This Is The Life

Yesterday was one of those Magical Mondays where everything went right (for a change!). My son was happily playing, the house was looking ship shape and I could finally breathe through my nostrils again!! So, when my son went to nursery in the afternoon, I indulged in my guilty pleasure; Project Life!!

I went through my album and picked out some unfinished pages that I thought would look good with my new 'This Is The Life' kit & matching accessories. The colour scheme is bright; Crushed Curry, Bermuda Bay, Cucumber Crush, Watermelon Wonder, and Rich Razzleberry, so I knew that it had to be for a summer page.

I printed the title 'The boys of summer' in as close a match to Cucumber Crush green as possible (printing is sometimes the quicker option for me). I did whip out my trusty and much loved Rotary Stamp though to stamp 'Kate's House' underneath a location sticker.  The 4x4 heart card is actually from Moments Like These kit, don't be afraid to mix it up if you have more than one card collection!!

I used the crushed curry letter stickers for September and stamped 3rd in Cucumber Crush using the Day to Day Project Life stamp set (one of my most used!). I love all the stickers in this set, but especially the clear/white stickers, they look so effective over the photos.

I finished the page by rounding the edge of the photos and cards using the Project Life Corner Rounder Punch, and scribbling my journalling using a Project Life Journalilng Pen. I think I may have to invest in some Stampin' Up! Write Markers on my next order for colourful journalling, to brighten my pages even more!! 

Why don't you have a go yourself? Project life is super easy, and fun.  You can find all the supplies you need to get started on via my online shop

Supplies Used:

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

What a wonderful festive weekend we had; meeting our friends for Christmas lunch on Saturday and chilling at home watching Christmas movies on Sunday. Somewhere inbetween all that I managed to grab a little crafting time.  I had ordered the gorgeous Winter Wonderland Designer Series Paper (DSP) last week, and couldn't wait to make Christmas stars with them.

I had made these Christmas stars a few weeks ago, but not with these papers. I'd seen them in the Stampin' Up! Christmas Catalogue and had to Pinterest them to find out how to make them myself.  After watching a video via Chic n Scratch I was all clued up on how to make these gorgeous handmade Christmas decorations.

They are so simple to make, you literally only need paper, scissors (I used guillotine as I have one), glue, a ruler, pen and glue dots. I finished them with lengths of metallic gold twine to hang them on my shelves.  If you like the look of them, go and check out the video and have a go yourself.  Don't forget to order the Winter Wonderland DSP via my online shop, hurry though as these beauties will be retiring after Christmas.

http://www.stampinup.net/esuite/home/annapickering/

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Celebrate Baby

Hello crafters,

Today I am babe free thanks to my kind parents looking after my son, while I recover from the cold I feel like I've had forever.  It's lovely having peace and quiet, and time to rest but I have had a list of crafty things to do for a few weeks now, so it's been nice to sit down and enjoy some leisurely crafting time.

Top of my list was to create a baby girl card for a new addition to my partners side of the family.  I decided to use the Celebrate Today stamp set & matching frame-lits that my lovely friend Kate had lent to me.  I looked for Pinspiration for my card, and found a lovely card made by the talented Sarah Berry.  I loved the simplicity of it, and how she had personalised it using the Sophisticated Serifs stamps.

I started by stamping Blushing Bride polka dots onto matching BB card, using one of the balloon stamps.  I then stamped the hot air balloon basket in Smokey Slate, the balloon itself in Blushing Bride again, layered with white embossed stars.  I chose Mint Macaron as an additional colour for the 'baby' bunting, and small layer of card behind Ellie, embossed in white.  I also used my new cupcake builder punch to create small sparkly white clouds, and the bow framelit as a finishing touch.

Inside I stamped another of the bunting stamps, 'celebrate' and 'baby' in Blushing Bride.  I love how you can create various layers with this stamp set, and combine phrases for any occasion.  As well as 'baby' there's 'birthday', 'wedding', 'graduation' and the word 'happy' for perfect pairing sentiments.

