Spooky Spooks like Stampin' Up! Spiders!

The bewitching hour came early recently at our local primary school end of term disco and Charlie was not to be left out. So we set to and at vast expense, well 89p from the local supermarket adapted a cloak to have bat like tails and painted his face to match.  He threw in the skelton gloves from last year's costume and there you have it, Master Charlie Batpire.

We also received a spider card from my downline Marrigje which is made using the spiders web embossing folder and punches for the spider.  She's also added a mini spider from the halloween stamp set Googly Ghouls and some googly eyes.  It's a great card for scary boys!!!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Stampin' Up! Halloween with googly ghouls and spiders webb

Have a great Halloween!
Zx

Food, glorious food.....

If you are local to Lincolnshire and in particular Horncastle please come and see our production of Oliver.  The cast is made up of local people from the various clubs the theatre runs ranging from young stagers to up stagers to the adults.  It's being performed at the Red Lion Theatre in Horncastle by Horncastle Theatre Groups.
It promises to be a great show and your support would be much appreciated. Tickets are available from the Music Shop in Horncastle. 

Christmas Card Club - Musical Theme

Firstly today I want to thank everyone who stopped by our stand at the Lincoln Sincerely Yours Craft Show on Sunday.  It was lovely to see so many friends and customers and to meet new people. 
It was especially nice to see Margaret from Christmas Card Club and put a face to a name. Thanks for stopping by I look forward to seeing you again.
That leads me to our challenge this fortmight for Christmas Card Club.  It has been set by Lizzie and she challenged us to make a musically themed Christmas card. As usual I'm a bit behind the curve so I checked  out some of the other club members and noted that some had used a Christmas song for their musical inspiration.  I've therefore based my card on the song 'Oh Christmas Tree' .  A loose link I know, but a link nonetheless!!!
Products used are all Stampin' Up! and I'm just loving the sparkly, shiny silver glimmer paper from which the stars are punched.  It's perfect for adding that bit of bling!!!!
Thanks Lizzie for a fun, challenge.  Remember if you're still behind with your cards for the festive season you can join our club challenge and have fun sharing ideas with others.  Do visit the other members of our club for inspiration there are some fabulous cards to see!
Back soon Zx
ps sorry for the lousy pic it's still thick fog here and I just can't get it better than this at the moment.

Cookie Gifts with Stampin' Up! Apothecary Accents

So if you visited my last post Stampin' Up! gifts for France, about Olivia's trip to France you'll have read that there was one more gift to share with you. 

Here is the cookie mix that she took to her french family.  They've made the cookies and eaten them all already and she told me they were delicious.

It makes a great teacher gift or one for a friend who likes baking. You just layer the dry ingredients and add some decoration to the jar, possibly a wooden spoon and of course a recipe for adding things like butter  and eggs.

I look forward to hearing about your creations.

Zx

Stampin' Up! gifts for France

Olivia left at 0130 on Friday morning to travel Cahors on her french exchange trip.  She wanted to take gifts for her new penfriend Amandine and her parents and so I promised I would make some for her.  The gifts included this rather nicely wrapped (if I say so myself) cookie press.  I'm just adoring the new Comfort Cafe designer series papers which I used to wrap all the gifts. 

You'll also see that I stamped on the new cotton ribbon available from the Stampin' Up! Autumn/ Winter catalogue.  I stamped on it with the Border Banter stamp set using cajun craze ink.  A vintage tag from the retired stock of last year and a new brushed bronze designer button added just enough vvv voom!

On the right is a gift for Amandine's father.  Men aren't easy to buy for at the best of times and when you don't know the person even harder.  I didn't feel we could send chocolates or wine to France...... and so this neat package contains a tin of mints labelled 'THE BOSS'. 

Amandine and her mum were much easier to make for...  I used the sparkly vintage faceted buttons to make a button bracelet for Beattrice and Olivia chose the colours that she thought Amandine would like for her button bracelet.  I cased Jenni Pauli's idea for decorating empty button boxes as the gift wrap for these.

