Two and a half years ago I decided I wanted to start my own business teaching cardmaking from home. I looked into different ways that I could start my business but all of them were very costly and and all of them required that I keep stock of a heap of product that I may or may not be able to sell. Interesting though how some things just fall into your lap at the right time… just when I was starting to think it was all too difficult, Stampin’ Up! came to Australia. I will admit though that I had lots of questions and doubts - in the end, I just thought “I really have nothing to lose - in the end if I change my mind I’ll end up with $324 for stamping stuff that I’ll enjoy using anyway”. And the rest as they say, is history.

Today (and until 15th August 2008), you too can start your own stamping business for only $299.

Email me now on angelasargeant@gmail.com for a free information pack plus ideas on how you can run your own business in a way that suits your style.

Due to so many people asking me for evening classes, I have schedule a class for this Friday evening at 7:30pm. I thought I’d post it again because usually my classes are on in the day time so some people thought it was the same for this week. There’s a few more spots left so if you’d like to make these lovely Black Magic cards then email me right now on angelasargeant@gmail.com to secure your place. Class will be held in Lane Cove on the Lower North Shore of Sydney - plenty of parking is available.

Earlier this month I pledged to donate my commission from the first two weeks of June sales to Alzheimers Australia.  I would like to say a very big thank you to my customers who bought Stampin’ Up! products from me during that period.  I have donated my commission (and matched the amount too) to Alzheimers Australia in memory of my Father who passed away from this horrid disease last year.  If you would like to also donate to this very worthy charity then please go the Alzheimers Australia website to make a donation.

Thank you again to my customers for helping me to be able to give back to the community.

My long-suffering husband came home from work yesterday afternoon and told me about his day: “I wore my new shoes today. I walked around all day feeling that something just wasn’t quite right. My foot was feeling irritated but I figured it was my new shoes. Allllll day long… meeting after meeting….. driving around Sydney, something bugging me all day”. I didn’t know where this was heading but I listened very politely.

And then he held up a piece of rubber off-cut.

Oops.

Well I think my darling might be just slightly relieved to hear that all the stamps in our next mini catalogue will be die-cut. Not something he’d normally care about mind you, but I have a terrible issue with rubber… off cuts seem to find their way in all sorts of strange places (cough, cough). I’m even worse with unmounted rubber.. one day I found a ladybug rubber stamp stuck to the elbow of my sweater while I was at the shops - the other day I found an unmounted ‘a’ in my make-up case!

Oh. I mentioned ‘mini catalogue’ so y’all probably wondering why I stopped talking about that all of a sudden. Well I wasn’t going to say anything until next month - seeing as we can’t even order supplies of mini catalogues as yet. But the cat’s been let out of the bag super early and I’ve been asked by quite a few customers when they can get their hands on Stampin’ Up! new Spring Mini Catalogue. The 2008 Spring Mini Catalogue will be available to demonstrators to order on 1st July - email me now at angelasargeant@gmail.com with your name and address so that I can mail you a Stampin’ Up! Spring Mini when it becomes available. Please note that customers will not be able to order any products from the new Spring Mini until 1st of August. In the meantime to whet your appetite, I shall start posting projects using stamps from the new mini catalogue sometime at the end of next week!

It’s almost July so that’s close enough for me to start making Christmas cards. I must admit I don’t like making them early because come December 1st when I mail them out, I look at the cards and think “ugh! I don’t like this anymore”. Anyway, I’m participating in this scrapbooking sketch class at www.gosketch101.ning.com and today there was a card sketch so I thought I’d give it a go - the sample was of a card with a flower but I decided this would make a good Christmas card.

To make this card I stamped the Christmas tree image onto some watercolour paper and watercoloured it using Old Olive and Real Red markers then added some definition using the fine ends of the markers. The gold star is simply Gold Encore reinker applied with a fine brush. The circle is a piece of chipboard onto which I glued some patterned paper and then cut around it, I then adhered this to the top of my stamped Christmas tree and trimmed around the circle. The base of the card is more patterned paper, there’s three sheets there, the top one which is striped the bottom with the circles and the middle is striped with dots and this was scalloped to add some interest. If you haven’t ever done scalloping you should try it, it’s so simple… all I did was use my corner rounder (it has to be a corner rounder like Stampin’ Up!’s - the Creative Memories one won’t work for this purpose). So just remove the base of the corner rounder which is the black plastic guard and then working with the underneath of the punch facing you, hold your strip of paper flush with the bottom of the punch and give the punch a squeeze. You’ll see that it’s created a ‘U’ shape… move your punch along a little so that the edge of the punch shape (it looks like a little smile) is matching with the punched out edge of your cardstock and punch again… keep going along. Okay, that sounds complex - so here’s two photos to show you how super easy it is.

