Last Hurrah For Sale-A-Bration!!!

SALE-A-Bration finishes on March 31st for another year and as usual there were some fabulous stamp sets to choose from, as well as paper packs & vellum. I love the SALE-A-Bration offerings every year. I've been thinking about which was my favourite, and going by the cards I've made, I'm thinking it is Flowering Fields.

I enjoyed putting together this grunge card with three panels back in January when SALE-A-Bration was just starting out, and this pretty watercoloured offering was even earlier and has been pinned many times on Pinterest.




Most recently, I made a set of notecards to give to an old friend of my mother's.
Again, these have been watercoloured, using ink and a combination of blender pen and Aquapainters to colour the images. The outside border is matched to a shade used on the bloom, and I stamped and coloured the envelopes to match. I have left them free of a sentiment, as I hope June will use them quickly and not hoard them for a 'special occasion'. June upcycles the magazines she receives from the boarding school that she, my mother and I all attended, which must be an effort for her, now she is 90. She truly deserves some 'happy mail'.

At the same time, I stamped this notebook which Stampin' Up!® used to sell. I wanted to keep a record of the classes I hold, who attends, and what products we used.
Four flowers were stamped and coloured straight onto the Kraft cover. A strip of Wildfower Fields Designer Series Paper was added to the base, after using the corner rounding punch from the Envelope Punch Board to round two corners. A length of ribbon finishes the notebook, along with a gold button and linen thread. The Little Letter thinlets were used to cut the title. You can get two of these notebooks for $3.58 here in the Clearance Rack.

Australian readers only.
This week, the Weekly Deals are a worthwhile place to begin your shopping, if you've been meaning to make an order and get yourself some SALE-A-Bration freebies.
If you leave a comment telling me which is your favourite SALE-A-Bration item and why, you will be in the running to win a free SALE-A-Bration stamp set *no purchase required to qualify*!!!!





Cheers, Rachel

Wildflower Birthday Wishes SAB CTC#68

   This week at CASE-ing The Catty we are sharing another SALE-A-Bration pick, whether it be a stamp set, one of the papers or even Project Life - they're all available for you to pick when you make an order of $90. If you happen to be mad for everything in the Occasions catalogue, you can pick an item for every $90 you order ($180 = 2 items, $270 = 3 items, $360 = 4 etc). If you get as high as that, maybe you should have a chat to me about joining up as a demonstrator, Stampin' Up!® welcomes and supports all types of demonstrators from the hobby demo buying crafting supplies at a discount, through to those making it a full time business. During SALE-A-Bration you get to choose $60 extra, choose $295 of any products from the Annual Catalogue and/or the Occasions Catalogue and pay only $169. Of course, if you prefer to be a customer, you can purchase your supplies through my online shop, or by contacting me, you just need to have a delivery address in Australia. 

One of the great things about being a demonstrator is being able to really plan your spending to take advantage of these promotions. This is the time of year when I stocktake my card, dimensionals, glues - really all the consumables I use for classes. Naturally I spread it over the three months of Sale-A-Bration so it doesn't do too much damage to my budget, and I usually end up with everything from the SAB catty. I love the SAB products, possibly because they have to be earned and there are generally less of them around. On the other hand, have you noticed what fantastic sets of sentiments they have during SAB. You can't ever have enough variations of 'happy birthday' greetings, can you?

The card in the catalogue with the cute chick is so sweet, I could have happily CASE-d it for my project. However, where's the challenge in that? Using that layout as my base, I took the Wildflower Fields DSP, Flowering Fields and Perfect Pairings rubber stamps, and this is what I came up with. I'm just a tiny bit besotted with the wee butterfly too, it's such a sweet little addition. This is a simple little card really, you could use this design for so many different cards.

With that challenge on my mind, I've substituted a baby bear for a cute chick. Bear Hugs comes with dies to cut the many pieces, and Balloon Builder of course has the matching punch, but this exercise was to show what you could do with less supplies. Cherry On Top is the paper stack used at the bottom of the card, it has helped me to pull a variety of colours for the card. I am wishing that I'd put a wee butterfly over baby bear's head (and I think I might just do that before it leaves my hands!)

Would you like to learn how to make cards like this for your family and friends? I have a simple beginners class on Thursday 10th March. Come at 10 am or 7pm, it will only take 1-1½ hours to make two very easy cards. The location is South Morang, Victoria - more details given when you make contact. Email-  rpalmieri5@bigpond.com

If you'd like to play along at CASE-ing The Catty, you can link your project here.

You may have arrived from CASE-ing the Catty

and perhaps now you're going to head off to Helen at H2 Designs

Have fun hopping

Cheers, Rachel

Field Flower Fantasy CQC#325

Since I'm on holiday, I have extra spare time - YAY! Bonus crafting time is always good, yes? It coincided with Colour Q posting their latest colour challenge. I love what the design team have done using these colours. Make sure you click on the link and take a look too.
I have been sorting my open packets of DSP, but found very little in Raspberry Ripple or Primrose Petals. Just one little piece of paper, but I do have each shade in ribbon, so managed to come up with that combination. Of course, So Saffron, Crumb Cake and white are all current colours so no problem finding them!



I was absolutely in the mood to use Flowering Fields again, knowing the blooms would fit into the panels created by a framelit from Chalk Talk Framelits. Cottage Greetings provided the sentiment, what a lovely font the birthday greeting has. Did you know that Birthday Blooms uses the same font as Cottage Greetings? More matchy-matchy! It is so handy to have all your supplies co-ordinating like that, ink & card colours, ribbons, brads and now fonts from one stamp set to another.

