Another Masculine Birthday

With five sons, and five grandsons, plus a husband, it usually does seem to be masculine cards I need in my personal stash! Today it is the birthday of my 3rd son, and although he is a plumber by trade, he has an interest in wood turning. My husband discovered some lathes at a garage sale recently and he and our son are reading up on wood turning. Sam has even made a few handles for his chisels.

There is no way that I'll let go of Nailed It anytime soon. I actually live in hope that it will return to the catalogue, but it would be very unlikely. This was fun to put together using the Wood Texture DSP stack for the background and those lovely handles on the tools. They look well-used don't they?

Those flag banners are from Birthday Delivery, and the words can be added in later. The words fit perfectly.

The sentiment used inside is from Colorful Seasons. It is a lovely thought for birthdays or weddings don't you think? When the card is for someone special, I really like to finish them off. The white card has been layered onto Chocolate Chip like the outer part of the card, and linen thread has been wound around the layers at the top of the stacked log strip.

With a lot of guidance, his 3 year old son made a card too. Well, Gran did the cutting and gluing and our little man stamped and applied candy dots - all over! I let him pick the stamp from Boys Will Be Boys, another retired stamp that isn't leaving my shelf anytime soon. He said, "My dad likes Lego", so that was an easy choice. I pulled out the older linen stamp pads, because like most children (and some adults) he presses too hard into the newer foam pads.

He practised on a big sheet of paper first, so that we could be a bit controlled when it came to the real thing. He was great at using baby wipes in-between colours, so his technique is beginning to develop. In this picture he had stamped a sentiment, and he asked, "Is that my name?" He'd been playing with my name and contact details stamp and when he'd asked, I'd told him it was my name, so he must think everyone has a name stamp. Well as a matter of fact, Boys will Be Boys has a sentiment that says 'Best Kid Ever' so I stamped that inside with his name printed after it.

 Hope you find some time to create this week,

Cheers

Rachel

Number Of Years

Thought I should draw your attention to an item in the Online Extravaganza which is in the 20% off section. This continues while stock lasts or until 28th November, whichever comes first. Large Number Framelits are one of the most used items in my kit. Hardly a week goes by when I don't use them for something and I really believe they're a must have item.

Instead of the usual $54.00 they are $43.20 until 28th November, and this Lego card is one you could make with them, with just a 'Happy Birthday' sentiment and a circle punch.

Boys Will Be Boys is a retired stamp set which had Lego as one of its stamps, so this set remains in my stash while I have 5 young grandsons to craft for (and with). For the Lego on the front of the card, I have cut squares and rectangles and punched small circles in the same colour to construct the blocks. This card was for the recent birthday of one of my grandsons, along with the Lego gift.

For this next card, I was creating a card for a lady turning 60. The Number Framelits cut a Dazzling Diamonds 6 & 0 for the centre of this floral display, from Timeless Love. It was fun to colour the flowers all different shades of pink. Another stamp from Timeless Textures is stamped over the background, and the sentiment comes from Cottage Greetings.

When making a card for such a significant birthday, I do use a few layers, including on the inside,I find it helps to balance the card a bit better, and just looks more luxurious.

A little close-up of those lovely numbers and the watercolouring.

I'm planning to put a small order through on Sunday night,so if you are wanting anything from these specials and can collect them from me, you can have free shipping. You just need to text 0417500681 or email me your order and let me know how you'll be paying by 7pm Sunday 27th November. You can also order online yourself at anytime of the day or night, remember to use the hostess code SVAGUCMK before checkout, and you'll receive a surprise from me in the mail.

Cheers, Rachel

Farewell To Some Sale-A-Bration Items

Most of you are probably aware of the Stampin' Up!® annual promotion which always takes place in the New Year. It's the reason I joined up as a hobby demonstrator nearly 5 years ago. (My anniversary is February 28th) and every year I've loved the SALE-A-Bration collection, and usually hang onto the stamp sets. They often have great sentiments and images, and because they are only on offer with a qualifying purchase (for less than 3 months too) they are a little bit different.

Two stamp sets, and one Designer Series Paper are leaving the collection early - Monday 15th January will be the last day to add them onto your qualifying order. $90 if you want one, $180 for two or $270 for all three!

It's hard to pick a favourite out of the three. I've enjoyed using The Sky Is The Limit a lot. I used it for my January class and loved the way each of the ladies put their own spin onto my sample. They're a clever lot, those girls!





It's a great masculine stamp set and it fits in rather nicely with Traveler and Going Global stamp sets, so I will hang onto it. I made another pair of cards this week so you could see the DSP, which comes in six shades, 2 12" x 12" double-sided sheets per pack.




