Let the Holidays Begin!

HOLIDAY BREAK

I love this time of year! Though it might be busy and I tend to plan on doing WAY too much throughout the month - I love it all -- the holiday music, the snowy weather, the get togethers with family and friends and all of the special homemade goodies, ornaments, gift wrapping and presents!

PLUS this year my husband and I will be taking an extra long holiday as we are planning on going away to a sunny destination! I can't wait to hit the road and go from white to green! 

So this will be my last post for the year - but I will be back in the new year with some exciting news...

SALE-A-BRATION & OCCASIONS

Starting January 4th I will be posting some exciting details about a 

new Occasions catalogue that runs January 4- May 31AND 

an amazing SALE-A-BRATION catalogue with some great deals from January 4- March 31. 

so stay tuned....

SAVE-THE-DATE

I will be having a launch party January 27-29 - both online and in Kingston - it will be a great chance to see the new catalogue, play with the new products, see samples from upcoming classes and more!

You won't want to miss this... so save the date!

THANK YOU

And lastly I want to say a BIG thank you to all of my friends, family and customers for an amazing 2016. Its hard to imagine that I started my business with Stampin' Up! only in September. 

But it has been an amazing four months and I couldn't do it without YOU! 

So thank you all so much and I look forward to Creating and Sharing with all of you in the new year!

May you have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Blessings ~ Amy

Creating for the holidays

Candy Cane Lane Designer Series Paper

I LOVE the Christmas paper - Candy Cane Lane by Stampin' Up! I may have purchased 3 or more packages of it! But I made a lot of fun projects out of...so I thought I would share with you a few of these...

Christmas WreathDoesn't this look amazing! It was so simple. I purchased a foam wreath from Michaels and a box of straight pins and used 7 sheets of the Candy Cane Lane paper. I also used my paper trimmer and bone folder and some red twine. I added a cute Christmas ball/bell for the middle (also from Michaels). So to put this together - I cute the strips of paper 0.5" x 12 - all 7 sheets of paper. And then I took each strip and held it in the middle and curled each end in using the bone folder. This took about 30 mins to do it all. Then using the straight pins I just started to attaching them (pins in the center of the strip) and just alternated the paper patterns. Oh and I also added the twine at the start before I added the paper. Plus the bonus is you only have to put papers on the front of the wreath - so leave the back empty - it sits flat against the door this way (and uses less paper). I will certainly be doing this again for other holidays...and maybe using different shapes of foam too! Christmas CardsI decided to do a variety of cards this year - all have been mailed so hopefully my friends and family have received them by now! I love getting Christmas cards (or any card) in the mail so I try to make a big pile of cards to send out mid month. With these two cards, I cut out the gingerbread houses from one of the papers. I used gold sequins (left over from my November Paper Pumpkin) and the stamps from Stitched With Cheer. Ink colours are Crumb Cake and Real Red. I also added some Wink of Stella (clear) on the front of the houses and some white glitter (from craft store) to the middle house using the Liquid glue. Super simple cards - but I love the look of them! Oh and its hard to tell in the picture but the card with three houses I also used gold thread behind the middle house and some stampin' dimensionals. And then with this card (my favourite!) I got the idea on Pinterest (best place - just plug in the name of the paper or stamp set and you will get so many ideas!). I again used the Candy Cane Lane paper and cut out the shapes - used real red, crumb cake and whisper white cardstock. I also used the red/white twine and used the "Wishing You a Sweet Season) stamp from Candy Cane Christmas stamp set. I used VersaMark ink and white embossing powder. Again a very simple card and easy to recreate over and over again. Christmas Candy CrackersI wanted to give candy's to a few friends - but package them up in some sort of creative way... and I came up with these Christmas Crackers through a video on youtube. They are really easy - you need the envelope punch board and score board - some paper and ribbon. I just used simple gift wrap ribbon that matched my paper. In this size (paper was 4.5" x 6.5") I was able to fit two of the Lindor chocolate balls. I also used the Candy Cane Christmas stamp set for the sentiment on top with real red ink. Would love to see your projects you created this Christmas - post your photos on FB and possible get a special gift from me!

