I hope you’re ready for another ESAD Christmas Blog Hop!

What is ESAD?

ESAD stands for Extra Special Australasian Demonstrators and it is an online group just for Australian and New Zealand demonstrators for Stampin’ Up!

We so love what we do and not only do we love to share it with our customers, friends, and wonderful blog visitors but we share our love for what we do with each other as Demonstrators. We run swaps, challenges, tutorials, product know how and cyberstamps and we are always there to help and support each other when its needed.

So if you are a Stampin’ Up! Demonstrator located in Australia or New Zealand then please feel free to click here to join our wonderful group.  My father (who is popping in for a visit so Hi Dad) brought me the mini milk carton die from out catalogue as a birthday present.  I have had so much fun with this die and am excited to show you my first creations using it.

I have made some lovely little boxes with the die but they would look lovely with a string attached to the top and hanging from the tree.  I am going to make a couple for the grandchildren with some lollies in for Christmas.  Lucky they dont read nanny’s blog yet.  I cut a couple off cms of the bottom of the die so I could fold the bottom flaps into each other. I havent sealed them so they are a little wonky in the photos.  I have chosen for these designs to make the cartons bottom opening rather than the top so they can be used as ornaments if desired. I have four different designs to share today and a couple more that I will share later in the week.

The hat on the owl is now retired but I did look in the catalogue and the accessories for sock monkey set has a hat that could be used I just don’t have that set yet.  I also didnt have any Christmas paper so that is also retired (if only my budget matched my wish list ) The lovely little pearls on his vest are in our catalogue and are just so adorable.  I love the punches in our catalogue and have used both the bird punch and the owl punch in the first two cartons.  If you need any more information on products used or would like to learn how to make these or any other items or would like to purchase any of the items used please contact me. You can also use that link to sign up for my newsletter. The idea of using the carton as a bird house isnt unique and I am sure some of you have seen versions of the same thing.  I do hope you like my slant on the idea though.The next box I want to share is as far as I am aware a unique idea (I havent seen anything similar).  I have tried to create a little gingerbread house.  Hope you like it. I have tried to make the door look like licorice strips and the trim to look like icing. The roof was supposed to look like chocolate covered sponge or those yummy mint sticks. Didnt quite come off as anticipated but I am still fairly happy with it.

The last one to share for today is a snowman house.  The snowman has been created using the frosting technique to give him some texture and glitter

Thanks for dropping in for a visit. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think and to let me know you were here.  The next stop on your journey is with Jane Norrish and you can find her here.    (if you didnt arrive here from the previous stop in the hop you can find it here with Monique ) I look forward to reading your comments.  I hope you come back to visit again.  I have a few more design ideas for the milk carton christmas ornaments on the drawing board and a few other ornaments in the making.  I hope you will return to see what is to come.

My blog has been sadly neglected for such along time.  Unfortunately I am not the most knowledgeable when it comes to working on blogs and websites and had a hard time getting my blog to meet SU guidelines.  I needed to get a disclaimer on the blog and despite lots of attempts and efforts had a hard time working out how to do it.  The good news is persistence paid off and I worked it out.  I can now blog again YAY.  I decided the best way to celebrate this was to participate in the ESAD blog hop that starts tomorrow.

I have been busy creating with the new items in the catalogue and can’t wait to share them with you so stay tuned for more.

A friend of mine has been busy lately with making items for her sons school fete.  I decided to give a helping hand and have been busy making some bits and pieces.  I will share some of them now.  The rest will have to wait until tomorrow as I was so happy with my project for the hop that I made some for the fete.

Some of the materials used in the items for the fete are no longer available.  It was a great opportunity to use some of the stash I have built up and for a good cause.  Enjoy!

These lovely little bags were shown to me by a fellow demonstrator and friend Wendy when we were making swaps for the Brisbane regionals.  They were so cute I had to make some myself.  I found some cute tiny post it notes in the shops recently and they make such a cute addition to the bag with their little cover.  (there will also be a little pencil in the set that isnt included in the photo).  The flowers are from my stash of bits and pieces that I need to start using as they have been sat for too long.

A cute little stocking stuffer idea for xmas.  These are upside down chuba chups with a decoration added to the stick.  Cute little idea.  I will be making a heap of these for my granddaughter to give to her friends at school at the end of the year.

The last few photos are some little books I made.  My friend was given some pens to be added to items made so I made some books to match the colours of the pen covers.

The latest promotion with Stampin Up! is free ribbon with selected Christmas bundles.  Great chance to start those cards and gift wrapping ideas for Christmas.  One of the bundles includes some beautiful scrapbooking papers that are not in the current catalogue.  A picture of the papers is included for you to see how stunning they are.