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I'm dreaming of a white Christmas....

This week I have been playing with the Tiny Treat boxes that have been sitting on my craft desk for weeks. I absolutely love these adorable little boxes, and used them last year to make an advent calendar. This year I wanted to do something slightly different.

I love all the beautiful Nordic Christmas decorations you see at Christmas markets, so decided to use them as my inspiration. I had lots of Winter Wonderland Vellum leftover, and also lots of Sleigh Ride cut outs I had saved when experimenting with the Sleigh Ride Edgelits to make cards.  I hate waste, and the materials aren't cheap so, I gathered as much as I could, trimmed them down to 2" to fit the boxes and then started to play around. 

I had in my mind a tiny "lantern" effect. I thought the vellum with the cute cut outs of houses, trees and sleigh with horse would look beautiful with a warm light behind. 

I used the 1 3/4" circle framelit to cut out a tiny window on one side of the box. I then stuck a 2" x 2" square of vellum to the inside of the box. Once that was in place, I chose a sleigh ride image and used the circle framelit again to trim it down so it would fit in the little circular window. I unfolded the box so it was flat, made sure the glue from sticking the vellum was dry, and then stuck the image to the front of the vellum. I soon realised that the sleigh with horse cut out wasn't going to fit inside the circle, and so decided to simple stick it to the outside.  

Once I was happy with the tiny window effect, I set about decorating the box. I predominantly used white and gold card, as that was my theme, and so cut the pieces down to 2" x 2" and then ran one of the squares through the big shot with the circle framelit, this was for the front of the box with the tiny window. The other squares around the box were simply stuck on. 

I added a bit more vellum to some boxes for that extra bit of Christmas magic (the tree box above had double gold snow falling vellum in behind and in front of the box). Top tip: when glueing vellum, always add the glue to the card first, wipe with your finger so you don't have "blobs" of glue, leave it for 20-30 seconds and then stick the vellum. That way you don't get any unsightly blobs of glue outlines through the vellum! 

I finished the boxes with gold metallic thread wrapped around the lid. That way you can get in and out of the boxes easily, to put an LED candle in, or even tiny treats if you're giving them as a Christmas stocking filler. Or you can stack them in Tag a Bag Gift Boxes like in the image below.

I got some cute gold glitter flickering LED candles from our local £1 shop, and had all my boxes lit up on the shelf the other night. As the song goes, "it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas". 

Why not have a go yourself? Don't have all the materials and equipment? Go to my online shop and get all you need to make these. Supplies are listed below and link to my Stampin' Up shop is on the right.  Use Hostess Code EE6YCCKA and receive a free gift with any order over £45.

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Trick or Treat

I've been lucky enough to be asked to be Guest Designer on this month's Memory Keeping with Project Life by Stampin' Up! So with Halloween just around the corner, I decided to look back on last year's photos and create a page using the new Seasonal Snapshot kit. 

I used professional photos taken from a Halloween disco we went to with fellow Project Lifer, Kate Denyer, and her son.  The photos were fab, but I didn't know where in the house to put them.  I thought what better way to display them than in my Project Life album using the Halloween theme cards from the kit, which also includes Back to School, Autumnal & Winter themed cards.

As the photos were larger than the pockets in the pages I had to trim them using the guillotine.  I was a bit nervous about doing this, as I had no copies of these photos.  However, I was really pleased with them, I love the overall effect.

I used Back to Basics letter stamps to stamp "Halloween Disco" and "Mini Movers" and the small round number stamps from Moments Like These stamp set, all in Basic Black.

I love how the rustic and black cards compliment the photos, but I felt the pages needed a splash of colour. 

I think the bright Tangelo Twist orange looks fab alongside my sons 'strawberry blonde' locks, and also the glittery spider web on my witches hat. 

