For inspiration, ideas, tutorials, techniques and classes on paper crafting, card making, scrapbooking and more using quality Stampin' Up!® products. gerlach@iinet.net.au 0421 482 578
It will be sad to see the holiday catalogue end on January 4th, because when it ends so many of the products in it will not be available any longer and some will be gone forever even sooner!
To give everyone a heads up, Stampin’ Up! has released the Holiday Catalogue Retiring list so you can pick up all those things on your list prior to them being retired or sold out.
Just be aware, the products on the retiring list will be while supplies last from today until January 4th, once a products sell out they will not be restocked.
I can’t believe it, Stampin’ Up! has 17 stamp sets on sale at 20 percent off for just a few days. This rarely happens, so check it out here and get your stamps ordered before the sale finishes on November 20th!
So you have the choice to order online or contact me and I can place the order for you, but don’t wait as this is for one week only!
So I finally got some time today to play with some of the new stamps that I got on pre-order, I love that perk about being a demonstrator!
I am loving this holly stamp, the choice of making the holly berries red via red glimmer paper and the owl builder punch – well all I can say is once I started I sort of had to keep going and thank goodness for the new fine-tip glue pen, otherwise I think I would have been in a big mess! Next time I think I will order the Cherry Cobbler Dazzling Details as that will make my life easier.
The red foil that I used on the card is new and contrasts beautifully with the gold foil, do you like the new gold cording trim at the top of the ornament? So many lovely new things coming in the Holiday catalogue – if you want to join us to play with the items on September 5th, please see the post here for details or if you don’t currently have a demonstrator contact me and I will happily put a copy of the new catalogue in the mail to you.
I love the simplicity of this stamping style, it is simply just inking up the clear block, in this case ‘D’ size and stamping it onto the card stock. Every imprint is unique and the best coverage of ink can be achieved by stamping whilst using the foam piercing mat underneath.
The card stock dimensions are Very Vanilla 8cm x 14.8cm, Typeset DSP 10cm x 14.8cm (on sale this week with the Weekly Deals) and the sentiment strip is a 2cm wide strip of Very Vanilla. The fish tail on the end of the sentiment is done by hand, layered onto a piece of Burlap ribbon that I had pre-frayed the edges of.
Who doesn’t love receiving presents? Well last week I got this amazing package in the mail – isn’t it cute? A friend sells the Your Inspiration at Home baking spice things and I made a purchase form her recently (as I love their chilli hot chocolate & caramelised balsamic vinegar) as she needed some extra sales to get a promotion & what are friends for?)
Anyway as part of her promotion sales call out she offered up some prizes and I won one – how beautifully packaged they are in the Stampin’ Up! gift boxes, some designer series paper and a doily. Very pretty, very achievable for any crafter that I felt the need to share, of course if you’d like to check out her range you can do that here.
The original peppermint crisp slice recipe is here and I got introduced to it from Sue, but like almost everything that I come onto contact with I changed it from the original, primarily as I don’t like waste or white chocolate (which isn’t chocolate its white sugary blah – the only real chocolate is DARK chocolate – quirky rant over).
Hmmm peppermint crisp slice
It is simple to make and stores nicely in the fridge (hahahaha, who am I kidding I have males in the house – I’m lucky if this lasts 2 days, although in my defence generally half of it gets taken to a crafting event). It is also a fun recipe to make with children as it’s quick and no bake.
My modifications are:
1. I use approximately a packet and a half of milk arrowroot biscuits as there’s more than enough sugar in this recipe without the need for me to add sugar coated biscuits!
2. I use a whole tin of condensed milk (as I hate half tins of the stuff)
3. I melt the butter and condensed milk in a large pyrex jug on medium setting, stirring a few times to ensure it combines nicely
4. I use about 200g of dark chocolate for the topping (not white), to which I also add about a tablespoon of butter so that I can slice it easier otherwise I find the chocolate shatters
5. I only purchase the peppermint crisp bars when they are 50% off at the local supermarkets as otherwise it’s an expensive slice, they go on sale at least once a month at our two major supermarket chains so it’s not like I have to wait long to stock up although I do get a few strange looks when I buy 6 of them at a time!
This weeks Weekly Deals are AWESOME – especially if you are like me and starting to prepare for the Christmas season as there are some great sparkly and shiny items that you can really save money on at the moment.
I thought it was about time I blogged the recent Ronald McDonald House Charity (RMHC) fundraising event that I was involved in – so get comfy as this is a REALLY long post, I thought about splitting it up into multiple posts, but I know me, I’d start and not finish and I don’t want to leave you hanging! I did some of the photos as galleries so as not to clutter it too much – thank you to the fabulous Marleen for letting me use her picture at the bottom of the post and to Teresa for the bird on a wire card that I CASEd from her.
