Little Additions for George William

Hello there I hope you are enjoying your weekend, I have just finished prepping for my class tomorrow and I am watching a bit of Strictly before jumping in the shower and putting my pj’s on, can I just say this is the second lot of pj’s as I spent the whole day in the pair I was wearing since last night , I love pj’s days.

I told you yesterday that lovely Jane my downline, brought a lovely baby boy into the world last week and this is the card I have made and sent them.

It uses the Little addition stamp set and I really love this set, is fab for building  nursery scenes but equally versatile for other occasions. I am just cross with myself that I didn’t use a green teddy bear for the corner of the cot. I think it would have made a big difference to that lower corner, hindsight huh?

Colour scheme is Crumb Cake, Wild Wasabi, Soft Suede and Bashful Blue. The scallop shape is a fabulous die for the Big  Shot machine and I have used it quite a bit lately. Here’s a sweet idea made with the same die and some of our fabric.

I made 12 of these aromatherapy pillows to take with me at Convention for a organized 3D swap. I am using mine as a car freshener but they are designed to be used in the microwave to release they’re wonderful aroma.

I was so lucky because I used the Thermomix to mill quite a large amount of spices to fill those pillows. I have used cinnamon bark, cardamon pods, cloves, coriander seeds,and vanilla pods after scrapping the seeds out to make some vanilla extract to use in my baking. The spices were mixed with oat bran making them safe to heat up in the microwave.

Well have a wonderful rest of the weekend see you again soon. till then big hugs xxx

 

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Birthday Passionette…

Hello everyone, a bit of a break from my Convention update. Today Jane is celebrating her Happy Day, and this year is even more special for Jane as her first son William George was born on the 19 Nov. so what a fabulous gift she has had?

I haven’t met him yet but is very high on my agenda to see him for a special cuddle.

Jane loves green and I took inspiration from our Convention colour theme of Island Indigo and Lucky Limeade.

I am so pleased with the result and you will have to take my word that it looks much better in real life than this dreadful picture, we are back to no decent light so back to rubbish photos.

I have used a hostess set called Simply Soft to stamp straight onto the newsprint designer paper. The flowers were coloured using markers. Beautiful Wings embosslit was used along with the little leaves embosslit to create a cluster on top of my stamped background.

Lots of new products here, the seam binding in vanilla, yumy lace, very lovely vintage tags (which I only got round to buy) and a sentiment from the new Teeny Tiny Wishes stamp set.

The vintage tag was stamped with the word friend from the tiny tags set and I used a pearl to mask the ^s^ from the word friends.  Rhinestones and pearls were dotted about on the card a little element that my friend and fellow German demonstrator Jenni Pauli uses a lot on her projects.

Right I am off I had a busy day today and now I am about to leave the house for a date with my hubs at our favourite Thai restaurant. 

See you again soon till then big hugs xxx

Stampin’Up! European Convention-Paris 2011

Hello there well good plans and all that. Two days after flying back home and I have managed to acquire a cold .
So the first morning of the Convention came and I was getting ready to walk across to the Conference centre when I came across this lovely individual…

Before I left for Paris, Alison my downline requested that I said hello to him for her. I did so Alison but I couldn’t get him to wave back as he had a rather long queue of little ones to see so I snuck this photo of him for you.
We picked up our convention bags, we swapped, exchanged gifts and shopped. That’s right you get to do some much needed retail therapy at Convention as well, the Memento Mall was full with cute Stampin’Up! branded merchandise(photos of it later).
I have some more gifts to share with you, I made 26 of these for all members in the lower levels of my team attending Convention. I used the candy cane fabric and some 100%wool felt, the flowers were cut with the Fun Flowers Bigz Die.

I added some chocolates and a hand made topper to the packaging.

I also made 8 of these lovely corsages for a few special friends. Made with the same die and 100% wool felt, I've cut the flowers first then wet them and scrunched them up quite a lot to get the felt to full some more and get those edges smooth and the petals curly and shaped. I have used 2 layers of the bigger size, one middle size and one small size, all held together with a vintage brad. A small circle of fabric was added to the centre as well.

