Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas

#GDP015

#GDP015

Spring/Summer Catalogue

Spring/Summer Catalogue

Christmas Advent Calendar Workshop

Christmas Advent Calendar Workshop

Cherry Cobbler Christmas card

Cherry Cobbler Christmas card

Snowflake Card and Tag set

Snowflake Card and Tag set

Butterfly Basics - #GDP009

Butterfly Basics - #GDP009

#GDP008

#GDP008

oops I should be doing something else!

oops I should be doing something else!

Crafty Friends

Crafty Friends

World Card-Making Day 2015

Well today is World-Cardmaking day, and I hope you are all crafting away.  If you particularly like stamping and sniffing new card-stock then I have a deal for you today.

For one day only I am offering a discount on orders placed with me.  £5 off any order of £25 or more or £10 off any order £50 or more, and there will be no P+P.  If I get enough orders, there may be some extra surprises for you in your shopping

Email me on fispapercraft@hotmail.co.uk by 9pm (GMT) to take advantage of this offer. check out my shop at 
http://www.stampinup.net/esuite/home/fis-papercrafts

*Small print
Offer open to UK residents only for one day, Saturday 3rd October 2015 up to 9pm (GMT). Offer only on orders emailed directly to me via fispapercraft@hotmail.co.uk and not to online orders placed through my online shop.

Tags, Tags and more tags

Tags, Tags and more tags

The Wonder of Classes

The Wonder of Classes

Open Day

Open Day

It's Here

It's Here

Fi's Papercraft - Independent Stampin' Up Demonstrator - Launch

Open house, only a few days left to register....!

Shhh....Christmas is on its way

Shhh....Christmas is on its way

Season to Season Wreath Project Kit

Season to Season Wreath Project Kit

Busy Busy Busy!

Well, we are in the midst of the Summer Holidays and the children are having at least one meltdown a day each.  Izzy - well she's a baby and teething, Sophie - wants to wear her school dress everyday (she might be excited about starting school in September) and Emma - because life is sooo unfair and we are the worst parents evvvver and we are ruining her life (I think we asked her to take her plate to the kitchen).

We had a great week at Butlins, the children really enjoyed it as there is enough for them to do and Ian and I got a chance to relax as well.  After that we spent a few days with the in-laws, which was lovely.  This time last year MIL was too unwell to play with the children, but a year later and she is much better and everyone had a great time.

In between all this, it was our 5 year wedding anniversary.  I'm not the greatest romantic in life, so I am sure I checked with Hubby and we agreed not to get anything, which I assumed included a card - I was wrong.  So at 11pm the night before I whipped up this exploding box using Stampin' Up DSP (retired), card and vellum.  I was pleased with it, but you can see where I glued the vellum to the card - any suggestions?

I also had some thank you and birthday cards to do.  I went back to may favourite 'Flamingo Lingo' stamp set and matched it with Stampin' Up in colour paper stack.  I do love it, particularly the ribbon trim,

Here are the Thank you cards, for leaving Governors.

I have been very busy with my Stampin' Up bits and pieces, I have held two workshops that have gone very well, in the process of creating samples for my Open Day on 5th September and launching a local craft club on Thursday 10th September.  Its very busy, but enjoyable.

Workshop No.2

Workshop No.2

Hostess with the Most-ess

Hostess with the Most-ess

Summer Workshops

Summer Workshops

End of Term Madness

End of Term Madness

1st Workshop

1st Workshop

Sneaky Peak - part II

Sneaky Peak - part II

End of term mania

Well it is as manic as ever, with Emma's birthday celebrations taking over two weekends and trying to finish up all my work commitments by the end of term.  Being busy is at least doing the diet some good, however I can't wait until the summer holidays and enjoying some fun times with my girls.  Here are the two cards I made for Emma, one from Mummy and Daddy and the birthday cake one from Izzy.  Sophie made her own stylish drawing (as only a 4yr old can).

I used the 'Heat and Stick' powder from Stampin' Up on the blue card and the butterfly.  Basically you use an embossing ink - like versamark - to stamp the image, cover in the heat and stick powder and heat with a heat tool.  Be carefully as it doesn't take as long to 'turn' as embossing powders.  Once it is ready, cover the image in ordinary glitter and re-heat briefly to set.  It means you can stamp and glitter an image without ruining your stamp with glue.  I guess it depends on the type of glitter used (i used Hunkydory glitter), however the fine detail in the cake was lost with this method  - but I was still happy with the effect.

South Hill Park in the Spring

We are going to Butlins for a week when term finishes and visiting relatives at various times, but I have given us the challenge of trying to visit all the parks in Bracknell Forest over the holidays.  if you don't know Bracknell, they have some of the best and well kept parks I know.  We are so lucky in where we live that we walk through a park to school every day, one road to cross and that is it.  The girls love it, they talk to all the dog walkers and the joggers and spend their time om the way to school looking for slugs (don't ask me why - I don't know).