Corner rounder with guard removed

Punch upside down, facing you as you punch.
The sentiments at the bottom of the card are also super easy… I just stamped the sentiment from the Crazy for Christmas stamp set then cut it up with scissors (didn’t worry about it being straight), adhered it to some Real Red cardstock and then cut it down again to leave a 2mm border.

So. Have you started making your Christmas cards yet? I’ll post more Christmas cards as I make them. In the meantime, here’s the list of items I used to make this card:

(All products by Stampin’ Up! images copyright Stampin’ Up! 1990-2008. All products available for purchase through me at angelasargeant@gmail.com)

Fun & Fast Notes stamp set
Crazy For Christmas stamp set
Real Red cardstock
Watecolour paper
Confetti White cardstock (for sentiment)
Old Olive marker
Real Red marker
Close to Cocoa marker
Aquapainter
On Board Lots of Letters Chipboard (circle)
Dashing double-sided patterned paper
SNAIL Adhesive
Paper Snips (scissors)
Encore Gold Reinker

It feels weird calling this an Altered Notebook as I usually associate that with vintage collage, however since this notebook was originally plain chipboard and I’ve ‘altered’ it, then that’s what it’ll be called.

This notebook was done so quickly - I started by using one of the Stampin’ Up! On Board Art Journals and then simply covered it using papers and die-cut stickers from the Crew Kids Girl Simply Scrappin’ Kit. The kit makes it so easy to make super fast cards, super fast scrapbooking and super fast ‘off-the-page’ items. Everything in there is coordinated, so all I had to do was use the Stampin’ Up! spiral punch to punch holes down the side of the patterned paper and then glue the paper to the notebook. Then I used some plain cardstock and the die-cut stickers to layer over each other and decorate the rest of the notebook. Oh… I’d better explain what die-cut stickers are… yes they are different from usual stickers - they are actually die-cuts that are sticky, therefore they are thicker than usual stickers - this means that if you want to use them as die-cuts, all you need to do is dust the backs of them with some talcum powder and then mount them using Stampin’ Dimensionals (or double-sided foam tape). There’s also a built-in bookmark - that’s simply a length of Wild Wasabi striped ribbon which I’ve tied to the spine of the notebook then I stuck a sticker on a metal rimmed circle tag, punched a hole in it and tied the ribbon through it. The other ribbons on the spine of the notebook are: Wild Wasabi double-stitched ribbon plus pink tafetta.

I must admit these aren’t the usual colours I’d work with but I wanted to make a notebook for my daughter so this was just perfect.

This sketch was care of www.gotsketch101.ning.com - I might copy it again only this time turn it into a greeting card instead.

Here are the list of products I used:

On Board Art Journal
Crew Kids Girl Simply Scrappin’ Kit
Round Metal Edged Tag
Wild Wasabi striped ribbon
Wild Wasabi double-stitched Ribbon
Pink Tafetta Ribbon
Spiral Punch
Small hole punch
Glue Stick or Mod Podge or Gel Medium for sticking down the paper to the journal.

Strange title but that’s what it is… here’s some scrapbooking that I did using mainly Stampin’ Up! products but no actual rubber stamping.

I’m pretty lazy when it comes to scrapbooking so I joined an on-line Scrapbooking Class at www.gotsketch101.ning.com to give me the inspiration and kick in the pants to do some more scrapbooking. In my defense, it takes me forever to scrapbook which is why I avoid it. I don’t know why, but I fuss so much over what papers I’m going to use and what embellishments, etc. In this case I just copied the layout almost identically to the example given at GotSketch. Anyway, I’ve always loved these photos so I’m thrilled to have finally scrapbooked them 10 years later, LOL.

All products by Stampin’ Up! unless otherwise stated:

Spring Break paper pack
Blue Bayou 12×12 cardstock
On Board Lots of Letters Chipboard
On Board Blossom Basics Chipboard
Pumpkin Pie Brad (Earth Elements)
Pumpkin Pie Striped Ribbon
Soft Sky Double-Stitched Ribbon
Cuttlebug with Circle Nestabilities (used to make circle under and over the #1 chipboard piece)
Prima Flower (to dot the ‘i’)
Large square punch (to make photo corners)
SNAIL Adhesive
Glue Dots
FolkArt Baby Blue paint mixed with a touch of Turquoise paint (to paint the chipboard letters)
Sketch & bracket template care of www.gotsketch101.ning.com

Here I am again with my second favourite topic - Storage. In fact, I’ve decided to make a whole category for storage as I’ve talked about it in the past and no doubt will keep on talking about storage. There something just so fun about buying craft stuff then figuring out how to store it

Ribbon Storage seems to be something that papercrafters struggle with. I’m not going to say that my system is perfect but it sure works for me. Maybe there’s something here that will work for you too.

This is a system used by quite a few people. It uses a metal rod and hanging basket by Ikea. The rod makes a great storage system for punches while the hanging basket can be used for ribbons or other items such as little bottles of embellishments. Now I just have to get back to Ikea for a couple more baskets for all the other ribbon spools I have!