I was running out of time so I packaged them very simply.

The first day of Convention was amazing, inspirational classes ( one of my shiny stars Lindsay presented on stage and she did a fabulous job) gorgeous make n takes and of course in the evening we had the Awards night.
Awards night is always exciting as everyone gets dressed up, we all enjoy  a really nice dinner and is always a very happy and relaxed atmosphere coupled with a bit of excitement as the top achievers get announced, everyone wants to know where they have ranked.
2011 was a good year for the Passionettes , five of us made the top 25,  four members  got to walk the stage for the first time and three members achieved the Incentive Trip to Vienna next June.
Here’s the lovely Lindsay taking to the stage for the first time, how cute did she look?  and I just love Shelli’s reaction.

Stevie’s first walk was very emotional, she had a great year and so deserved to be there. 

To say I was proud it was an understatement. I also witnessed two of my leaders Julie and Bekka walk the stage and collect awards for their incredible achievements and I cheered as loud as I could for those at home who couldn’t make it but had their names called out.  I was lucky to be up on stage myself a few times.  I came 3rd in recruiting and 3rd in leadership. Here I am on stage collecting the award for leadership which required no work from me really, I was collecting this award on the back of my team’s hard work and their promotions so thank you to each and every one of you, you are amazing and I am grateful for all you do.
Shelli, myself, Jules, Michelle and Paula our Country Manager

I was very happy to have ranked at number 4, now this really came as a surprise to me as this year was a little challenging  for me and and I really expected to rank lower than that.  And so I have to thank all of you that supported me  and my business this year, my loyal customers, close friends and fellow demonstrators  and of course my fabulous team, you all rock!!! I know I am gushing now sorry..
However the star of our team was this lovely girl, Jules. She ranked at number 3 in the whole of the UK , herself and her team worked very hard and I am truly delighted and so very happy for them all. I treasure our little chats on stage if we happen to be there at the same time, she is so funny. On the night as well as collecting many awards Julie captivated everyone in that room with a stunning live performance of a song from the famous production Wicked and she was A-MA-ZING!!!

I shed a tear as the words were so meaningful, she looked lovely as well in her green frock.
And here’s the top 3 demonstrators of the year.
Shelli , Michelle Last no 1, Amanda Fowler no. 2, and the lovely Jules at no.3, and Paula Gorry
A big well done to them

As if walking the stage is not enough you get flowers and lovely gifts, here’s my loot.

Beautiful, beautiful  gifts that make you feel spoilt and appreciated!! I love this company for what it stands for and for allowing me to follow a dream I didn’t know I had nearly 4 years ago.
And even the tags on these precious gifts were amazing,

LOVE THEM!!!
And after a bit more cheering we were done and the location for the next Incentive Trip was announced well let me say it loudly  OH EM GEEE !!!

How amazing does this look? I am working like mad to earn this trip of a lifetime and if you want to join me and my team and have a bash at earning it please get in touch I would love to go on a free holiday with you.
After the awards ended  we had a quick group photo on the stage, not all of our attending team members were present and we adopted a few sweet friends. I loved spending time with this great bunch of girls, we laughed, sang,  danced and had the most fabulous time. I cannot wait till our next Convention in Germany, you to could come and experience it!!  All you need to do is join my team, email me for a no pressure chat.

Oh and in case you don’t know already we are all about the shoes in this team, I love those heels!!!
They belong to Linz and Jo can you say hot?

We ended the night with a few glasses of champagne and I fell asleep the moment my head hit the pillow.
If you are still with me well done and sorry for the long post, see you again soon till then hugs xxx.

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European Convention-Disneyland Paris 2011

Hello there I hope you are well and I hope you can forgive my long absence from blogging. I won’t go in the why’s I am just asking for forgiveness .

I have just returned from our Annual Convention held in the fabulous Disneyland Paris. WOW! what a fabulous few days we all had. I left for Paris on Weds along with  quite a few over the top excited demos from my team and other teams. It was great to see all of us giggling with anticipation. We had a short and uneventful flight and after landing we were straight into a taxi with destination Disney Village. And in less than 2 hours from landing 7 of us were back into the heart of Paris.

