Happy Birthday Miss 7

Recently, I had the pleasure of my first ever party for a young lady turning 7. She came to my house to see the items I suggested we make, and she was fairly happy, except we changed a card featuring This Little Piggy to the same one featuring Pretty Kitty.

 Never having done this type of event before, but working with primary-age children in my regular day-job, I sort of knew what to expect, but on the other hand, it was an unknown. Just to make things a bit more challenging, my 3 year old grandson was spending the day with me as his other grandparents (and regular Monday-minders) had gastro, plus it was a rainy day.

I'd planned for the 8 girls to make the fox card first, and they did very well with it. Only a couple wanted to use the fox die-cut from the Designer Series paper, the remainder chose to stamp it in black and use watercolour pencils to colour it themselves. I was surprised that no-one chose the poodle I'd used for the alternative card. Obviously, these girls were all 'cat' people!

The fox card was one we'd made at Onstage in April, and made me fall in love with the Birthday Delivery suite. If you read on, you'll see that from 1-10 October you can buy some of the stamp sets with co-ordinating papers at 10% off. This includes Birthday Delivery, at $39.95 in Australia, down from $47.00 and great for kids birthdays. The designer series paper shown below, are buy 3 , get the 4th frree all through October. Yes, you can buy 3 cheaper papers and select a more expensive one for the freebie! How about that? Get together with a friend to share the savings, or keep them all for yourself. I love when Stampin' Up!® has these promotions, and make sure I take advantage of them.

All the girls chose a different colour card base, and kitties doing different things for their second card. I had forgotten the punch for the flower unfortunately, but the girls didn't seem too upset by that and for the folded bookmark, they all wanted to do the Gingerbread Man from Cookie-Cutter Christmas. They had a hard job lining up the gingerbread man and punching him with the matching punch as well, but it is easy for an adult.

They seemed happy with their activity and ran off to play with the new birthday gifts. Problem was, my grandson heard the words 'birthday cake' and was insistent we stay on till after thye cake was cut and distributed. It was a lovely afternoon with these girls, so if you have a budding crafter who would like to do this for her birthday party, contact me.

Check out my online store for all the fantastic offers from Stampin' Up!® and if you remember to add the host code when you purchase, there'll be a gift from me in the mail in the following month.

URYS3BV2

Cookie-Cutter Cutie CTC#102

This week at CASE-ing The Catty we are looking at the Halloween section of the Holiday catty, pages 50-55. I'm not really into Halloween cards, but I do like the sketch on page 53 using the little scarecrow from Cookie-Cutter Halloween. For my first card I substituted the gingerbread man from Cookie-Cutter Christmas, equally cute and so easy to punch out with the Cookie Cutter Builder Punch. For this selling period (until January 3rd) you can Bundle & Save 10% by purchasing the Cookie-Cutter Christmas stamps with the Punch using it's special code #143493.

The sentiment and star embellishment both come from Tin Of  Tags stamps, and I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Currently featured on page 33 of the Holiday Catalogue at $37 for this stamp set, through November 1st - 31st you can buy this for $27.75. Several other stamp sets are included in this 25% discount offer, mainly for Christmas.
On my card I've alternated silver and gold star enamel shapes for a touch of bling. Enamel dots in Real Red are on his chest too, and the DSP is from Candy Cane Lane, which is part of the buy three, get one free promotion, ending 31st October. I've re-stocked and can now freely use my pretty patterned papers. I liked the scrap of colour popping out to the left of the scarecrow, and I added a splash of Crushed Curry for added interest.

I haven't used this Cookie-Cutter Christmas stamp set and punch near enough yet, so I am planning a class for November 18th where you'll have the opportunity to make the Double-Z card, and possibly decorate it with some of these cute santas, gingerbread men, reindeer or even the teddy bear. I just need to get busy making the samples. I'm also holding a Quick & Easy Christmas Class on Friday 9th December at 7pm and again on Saturday 10th December at 2pm and those cards are on my class page already.

My next card is what happens when my creativity gets slightly out of hand! Do you ever have those moments? Mostly I'm quite restrained when it comes to embellishments and even layers, I call myself a "clean & layered" crafter, but I do like to push myself beyond my comfort zone. This is one of those cards! It is still based on the same sketch, but wanting to include  Ghoulish Grunge stamps to bring in the Halloween theme, I created some flower stems based on an idea I saw on Maria Willis' blog for What Will You Stamp #84. I had hand cut some flowers stamped on DSP with Love & Affection and liked the way they complemented the background DSP (Serene Scenery)


The sentiment is from Sunburst Sayings, and there is another card featured on page 43 which uses the same drips, and this sentiment. The remainder of the card is finished with some (drips) stems, flowers and a 'happy birthday' stamped straight onto the Crumb Cake card in Dapper Denim.












I really enjoyed making this pair of cards for the challenge this week. Same sketch idea, with quite different results.

Now you are heading off to the talented Kelly Kent in West Australia. I bet she has something to dazzle you.

If you'd like to join in the challenge for October, there is a day or two left. Link up here

Cheers, Rachel

Peekaboo Baby Bear

A big brown box with new stamps from Stampin' Up!® with my Holiday Catalogue pre-order arrived on my door step on Friday morning. Oh yay! Delivered in time for the weekend. I couldn't play with it through the day though because Friday is my day with my small grandson, Oliver.




When I finally had time, after dinner, I barely had any energy but this afternoon I did get a chance to stamp and inked up the Cookie-Cutter Christmas. The sketch for Sunday Stamps was the perfect kick-start for my inspiration today, although I've deviated slightly from the plan.

That stamp and the matching Cookie-Cutter Builder Punch were  #1 on my wish list, just for the cuteness factor I suspect. For this card, no punch required and the sweet little face, and the separate pair of ears are so easy to add with a photopolymer stamp. The other stamps are pretty cute too, a Santa, Reindeer, Eskimo and gingerbread man and all can be punched out. For the reindeer, you turn the punch the other way and what were legs for the other stamps are the antlers. I'm going to try that stamp out next. I'm sure with a change of patterned paper and a red bow, the teddy will be super-cute for Christmas too.

Thanks for dropping in,
enjoy your {crafty} weekend too
Rachel