Perfect punching with some papers!

Here is a sweet little birthday card made for one of our little friends who turned 2 recently. I just love stamps that co-ordinate with punches and this card demonstrates just how quickly you can put a card together using these co-ordinating products. These fun Playdate designer series papers also inspired the colour combo I have used here.

I am entering this card into this weeks Just add ink challenge which is to just add Summer - butterflies and flowers say Summer don't they? :)

Supplies used:

Stamps: Perfect punches, Butterfly prints

Ink: Chocolate chip, Real red

Cardstock: Chocolate chip, So saffron, Whisper white and Playdate DSP.

Accessories: Scallop edge border punch, Wide oval punch, Butterfly punch.

Happy stamping! Love, Claire

Christmas card production line!

Good morning girls!!

As promised, here is a little piccie of the cards that my sister and I have mass produced for her clients! We made 80 in all and actually Laura is yet to finish putting them all together as we just ran out of time at the end of her stay (truth be told, sushi and shopping took priority!).

We used items from the Delightful decorations bundle to make this card - that includes the Ornament punch, Delightful decorations stamp set and the Old olive ribbon from the free ribbon bundle, Mistletoe originals. The colours used are Cherry cobbler and Old olive on a Whisper white base. The Old olive stamped decoration is actually stamped on the inside of the card and the card front has had the decoration shape punched out to form a little window. The sentiment comes from the Welcome Christmas stamp set and is stamped in Early espresso ink. We also used the Perfect polkadots embossing folder to achieve the polkadot pattern on the Cherry cobbler cardstock.

Don't forget that the Dress up Christmas Promotion where you can qualify for free ribbons runs out on November 30th. Contact me if you'd like to order any of these gorgeous bundles with free ribbon before then.

Happy stamping! Love, Claire

Some Birthday Cheer

Hello Girls!

Well, for those of you in blogland who have not yet heard, our dear baby boy Samuel arrived on Sunday November 7th @ 1.45am! So he is just over 1 week old and so lovely! He is going so well, feeding and sleeping wonderfully.

I thought I would pop by today to share a couple of Birthday cards with you. The first one was for a little girl at Ethan's school. It uses the stamp sets For Everything and Perfect punches. The colours are Pear pizzazz, Blushing bride, Marina mist and So saffron.

This next little card was made for a good friends little boy who turned 3 a couple of weeks ago. I love all the blues that we have in the Stampin Up! Colour collections now but my favourite would have to be Marina Mist. This card uses the stamp sets Teeny tiny sentiments and Fox and friends. The colours are Bashful blue, Marina mist and Tempting turquoise.

I have had my gorgeous sister Laura here for the last week and she has been a wonderful help to me as well as a great companion. Tomorrow we have to finish making 100 Christmas cards for her to send to her customers and friends! Wow! We'll be busy that's for sure. I will take some photos to share with you all next time.

Happy Stamping!

Love, Claire

Welcome Christmas

Hi Girls!

I am just loving having so many new products and colours to enjoy at the moment. A really surprising stamp set for me has been the Perfect punches set. It contains 6 stamps with greetings which co-ordinate with Stampin' Up punches. This one here is the Joy at Christmas stamp which I have used with the scallop circle punch and 1 3/8" circle punch. Pear pizzazz is really one of my favourite colours at the moment and here I have teamed it up with Real red and a little Concord Crush.

The beautiful little family scene is from the Welcome Christmas stamp set and I have stamped it in Pear pizzazz and Versamark before heat embossing it with some clear EP. The Versamark allows the Embossing powder to stick to the image.

Don't forget the current Christmas Promotion where you can receive free ribbons when you purchase one of the Christmas Bundles or host a qualifying workshop! Have a look at the Stampin' Up! website here for more information. Please email me if you would like to place an order.

Happy Stamping!!