Now these neutrals don't really do the paper justice, but I'm sure when you see the pink, which is Melon Mambo one side and Blushing Bride the other you'll be more impressed.
Quite a contrast, isn't it? This is the other retiring stamp set, Hello.


As well as the word 'hello' in a large clear script, there are 4 sub-titles: Little Sunshine, Birthday Girl, Birthday Boy and My Friend.
For the Melon Mambo version, I've used only stamps from Hello. The little party hat is also part of it, along with a smiley face and a sun. They're designed to fit on the 'e' or the 'o'. The Blushing Bride card has some flowers from A Whole Lot Of Lovely, which was out because I was making a card to send off to a team mate who is unwell.

I couldn't resist putting a card together for a Birthday Boy as well, using Boys Will Be Boys for the Lego and Balloon Builder for a balloon, but of course there are so many balloon stamp sets around at the moment, it could come from anywhere. If you have boys under 10 in your life, Boys Will Be Boys is a 'go to' stamp set too. The different coloured Lego were water-coloured using ink and an aquapainter, easy enough, and the background lego were just stamped out in matching ink.

The inside of this card was a bit of fun too! This time the lego were stamped in 4 different colours, there is some brightly coloured washi tape at the bottom and two sentiments from Party With Cake.
You can see the little smiley face here too, but I haven't yet used the sun or Little Sunshine. I bet they'll fit into the Sunburst Sayings range rather nicely though. So which of these SAB items do you NEED in your stash?



Want to Join?


Another thing I'd like to remind you of. During SALE-A-Bration is a great time to join Stampin' Up!® especially if your wish list is a long one. The joining special is "pay $169, but order $295 retail of Stampin' Up!® products". There's no shipping to pay on that order, and you have until end of June to make your $440  quarterly minimum. Not sure what I'm talking about? Email me with a question, or a phone number and suitable time for me to call you and maybe you'll join the Stampin' Up!® family too.


It's totally okay to join for the discount, maybe you'll take your hobby further but Stampin' Up!® (nor me) will ever pressure you to do that. One of the unexpected bonuses for me has been the fun friendships and support I've received from other demonstrators. Oh, I'll just share the card I've posted to my team mate too. Its so pretty in shades of Smokey Slate and soft, subtle pastels.

I am an Australian demonstrator, living on the outskirts of Melbourne. My team, the South'n Stampers, is small and friendly. We try to meet up every couple of months to stamp together, sometimes a bit hard with work commitments and family, and I hold a class once a month. Email me at rpalmieri5@bigpond.com if you need to know more. If you have a long list from the Occasions Catalogue and Annual Catalogue ready to go now, you might want to click on the link to read terms and conditions.

Cheers, Rachel

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Baby Bear Turns One FMS#222

My littlest nephew is turning one next week. He had his first haircut last week and no longer looks like a baby - he's a toddler!!

I have so many birthday cards to make over the next few weeks, S-I-L celebrated 3rd February, Logan is 6 on the 14th, Stephen is 1 on the 17th, Xavier is 8 on the 21st, Matthew is 40 on 2nd March and Alice is 3 on the 8th March. Balloon Celebration with the matching Balloon Bouquet Punch is my life saver!
I haven't made up my mind yet whether I prefer a punch or a die, but this Balloon Bouquet Punch is fabulous for using up scraps of card, so I have a container of balloons already punched sitting on my table.

Last night, looking for inspiration, I found the sketch at Freshly Made Sketches. Aussie Narelle is responsible for this little beauty, and although there are a lot of pieces layered onto this card, I hope it's still 'fresh' enough.
The colours were drawn from the patterned paper, a lovely retired Christmas DSP, All Is Calm. I love these soft, sweet shades. I used the Little Number Thinlets and cut a space in the large balloon so the number lays flat. There was already so.o.o.. much texture happening here, we didn't need any more.

The littlest bear from Bear Hugs has a hold of his birthday balloons and he's grounded by the banners. It's so handy having an easy-to-use banner stamp, and this one is from Number Of Years. I have been using that stamp set most of the time for birthdays, but this little guy needed a petite numeral. The birthday sentiment from Boys Will be Boys fits perfectly inside the banner, always handy when you want to stamp something quickly.

Don't you love the stamped shading on the balloons? Oh, and did you know that if you buy the stamp set and punch together, you get a 15% discount, how good is that!

Cheers, Rachel

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Lighthearted & Lovely - FMS#207 CTD#363

There's a lot going on at the moment, but the best way to keep life on an even keel is to slip away for a few minutes to play with paper and ink. I'm looking forward to another weekend away with three of my grandchildren, and there will definitely be no 'time out' for Gran and Pop!!!

