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