Stampin' Up! Hearth and Home

I spent a fun day yesterday celebrating with several crafty friend the birthday of our lovely friend Lou.  You can visit her blog to see the fab things she makes with lots of LOTV stamps. She is a very talented lady.  

I showed them how to add ink to an embossing folder and had made a card for Lou using the same technique which I can now share with you.  I didn't realise either that she has a 'thing' about pumpkins so it turned out to be the perfect card for her.

I used the Stampin' Up! stamp set Happy Scenes with the coordinating Thinlits  dies called Hearth and Home.  You may remember I made a couple of other cards using the Thinlits recently one which was looking out of the window and one is a Stampin' Up! Christmas card looking in. The popular choice is looking out I think.  Here I've gone for looking out and have used some of my favourite 'knicker' lace in tip top taupe to add a pelmet to my window frame.  I coloured the image behind with the Stampin' Up! marker pens having stamped the image with Staz On ink to stop the colours from bleeding once you colour.  I also used a blender pen to lift colour from a couple of ink pad lids to add the sky and grass.  

All that's left is to wish a continued wonderful birthday week and happy birthday to you if you are celebrating this week.

More soon Zx

Christmas Card Club - Robins

Well I have been very busy for the last couple of weeks attending a senior managers meeting for Stampin' Up! UK, hosting a MacMillan Coffee, Cake and Cards event, several workshops which all totted up my career sales with Stampin' Up! and earned me a milestone award from Stampin' Up! as I reached my first £100K in sales.

I have all my wonderful customers to thank for their ongoing support of my business and their love of  our fabulous products.  I also have a fabulous team to  thank and my customers for helping me to achieve the 2016 incentive trip which gives me two tickets on an all expenses paid cruise around the Mediterranean next year.  I'd obviously love to take you all, but Martin, my wonderful hubby,  gets first refusal.  At least then he doesn't question how much I spend on crafting tee hee. Thankfully he doesn't read my blog yet!

So you can see how a fortnight has already passed since our last Christmas Card Club offering and this time our challenge is set by Sylvie who asked us to include Robins on our cards. I've got 3 on mine, but they are only wee and are part of the Happy Scenes stamp set.  I've set the scene with the Hearth and Home Framelits, looking out through the window onto a snowy scene.

Quick Tip Time
Picture yourself in the cosy room inside, sat in front of a lovely log stove and you can admire the embossed wallpaper.  Did you know that you can use a brayer on your embossing folder to add colour to your embossing?  Prior to adding your card stock (mine here is shimmery white) use your brayer on an ink pad and then roll it over one side of your embossing folder.  Depending on whether you want the debosed or the embossed part to be coloured depends on the side you add the colour on the folder.  Here I've added it to get the debased part coloured and so with this Stampin' Up! Boho Chic folder I added the colour to the side that has Sizzix printed on it.  Add your card to the opposite side and close carefully ensuring you don't move the card.  Whizz through your Big Shot and you have two tone embossed card.  Mine is very subtle as I used soft sky ink.

To draw out the colour of the Robin's red breast I've added some retired cherry cobbler seam binding and a scroll sentiment.

Remember to check out the other lovely cards in our club by visiting the blogs in my left hand sidebar. If you'd like to join our club please do let us know.

Enjoy the week ahead.
Hugs Zx

Christmas looking in

Stampin' Up! new Hearth and Home thinlits dies and matching Happy Scenes stamp set are proving popular as there is so much you can do with them.  Lots of folk have made beautiful cards looking out of the window, but I haven't seen quite so many looking in and so I decided to team the thinlits with some of the awesome new designer papers in the Stampin' Up! autumn winter catalogue called Home for Christmas and look in through the window to a gorgeous vintage Christmas tree surrounded by gifts.  

I've also just received my brick wall 6"x6" embossing folder so made use of it and of course a bit of smudging.  A little tip top taupe 'knicker' lace as I called it for some pretty net curtains and you guessed it my favourite touch of bling, although you need to be here to see it really as it's a very delicate touch of dazzling diamonds glitter to make the tree candles shine bright.  

Our tree is usually similar to this, although not quite so uniform as we've grown them in the garden and our ornaments are memories from trips to places like DisneyWorld and friends in Virginia.  

So my question is do you have a real or artificial tree?  Please leave a comment and let me know.

Remember if you like the weekly deals that this week's set will finish tonight around 10pm and a new set will be in tomorrow.  

Have a great day.

Zx