It’s finally here. It has been awhile since the last catalogue release and I know many of us have been eagerly awaiting the new catalogue. I must say I love it, once again it is full of wonderful ideas and inspiration. If you would like to receive your own copy of the catalogue there are a few options. One is to purchase a copy or you can receive a free copy either by hosting a Stampin Up workshop or by joining one of my stamp clubs. For more details contact me.

I am so excited to be taking part in my very first Blog Hop.  This blog hop has been created to help celebrate Stampin Up’s Sale-a-Bration  and is brought to you by a group of Stampin Up demonstrators that are all part of a yahoo group called ESAD. Through the yahoo group demonstrators are able to support and encourage each other as well as sharing ideas and friendship. If you are a Stampin Up demonstrator and may be interested in joining ESAD details can be found here. 

Sale-a-Bration  is a great fun and a fantastic way to receive free stamp sets. Sale-a-Bration runs from 25th January to 31st March 2010.  There are three ways you can recieve a free set/s. 

1. Place an order of $100 or more before postage and receive one of the sale-a-bration sets available for free (one set for every $100 spent ie spend $200 and receive 2 free sets)

2. Host a party with total sales of over $600 before shipping and receive a free sale-a-bration set in addition to the fantastic hostess thankyou rewards.

3. Join Stampin Up as a demonstrator and receive a free stamp set from the Idea Book and Catalogue valued up to $79.95. 

You can view the Sale-a-bration catalogue here for more details and to see the sets that are available.

One of the sets available for free is called Happy Moments and is a wonderfully versatile set that can be adapted to any occasion and anyone…young, old, male or female. 

Here I have made a couple of easel cards using the set. 

This is the easel card shown as a frontal view. 

and a side view.

The card folds flat for postage as shown here

I made another easel card using the same stamp set.  After finishing making this card and putting it to one side for a few hours I remembered that I had initially planned to experiment with a new technique for this post.  Here are versions 1 and 2 of the card. 

One of the benefits of being a demonstrator is the ideas and inspiration you can get from the Stampin Up website or the Impressions newsletter.  A recent Impressions had the instructions for a frosting technique.  It looked fairly easy and the results were pretty amazing.  Here is a close up of the frosting part.  I will be teaching this technique at classes or workshops this year contact me if you are interested in more details.

Thanks for dropping in for a visit.  The next stop on your journey is with Julz Johnston and you can find her here.  Dont forget to leave a comment on all the sites you visit for your chance to win some fantastic blog candy.  (if you didnt arrive here from the previous stop in the hop you can find it here with Jenny Hayward) I look forward to reading your comments.  I hope you come back to visit again.  I will be posting more sab samples and other cards in the next few days.

Here are two Valentines Day cards that I made recently.  There is only a very slight difference between the two cards but I thought I would show you them both anyway.  They are both created using the I {heart} hearts stamp set.

Stampin Up is such a fantastic company to work with.  They have been involved in many relief projects in the past and when news hit of the tragic earthquake in Haiti it was no different and Stampin Up has found away to support the American Red Cross and the people of Haiti. 

From now until 28 February 2010, $2 from every I {Heart} Hearts stamp set sold will be donated to the American Red Cross’ Haiti Reflief and Development Fund. The Red Cross is already well-established in Haiti, and this money will be used to provide immediate relief and long-term support through supplies, technical assistance and other support to help those in need.

Posted below is the release put out by Head office about the Haitian disaster relief program

“We have all been riveted by the happenings in Haiti, where on 12 January an earthquake literally destroyed much of this poverty-stricken nation. The death toll has reached hundreds of thousands, and millions have been left homeless, without food and water.

Like people all over the world, Stampin’ Up! employees, demonstrators, and customers have yearned to help. We are pleased to announce our Haitian Relief campaign, which allows demonstrators and customers to get involved in our relief efforts.

From now until 28 February 2010, Stampin’ Up! will donate $2 from the sale of every I {Heart} Hearts stamp set. These proceeds will be donated to the American Red Cross Haiti Relief and Development Fund, and the money will be used to provide immediate relief, as well as long-term support. In addition to this, Stampin’ Up! purchased supplies for 5,000 hygiene kits; a few of our vendors also donated supplies for these kits. Stampin’ Up! employees assembled the kits last week, and the kits will be sent to Haiti through a relief organisation already working in Haiti.