Love, Claire

Heart of Christmas wreath

Hi my stamping friends!
A little something to share with you but it's not so much of the stamping variety - much more punching and bow tying here today!
Here I have made a simple wreath using the branch from the Two step bird punch and one of the little flowers from the Boho blossoms punch. Some of the new SU adhesive pearls and lovely Real red satin ribbon just finish it all off!
I am also really enjoying the Heard from the heart stamp set which includes four beautiful sayings.

Happy Stamping!
Love, Claire

Vintage birdie

Good morning my stamping friends!

It's a beautiful day here in Sunny Cairns - the birds are singing, butterflies floating about and it's not too hot - yet! And on top of that I am preparing to head off to one of my new team member's homes for her first workshop! A great morning planned.

I just had to pop in and say hello though and share this little card with you. I have used a few of my favourite things of the moment to create this one. I just love the bird punch and am loving inking up Vintage Vogue at the moment too! Plus these new colours of Pear Pizzazz and Concord Crush are sooo lovely.

Stamps: Vintage vogue, Perfect punches

Colours: Old Olive, Pear Pizzazz, Crumb cake, Whisper white, Concord Crush.

Accessories: Eyelet border punch, Two step bird punch, Wide oval punch, Concord Crush Stitched Poly ribbon.

THANKYOU also to Tennille from Stamping With Tennille for sharing this Blog award with me! I can now pass the award onto 8 of my blogging friends! So please go and find some new and fresh inspiration from the following bloggers - who always inspire me!

Makeesha Byl
Paula Fuller

Danielle Daws

Tania Gould

Melissa

Christine Henderson

Kirsty Jeffery

Claire Daly

Oh and there is no baby news yet... still all snuggled up and waiting for this little one's arrival!

Happy Stamping my friends!

Love, Claire

Christmas Inkspirations!

Hello girls!!

Well I am just going all festive at the moment! I think with our baby due in November I am determined to be on top of things this Christmas so I have actually begun on making some Christmas cards. When I saw Makeesha's Inkspirations sketch challenge this week I thought of this Christmas wreath straight away. It is from the new stamp set, Welcome Christmas which I am loving playing with as it also has some beautiful little silhouette stamps of children toboganning and a family decorating the Christmas tree.

This really is quite a simple card - I am desperately missing having background stamps at the moment, I really need to get some new ones... and I also need to get some of the beautiful big shot embossing folders so that I can be back on board with decorating the backs of my cards! But to add a little interest I first stamped the wreath in Pear Pizzazz (One of the SU delicious new In colours) and used the Poppy Parade (another new In colour) Marker to highlight the berries. You may also notice if you look closely a few tiny little pearl berries. These are the new Basic Pearls - they are adhesive and just gorgeous :). The Merry Christmas comes from Teeny Tiny Sentiments. The ribbons are Real red Satin and Old olive taffeta.

Hope this has been a little bit of inspiration for you! Happy Stamping!

Love, Claire

Birthday Bakery at Just add ink

There is a very delicately sweet colour combo challenge over at Just Add Ink this week. The colours are Pretty in pink, So saffron, Certainly celery and Crumb cake (used to be called Kraft).

So what a perfect opportunity for me to create a card with the equally sweet new Hostess stamp set called Birthday Bakery! My order from the new Idea Book and Catalogue landed on my doorstep yesterday so after assembling my stamps and unwrapping everything yesterday I had fun creating today! I also couldn't resist using a little of my new roll of Pretty in pink taffeta ribbon.

This was also doubly enjoyable as I was stamping this card for a good friend who lives up in the Northern Territory serving with her family up there as missionaries. It was her birthday in August but I knew of something she was excitedly wanting from the new Idea book so I am sending her a late birthday gift.

Cardstock: Pretty in pink, So saffron, Crumb cake, Whisper white

Ink: Basic black, Pretty in pink, Certainly celery, So saffron

Stamps: Birthday bakery, Perfect punches

Accessories: Taffeta ribbon in pretty in pink and whisper white, Scallop oval punch, Wide oval punch, Mat pack, Blender pens, Snail adhesive.

Happy Stamping!