I believe the gifts were well received and by all accounts Olivia is having a wonderful time.  She's spent the first weekend with the family and today went into the french school to meet her english school friends and those of Amandine, before visiting some historical venues in the city of Cahors. 

I'll share one more gift with you tomorrow. 

Have a great evening Zx

Supplies

Stamps - broadsheet alphabet, mixed bunch, tiny tags, border banter

inks - cajun craze, midnight muse

card stock - whisper white, midnight muse, summer starfruit, soft suede, vellum

accessories - blossom punch, labels framelit dies, designer buttons, large and small pearls, crumb cake seam binding, dimensionals, cotton ribbon

Christmas Card Club

Stampin' Up! Christmas Card

 This fortnight's challenge for Christmas Card Club is from Sylvie, who lives in Gibraltar and I'm very envious of her sunshine, but she warms up us with her lovely projects photographed often on beautiful days with the sun shining.  She asked us this time to make a card for Christmas using red and white. 

Mine errs on the side of clean and simple with some of my new products.  The petals a plenty embossing folder is just gorgeous with it's pretty all over flower design.  I've just embossed half of my card base and then stamped using a post it note mask in real red using part of the Creative Elements Stampin' Up! set.  A little bit of silver glimmer paper goes a long way in adding sparkle to your card and a sentiment heat embossed onto an Apothecary Accents Framelit (try saying that three or more times quickly!!)  with some mini brads give the Christmas message. 

It also goes along with the Less is More challenge of use silver on your card and as it's a Christmas card it also suits the clean and simple Christmas Card challenge at St Luke's. 

In Love with Stamping Blog Hop for Stampin' Up! AW Catalogue

 Welcome to everyone on the ILWS blog hop especially if you've arrived from Dawn's blog.I'm very late in posting my entry for the In Love with Stamping Forum blog hop to celebrate some of the gorgeous products in the Stampin' Up! Autumn Winter Catalogue so I won't chat much and will just let you know that the card above and below use the two step stamping set Watercolour Winter which is 
£22.95 129724 in wood mount and £17.95 in clear mount 129727.  Simple but elegant Christmas cards using the notelets and envelopes which are now only £5.50 for 20.

The 2 cards below have featured on my blog before and they use some scrummy snipets from the new seasonal catalogue, including the Snow Flurry Bigz Die, Festival of Prints mini paper stack trememdous value at £6.25 for 48 sheets, champagne glimmer paper which is perfect for that Christmas sparkle and also a glimpse of one of the new hostess sets in the new annual catalogue which launched today.  Check it out here on my stamping scene blog.

I've also entered the St Luke's Hospice Challenge with the two cards above as they are looking for clean and simple Christmas cards in their monthly challenge.  Please do visit the blog and see what you can do to help with just a simple card.

Now you must away to the lovely Fiona's blog to see her beautiful projects.



Yes I am going to UTAH with Stampin' Up!

Yesterday I hosted the first all day training event for my team The Tantalizing Stampers.  It was a fun and busy day and as usual had lots of chatter and the sharing of inspiration. 

However the day started with lots of celebration as several of my team have promoted over the past Stampin' Up! year.  With the help of my fabulous team and my lovely loyal customers I also celebrated the fact that I have achieved all that is needed to go on the 2013 Stampin' Up! Incentive Trip to Utah, USA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am so grateful to the team for their support and hard work and also to my customers for all their support and their love of all things Stampin' Up!.  Thank you all for helping me achieve this exciting milestone.

We spent our day in my new craft room above and sampled a little bubbly to get the day going with a swing!

We shared lots of tips and crafting and I particularly want to thank Bridgette who shared this lovely card with us which she took from the new Stampin' Up! Annual Catalogue which is now live for you to browse.

Special thanks also to Mandy who shared two different cards using the timeless stamp set Lovely as a Tree. Here's a picture of one of them.

Thanks also to my gorgeous family who help me so much with my Stampin' Up! business.  Martin made cookies with the new sweet pressed cookie stamp

Olivia did all the washing up and Charlie, well he stayed out of the way which believe me was a great help!!!!

A fabulous way to celebrate the success of a fun and friendly team.

THANK YOU ALL!

Zx