The sky was blue the weather mild and we enjoyed a few hours mucking about and taking photos of this famous landmark.

We started doing the cancan, from left to right we have Erika, Paula, Jo, myself, Linz and Alison, Helen was taking the photo, thank you Helen.

Very soon after this shot things got a bit out of hand, can you spot the exhibitionists of the group? LOL we were in hysterics silly girls!!

From left to right Helen, Paula, Erika, Lindsey, Jo and Alison.

After the stroll we stopped at a nice cafe overlooking the Eiffel Tower  and enjoyed a few refreshments. The Kir Royal was one of the best I had.

We got the taxi driver to pick us up at 6pm  to get back to the hotel in time for dinner at Hollywood Planet. Here’s what the tower looked as we left we even got to see it flickering for a few minutes when the clock strike 6pm, it was very pretty.

I forgot my camera so have no pictures of the dinner but I can assure you that it was a really fun, we joined a rather large group of French demonstrators and gosh were we loud LOL> It was a wonderful end to an exciting and happy pre convention day.

Before I leave for my bed I will share my downline gifts. As I was searching for ideas I came across some lovely hand felted scarfs on Etsy. They were beautiful and I knew I wanted the girls to have one, and as my budget didn’t stretch far enough to buy them I decided to learn a new craft and decided to make them myself. After spending twice as much on materials to make them then i would have spent to buy them I set to work and produced a little piece of wearable art for each of my first level attending convention.

Hand dyed 100% silk and 100% merino wool fibres have been hand felted together to create a light, soft and very warm scarf, each one unique just like the girls. They did take a LOT of time and effort (up to 3 hours each) but they were worth it for sure and I can confirm that they have been well received. I made 13 of them but the other ones were still drying when I took the photo.

Here’s some close up details

                 

  

Silk fibres and sari silk threads were used for extra sheen and to create interesting 3 dimensional details on the scarfs.

The scarfs were packaged in black bags topped with a tag that doubled as a bag tag the next day. Each year we receive a Convention bag and is handy to have a name tag on your bag so you can identify easily should it get misplaced.

I used the Top note die and some Newsprint designer paper for the basic tag. Basic Grey card stock was embosses with the frames embossing folders and the Artistic Etchings stamp set was used to add lovely accents. Vintage brads, Victoria lace and rhinestones provide further interest to the tags.

I want to thank my sweet friend Carol for helping me with these lovely tags for the girls.

Right I will be back tomorrow with more from this fabulous trip. Good to be back thank you for visiting, hugs xxx

Stampin’Up! Heat and Stick Video tutorial

Hello there my lovely blog readers. I hope you are excited about the weekend because IS HERE!!!

I have a really quick video for you today. I had shot this nearly 3 weeks ago and finally I got a spare 30 min to edit it. Is a voiceover as I was chatting with two of my downline while creating this card. This was another card we made at my October Christmas Card Club.

It uses a fab product from our Stampin’Up! catalogue the Heat and Stick powder!!

I am so glad that you will get to see this card on the video just to see the amazing glitter, the picture does not do it justice at all.

The best I could do was this poor attempt.

So here it is a quick how to for this amazing and very clever powder. Enjoy it and if I can help you buy some of this powder please contact me.

Have a fabulous weekend, see you again very soon till then Big hugs xxx

ps. Yes I do realise I spelt the word heat wrongly in my title, that’s what I get editing in the middle of the night. ta ta

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Petal Cone Die from Stampin’Up!

Hello there I hope you are well and less hectic than I am right now. I love being busy but every now and again it gets a bit out of control busy.
I am sharing a project that I designed for my Virtual Club members this month. They got a kit and complete video instructions on how to make this lovely gift box.

It uses the Stampin’Up! Petal Cone Die and Holly Berry designer paper. There’s also some Newsprint designer paper as well. It closes with a length of Victoria lace trim long enough to hang this on the tree as a Christmas decoration.

