Lida's Journey

I attended the wonderful Scrapstars Retreat in Leeds at the weekend and this amazing album was one of the classes by the very talented Lida De Witte from The Netherlands.  I was gob-smacked when I saw the little car and the road in the album, how she thinks these things up I will never know.  The middle part of the album is a fold-out page with a huge heart and smaller hearts and I couldn't resist punching a few hearts with my Stampin Up Hearts punch, well it would have been rude not to.  I have finished the album but I am going to have to think very carefully about what photos to include in it, I want it to contain very special photos.

Go Team McLaren

Another day, another layout! This will be the last for this week I think, back to work tomorrow after having 8 craft filled days off. This layout is another using my Brights Collection Paper stack by Stampin' Up! Today I used the Real Red stripes and Pacific Point dots papers and the Scalloped Border punch for the white between the two coloured papers. The bunting was made using the Petite Pennants punch and tied up with Linen Thread and the hearts were made using both the Heart to Heart punch and the Full Heart punch. The frame around the photo was the left over part from the label I used on yesterday's cupcake layout and stamped using the Confetti stamp set. I cut the label using the new Framelits Dies called Labels Collection from the Summer Mini (available from 1st May 2012). The text I cut using the Alphabet Simple Letters dies.
The photo is courtesy of McLaren and features Jenson Button (phwoar) and Lewis Hamilton at a photoshoot in London. We are huge McLaren fans and during the Formula One season can be found glued to the TV on Saturday and Sundays watching qualifying and the race and we love going to live races too.

I Dream of Cupcakes

Here is another layout using Stampin' Up! papers, this time from the Brights Collections 12" x 12" Paper Stack and I used the Regal Rose and Tempting Turquoise dots papers from the stack and from the matching A4 Smooth Cardstock pack I used the same colours. The cupcakes were stamped using the Create A Cupcake stamp set and punched out with the matching Cupcake Builder Punch, both from the Spring Mini catalogue which finishes at the end of April. The inks used throughout are from the Brights Collection and I cut the large letters for the title using the Alphabet Simple Dies which I absolutely love. I also used the Scallop Trim Border Punch to add a little bit of white in between the two strong paper colours to break it up a bit and added some gorgeous Pretty in Pink half inch Scallop Dots Ribbon. I mounted the cupcakes onto label shapes cut using the brand new, and exclusive to Stampin' Up!, Sizzix Framelits Labels Collection. There are six metal dies in the set, each progressively smaller than the other. The hearts background on the label was stamped with one of the stamps from the Confetti Stamp Set, which has six different stamps that can be used in so many diffferent ways, they are so versatile. To finish the whole thing off I used a photograph of my bessy mate Caroline, which was taken last July on a photography day out in Leeds, with the lovely Kirsty Wiseman and friends. Caroline loves cupcakes and does in fact dream of cupcakes.

So Cute!

No posts for months and two in two days, how fickle am I? These gorgeous Nursery Nest papers are free from Stampin' Up! with any order over £45 during April 2012. I got these last week with my demonstrator pre-order from the new Summer Mini brochure which has some gorgeous stamps and dies etc in it. The little cutie in the photo is my niece's son, Maison, pronounced Mason but I think she got a bit confused when she registered his birth, thus ending up named after the French word for a house! I love Stampin' Up! owls, the punched ones and the ones on paper, it seems to have become an addiction. You might have guessed that as I have used lots of owls in my layouts and cards recently.

Heart Card

I saw this type of card in a cardmaking magazine in February and bought the magazine just for the instructions on making the base of the card. The one in the magazine had flowers and butterflies embellishing it but after purchasing two heart themed punches from Stampin' Up! I thought I'd make a heart one for my mother in law for Mother's Day. The lovely Julie, a fellow demonstrator, made a gorgeous version of this card with plain cardstock (crumb cake I think) and a few hearts but I wanted to decorate mine with papers and go really mad, overloading it with the heart embellishments. I used white cardstock for the base card and Stampin' Up!'s Everyday Enchantment Designer Papers mounted onto some red cardstock for the embellishments with the papers used to line the front facing sections of the card. The card was so chunky with all the heart embellishments and ribbon bow on it that I had to make a box to put it in so I used the same papers and a heart embellishment. My mother in law loved it and has kept it out as she said it was too pretty to put away.