Stampin' With Michelle Pepper

Today's share is a fun happy INTERACTIVE card - and the great thing is that it comes together so fast with the Circle Card Thinlits! The fun pattern paper is from the Cherry on Top 6 x 6 Designer Series Paper Stack which will be retiring on 31st May 2016 - I am so going to miss it!!! Did you notice the candles? Made with the also retiring Cherry On Top Designer Washi Tape - gotta love Stampin' Up for well co-ordinated products. Finally can you guess how I got the "flames"? The wing from the Bird Builder Punch! I am sad that this well loved, versatile punch will also be retiring at the end of May - sob sob. When you open the card, the circle flips and you see a different message on the other side of the circle. How fun is that! This "fancy fold" card comes together in no time at all with the Circle Card Thinlits! The sad thing is that these Thinlits dies (the set comes with a few dies) will also be retiring on 31st May. But the GREAT news is that...

Just wanna showcase the cards made by attendees to my Friday class last Friday :-) This one here is on the ever classic Cherry Cobbler. And this is Sandra, the creator of the featured card for today's blog post :-) What you wouldn't have guessed is that this was her first time stamping and her first experience with Stampin' Up! products!  And now the good news is that I am repeating this class on Tuesday so I'd love you to come join us: Thanks so much for stopping - I hope you are inspired one way or another :-)

Sale-a-bration 2015 is coming to an end - 31st March (that's TOMORROW!) is the last day you can take advantage of this year's bigger and better Sale-a-bration. The Best Year Ever Designer Series Paper featured in the above set is only one of the many Freebie options when you spend $110. View the Original SAB brochure online if you don't have a copy (please note Blendabilities are no longer available) View the additional SAB Free items available from March. View catalog items available as SAB free items available from 17th March. You have till 11.59pm tomorrow to shop online with me or email/txt me to place an order with me by 10pm tomorrow - so hurry for your last chance to grab some SAB freebies! See this beautiful flower? This is made with the Originals Flower Spiral Bigz Die . The great thing about the Bigz Die is that you can cut fabric and felt with it as well as paper - oh the possibilities! Well, I just thought I'd better mention it here, becaus...

These were inspired by Monica Gale, a UK demonstrator. You can see her card  here . Quite a few families in our local homeschool group are having new additions this year so I will be looking more closely at all the welcome baby stamp sets from Stampin Up. When I made these cards, I had no current baby stamp sets, hence I pulled out the retired Curvy Verses from storage. I love that sentiment: "One baby, many happy hearts." So true! Just a quick tip: while I like to use up every inch of the card stock, sometimes, when I punch out a shape, like the flower from the Blossom Punch, I keep in mind that I could use the "negative" side (see pic below) as well as the positive (the Blossom shape itself). For example, I could layer the negative over a piece of DSP or as in these baby cards, I used it as a matting layer. Thank you for visiting today.

Miss Resourceful K10 came bounding in today, announcing excitedly, "I've got to do some stamping today." She had just received a journal from her dad's cousin and on the front cover is the quote which she remembered I have a stamp of. We set to play after our families' weekly science get together. I talked her into making a framed art that Aunt A could have on her dresser to remind her of Miss K. Once she decided on the patterned paper to use, the rest of the design came together fairly easily. Except the decision of whether to use butterflies or birds or flowers or a combination. I'm happy to say Miss K left this evening with not only the framed art but also a thank you card. The Wisteria Wonder layer, if you hadn't noticed, is the "negative" of the flowers used in the framed art. Well, I just noticed that one of the leaves was in the wrong green colour - ha! Kinda goes with the crooked sentiment then - which you probably wouldn't ha...

This is the second card I made for the combined CAS(E) This Sketch #73 and Runway Inspired Challenge #58 . As mentioned in my previous blog post , the patterned paper triangle pieces in this card were the scrap from cutting out the half hexagon shape used in the first card. Unlike the first card, it worked in this card to put the flowers from the sketch in. I already had the flowers in my "left over stash", ie the ones that didn't get used on previous cards because either they were just the extras I made in case I needed them, or the end result wasn't what I imagined so they didn't get used. I should really put these into jars because "my flowers jar" sounds better than "left over stash", but I digress...The leaves were from the Bird Builder Punch (#117191) and then inked up with En Francais  (WM #128562, CM #127790) in Crumb Cake colour. I am not sure if you can see there is actually faded details on the crumb cake hexagon portion...

In the last post I asked you to guess what else were in the upcycled gift bags I recently donated to the Auckland Home Educators Art & Craft Fair. The answer is, of course, some hand made cards :-)  Well, I wanted to add some hand made cards too, and of course, I didn't think of the idea till the last minute, so I put these together the night before the event. Fortunately, these came together very quickly - thanks to beautiful patterned paper and punches.  I made a set of 3x3 cards and a set of 4x4 cards, dictated by the amount of matching patterned paper that I have. This retired DSP, Love Amore, is an old favourite. The co-ordinating envelopes were a breeze to make with our Envelope Punch Board - love that tool! Some close up pictures for your enjoyment :-) This next card features the Banner Blast stamp set and its co-ordinating Banner Punch that you can get for FREE during Sale-a-bration (SAB) time. Spend $110 during SAB and you'll get one free item, ...

It's my friend Carrie's birthday and since we haven't got a car at the moment, I haven't been able to go shopping for a present. So what do you do the night before? Well, you make a handmade gift! My inspiration came from SU! Demo Tania Bell who had shared in July a  video tutorial  on how to make a lidded box from a single 12" x 12" sheet without cutting.  Problem was, there was no instructions for the smaller boxes so imagine the mental gymnastics that I was doing late at night (as I got too engrossed in watching Iron Man 3 to multi-task as I originally planned, so I got to working on these close to midnight, lol).  I am quite proud of myself, so these measurements are available at the bottom of this post, for your convenience :-) The smallest box in this set had room for only one Ferrero Chocolate. I managed to squeeze in 2 treat size of Picnic bars in the middle box, and the largest box is good for 3" x 3" cards (I made a set of 6 card...