Look at this.........

I celebrated my Birthday on Wednesday (17th) and I received the most wonderful gift from my up line Monica at My Many Many Passions. Isn't it beautiful..........Now I haven't been able to share this with you earlier because I have been away with all the other Stampin' Up demonstrators doing some training for the new catalogue, which comes out on 1st October. (If anyone would like one then email me your details and I will arrange). We had a fab time, big waves to Michelle who shared the very long and tiring journey in the car with me, and Monica, Sally, Julie, Bekka and Jo my Stampin' Up! Sisters. We had a blast. These girls are so much fun....I love them all.



I have to apologise to all you followers of my blog for the lack of updates.....but I have been very busy getting my swaps ready for the training day and also creating a project for the demonstrator competition. The next card is my swap card. The idea is that each demonstrator brings along a card to swap with another demonstrator, by doing this you get lots of beautiful cards and loads of ideas and inspiration from each other. This is the card I created for my fellow demonstrator sisters. I made 60 of these!!! but I had loads of comments from people saying how lovely it was. So thank you all ladies.... your cards are fab as well. I will try and upload some of them later in the week.

My next card is one I made for the demonstrators competition. Each demonstrator made a project and the other demonstrators voted for the one they liked best. I really struggled with this, I am afraid. My Mojo up and left just at the wrong time. I could not create a thing I was happy with. Do you get those moments? I have about five cards strewn across my craft desk, half completed because I wasn't happy with them. This is what I ended up with. The top of the card has faux stitching on it. I stressed a long time about doing this. Anyone who knows me, knows that my style is very uniformed, normally straight cut lines etc. I don't do tearing, inking edges and all that jazz...I admire many cards like this but don't enjoy doing it myself. LOL. So I decided in the end to give the faux stitching a go. Wow, wished I had tried this technique out earlier. I loved it. All I did was pierce two rows of holes along the top of the card and then ran a red marker along the top of the holes. It looks like real stitching...... Think you will be seeing more of this technique on my cards over the next few weeks. The stamp used is from Season of Joy, which will be available in the new catalogue.

The wonderful Karin won the competition with a fab fold out folder. I don't think Karin has a blog so cannot give a link to the project. If I find I can I will add later.

My next card is one I made for a shoebox swap Monica organised for her down line. I knew we would be pushed for time, so I kept it very simple. I used the Spotlight technique for this one and the stamp set is Season for Joy. This is my favourite set at the moment as you can see.

Anyway.....sorry for such a long post. As you can see I have been very busy, but just couldn't share with you my creations until after the events, otherwise the surprise element would have not happened for all the recipients.

Off to my craft room.........see you all later.

Carole x