The stamp sets used are Pines and Poinsettias and the punches used are the ornament punch, large oval and designer label punch.
The chunky glass glitter is the perfect finishing touch for this sweet project.
Here’s a close up

I hope you like it and if you are interested in joining one of my virtual clubs I have one starting at the end of this month. Read more details about it here.
Thank you for popping by see you again soon, till then big hugs xxx

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Birthday Passionette..

but a bit wonky.

Hello there yipeee is the weekend although I am so busy with tons of stuff on my to do list.

Today one of my lovely downline Val is celebrating Her Happy Day !!

Val loves red and I set to work creating her card, now I admit to really rushing making her card to make sure I got it in the post in time and I cannot believe that I didn’t see it until I was editing the photo. I am almost embarrassed to show it to you and mortified that I have sent it in this state.

Have a look

Look at that sentiment !!!!!!!!!!!! I am so upset now seeing it but I can honestly say that I didn’t see it at all while I was making  it.

Val hope you will have a fabulous day and I hope you will enjoy my a bit different card.

Anyway Everything Eleanor stamp set with a wonky sentiment from Perfect Punches, newsprint designer paper, Cherry Cobbler , Very Vanilla and Early Espresso card stock.

The flowers were stamped and cut out then layered for a 3 dimensional effect.

The scalloped layer was cut with the Big Shot and the Scallop Square Clear die. The scallop trim edge punch was also used to ad a border, here are the measurements:

Start with a piece of Cherry Cobbler card measuring 15cm x15cm.

Cut a piece of Crumb Cake measuring 7cm x15 cm then another piece in early espresso measuring 15cm x 3cm.

Using the scallop trim border punch add a decorative border along one edge of the espresso layer and glue onto the crumb cake layer.

Add a length of crumb cake seam binding around this layer and tie in a bow.

Next cut a scallop square on the big shot from  newsprint designer paper and adhere everything to the card blank.

Stamp the flowers you will need 2 of the big size and 4 of the medium size on real red card in cherry cobbler ink and cut out and attach onto one another with  dimensionals.

Stamp the frame in Crumb Cake ink onto vanilla card and cut out then adhere to a piece of espresso card and cut a contrasting border around it.

Stamp your sentiment straight if possible adhere to the card and arrange your flowers around it.

Here’s the supply list: All products Stampin’Up! unless otherwise stated.
PAPER: Early Espresso, Very Vanilla, Cherry Cobbler and Real red cardstock, newsprint designer paper
INK: Early espresso, Cherry Cobbler and Crumb Cake
STAMPS: Everything Eleanor, Perfect Punches                                                      TOOLS: Big shot, Scallop Square Clear die
ACCESSORIES: crumb cake seam binding ribbon.

Before i go I want to post a link to a quince paste recipe as so many of you have emailed me about it and a few left comments on the blog. You certainly do not need a Thermomix to make it( the Thermie just makes life so much easier) but you will need to watch it and stir it every now and again for a long time to make sure it won’t catch, also sometimes the timing can be a bit off as it will depend on how juicy is your fruit, the variety etc. THIS seems to be a good recipe with lots of reviews so please try it you will not regret it.

Thank you for stopping by see you again soon. Till then hugs xxx

 

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Is November..

and I haven’t posted on here since October. Seriously it has gone mad around here !! Lots of crafting happening but no much I can show you right now as is for our Convention in Paris 2 weeks today.
But I do have 2 of the cards we made at our Christmas club last Sunday to show you. Christmas club was such a fun day we had quite a few new faces and I made ginormous Choux Buns filled with yummy crème patisserie with my much loved Thermomix.
Here’s one of the cards

I have found a similar card on Splitcoast and drew my inspiration for it however I cannot find it now to give the artist credit. It was made with the pennant punch and the doily triple layer punch. The *tree* was a piece of garden green card stock embossed with the Big shot and the polka dot embossing folder. The background was stamped with the Serene Snowflake stamp and Pool Party ink. a bit of whisper white and crumb cake for the sentiment finish off this minimalist card.
And the second one was this beauty all my own design this time and everyone’s favourite

Yummy combo I am in love with it, Cherry Cobbler, Early Espresso and a hint of crumb cake. The bauble from the gorgeous Tags till Christmas and the sentiment from Delightful Dozen stamp set. Cherry cobbler seam binding and the ribbon punch add the right amount of interest for a simple but very effective card.
So is November and before we know it it will be December, for my the month of Nov just goes somewhere and before I know what s happening I am planning for Christmas yiikes.
And as I started  thinking gifts I decided that this year I will make all my gifts and not buy any. Last week when Laura and Luca were here we visited this gorgeous farm shop and found some quinces, they are in season right now. The smell of fresh quinces brought back memories for both of us as we used to love quince jam and paste every year from mum’s larder. I bought them of course and made some quince paste the very next day, it turned out sooooo yummy.