Stampin’ Up! if you didn’t know is a global sponsor of the RMHC and over the last 10 years has donated over 1 million dollars (US) to the charity. We are fortunate in Perth to have RMHC houses located near our children’s hospital, but they are always full and we can’t wait for the new hospital and new RMHC units to open over the next few years which will be able to accommodate a lot more families. It really is a charity that benefits everyone and although we hope that you never have to utilise their services, it is wonderful to know that they are there if you need them.
We had 25 fantastic ladies join us for a full afternoon of stamping fun, in that time we played party games, ate yummy food & of course stamped! These were the goodie bags which contained the kits, stamp set and a sugar treat.
We created a notecard box and set of 4 notecards on the day – I totally love the Stampin’ Up! notecards in white or crumb cake for making up sets of cards, $10.50 for a pack of 20 makes them great value as well. We endeavoured to show just how versatile the Sprinkles of Life 22 piece photopolymer stamp set is. The set is just $37 of which $3 is donated to the RMHC, it does have a matching punch, but only the stamp set was included in the price of the day so at the start of the day we had already through the stamp set sales donated $75 to the charity – not a bad start really……
Crumb cake notecard box with an ice cream belly band
Hot air ballooning fun
Inlaid embossing cupcake
Birds on a wire
Basket of flowers
Don’t forget to stamp the envelope as well!
Tags for the kit bags and every prize had a tag
The notecard box was made using the envelope punch board and this template that I blogged the dimensions of etc. last year here. We had over 35 raffle prizes (which of course I forgot to take a photo of), the majority were donated by Stampin’ Up! however there were some other prizes of wine, chocolate & body products donated by the very generous Kia, Catherine & Sue. There were +18 game prizes, 2 door prizes, first to pay prize and probably some more, but I’ve forgotten now! We had a guess the number of sour bears in the jar, put the spot on the dot (blindfolded), heads and tails, and pass the parcel as our children’s party games. The five simultaneous rounds of pass the parcel was a lot of fun – although I am mean and only put two prizes in each parcel not a chocolate frog in every layer – sorry girls!
Game: put the spot on the exclamation mark (blindfolded of course)
Busy creating and chatting
Envelope punch board in action – awesome for making boxes
Pass the parcel!
No children’s party would be complete without food and we did have some dip and crudities, but of course I only took photos of the sugar laden items!
Hmmm peppermint crisp slice
Fairy bread
Cupcakes with sprinkles
Honey joys
Chocolate brownies & peppermint crisp slice
You can see in the photo below from one of our participants that we really did try to ensure everyone got to share the prizes and inky fun. Everyone on the day also got to take home a special little thank you from us which was a test tube full of sprinkles to say thank you for coming and having some fun and helping to raise over $700 for the RMHC. If there is a fundraising recipient that you would like to get crafty and raise funds for, please let me know as I’d love to help, it doesn’t have to be a whole crafting event, it could be hosting a party and donating the proceeds, there are lots of options.
Anyway it was a fun four hours, a big thank you to Sue for organising it and asking me to assist as I genuinely enjoy sharing what I love doing. If you couldn’t make it along on the day, we still have a couple of kits available that you can get via a donation to the RMHC and you can purchase the Sprinkles of Life stamp set until the 31st of May 2016 and/or the tree builder punch which makes it easier to use the stamp set from my online store here or by contacting me with your order.
Have you seen the fantastic Project Life items in the new catalogue? There are some amazing new items and don’t forget you can save 15% when you purchase the bundles.
If you need some hints on taking different styles of photos to give greater variation in your albums or just how to make your existing style even better, why not check out Becky Higgins’ top 10 tips on taking Project Life photos.
I am loving how versatile the Sprinkles of Life stamp set is, I always purchase the Ronald McDonald House Charity (RMHC) stamp set each year, because well I do. This year however I am totally loving how amazing this set is, maybe it’s because it has a matching punch or so many different sentiments to make it suitable for lots of different occasions.
Here’s one that we made in a recent Christmas stamp-a-stack, cute, easy and fun!
Three dollars from every set sold goes to the Ronald McDonald House Charities, as a global sponsor of the RMHC, Stampin’ Up! has donated over one million dollars to the charity so each an every time someone purchases this set, it really does help to make a difference to the families of a lot of sick children.
Emboss the Real Red card stock 4 7/8” x 3 3/8” with the Lucky Stars embossing folder & adhere to the Crumb Card notecard base
Stamp the tree stamp in Chocolate Chip ink on Crumb Cake ink, punch them out
Stamp sentiment in Real Red ink on Whisper White card stock 1 ½” x 2” and layer onto Crumb Cake card 1 ¾” x 2 ¼”
Punch owl body & small eyes from Soft Suede card stock, punch small eyes in Whisper White & one large eye in red glimmer paper
Cut the feet off the owl body and make the reindeer using Tombow glue.
Punch two apples in Basic Black and cut the stems off for the hooves
Adhere everything onto the base Crumb Cake notecard