I had a lot of fun finishing these pages with the wood shape and stickers from the accessory pack, making full use of  the bats,  letters and numbers. I love the vintage label lettering and couldn't resist creating an Instagram style tagline #toocutetospook.  These, and the peel off black and white letters and numbers  are great for creating titles if you have no stamps, or have little time to create pages.

Big thank you to Julie Kettlewell,the Yoda of Stampin' Up!, for kindly asking me to feature this month. You can check out more examples of the Seasonal Snapshot kit in action at the following blogspots:

Julie Kettlewell, UK - http://www.juliesjapes.blogspot.com

Delys Cram, New Zealand - http://delysc.wordpress.com/
Tina Gillespie, Australia - http://www.scissorspapercard.blogspot.com.au/

Constanze Wirtz, Germany - http://conibaer.blogspot.com

Janet Morrow Wakeland, USA - http://remarkablycreated.com/

Elizabeth Richards Peterson, USA - http://www.lenfantcheri.com/blog/

Kate Denyer, UK - http://katemakescards.blogspot.co.uk

Linda Higgins, Australia - http://lhiggins.blogspot.com

Paper Stars

This week I've been making paper stars. They're super easy to make, and quite addictive. I think they will look fab hung up as Christmas decorations. Here's how to make them:

You will need 2 x paper squares measuring 6x6", scissors, glue, pen, ruler & very small glue dots.

1. Fold your paper in half, both ways. 

So you have 2 creases and 4 squares, like this... 

2. Fold your paper diagonally, both ways... 

 You should be left with a lot of creased triangles. 

3. Take your ruler and measure 1 1/4 inch, or 3.2cm, from the outside of the horizontal/vertical creases. Draw a line like this on all 4 creases... 

Cut along all 4 lines with scissors. 

4. Next, fold the edges in towards the crease, like so.. 

Repeat on all sides, until you are left with a star shape.

5. Get your glue, and apply a smidgento one triangle. Fold over and stick over the other triangle. (Tip: glue the flap you are going to fold over, otherwise if you put glue on the other side you will have excess) 

Once you have done all 4, you should be left with a star shape like this... 

Repeat steps 1-5 on your other piece of paper, then when you have 2 stars apply glue dots to one of them like so...

Then stick the other star onto it, using a bit of pressure...

You should be left with a star like in the photo at the beginning of this blog. Add string to a point with a needle and hang from your window, or Christmas tree!! 

Project Life Seasonal Snapshot

Yesterday I had a self indulgent afternoon of Project Life using the new Seasonal Snapshot (SS) card kit & co ordinating accessory pack. I'm a little obsessed with this new kit as it has a rustic kinda vibe about it thanks to the Kraft cards & stickers. 

I used the white letter stickers for the date, (top tip: stick them onto the plastic pocket over the card to see if you like the lauout first, that way you can peel them off and move them if not!). 

It looked a little sparse, so I grabbed my Moments Like These (MLT)  stamps and stamped Friday in black on a one of the stickers from the SS accessory pack.

I trimmed this photo along the top so it fit neatly underneath the spots. I then used the black peel off letters for #NCT and again grabbed a MLT stamp for Moments. It fits perfectly in the SS sticker don't you think? 

I absolutely love this photo. Ellie's face is hilarious, with the boys in the background who look like her bodyguards. Had to think of something to capture that look, think "s'up" nails it!

I used my Project Life Day to Day number stamps (but you could use the SS number stickers that come in the accessory pack) and the 'today is' stamp from MLT stamp set (again you could use stickers).

I wanted a camera image, but as I don't have one I simply googled Stampin Up Camera Stamp and printed it off, cut out and stuck on. 

I finished the page with some journalling typed out on Word and cut out to fit the 6x4 card. You can print direct onto the cards, but I didn't want to attempt it with this tricky shape.  You can use the PL journalling pens to hand write it, but I like playing with different fonts too much!! 

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