Any way I have also been busy establishing my Stampin' Up business, with my first workshop this Friday.  I think I have planned everything and know what I am doing - it's very exciting!  I'll post Sneaky Peak - Part II tomorrow.

A sneaky peak...part 1

A sneaky peak...part 1

A New Role!

This is very exciting! I have joined Stampin' Up as a new independent demonstrator.  Yes, yes, yes I know it's a bit like Avon,  however I am very excited to start this journey and I hope I can make a success of it.  My Stampin' Up website is:  http://www.stampinup.net/esuite/home/fis-papercrafts

I hope you will have a look around and join me on this adventure.  I have really enjoyed posting here and getting your feedback.  I will still be posting projects that are independent - because lets face it, like you, I have enough supplies to open my own shop even without Stampin' Up!  So I will be trying to manage two blogs, this one and one on my official Stampin' Up website.

Flamingo's!

I promised I would show you some cards I have made with the new Flamingo Lingo stamp set I got from Stampin' Up.  I have to say I have had enormous fun with them, to be frank I think everyone will be getting a flamingo on their card this year!

Here are a selection of cards I have made recently, some with the Docrafts 'Feeling Fruity' free papers from their website.  So, if you have a birthdays soon, you will have to guess which card could be for you.

On the middle card I used the 'Mustache Framelit' die with the Stampin' Up 'Well Worded' (retired) stamp set.  Again, another love of mine and very easy to make contemporary cards for men with.  Watch out Hubby, with your birthday and Father's day coming up this could be for you!

 Last Saturday I went to the Stampin' Up catalogue launch and these were the 'make and takes', a card, a tag and a chocolate bar wrapper, all with the new colours and products.

The last two cards were made for my Dad's partner's 70th Birthday.  Both cards were made with free stamp sets.  The flower stamp set for the blue card came from issue 117 of Papercraft Essentials. I think this is a very pretty set, and easy to use.  I used three ink colours to get the layering effect.

 The oriental stamp set came from issue 144 of Cardmaking and Papercraft.  Colouring isn't my strong point, but I find using watercolour pens helpful (in this case docrafts artiste watercolour pens - set of 12).

That's all from me at the moment, still have quite a few summer cards to complete, but currently busy with the end of term paperwork for work, so they may need to wait a little bit.  Can you believe it -  all the Christmas goodies will be released soon for the Christmas 2015 cards.  I will have to sit on my hands.

Birthdays

Just a quick post to show you the preparations for Sophie's 4th Birthday.  I made place-mats and thank you bags using craft artist.  I have also prepped pinwheels for the children to make and decorate (along with princess hats) tomorrow - well I had to do something crafty with them.

If we survive the crafty table, party bags and party food there should be another update next month!

Not quite keeping to my New Years Resolutions

Oh dear....not sure how much of this I should write as I know my husband reads and shares these posts...now.

'Gulps'... my resolution not to spend any money on crafty items has gone since I have been going to the Stampin' Up classes (well to be honest it had gone by the end of January).  I've spent roughly £40 on new stamps and bits and pieces and I have only been to two classes. One of the new stamp sets I have purchased is called 'Flamingo Lingo'. It's a really fun set featuring flamingos, I will show you some card examples with my next blog as I haven't had a chance to play with them yet.

I have also purchased the Midnight Blush capsule collection from Papermania (via Create and Craft), from which I made the following 'Thank you' card and box for a colleague.  I stamped and embossed a free flower stamp set from a magazine onto a off-cut from an A3 piece of centura pearl card-stock. I then layered with a strip of paper and lace from the capsule collection.  I covered a tag with contrasting paper and stamped a sentiment on and attached it with a 'big bloom' paper flower.  I made a basic box for the card to fit in, and layered paper from the collection onto plain black card before decorating the box with the layers.  I stamped a large greeting onto black card and embossed with silver powder.  I die-cut several flowers and attached around the greeting, finishing with a gem in the centre of each flower. I thought they both looked very sophisticated.

I was very busy in April as it is the busiest month for birthdays - Dad's, my brother's and my niece's all within 2 weeks.


For Dad's I used a Stamps Away mask (hummingbird) and Phill Martin's texture paste (denim blue) from Creative Expressions.  It worked quite well, although I do need to practice more in ensuring the paste doesn't bleed under the mask.

I also made a pop up box card from the Grandchildren using a Hunkydory at the Seaside kit.

For my niece I used a Santoro Gorjuss card making kit for her card and used the same kit to decorate a notebook and bookmark for her.

There have been other expenditures which I decided had come for Valentine's Day and Mothers' Day...after I had bought them!

