your last chance to earn FREE products

on Tuesday 19th March I am holding a Sale-a-bration party at my place here in Greenhithe. This will be my last event to be able to earn FREE products from the Stampin' Up! Sale-a-bration catalogue. We will be crafting and playing with new products, and there will be giveaways and other great things - plus I'll put on a lovely (fingers crossed hehe) supper afterwards.
RSVP by Saturday 16 March :)

with sympathy

One of the card that we have to make from time to time is a sympathy card. No one likes that we need these cards as it means that a sad event has occurred. But we do know that these cards do bring comfort to those receiving them, knowing that you are thinking of them during their sad time.
This particular card I made for some neighbours when I heard that the father had past away. I hadn't met the gentlemen with him being sick the whole time we've been at this house so it did make it a little difficult so I went fairly neutral. I used the big stamp from My Friend set - stamping it in Baja Breeze. I then went over some parts with the Baja Breeze marker pen to add some shading and also used the Marina Mist marker pen on the storks. I then added some white gel pen to give the highlight on the stamp too. I added some strips of Linen Thread to carry the neutral look to it all and mounted it on Crumb Cake card base.

welcome to the wonderful world of demoship

I recently celebrated with a new downline who joined Stampin' Up! to be a demonstrator. She is very excited about what she can do with Stampin' Up! products both creatively and as a business.
This is the simple card I made for her to go along with the bundle of goodies I give all my new downline. To make the embossing along the bottom and to not have it show the edge of the embossing folder you need to have a piece of card - thicker than normal card stock - but smaller than the actual folder itself - but larger than the part you want embossed. You make a sandwich with the card in the embossing folder where you want it, then place you scrap piece of thick card over the part you want embossed then put it thru the big shot AFTER you have taken all the 'tabs' off. Only the part under the scrap card will emboss on to the card, and NO edges of the side of the embossing folder will show! You can use this same technique with the little frame embossing folders too.
Happy crafting!

be a tall poppy!

I am known to enjoy my shopping and when I came across this lovely cup at a New Zealand shop called Stevens I just HAD to purchase it as I knew it was so much like our Poppy Background stamp. I raced home and created this card just to prove it! lol
I stamped the image after colouring the stamp with my Stampin' Up! Marker pen, the stems with Wild Wasbi and the flowers with Real Red. Then I went over the stamped image - this time I used Certainly Celery on the stems and buds and coloured in the flowers again with Real Red and highlighted the shadows with Cherry Cobbler and a bit of Basic Black for the centers. Really pleased how it came out and I enjoyed making it cause it doesn't matter how old you are you still enjoy 'colouring in'!!! hehe

leopard print background

Here is my attempt at a leopard print look. I decided I should give it a go after making the below stencil for my cloud card yesterday. I used a variety of colours and sponges to get the effect I wanted. Probably if I was to do it again I would create a stencil with the 'holes' closer together. The dress is from the All Dressed Up framlits and I embossed it. I cut the center part of the paper clip coat hanger so I looked less fussy. The tag/ticket says "fashionably happy' which are words from the All Dressed Up stamp set, but the whole stamp says something like 'happy birthday - fashionably late' which I didn't want so I cut out the words I wanted and attached them to the ticket. I coloured the linen thread so it didn't look so 'earthy' lol!

Today is the 2nd anniversary of the terrible earthquake in Canterbury that killed 185 people. My thoughts are with all those affected by the quakes. Also a good friend and ex neighbour lost her mum this morning too so BIG hugs to Joyce and her family.

on cloud nine!

I love the two new products that I have used on this card. Firstly the pinwheel die, makes making pinwheels sooooooo much easier - there are things other than like the bows I made on THIS card.
The second item I used on this is the Cloudy Day embossing folder. I used it in reverse on this card to have the texture on the inside so I could use the 'holes' on the front as I wanted to use my white gel pen to go around the clouds to make them stand out more. But I wanted the clouds to show up more so I made a stencil out of the embossing folder by embossing a piece of scrap card and cutting out all the clouds - yes I was mad!! lol I will show you tomorrow what the stencil looked like as I used it for another project.
To be honest at first I was worried that this card might look like a scene from the Teletubbies TV show but I think I just managed to escape that problem! hehe
see you tomorrow :)

Happy Stampin' Up! Birthday to ME!!! 4 years on!

TODAY is my 4th Stampin' Up! birthday - when I signed up to Stampin' Up! to become a demonstrator. I have LOVED every moment of this Stampin' journey - from playing with new products, sharing them and my craft with others and most importantly to me - the wonderful people I have met and made new friends!
I promised my husband that I wouldn't spend any of the 'family' money (ie his wages lol) on Stampin' Up! - I will only spend what I earn - and to this day that still applies! And if you can see from the photo below I have a fairly good craft room supplied with LOTS of amazing Stampin' Up! products.