Freshly Made Sketches always has some inspiration over on their challenge blog, and by just rotating the sketch it has accomodated my design. This time I found my colour inspiration at Color Throwdown.

I began with flowers and fuss but quickly changed track to this very simple card, with a sentiment from Stampin' Up!® Boys Will Be Boys and a single leaf from Lighthearted Leaves. When making a card like this with pieces needing precise positioning its always a good idea to have  Tombow multipurpose glue handy because it allows you to slip the pieces around for a short while.



Cheers,
Rachel

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Weekly Deal - Boys Will Be Boys

This week one of my favourite stamp sets for kids, Boys Will Be Boys, is included in the Weekly Deals, only until next Tuesday 11.50pm  (8th September) though.

Boys Will Be Boys clearmount  $31.00 $23.25

Really, this stamp set isn't just for boys, my grand daughter loves to stamp with it just as much as her brothers do. You can check out the Weekly Deals every Wednesday morning here.

There is a new HOSTESS CODE for the month, H7YNXJJG. If you use it when you checkout in my online store, you will receive a small gift from my stash. Don't forget, the HOLIDAY CATALOGUE is available for you to view online (See the sidebar to the right on my Stampinpals blog) and if you let me know, I'll send you a copy of your own.

I'm happy to be back home from my little overseas jaunt, and maybe will start creating soon, after I get up to date with the washing and ironing!

Cheers,

Rachel

Stamps & Ink = FUN - CASE-ing The Catty #39 Project Life

Here it is Friday, once again. You may have arrived from Jackie's blog or perhaps you're starting here on the Blog Hop? Either way, continue hopping around until you get back to where you started, lots of great crafty goodness to be shared. This week at CASE-ing The Catty we are case-ing the Project Life section, pages 49-54. My Project Life is basic at best, so I wasn't sure how inspired I could be. I hardly use any stamping on my pages. However, I am having a 'bit of a thing' for Layered Letters Alphabet, and looking at the tied the knot layout on page 54 I decided that I could improvise with that. I'm so sorry I haven't been able to scan my inspirations recently because my computer and scanner/printer have had a falling out. I'm not sure who is at fault, but I sure wish they'd hurry up and make up.

The card that inspired this has 'tied the knot' in bold black text and it appears to have been sponged in a chartreuse colour at the bottom. After sorting through 'This Is The Life' set of cards, I chose a 3" X 4" that had a Bermuda Bay flag at the top, where I've stamped the date. This date stamp is from a newsagent, as the Becky Higgins one ...
a) isn't available through Stampin' Up!® and
b) has the date formatted differently to the way we use it in Australia.

I cut some cards and trialed a few different titles and sub-titles, until I settled on this version. The rectangles shape is in Layered Letters Alphabet and made the title more colourful. FUN is stamped over the colours. For the other sub-titles I've used my Alphabet Rotary Stamp. Flipping through the catalogue I couldn't find it and thought it had been retired without me noticing, but when I went to the shop, it came up and I realised it was with Alphabet stamps, not accessories! Page 132 if you'd like to take a look. Its lots of fun for all those short phrases, and Alison has even suggested using it to address envelopes! Now that's a cute idea.If you click on her name back there, it will take you to her post.

The photos were taken the day school broke up for the winter break. Poppy and Grandma were taking a family group to see Circus Oz the next day, and because these guys live nearly 2 hours out of town, they needed to stay the night to get here for an early afternoon show. Friday afternoon, their Dad and I took them for a walk to the lake, and they played until it became too chilly. Matthew was very pleased to hear that I had a crafting activity planned, instead of plonking them in front of the TV straight off - after all, we were having 'movie night' complete with popcorn later. The children were pretty happy to have made cards for the next parties they go to. They always do make cards for us, usually hand drawn, but they loved the chance to stamp with Boys Will Be Boys stamp set.


All the cards on this page are from Project Life This Is The Life, the yellow one was a 6" X 4" sliced down the middle to fit two small pockets. I still need to journal - oops!

I've "borrowed an image from my friend Elizabeth, so you can see my "Tied The Knot' inspiration.
Now you're heading off to Julia's blog, enjoy the trip
Rachel

If you need any of these products, the product list takes you right to that item in my online store, and the Hostess Code is 6J7FYB24.