Oh well, it should give me an incentive to try and sell my cards at a Craft Fair, although I never seem to have time to build up enough stock to do this.  I must do so as I am just getting swamped with crafting goodies.  My latest purchases I have justified by saying they are for my daughters 4th birthday preparations this month.  They include a W R Memorykeepers pinwheel board and accessories and a laminator and pockets.

Celebrations!

I thought I would do a quick post before Easter to show you a couple of things I have been up to recently.  

Last weekend I went to my first craft class with Stampin' Up.  Esther the demonstrator was very nice and even provided cakes and tea.  There were three other ladies, who were all soooo good. We completed three projects - a notelet set, a teeny weeny basket and a birthday card - as well as having a good natter.  Here is a link to her blog, she has some fantastic ideas there:  Esther's Blog

We also received some goodies, including a set of 12x12 'something borrowed' papers from their designer range.  It's a very stylish set of papers for weddings etc.  However we used them on the birthday card and they would probably be very nice for christenings and anniversaries.  However, these papers came in handy almost immediately as on the Monday my next door neighbour looked a bit worse for wear.  Her son had got married the day before!  That night I made the card below, mixing the papers with a Hunkydory kit and some of the Craftwork card flowers I had left over from the girls wreaths.

On a more personal note, Isabel has started rolling over and we are introducing her to foods.  Her Grandparents don't live very close, therefore I created this page for them using Craft Artist 2 and the Nursery Rhyme digikit.

A quiet month...

Well, this month we have had the builders in remodeling our kitchen, dining room and backroom.  Therefore my craft room/spare room is currently the storage room.  Thankfully, I thought ahead slightly and made my Mothers' Day cards before the work started.

However, I have learnt a rather useful (if basic) lesson.  Do not leave your cards on top of the printer, in front of direct sunlight as all your ink fades.  I got inspiration from Issue 136 of Quick Cards (p60) - triple stamping.  It is were you carefully layer three different sized pieces of card on top of each other and stamp across the borders so that the image is on all three pieces of card.  Once happy, the individual cards are matted on to contrasting paper and layered back together.  The effect is very pretty and is a way of producing your own background papers.  Admittedly, it is not so effective after three weeks in direct sunlight.

However, here are the cards I made for Mum and Mum-in-Law, they are 6x6 gate-fold cards:

Now that the girls are growing up they seem to be invited to birthday parties more and more often. It is lovely to see how excited they get, therefore, I had a couple of cards to get ready this month.

I made this card for a 3yr old using Crafter's Companion Rachelle Anne Miller Kids at Play CD-Rom and the accompanying papercrafting pack.  I used one sheet of the background card and one sentiment from the papercrafting pack to make the front of the card and printed of the decoupage, flowers and backing sheet from the CD-Rom.

I made sure the front panel and back panel were the same size and scored both sheets at 1/2 inch and 1 inch in from both sides and folded the score lines so that it forms a box frame, which would push flat in an envelope (but don't glue yet).  I cut the aperture from the front panel, and kept the square piece that came out.  I then cut the base image for the decoupage from the next sized die down from the the one I cut the aperture with.

I compiled the decoupage on to the base image and glued it onto the square I saved from the aperture I cut from the front panel.   I glued one side of the front panel to the back panel and placed the decoupage in the box frame.  After carefully lining up the image, I glued it in place and then glued the other side of the box frame.

I then decorated freely with the embellishments, adding some cosmic twinkles glitter glue to the centre of the flowers.  I was really pleased with how it came out, although I think in future I would change the colour of the card I printed the decoupage on.

The second card was made with Serif Craft Artist 2 for a 7yr old who is mad about Frozen.  I found the Frozen image on the internet and brought it into Craft Artist as a photo.  The background and materials for the mats and layers are from the Serif Christmas Card 2009 digikit, the embellishments, bow and ribbon were from the 50's Fever digikit.  I used the colour picker tool to colour match the bow to Anna's cape.  I printed it on photo paper to give it a nice glossy finish and glued it onto a A5 card blank.  I added an insert by copying  the main image onto a second page and using the transparency tool to lighten the image before printing off.

Lets just hope I understood my 7yr old's ramblings correctly and her friend really does like Frozen, as she got home made Frozen wrapping paper as well!

That's it for this month.  I am still trying to start the scrapbook for Izzy, however I am struggling to find a way of starting it.  Any suggestions let me know (I am using the Snap Studio, Simple Stories system).

Projects on my Desk

I'm not sure about any other crafty or hobbyist person, however I seem to have an awful lot of projects scattered around my craft room (aka the spare bedroom) that are never completed - or even started in same cases!  I think its a crafty thing, we are attracted to all that glitters and flit too and fro but never stay long enough to see things through.