I must admit that that photo was taken about 20 months ago when we had just shifted to this house and my room doesn't look as tidy as that now and more stuff is squeezed into that room. That is where I mainly teach as well as create in.
Now is the time to join in on the fun - during Sale-a-bration and to celebrate Stampin' Up!'s 25th Anniversary you only pay $189 for $356.50 worth of products - that 25% extra to normal! AND you pick what products YOU want to start your business or to improve your personal stash (known as a hobby demo).  BUT if you join TODAY on my Stampin' Up! birthday I will add a an extra bundle of goodies JUST FOR YOU!
Contact me TODAY! julia.leece@vodafone.co.nz :)

what do you call them??? - twisted easel card

Last night on Crafters Anonymous we made this card. Now here in New Zealand we call them 'jandals', Australian's call them 'thongs' (we call a version of underwear 'thong' in New Zealand hehehe) and I think everyone else calls them 'flip flops'. Regardless on what you call them we all have a pair we wear in summer. My boy like black and white ones so I thought I would make a masculine version. So I actually cut two bases (one black -for the underneath part) and I embossed the white part with the chevron embossing folder. I coloured the 1/4" taffeta ribbon completely with black marker to make it more solid in colour. To make the 'dude' I stamped some of the sentiments from Up Up and Away stamp set (which I also used on the inside of the card) and cut our roughly the ones I wanted. The brackets are from the Sale-a-bration set Pretty Petties and finally the 'arrow' from the Cute Clips - Hung Up.

The card itself is a twisted easel card. The arrow paper clip is holding it up, it makes a nice change to a 'normal' easel card. Like the Mum on Miranda would say - "such fun!" hehe

bows from pinwheel die

 I originally got this idea from Pinterest - gotta LOVE that site! lol  I did have to 'tweak' it a bit to get it to work on our new pinwheel die as the original one was like 10x the size of ours.
The card itself is made using the new oval framelits which has the biggest oval with a scalloped edge. I also used the matching piercing pack for the faux stitching which I then went around with my Pool Party marker pen. The DSP is from the Sale-a-bration (SAB) catalogue, the stamp set is ALSO available for FREE in the SAB catty as one of the Annual catty products available to be picked from the SAB - LOVE FREE STUFF!!!!! Email me TODAY to find out more on how you can get FREE stuff!!!
One awesome thing about SAB is that if you sign up to join the Stampin' Up! demo family you can get 25% extra products FREE with your starter kit. This awesome opportunity is only on till 22 March so you need to sign up NOW!!! email me directly on julia.leece@vodafone.co.nz. :)

Here is the link to the Pinterest site for the idea - http://pinterest.com/pin/76420524898862262/

I WON and came 2nd too!!

A couple of weeks ago I entered the Home Industries section at the Franklin A&P Show - this is the first time I've ever entered anything like that before. They were wanting to promote the show so allowed 'out of towners' to enter. So I entered two cards and am VERY happy to say I got 1st AND 2nd!

 This is the first prize card and below is the second as they were displayed today at the show.

Below are close ups of the cards - each had to have a matching hand made envelope.

 Above- inside card

 Above- front of envelope

 This is the card that came second - a stepper card that's 6" across. Below is inside the card.

 Below is the back of the envelope.

Valentines Day gift box

On Monday night Anne taught us how to make this cool box card. It's a cute idea with a box space on a card. I have made a Becky Roberts but this one is different because it has the spine so when it's shut like this it looks like a little box. I decorated mine for Valentines Day with help from the More Amore Specialty DSP, Hearts a Flutter stamps and dies.
Below you can see the inside, I stamped the 'Happy Valentines Day' stamp from You Are Loved stamp set directly onto the DSP. I also made the red chocolate hearts for the pocket which tasted not to bad! lol You could put tea light candles in too or anything that fits into the wee box.
I hope you had a lovely Valentines day and surrounded by the ones that love you. Here in New Zealand it isn't as big as other countries but my hubby and I went to Gold Class at the movies and had dinner during the film - action movie with Bruce Willis! hehe

JIMMY

Yet another version of the pocked scrapping system. This is my Father-in-law back in the day. The photo was taken in the South Island about 48 years ago (according to MIL! lol) I used the Print Poetry DSP stack again for this one and the colours are Midnight Muse, Whisper White, Gumball Green and Summer Starfruit. I used The Open Sea and Dapper Dad stamp sets.

BTW - wishing you all a very happy Valentines Day everyone!! xx