For shorter lengths of ribbon I find that the system shown in the next photo works best for me. I know some people like to stuff their ribbons into fancy jars and organise them by colour but I’d have to constantly dump out the whole jar of ribbons to search through the one I wanted if I stored my ribbons that way. So what I did was to get a really cheap storage box from Big W which already had some ribbon organisers in it then I wrapped all my short ribbon lengths on the organisers and filed them in the box by colour.

When I ran out of ribbon organisers I made my own, like this:

The ‘ribbon organiser’ on the left is simply an old Manilla Folder I was throwing out that I punched with Stampin’ Up!’s Round Tab Punch. Because the storage box I was using was a little narrow, I just snipped of the left and right edges of the punchie with some scissors and that was then perfect size.

The last system I have is for the Stampin’ Up! Ribbon Originals ribbons that come in coordinating colours and wrapped around cardstock. These are all stored in a sturdy flip-top by from Smiggle.

If you like this system, you can easily make your own lengths of card to wrap your coordinating ribbons around by cutting a piece of sturdy cardstock to the length or width of your storage box then punching out notches using square, circle and oval punches to hold your ribbons in place. I’d love to show you a photo of that, unfortunately the blog for some reason won’t let me upload any more photos so I’ll come back and add a photo later when I’ve figured out what’s wrong.

Ever nearly burn your kitchen down in the name of craft? Okay, so I got it in time but I did panic. I had this cool idea (well I thought it was) to burn the edges of my stamped cardstock. Anyone old enough (and I’m really showing my age here) will remember that great Western TV show called Bonzana - at the beginning of each episode, they’d show the map of Ponderosa (the name of the ranch) and it would burn slowly from the edges. So I thought it would be cool to emulate this on a birthday card that I was making for a friend. I like the effect, but next time I won’t hesitate to turn on the tap to douse the fire rather than worry about having to start again. LOL.

I really enjoyed making this card and although I will say “don’t try this at home kids!”, here are the instructions: I started with a piece of Naturals Ivory cardstock and randomly stamped the swirly smokey stamp around the card using River Rock ink then overstamped with the Marlboro Man (that’s my name for him) in Chocolate Chip ink. Next I lit my gas stovetop and carefully (ahem) burnt the edges of the cardstock. This was then adhered to a piece of Close to Cocoa cardstock on which I dragged Close to Cocoa inkpad over it then distressed the edges. This was then adhered to a piece of Sage Shadow cardstock which I distressed the edges of and also ran the Sage Shdow inkpad around to define the edges. The embellishment on the top right is a piece of Close to Cocoa cardstock punched out with the Designer Label Punch then stamped with the swirl stamp and edged in Chocolate Chip ink. On top of the punched label is a 1″ circle punched from some of the Outlaw Designer Series Patterned Paper and on top of that is a star stamped onto Sage Shadow cardstock with Chocolate chip ink which has been cut out and affixed with an Antique Brass Brad. On the bottom left hand corner I simply added a piece of metal hardware with some twine tied around it. The base of the card is some more of the Outlaw Patterned Paper with a sponged and pierced border and wrapped with twill to ‘ground’ the main section of the card. The whole piece was then adhered to a piece of textured Chocolate Chip cardstock.

So that’s it - quick easy instructions, I decided not to stretch it out and bore you too much this time but if those instructions aren’t clear enough then please feel free to email me on angelasargeant@gmail.com to ask me any questions.

If you’ve made it down this far, it’s your turn to tell me, have you ever nearly burnt your kitchen or done any damage to it (or yourself!) in the name of craft?

(All images copyright to Stampin’ Up! 1990-2008 - Card designed by Angela Sargeant)

All products by Stampin’ Up! and available for purchase through me at angelasargeant@gmail.com

Here’s a list of the products I used:

Bronc Buster (man on horse stamp)
Wanted stamp set (star stamp)
Natural Ivory cardstock
Sage Shadow cardstock
Close to Cocoa cardstock
Chocolate Chip Textured cardstock
Chocolate Chip inkpad
Sage Shadow inkpad
River Rock inkpad
Close to Cocoa inkpad
Outlaw Designer Series Double-Sided Patterned Paper
Crafters Tool Kit (for the paper piercer, mat & template to pierce the holes around the perimetre of the patterned paper)
Designer Label Punch
1″ Circle Punch
Sharp scissors
Antique Brass Hodgepodge (brads and fastener)
Hemp Twine
Twill
Cutter Kit (for distressing the edges of the cardstock)

Hi everyone I have a newsletter ready to go out, if you haven’t subscribed to my newsletter now is the time! I have an easy peasy competition, more card ideas, tips and hints. Just enter your email address in the box on the right to subscribe. Don’t forget this competition to win stamps is only for newsletter subscribers.

A big congratulations to Sonia Bowers for winning the competition in last month’s newsletter!  Go Sonia!