December Paper Pumpkin 2016

Can you believe its almost time to say goodbye to 2016! And Stampin' Up! provided the perfect kit to help document your 2016 memories in the December Paper Pumpkin Kit, Another Great Year. 

This kit makes memory keeping easy and completely customizable. 

Included in the kit: patterned papers, window sheets, stickers, and washi tape to embellish your book. And, for the first time ever—they've included a rotary stamp and Basic Black Stampin’ Write® Marker to help you jot down and journal every moment! 

They also provide an easy to follow guide.

And check out the easy to follow video - putting the kit together! 

They also are posting on their blog ideas for how to use the kit in a few different ways. 

Be sure to check that out tomorrow by clicking here.

PUTTING THE KIT TOGETHER

I'm not sure what I will be doing with my kit yet - but I'm looking forward to crafting over the holidays with it. I already use Project Life for my scrapbooking throughout the year - but I like the idea of either using it for a vacation trip we took in 2016 or maybe to tell the story of our new kitten...who seems to be getting bigger and bigger each day - Tibbie is now 9 months old....so we will see - but I will be sure to let you know. I would love to know what you do with yours - post a picture of your final project on FB and you might receive a fun gift from me :) 

PLUS Stampin' Up! will be announcing something special with this kit - 

so stayed tuned for tomorrows email if you subscribe to Paper Pumpkin!

Looking for the perfect last-minute gift?

Check out our prepaid subscriptions. Give the gift of creativity for 1, 3, 6, or 12 months. Simply click here to purchase and they email you a printable gift card and a subscription code. Merry Christmas!

Time for some catching up!

Ok its been awhile since I have posted and I have to apologize. First I bit off more than I should have for the month of November - starting up your own business takes a lot of work and I wanted to offer a lot of classes and do a lot of things. And I was doing ok until I had some health issues pop up and completely throw me off. Thankfully I was able to push through and completed all of my classes and only had to cancel one Open Studio evening.

AND I am VERY HAPPY to say that I'm now been given a clean bill of health and starting to gain back my energy! Praise God! I'm beyond thankful for everyone who was praying for me, for the support in sweet text msg's and emails and even some amazing home cooked meals!

So enough about me - on to something fun. I wanted to share with you what I did with the November Paper Pumpkin kit.

So if you haven't heard of Stampin' Up's Paper Pumpkin before - its an amazing kit that comes directly to your door each month. The kit includes all the supplies needed to make some amazing projects like cards, home decor, gift packaging and more. Plus every month, Stampin' Up provides a video that demonstrates how to assemble each kit.

So you can create the project as intended or if you're feeling the urge to get a little creative you can come up with your own designs. And thats what I did with this months kit.

So here is what the intended project:

The November box was a special holiday box - thats why its blue. So cute. And like I mentioned the box comes with the stamps, inks, adhesives - everything you need - to create 8 of these cards. 

Now the cards were smaller than I normally send for Christmas cards so I knew I wanted to try something different with supplies I had on hand. So I decided to create this:

I used the Dapper Denim cardstock (5.5x4.25) as the base, with a Dapper Denim envelope paper (5.25x4) along with a (5x3.75) piece of vellum that I used the snowflake stamp (included in kit) on in each of the corners. I then took the main part of the card and assembled as directed except first I used the Sponge Brayer tool (pictured above) to colour the background pieces in the dapper denim. 

I love the look of this so much! I used some stampin' deminsionals on the white cardstock to raise that area. I'm very happy with how this turned out. I really enjoyed using the brayer tool - very easy - if you are interested in seeing  a video with how to use this tool please let me know! 

So if you are a subscriber to Paper Pumpkin - your December kit should be arriving soon! I love how it's a surprise in our mailbox every month! Who doesn't love happy mail!

Interested in trying it out? Or possibly gifting to someone on your Christmas list?

CLICK here to find out more.

A Paper Pumpkin prepaid subscription is the perfect gift for all of your crafty friends! Choose from 1, 3, 6 or 12 months and a fully designed project kit will arrive each month at their door with stamps, ink and paper so they can skip to the fun part of crafting. Purchase a prepaid subscription today!