We thank you for your interest and support in our Making a Difference efforts, and are so proud to be associated with people who care so deeply about others. ”

If you would like to place an order for the I {heart} hearts stamp set please contact me

I have had a huge issue with spam comments and as I was unaware how to fix this problem I was put off updating the blog. Everytime I came to try to post something I would have to spend ages removing all the comments and was achieving nothing productive.  Only to come back the next time to do something to find heaps more.  Well I am pleased to announce I have learnt how to install a program to help control the spam and now I can start blogging.  Woooohooooo.  I have decided to post a few posts with a retrospective look at the year that was so there is something for you all to start looking at and then I will keep posting with the year to come.  I feel a little like Ebinizer scrooge with the visit from the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future.  I hope you enjoy my retrospective look at some of what I did during the year and will continue to come and visit and see what I am currently up to.  I have worked out how to put the posts in some sort of date order so will attempt to post retrospectively on the year that was in a chronological order.  I am looking forward to sharing with you all in 2010 and hope you will provide some comments and feedback so I know I am not talking to myself.  I hope to share my thoughts and ideas as well as some tutorials and step by step card instructions.  A few of my regular class attendees are moving or have been transfered away so I hope by providing some step by step instructions nd tutorials I will be able to keep in touch with the girls and they won’t miss out on what we are doing as well as inspire and share with some new friends.

I have been playing with the Faux Leather Technique and have really enjoyed myself with this technique.  The first card I made was used at the Carers Retreat I was asked to be a guest at.  I then created two more cards with the technique to show my team as I used it as a team challenge. 

This is the first card I created for the Carers Retreat.

This was a great card to teach at the retreat as I was teaching both men and women who may or may not have stamped before.  The two ladies who ran the retreat were both scrapbookers and stampers and both were keen to go home and try the technique on a scrapbook page.  I have since seen Katrina’s page and wow it looks great as a scrapbook page background.

I created two more cards to share with my team of ladies to give them some more ideas before they sat down to create their cards as part of the team challenge.

This ute card needs some finishing touches.  I need to add a face to the drivers seat and something in the back of the ute but I will still share with you all and perhaps when I find time to finish it I will share the new improved version.  There are two features of this card I want to draw your attention to.  The first is the trailer behind the ute.  I love the way this has turned out.  It is created by stamping a second copy of the ute and then just trimming the cab part of the ute away.  I kept the bottom of the door intact to create the towbar.  The second part of the card I want to draw your attention to is the brads.  They are punched out of the background card with the cropadile and then coated with crystal effects.  What a great way to get your brads to co-ordinate and also add a pattern to your brads.  Anyway enough from me….heres the picture.

The third and final card in this post was a quick card I created for hubbies birthday. 

Sorry about the quality of the photos my challenge for when I find time is to improve my photo editing and photo taking skills.

Polished Stone is one of my favourite techniques and it was great to team up such a fun technique with what has to be one of the most versatile stamp sets in the current catalogue.  I love the Lovely as a Tree stamp set, it covers every occasion and can be used equally for masculine or feminine cards.

So many stampers find it difficult to create a masculine card so this was one I created awhile ago for some of the workshops I was doing.  I thought that I would take advantage of the fact that the stamp set is still current and use the card as a post on my blog.

The recipe for this card:

Cardstock: glossy white, taken with teal, tempting turquoise and black.  ‘

Inks: Stazon black and tempting turquoise.

Reinkers: taken with teal, tempting turquoise and encore silver

Accessories: spiral punch

Other items used (non stampin up) cotton wool balls and rubbing alcohol.

Hope you like the card.  Would love to hear from you and your thoughts on my blog.  I will try to do a tutorial on the card and post it on here in the near future.  Watch this space lol.

Ready for a day of stamping, fun, lucky door prizes, companionship and raffles?  Then come and join the fun of Xmas In July at the Upper Mount Gravatt Scout Den. 

What a great way to get a head start on your Christmas cards, watch some demonstrations, and discover some ways to decorate your home incorporating your stamping and scrapbooking supplies.

Take home at least three cards, memories of a great day and hopefully make some new friends.

Cost: $10 Includes 3 card kits.  Lucky door entry ticket.  Tea/Coffee and biscuits.   Extra kits will be available for purchase on the day.  Pre book to recieve a little something extra when you arrive.

Date:  19th July

Time: 10am to 3pm.  Come for the day or just awhile.  BYO Lunch or take advantage of the takeaway shops that are in close proximity to the den.

Where: Upper Mount Gravatt Scout Group, End of Carsons Lane, Upper Mount Gravatt

            (down the lane between the primary school and hall on Logan Road, Upper Mount Gravatt.  Opposite McDonalds)

Everybody is welcome.  Whether you are new to stamping, a little experienced or more experienced. 

This is a fundraiser for the Upper Mount Gravatt Scout Group.  A percentage of all money made on the day will be used to help the group.

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