Now, there's a lot of talk here in Australia that they've used Australian flowers for these stamps. I'll concede that the central flower on my card does look distinctly like the Acacia (or Australian Wattle), while the flower on the right looks like a protea, which would be a South African native. Those flowers on the left remind me of wildflowers I saw growing on the Rockies in Alberta, Canada one summer. I guess I could put more time into researching what the artist at Stampin' Up!® had in mind when designing these stamps, but I'll just go on enjoying them and colouring them how I please. How I pleased today, was to use the thick end of my So Saffron marker to dab colour on the middle flower. Then I needed to mix some Cherry Cobbler and Rose Red to come up with something similar to Raspberry Ripple. I scribbled on a plastic lid with markers and then used an Aqua painter to water colour. The last flower at the very left, I mixed left overs of So Saffron with the reddish shade.

To the inside of the card, I added a piece of Whisper White and a strip of the SALE-A-Bration DSP, Wildflower Fields. From Cottage Greetings is another sentiment saying, "Hope Your Day Is Wonderful".

Finally, after finishing my card, I decided it was looking too clean. Thinking of the old art works by botanists, I've aged it with some Gorgeous Grunge and Crumb Cake.

Cheers, 
Rachel
I'd love you to choose my online shop to purchase from, and when you use the Host Code when asked at check out, I will send you a gift, along with a handmade card. The items listed below were used in my card above, and link to that item in my online shop.(Unfortunately, most are now retired, but feel free to browse anyway)

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Flowering Fields

SALE-A-Bration is a time of year that Stampin' Up!® demonstrators look forward to, as much as their customers do! Why? Because Stampin' Up! gives us free product too, when our orders reach $90 retail, and since it coincides with the new Occasions Catalogue (for us in the Southern hemishere, its a Spring catty for the Northern half of the world) it's is usually not that hard to earn a little SALE-A-Bration gift. This is the anniversary of when I joined the Stampin' Up!® family, 5 years ago and I love it as much, or more even, as when I first joined!

I have put through a sizeable order and now have a number of the free gifts in my hot little hands. I hate to admit it, but I spend a lot of time working my order out in multiples of $90 so I don't miss out by a few dollars. I always could add a packet of Dimensionals or an ink refill to bring it up to that magic total!!

No doubt you've seen and received heaps of notifications from demonstrators near and far about 'this most wonderful time of the year' and we are all making the same offers, so you'll find LOTS of information at the END of this post, if you want to read more, but now I'll share a little card I put together this morning. After mounting all the sweet wildflowers from Flowering Fields onto the wood blocks, I could hardly wait to ink them up. They remind me of wildflowers I saw growing in Canada, during summer, about 10 years ago.

 First I had to prepare the background. Using a size E acrylic block, I pressed about a third of it onto my Wild Wasabi ink pad, the other two-thirds into Soft Sky and then the edge of the top of the block into Lost Lagoon. Next, the block was spritzed with water. About three squirts, from about 30 cms, and it was nearly dripping.

The thick Whisper White card measured 10cm by 11.5 cm. which leaves a pleasing border when the inky block is smooshed onto it. I have to say that initially, I was disappointed with the white patches on the left of the image, but it's grown on me and now I really like that effect.






Using Memento black ink, I've simply stamped five of the six floral images and the wee butterfly straight over the background, after it had dried.
Flowering Fields has no sentiments, but I liked the message and the spidery writing of this one from Choose Happiness. "When I need a friend, you're there". It was stamped onto some SALE-A-Bration vellum and a thin strip has been placed over the other layers. Don't you love the clarity of the images? I'm sure they'd be great for colouring with Stampin' Write Markers or watercolouring with and Aquapainter and ink too.

Gifts For You

So after all that, if you'd like to shop with me, Australian residents only, you can browse the Occasions catalogue in my online store, or click on the image in the sidebar to the right. The same applies to the Annual catalogue, you can make your choices from either of those. I have a Hostess code for January  4G296SCD  and if you add it when you're checking out, I'd be very appreciative. If your order is $90 before shipping is added, you will get to choose a SALE-A-Bration item, a gift from Stampin' Up!®. I will also post you a packet of It's My Party Enamel dots for an order of $90 or more, which includes the Hostess Code. You need to allow me to contact you (that option is offered at checkout) so I know where to send your thank you gift. These will be posted out in the middle of February.

Read on for further information, and I am available to answer any questions or book a workshop at rpalmieri5@bigpond.com or phone 0417 500 681

Cheers, Rachel

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Here's the deal: for every $90 AUD/$110 NZD you spend (before shipping and handling), you get a FREE Sale-A-Bration product. That means it's the perfect time to purchase those products you've had your eye on while earning more products for free.

Note: Pages 4-15 of the Sale-A-Bration brochure show products available throughout the entire Sale-A-Bration sales period (5 January-31 March 2016); Pages 16-19 show limited-time products available only until 15 February.* Watch for another batch of limited-time products coming 16 February!
*Based on inventory, availability may be temporarily extended




It's the best time of year to join Stampin' Up! During Sale-A-Bration, you can become a demonstrator for just $169 AUD/$189 NZD and choose $60 AUD/$70 NZD more of FREE products for your Starter Kit. Plus, the kit ships for free! In plain English - go through your catalogues and pick out $295 retail of merchandise. It will be shipped to you and your credit card will have $169 debited to it. You are under no obligation to hold workshops or classes. If you are not able to order $440 worth of merchandise over the next three months, you just drop as a demonstrator. You will not have to return anything.