Sneaky peeky

I'm only going to show you a teaser at the moment. One of the Paper Angels has asked if I could make her a card for her auntie's 70th birthday using one of my little ladies. Of course I am always excited about having another reason to come up with something a little bit special for someone.

The snippit you can see is using the Reason to Smile stamp set. I just cut out some of the petals so that it looked better in her hand. The hat plumage is made by using the Crumb Cake seam binding ribbon and pulling the threads. I have also designed the background using the methond I saw at Convention. If you look carefully you may recognise the corset as part of the DSP called Attic Boutique, from the Autumn Winter Mini Catalogue. All I did was make sure I drew my little girl large enough to fit her corset.Don't you just love that paper?

The hat is made using a circle punch with a piece taken out, Crumb Cake and Pool Party cardstock. Finished off with a wee pearl. Now I can't show you the rest till I have passed this card on for the birthday girl so you will just have to stay tuned.

If you would like to receive a free Autumn Winter Mini Catalogue, just email or call me on 0402441964 and I will post one out to you.

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.

More little ladies

Liz Collett had made some cute wall frames using the Attic Boutique Designer Series Paper (DSP). the paper is so lovely it doesn't really need anything else BUT as I am in this crazy little lady faze, I suggested they could look nice with a little lady on them. She asked me if I could do that for her. So this is what I came up with.
The hair was cut from the Attic Boutique Designer Series Paper DSP as well. It was just a matter of finding the right piece that looked like curls. The dark haired girls were cut from Early Expresso card. The blue flower was cut using the scallop circle and then used the faux suede technique.
The pleats on the red skirt was created using the crimper, spritzing with water and then shaping it. I had to add the sliver of Early Expresso to make the bodice stand out.

The face and skin uses First Edition Specialty DSP. The dress was  Attic Boutique DSP from the Autumn Winter Mini Catalogue

My baby turned 40

It doesn't seem like 40 years ago that my youngest was born. It seems just yesterday that I myself was 40...
So of course had to make her one of my special ladies. I really love the Attic Boutique Designer Series Paper (DSP ) and seems to lend itself well to my little ladies.

I used Pool Party card stock and stamped the Umbrella background out of the Rue Des Fleurs stamp set found in the Autumn Winter Mini Catalogue.
My little lady was created using First Edition Specialty DSP for her face and arms. Her clothes and the ripped background was Attic Boutique. The hair Soft Suede, and....... for those who think if you make a mistake you have to start again. She did have 2 eyes but they looked wonky so her hair was restyled to cover the wonky one. No such thing as a mistake ey?

I was pretty happy with the result and Tania was delighted with it.

Another reason why I love Stampin Up

The other night I found yet another reason why I love Stampin Up. Everything coordinates. The card stock, the inks, the ribbons, the brads. It just makes things so easy.

The other night I had a friend over to have a play in my art room. She wanted to make a special 50th birthday card. She had heaps of card of her own but it was not Stampin Up card so nothing really coordinated very well.  I asked her what she had in mind. She wanted a cake that had a 50 on the top and kinda exploded with stars.  I drew up some designs for her and she tried various ways of getting things to look nice. By the end of the night she had tried various combinations but nothing quite worked. She had so desperately wanted to use her own card but realised that maybe using coordinating products would have helped.

Once she left I got out my card and worked on the designs I had suggested to her. I changed the cake to a stack of parcels and put it on the inside of the card instead of the front. I created a Pop-up with the parcels and a 40 (my dear SIL is turning 40 ) on the top with scrolls* coming out of the top parcel.
I added some pennants to the top to make it look like a celebration and looped them through linen thread. The front I used the same Pool Party card stock then layered  Attic Boutique DSP from the Autumn Winter mini catalogue. I stamped the cute little Seal from Under the Big Top stamp set on page 33 and coloured it with the Aqua painters.  Cut it out with the large oval punch and mounted it on a Soft Suede, Designer Frame found on page 157 which I then distressed. Stamping "Happy Birthday (to you)" also from the Under the Big Top stamp set, on the bottom to complete the card.

All of this went together so easily as everything coordinated. Just another reason why I love Stampin Up.

* Scrolls were created using my 1 3/4 inch circle punch and then cutting round and round like you were peeling an apple or orange.

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.