Love, Claire

Great friend

Do you have a great friend? Someone who you can call about anything in the world? When you're down or when you are excited about something? And regardless of how you sound on the end of the phone they'll gladly chat with you about whatever it is that is happening in your world. I am so blessed to have a friend like that!

This friend is who I made this little card for...

And this friend is going into hospital today for an operation and I just wanted to say that Natalie, I am thinking of you and praying for you. May you have God's perfect peace over all of this. Love you heaps my Great Friend!

Claire xo

A Hoppy Memories album

We recently had a visit from my husband's lovely parents and it was such a fun few days! We did lots of great touristy things (a perk of living in a tourist area) including visiting Green Island, going Go Karting, shopping, eating out together. It was great! I wanted to share some of the photos we took with Julian's parents in a little memory album. I know they don't have scrapbooking albums so I wanted to make something a little smaller that they could either stand up on a shelf to display the pictures or close up and slide into their bookcase. This is what I came up with.

FRONT COVER

PAGE 1-2

PAGE 3-4

PAGE 5-6

BACK COVER

The colours I have used are Kiwi kiss (retiring), Tempting turquoise, Pumpkin pie, Real red and Whisper white. The album uses the Hoppy Memories Simply scrapping kit. I just love these kits for quick, simple projects. They contain cardstock, co-ordinating patterned papers and great little die cut self adhesive cardstock pieces with journalling boxes, cute pictures, letters and more. I used A4 cardstock to make this album. The front page uses a retired alphabet set and do not attempt such a title page with out a stamp-a-majig!! I also used the Cheep talk stamp set on the back page which is a thank you page for a swing set Julian's parents bought for our boys on their visit.

If you are keen to know more about how to make one of these little albums then contact me and I can arrange to run this project as a class for you. This can be an excellent Christmas gift for family or teachers and adapted to any theme.

Happy Stamping! Love, Claire

Just Add Ink 31 - Colour challenge!

Good Morning Ladies!

Last night I found an ounce of energy so I decided to stay up past my bedtime (8pm!) and do some stamping. :) It was so fun and this weeks colour challenge from Just add ink was the perfect inspiration (I love these colours):

I decided to use the beautiful new stamp sets Cottage Garden and Heard from the heart. I just love these new sets. Cottage Garden is a two step stamping set which is one of the first things that I loved about Stampin' Up's range of products. To stick with the colour challenge I stamped the second part of the two step (the solid flower) with real red ink stamped off once. I think this worked okay.

I was feeling fancy so I pulled out the heat gun and did a bit of heat embossing on the greeting (hard to see in the photo unfortunately). To achieve this with SU inks you need to ink up in Versamark and then coloured ink and then stamp, sprinkle with clear powder and heat set.

The little butterfly has been given a similar treatment but I used heat and stick powder and dazzling diamonds on it instead of the clear powder.

The ribbon is 5/8"chocolate chip ribbon from SU - only available until August 31st!

I hope this gives you all a little creative inspiration for your day!

Happy Stamping! Love Claire

Farewell Nursery Necessities and Hello Triple Choc Brownies!!

Hi girls!

Today, Paula and I held our Last Chance Retiring workshop. We had such a lovely afternoon with the ladies that were there! This is one of the cards we made using the Nursery Necessities stamp set which sadly retires at the end of this month. If you look closely you may be able to see that we have actually stamped the elephant onto some of the Tea party DSP before cutting it out and popping it onto the Saffron cardstock. We also used the mat pack to pierce around the saffron cardstock and used the marker to draw faux stitching between the holes. Today, some of the ladies used the white uniball signo pen to draw their stitching which made it stand out well. The colours used on this card are Whisper white, Almost amethyst (retiring Aug 31) and So saffron.

And what is an afternoon of stamping without tea, coffee and something sweet? Paula made some delicious scones with jam and cream - she is such a wonderful scone maker! I made a Triple Chocolate Brownie which is one of my favourite chocolatey treats. I had a couple of requests for the recipe so I thought I should add it to my blog! Enjoy.

