on Sunday, so I thought I would try to make part of the gift. Since it's for a 5 (turning 6) year old girl, I was hoping that a cool, funky little note book would be well received. Of course, I am not actually capable of cool or funky, so this will have to do :)

I'm actually pretty happy with it - it came out almost the same as it was in my head (and my head more often than not waaaaaaaaaay overestimates my actual abilities). The beautiful butterflies die is, well, beautiful! There are so many options on how to use it, and let's be honest, who doesn't love butterflies?

I used the beautiful wings embosslit while I was at it to make some wall decorations for my future crafting space! I love the fact that the big shot and dies can cut through felt. I've even managed to get some types of felt to show up a pretty good pattern after going through the embossing folders.

Anyhoo, I'm off to put my feet up for the 5 minutes I'll be lucky to get before the twins' "Mummy is having a rest" radar goes off :) I'll be making a card for the party too, so I'll pop back and post when it's finished! I'm thinking top note easel.. but we'll see what actually happens later!

Mocha Diamonds

Woohoo... first post of the year! It's only taken me 6 days :) I'm actually amazed that I managed to get anything made to post about - having all the kids at home is not the best for the creative juices :)
Thankfully my darling husband had a birthday yesterday, so I had a reason to force myself to get jiggy with the stamping (yeah, I know.. I'm a sad, sad individual).

So here is my creation.

I love the mocha morning dsp - it's got such a lovely, decadent feel to it. It works really well for masculine cards too. The diamond fold technique is really quite simple, it just looks involved. This one only took about an hour to make - which is quick for me. That included measuring, cutting, choosing card/paper, watching tv, talking to people, spilling my delish frozen pina colada all over the table, cleaning it all up, getting a fresh drink and eating malteasers :) I'm so proud of how I can multi task ;)

Anyway, that's it for now. I have some grand plans for the near future, so hopefully I'll get some peace and quiet to see them through!

Post Christmas Geekery!

Helloooo! I hope everyone had a lovely and restful Christmas, I know I didn't :) It was complete chaos at our house, as usual. The lead up to Christmas was pretty full on, with lots of gatherings to attend, and then our two oldest boys woke up sick on Christmas Eve! Bastian was scaring me a little, because his temperature was so high he was hallucinating, absolutely terrified of things only he could see. But we managed to get the temp under control eventually, and he woke up on Christmas Day a little worn out, but much improved.

As happens almost every year, the boys got Lego for Christmas!! Boxing Day has been renamed "Official Lego Construction Day" in our house :) The boys love putting the minifigs together, but they're not really patient enough to see the larger parts through to completion, so that means Daddy and I get to unleash our inner children and play with Lego! We are not afraid to admit we love it.. so much so, that the last few years we have given each other Lego as presents too :) Look at what I got this year!!

It's pretty cool... eventhough he looks a little drunk when he's walking :)


I did promise you geekery, remember. So here is some more! Bastian's best friend is having his 7th birthday party today, and Bas requested this card for him:

He's a bit of a Dr Who fan (well, really, who isn't? David Tennant... mmmmmmmm), so the TARDIS was totes apropos. I found the basic design on Valita's blog, and I tweaked it a bit so instead of being a styandard card, the message was hidden under the opening doors. I was quite happy with how it turned out in the end.

We also had another birthday just before Christmas, so I thought I'd add this one to the blog too. I haven't used this set as much as I thought I would, but it works really well for the younger, male slot.

And just to finish off, a few pics of the delights of my life (well, most, some, every second day).

I know it's a day early, but HAPPY NEW YEAR!! I would come back and post at the appropriate time, but I have two buckets of frozen cocktails in the freezer with my name on them, so I fear I may not be able to :) See you next year!

More Christmas cards!

Just a quick one today... must dash off for school pick up!

I was very excited yesterday when the postman left a parcel for me... NEW STAMPS!!! I've been lusting after the Welcome Christmas set for a while and scored it 50% with the awesome December Frenzy sale. I had two more teacher cards to make, so I trotted out my supplies last night and made these. The first one I have seen so many versions of around the interwebs that I don't know who to credit for inspiring me, so I may just have to send out a general "Thank You" to everyone in the world, just in case ;)
The second card I can credit.. I was flicking through the galleries on Stampin Connection and saw a gorgeous creation by Bridgette Gray (it's not on her blog that I can find, but have linked so you can see her other lovely creations).

