Up to the challenge

We have a Paper Angels Demonstrator meeting each month to share ideas and for the ones that are more business focused it is a great way to learn how to make your business grow. Our monthly meetings are so much fun and we are always given some sort of challenge, sometimes it is swapping cards and this particular time it was coming up with a party theme using our new Designer Series Papers (DSP). Well my brain immediately went into overdrive once again. Pool Party, Slumber Party, Kids Party, Tea Party, Birthday Party etc...
Each night I went to sleep I was designing a new party. Finally I decided on a theme and it came about while I was actually just trawling the net without even thinking about the challenge. I found a great pattern for a paper doll that I wanted to make for my grand daughter to play with.

Well that sparked the whole dolly dress up party idea for the challenge. Poor Christina missed out on the paper doll game as Nana was on a mission. I made the invitation first, then cut out the dolly in skin tone card stock. To make the clothes I placed the dolly down and traced around her shape.

The smaller doll is the name tag. I glued a magnet on the back so that it could be attached to a blouse with another magnet. The DSP I used was Attic Boutique from our Autumn Winter Mini Catalogue. The hair on the little girl was cut from the DSP. I loved creating the Cheong Sam, I popped a little strip on the bodice of Early Expresso and also up the skirt. Luckily the corset on the DSP fitted her perfectly so all I had to do was cut the tabs. We know that every girl needs a trendy outfit so she had to have some flares, aren't they cute? And of course what does a girl wear for her coctail parties.

Yep you guessed it a cute little cocktail dress. Now she is set to party.

Autumn Winter Mini is here

As promised here are a few ideas from the Autumn Winter Mini Catalogue.

For this first little card I have used the new Attic Boutique Designer Series paper. I wasn't sure it would go with this little pink dress but I love it.

This whole catalogue is full of the best stamp sets, dies and DSP that I have seen in a mini. It is going to be very hard to decide which ones I really, really need.

The Framelets dies - labels collection is one that I couldn't resist. It can be used as frames or a background. I can see a lot of use for these dies. They are now taking over from the Top Note which used to be my favourite. One of the ladies at our Tuesday craft day has used the die as a journaling mat for her scrapbooking. She has also cut her photos with the die and then cut a larger version in card for the matting.  I've used it here with the Rue des Fleurs stamp set as a Thank you card.

This was my swap for our Paper Angels group. I made 30 of these using Sahara Sand as the card, with Pretty in Pink and Whisteria Wonder as the backgrounds. The flower embellishment was made using the Bo Ho Blossoms punch.

Here is another Thank you card using the Rue des Fleurs stamp set.  This has a front strip opening up to reveal this cute pop up umbrella. As soon as I saw the umbrella I could see the potential of a pop up. First I tried it inside the card and that was OK but not spectacular enough. So I played around with the front. My brain was working overtime with the closure. Finally came up with the idea of  putting a slit in the Attic Boutique Designer Series paper and fastening with a circle cut out of the decorative strip from the Rue des Fleurs stamp set. I used the Stamp a ma jig to position  the decorative strip. The Pool Party ribbon was gathered by pulling a thread and gathering.