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Cheerful Birthday Critters

On my 'to-do' list are family birthday cards! My only grand-daughter, adorable Alice is nearly two, so a special card is called for. I haven't had much experience with girls (lots with boys though!) and I've noticed that Alice plays differently to her brothers and cousins. I have a number of handmade teddies about, and Alice loves to collect them up and sit them on stools. I'm not sure what this game is, but it looks a bit like 'school'.

On the other hand, she also seems to think she can be involved in all the rough and tumble with her big brothers, so perhaps she will have the best of both worlds?
It seemed perfect to use Cheerful Critters for her birthday card. Its such a cute photopolymer stamp set, includes some sentiments which are so easy to position because of the see-through quality. Saying that, I haven't actually used any of the words from the stamp set this time. Happy Birthday is from Boys Will Be Boys (Weekly Deal in clear mount $23.21). The number came from Memorable Moments and the 'you're' is part of another greeting (can't remember which). The signs the bear and bunny are holding are perfect for all sorts of messages!

I've had the picture coloured for a few weeks now, just waiting for inspiration on how to finish it off, and that came from the sketch at Retro Sketches, just turned on its side.

I think it's turned out cute enough for our sweet Alice!

Rachel

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Happy Birthday Dear Isaac! CTS#102

In a week, the second of my little brood of grandchildren, turns 5! Yay!

Being so close to Christmas, we try to make an extra effort to remember his special day, so next Thursday I will drive 2 hours down to the coastal town where he lives, to celebrate with him. Unfortunately, his Pop can't have a day away from work, but luckily, it isn't one of my working days. Now, Isaac is a boy with an enquiring mind, and I have visited the National Geographic Store to select a gift, and it's not a robot. If it was, he would probably need to take it apart, like his Uncle Sam did when he was a young boy. Boys will be boys, always!

When I was studying this sketch at Cas(e) This Sketch, I thought of the robot in Boys Will Be Boys moving across a floor. I've kept the colours subdued and 'shadowy'. There is a shot of colour with the red frame and the rhinestones coloured with Blendabilities. I've been looking forward to using the cork numerals from Project Life, perfect for a birthday as well as an Advent project, don't you think?

This is a lovely sketch, it could be used with so many different images:- flowers, stars, candles. Are you going to share your card?
Cheers,
Rachel

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Boys Will Be Boys CTC#14

This week at Case-ing The Catty we have a colour challenge, inspired by the washi tape on page 29 of the Holiday Catty. The Old Olive reminded me of army fatigues, so it wasn't long before I thought of a Stampin' Up!® stamp set Boys Will Be Boys. It has an army guy parachuting. I put it on my wish list as soon as the catalogue came out, but it was only recently I took delivery.

These stamps take me back to my now-adult sons' toys. I'm sure the eldest had a robot just like the one in Boys Will Be Boys, and my third son was mad for those little men that parachute. Wooden blocks, Duplo, and Lego for the bigger boys, were a regular part of their lives. Now those toys have been taken out of storage and hang around the house for the grandsons to play with when they are over.

I've used a combination of Stampin' Write Markers, ink pads and an Aquapainter to colour the stamped images. In the spirit of the challenge I've stayed with Marina Mist, Old Olive and Real Red for this birthday card, but I'm sure there ought to be a yellow Duplo too, so perhaps I will colour the last one later!

The tabs in red and green were cut using the Project Life Cards and Labels and finished off with those cute silver metal buttons. That kind of reminds me of the overalls I used to dress them in!!!! Oh, such happy memories.....

What will you make using those colours?  Don't forget to add it to Case-ing The Catty.

November is my birthday and I'd love to send you a gift. So....any orders over $50 (before shipping costs) during November will qualify for a gift from me. I can't tell you what it is yet, (possibly a stamp set) and it will ship separately to your main order. You need to use this code   MYJAE96T  in the box "Hostess Code" BEFORE you enter your payment details.

Shop online here or click on any of the pictures below to take you to the store.

Rachel

Boys Will Be Boys Wood-Mount Stamp Set

$42.95

Boys Will Be Boys Clear-Mount Stamp Set

$30.95

Project Life Cards & Labels Framelits

$42.95

Big Shot

$149.95

Silver Basic Metal Buttons

$13.95

Fuse Fast Adhesive

$16.95

Marina Mist A4 Card Stock

$11.95

Real Red A4 Card Stock

$11.95

Real Red Classic Stampin' Pad

$9.95

Marina Mist Classic Stampin' Pad

$9.95

Old Olive Classic Stampin' Pad

$9.95

Old Olive Stampin' Write Marker

$5.95

Real Red Stampin' Write Marker

$5.95

Marina Mist Stampin' Write Marker

$5.95

Jet Black Stazon Ink Pad

$13.95

Aqua Painters

$19.95

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