Triple Chocolate Brownies

Ingredients:

• 185g butter
• 185g dark chocolate, chopped
• 1 1/4 cups caster sugar
• 2/3 cup plain flour
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• One block of top deck chocolate (minus a row for the chef!)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180c and butter and line a baking tin measuring 23cm square.
2. Place butter and dark chocolate into a saucepan and stir over low heat until melted and smooth. Allow to cool.
3. Place eggs and sugar into mixer and beat until light and creamy. Fold this through the chocolate mixture.
4. Sift flour and cocoa into the chocolate mixture and stir.
5. Add the top deck chocolate chopped into half squares. (You can also use half white and half milk chocolate of another brand, I just find to use the one block is quite cost effective especially if you can find the choccie on special).
6. Bake for 35-40 mins until set on top and not wobbly but don't overcook it as you want it nice and moist inside. Cool in the tin and then cut into squares. Makes about 20 pieces.
7. This is also delicious served warm with ice cream for dessert! It can be made a day ahead and stored in the fridge.

Happy Stamping and Cooking!

Love, Claire

Just Add A Man Card!

Hi girls!
This week over at JAI the challenge is to Just add a man card but to make it doubly challening they also added in a colour challenge which is Baja breeze, Chocolate Chip and Kraft.
Here is my simple entry which uses the weathered background stamp and a sentiment from Cute and Curly. The punched star is adhered with a silver brad. The faux stitching is achieved with the white signo uniball pen.

I hope this simple card inspires you to create your own 'man card'! And head over to the Just Add Ink website to check out the gallery of wonderful creations of 'man cards' over there!

Happy Stamping, Love Claire

Stampin' Up! Last Chance List and my new recruit!

Hi girls!

Well I have lots of exciting news today!

Firstly, Stampin' Up! have released their Last Chance List from the 2009-2010 catalogue. This is very exciting as you have the opportunity to purchase some of those wonderful items from your wish list at reduced prices! Click here to see the full list of retiring products and email me at jc_dauncey@bigpond.com to place your order. I can have your order shipped anywhere in Australia from $5.95 shipping. Don't forget that this month is also your last chance to purchase any retiring cardstock or inks of colours that we are farewelling from our range. Don't miss out, a couple of items have already disappeared, never to be seen again!

My other announcement is that my lovely friend Mikaela has decided to join Stampin' Up! as a demonstrator! Mikaela, it's so lovely to have you on board and I look forward to spending more time stamping together and sharing our love of stamping with others!

If you are interested in finding out more about becoming a demonstrator with Stampin' Up! then just shoot me an email as I would be happy to chat with you about how it can work for you. Some people like to run workshops and make a business of it, whilst others enjoy having access to a great discount on Stampin' Up! products as a hobby demonstrator.

And finally to let you know about a workshop I will be running next Saturday with my upline Paula Fuller. The workshop will be held on Saturday August 7th from 1.30-3.30pm in Edmonton, Cairns. Contact me for full details. Cost is $5 to make two cards and enjoy afternoon tea with us! Please rsvp to me by Thursday August 5th if you would like to join us!

Happy Stamping! Love, Claire

Wonderful Brothers - JAI 27

Hey girls.... I just had to give this sketch challenge at Just add ink a second go! I have decided to do a scrapbook page with some photos of my boys. I am sorry about the photos - they're fairly average due to it being too late at night to take them outside!

I have used textured Not quite navy as the background with Baja breeze. The DSP is from Urban garden. I am really loving my little Alphabet dies for the Big shot! So handy for scrapbooking.

I love these photos. Ethan and Levi were just walking along the street hand in hand. Ethan was being such a good big brother and Levi wasn't resisting the guidance. Totally cute.

Here is a close up of the little pocket I made to hide my journalling.

Happy Stamping!

Love Claire

Sunny Fox and friends - Just add ink 27

It is time again for a little challenge over at Just add ink. This week is a sketch challenge. Click here to check out the current challenge and why not give it a go yourself?