On to some non stamping crafts! A friend at school asked me if I would make some of my felt hair clip hangers for her to give as Christmas presents, so voila, here they are!

And one last photo.. my gorgeous boy Wil. He was happily sitting there clapping along to the songs in the car until, of course, I got the phone out to take a photo (while sensibly pulled over, not driving :P), then he pulled the grumpy face. Still cute though :)

Golden Dasher

Well paint me pink and call me Captain Slacky McSlackpants... it's been far too long since I last graced the interwebs with my awesomeness! I blame it on the pre Christmas chaos fest, though some may argue that I'm just lazy :) I actually have been really busy though, honest. Last week was mostly taken up with organising things for the kids workshop I had booked and helping friends get their cards, gift tags and assorted other goodies made. The kids workshop actually ended up being a success... I was a little apprehensive beforehand as I hadn't done a workshop specifically for kids before, and I was told there were going to be about 16 kids, with the youngest being 5! I had three very simple projects set up at different stations, all using only one stamp/set and one ink colour and that seemed to be quite a good way to go. No one had to wait too long to do anything, none of the inks got mixed up, and the older kids were great with helping the younger ones! Now if only I had remembered to take some photos on the day...I'll have to come back and add some photos of the projects instead :)

I do have one photo to add for this post, cos it'd be a bit boring without one. I made some gift bags for the boys' teachers a couple of days ago, full of chocolatey goodness, of course :) Here is the card I made to go with them. Nothing too flashy, but I do think Dasher looks quite lovely with the gold embossing. My friends will think it very unlike me, but I must admit to loving my new Very Vintage jumbo wheel - it's going on just about everything because it makes such a good background!

I decided to stick with fairly Christmassy colours a) because I like them and I think they look good, and 2) so I could enter some challenges!! That's right, I'm aaaaall about the challenges ;) This time I've used the Paper Players colour combo of cherry cobbler, very vanilla & gold, and I've decided that the sparkly gold embossing just qualifies for my fave challenge blog, Just Add Ink!

Card: Old Olive, Cherry Cobbler, Very Vanilla
Ink: Versamark, Pear Pizzazz
Stamps: Dasher, Short & Sweet, Very Vintage Wheel
Other: gold embossing powder, oval punch, modern label punch, real red ribbon

Lovely as a tree

A friend (Hello Michelle!) came over last night to make a few christmas gift boxes, but once she saw the card I was planning to make, she decided she *HAD* to make one too! I needed to make a pretty spesh christmas card for my oldest son's teacher to go with the gift the class has made for her. I didn't have much in the way of original inspiration floating around in my head  (I think it was drowning in cider and peach Omni!), but after a bit of a blog surf, I found a gorgeous card on Becky Jensen's blog.  I have kept it pretty much the same as Becky's creation but decided to try out a new technique.  Michelle had some tissue paper with her, which led to our first attempt at the faux silk technique... and I think they turned out really well! I used Always Artichoke for my background, but I also love the Rich Razzleberry too. I'm debating about whether or not to add a sentiment to the front.. I don't want to take away from the reasonably clean and simple design with too much frou - any thoughts?

Stamps: Lovely As A Tree
Inks: Crumb Cake, Bravo Burgundy
Card: Always Artichoke, Rich Razzleberry, Very Vanilla, Whisper White
Other: Vintage Wallpaper ef, Scallop Trim Border punch, Dotted Scallop Border punch, tissue paper, Chantilly Crochet Trim


I've been a bit slack with the posts, mostly because of my poor little/old man. My Stoli had to go to the vet to have his ears removed and cryosurgery on his nose :( He's home now and feeling very sore and sorry for himself, and I don't blame him. I feel really horrible about it, even though I know it was the right thing to do.. the cancer was getting worse and I didn't want it to spread and cause him more problems. Hopefully in a couple of weeks the stitches will be out, his fur will be growing back and he'll feel a bit like his old self. He's a gorgeous old man (14 years!) and I love him to bits!