. This is the best thing in the whole wide world to have with a cheese board  and once you try it nothing else will come near. Is beautiful with sheep milk cheeses but it will go with any cheese board. What’s even better that it keeps indefinitely in the fridge.
So I now have some really nice additions for a few gourmet hampers this Christmas, all I need to find is some lovely packaging. And here they are in some glassine bags waiting  to be decorated a bit, I have plans and I will share.
Quince paste takes up to 7 hours to make the traditional method but it only took 1.30h  in the Thermomix, and during that time I watched Downtown Abbey .
Right I will see you tomorrow with a birthday card. Till then big hugs xxx

Time with Luca

Hello there, I am here today with a Christmas card!!  Like it or not it is coming round very fast. I have used everything Eleanor again it is a fab set very versatile.

Now I have to admit that i made this card back in August when Moira my French demo friend visited me. We had a fun weekend together and made quite a few cards with this set. Now I will tell you straight away that the sentiment (hristmas part) is retired now but the sentiment from the Contempo Christmas will work just as well. I just didn‘t get round to changing it. The combo is Baja Breeze, River Rock and Cherry Cobbler.
The frame was stamped straight onto my river rock layer and the C monogram from the Broadsheet alpha was stamped on vanilla and punched out with the 13/4” circle punch.

The rest of the words was stamped on a banner and pieced together with the monogram for a different look. The bird from the same set was stamped in espresso ink and cut out.
Glass glitter, delicate lace trim, pearls and an and antique brad  provide plenty to look at and give a pretty and slightly vintage feel to this card I feel.
I need to step up my Christmas card making a bit although I am soo much ahead than other years thanks to my Christmas Club. I have quite a few ready.
now this week was wonderful so far as is half term and Luca and my sis have been here since last Saturday. To say I loved every minute of it is a slight understatement is been fabulous and I needed the break as well. we went out and about every day but Tuesday we had the best day. We spent it the the fabulous Farmers Cart near York and we all had a fab day.

We laughed so much going through the spooky corn maze, Luca was terrified bless him and I laugh every time I see this picture, I had to zoom in so you can see his face, I love this little guy so much.

hope to see you again soon thank you for stopping by, hugs xx

October Christmas Club

You are invited to our Christmas Club  Sunday 30 October 2011 Hello, I hope this finds you well. The weather is turning the chill in the air is telling us that Autumn is here to stay. Christmas is not that far now and once again we meet to complete more cards in preparation. Would you like to join us? Like always in this month's club we are making eight beautiful cards in one session, two of each design. You will also receive beautiful envelopes for all of the cards so you are ready to go.

Here’s all the details

WHEN?

30 October 2011, 10am -12.30pm
WHERE?
Carlton Village Hall
CHURCH LANE

CARLTON
GOOLE
DN14 9PB
HOW MUCH?
£12.50 This option includes your complete kit to make EIGHT cards 2 of each design, refreshments and cakes.

      FREE   With any £35 order or more, this is the best option you can order at the class or now, is up to you.

If you need any more info please get in touch with me. telemech01@aol.com

LOYALTY SCHEME

Introduce a new member to our clubs who is not on my mailing list, and you will get a £5 voucher towards your next club, TELL YOUR FRIENDS the clubs are fun and you are sure to enjoy the beautiful projects.

Generous Raffle prizes will be available on the day, everyone gets a FREE ticket for attending with a chance to purchase more.

Interested? Please book your spot at telemech01@aol.com

Hope to see you there, crafty hugs Monica xx