I just love these little animals from Fox and Friends, a new stamp set in our Autumn/Winter mini catalogue. They each have such different personalities which makes for a very versatile set or you can use a few together like I have today.

This is my first version of the card using a Tempting Turquoise background. I have used DSP from the Sunny Days Simply Scrappin' kit (also in the current mini catalogue) and have used the colours from this pack in my choice of ink and cardstock (Tempting turquoise, Pink passion, Old olive and Pumpkin pie).

My second version is oh so close but uses a Pink passion background for a more girly version. The sentiments are stamped from the set called Teeny tiny sentiments. I love a simple card!

Happy Stamping!

Love, Claire

Inkspirations sketch challenge #33

Hello girls!

Time for a little sketch challenge from the blog of the lovely Makeesha Byl. I have had the pleasure of becoming friends with Keesh since she moved up to Cairns this year but this is the first time that I have managed to get an entry up for one of her Inkspirations challenges! This week is a sketch challenge and had me dusting off the oval nestabilities to make this little Christmas entry.

I have used the Loads of love stamp set which is a set I really enjoy using (borrowed from friends!) and have had my eye on for some time now. So when it came up as one of the Two step stamping sets on special this month I just couldn't say no! It's always fun to ink up a new stamp set and I just love this little Christmas tree that sits in the back of the pick up truck. I am hoping for some new accessory stamps for this set when the new cattie comes out but we'll have to wait and see....

The DSP comes from the I wish Simply scrappin' kit which I used last Christmas to make a heap of cards and gift tags as well as a couple of scrapbooking layouts. The truck is stamped and coloured on SU watercolour paper which gives great results.

If you are keen to purchase this stamp set whilst it is 20% off (or any of the other two step sets on special) please click here to see the list of what's on offer and email me to place your order. jc_dauncey@bigpond.com

Remember that this offer ends on Saturday, July 31st.

Happy Stamping!

Love, Claire

Just Add Embossing!

Hello Girls!

Today I have a couple of cards to share with you. Both are inspired by the challenge over at Just Add Ink which is to Just add embossing. The first card uses two of my favourite colours, Not quite navy and Baja breeze. I was in awe of Danielle Daws take on this beautiful technique using clear embossing and brayering so I had to give it a go myself.

Project 1 supplies:

CS: Not quite navy, Baja breeze, Whisper white, Walk in the park DSP. Ink: Versamark, Not quite navy. Stamps: Upsy Daisy, Teeny tiny sentiments. Accessories: Baja breeze striped grosgrain riboon, scallop oval punch, brayer, heat tool, clear embossing powder.

My second project is a bit of a challenge to myself but I have included embossing on it. I used colours that don't normally appeal to me and also my Organic Grace stamp set which I have not used a lot. I am quite happy with the final outcome even though it's quite different for me. This project uses all retiring colours.

Project 2 supplies:

CS: Really rust, Handsome hunter, Mellow moss, Apricot appeal. Ink: Versamark, Apricot Appeal, Handsome hunter, Mellow moss. Stamps: Weathered (background stamp), Best yet (hostess set), Organic Grace (hostess set). Accessories: Hemp twine, stampin' dimensionals, heat tool, clear embossing powder.

Please remember that at the end of August many colours will be retiring with Stampin' Up. Please check with me to see which colours are leaving us and what you need to stock up on!

Happy Stamping!

Love, Claire

Just Add Ink 25

Well here is my very last minute entry into this weeks Just Add Ink challenge. It's a colour challenge this week and I decided to do a scrapbooking layout. The colours in the challenge are Elegant Eggplant, Very Vanilla, Rose Red and Soft suede - stunning colours. I have used the very beautiful Vintage Vogue stamp set from our current mini catalogue. Even though I would never claim my style to be vintage I do love this set.

Update on Thursday - here are some better pictures so now you can see the colours better :) Don't you think that the rhinestone brads just work beautifully with these flowers?

Happy Stamping!
Love, Claire