Well, this time I did.  Several months ago I got the Craftwork Cards Wreath Making kit, which was the members gift from Create and Craft.  There were two circle wreaths and one heart wreath and enough flowers to decorate them.  The idea was to make them into door hangings for my three daughters.  With number three on the way I couldn't sit down long enough to even contemplate starting it at the time.

But inspiration struck me soon after Christmas and I sat down and made the wreaths up.  Part of my problem was that I enjoyed making the first 2 pages of flowers, but got a bit impatient with the last two pages.  This is something I have noticed as I have gotten older, that I don't have the attention span! Maybe that's having three children, job and house to manage - I respond briefly to the item (or person) that shouts the loudest.

Anyway, for some of the flowers I added Hunkydory diamond sparkles glitter, some I left plain and just used the gold and silver candi supplied and some I heat embossed. It should have been clear embossing powder, however Sophie (3yr old) had 'played' with my stash and mixed all my embossing powders up.  So, it was a mixture of clear, sparkly and silver embossing powders.  I may need to invest in some new powders (but will this go against my New Year's resolution not to buy any new crafting stuff apart from essentials???).

I attached the flowers and the ribbons that were supplied with the kit.  I then used my Silhouette Portrait to cut their names out of Create and Craft glitter card stock and black card (from Crafters Companion - very good).  I used the black card as a shadow under the glitter card, and to add some strength as the lettering was fairly fine.  I then attached the names across the center of the wreaths to personalise each one.

I was quite impressed with how they have turned out, and the girls love them on their doors. I was also pleased to have a number of flowers left over that I can use on other projects and cards (in fact I already have).

My next project is to complete the baby book for Isabel - which I am very daunted with.  For my other two girls we just got a shop bought one which you add the information into, this time I got Snap Studio Simple Stories Album and inserts, and not sure where to start....

but that is for another blog.

And one year later......

I guess you could say I had a break for a little while.  In October 2014 I gave birth at home to our third little girl, Isabel.  Everything went well with the planned home birth, but unfortunately she had to stay for a week in neo-natal for a lung infection,  However, she is doing really well now and is growing fast -as any other baby does. As you can see from the photo of the three girls below, they are all fine and not besotted with Frozen at all - Emma as Elsa, Sophie as Arna and as I couldn't find a baby Olaf costume, Isabel is Sven!

During pregnancy I had to concentrate on the aspects of my life that had to get done, such as looking after my other two girls, the house and paid work, so crafting was put to one side for a little bit.

However.... I am back now and hope to keep this blog up and running.

New Year's Resolutions
I don't normally do New Year's Resolutions as I generally forget about them after a month (as most people do), however this year I thought I would plan some crafting resolutions:

1: Try not to buy any new crafting gear (apart from the basics) - a strange one I know, however I do have an awful lot of crafting and card making goodies that I want to try to use up, This includes quite a few Hunkydory card kits.  I do like the Hunkydory quality, but get a bit stuck sometimes on using them creatively rather than just sticking the toppers onto the cards stock - which creates a lovely card if you are short of time or mental capacity!

As you can see from the photo, I have started this trend with my Christmas thank you cards, which are entirely made from my 'bit' bag.  A bag full of scraps of card from other projects or papers and embellishments that I have had for awhile that are left overs from kits or I have got free from magazines.  I am quite pleased as to how they have turned out.

My lovely husband bought me the Silhouette Portrait electronic cutting machine for a joint birthday and Christmas present, which I am thoroughly enjoying even if I have only done a few basic shapes and cards on it.  I feel it will take me a couple of dedicated days to completely understand - which with three young children should be interesting to accomplish .  I am hoping that using the Portrait alongside Craft Artist 2 software will give me endless possibilities without an endless pocket.

2: To sell at a Craft Fair - I have sold cards at my daughters school Christmas Bazaar to the children and the parents, however it wasn't as successful as I had hoped.  Firstly, with the Key Stage One children (ages 4-7) it did feel like I was robbing them slightly as they hadn't a clue what they were buying, they just knew that they had money and they wanted to spend it! Secondly, the parents only came in for a short time when collecting their children after school and were not aware that it was open for them.  Nevertheless I made a small profit.

So I have decided that I need to take the next step and sell at a professional Craft Fair, which I am fairly nervous about as it means having a knowledgeable customers and peers look at my creations.  Family like them, but will the public....

3: To keep this blog going!  Hopefully this year I can manage more than two posts, unlike last year.  It will still be a push, but hopefully I can show you creations I have made using the Portrait and Craft Artist.  As a taster, here are two box cards I made using a cutting file from the Portrait and a Christmas card kit I got from Create and Craft in the autumn of 2013 - I believe it is their own brand item and not from another company.  The cards were for my niece and a my friend's newborn twins.

I hope you all had a nice Christmas and New Year, and I will keep you informed of the antics in this crafting house.

Fiona