Author: Hannah McCurley

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Freshly Made Sketches #191 – It’s Your Birthday

Stampin' Up! UK Freshly Made Sketches Endless Birthday Wishes

Oh yes, It’s that time again! Playing along with Freshly Made Sketches again this week with #191!

Freshly Made Sketches 191

This sketch scared the pants off me! So much white space! I love white space, I really do, and most of my cards feature expanses of white space, but to see a sketch with so much white was just frightening!

Stampin' Up! UK Freshly Made Sketches Endless Birthday Wishes

I’ve had a stack of card stock sat out on my shelf this week, and the Real Red piece shouted at me for this card. As soon as I saw the two little strips on the sketch I knew I wanted to use some Designer Series Paper, so I pulled Typeset – I love this paper, its so pretty but I hadn’t used it on a card before! I know, its shocking, but putting DSP on cards is something I struggle with – I am a total stamper at heart.

Initially I grabbed Guy Greetings for my sentiment, but I quickly changed my mind to the lovely new Endless Birthday Wishes. I uses a ruler and pencil to draw a line across the piece of Very Vanilla card stock, and I stamped the sentiment in Real Red on the line. Sometimes I find this way to get a straight line quicker than pulling out my Stamp-a-ma-jig!

I almost thought the card was finished, but it just felt a little too clean! I’ve been playing with the Birthday Blossoms preparing for my Stamp-a-Stack for July, so pulled it again for these awesome flowers punched with the Pansy Punch.

Thanks for stopping by today, see you again soon

x

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Hannah Wilks

Stampin’ Up! UK Independent Demonstrator

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How to use the Stampin’ Up! Gift Bag Punch Board

Stampin' Up! UK Gift bag punch board tutorial

I love a simple gift bag, and with the Gift Bag Punch Board Stampin’ Up!® has made making super cute bags super easy! I know I will be using this punch board lots in the coming months (and even more around Christmas!) but I wanted to give you a quick guide to using the board before we drive into more complex projects with it!

How To:

The gift box punch board has the instructions printed onto it so you can refer back at each use, but I thought I would share some tips.

The punch board includes a great scoring tool / bone folder – always store it back into the board so you don’t loose it! It is so easy to loose a great tool like this in your crafty mess

The width of the paper or card stock is important: a small gift back uses 10″ (25.4 cm) wide DSP, and the S line on the board. A medium sized bag uses 11″ (27.9 cm) wide DSP and the M line on the board. A Large bag uses 12″ (30.5 cm) wide DSP and the L line on the board. The length of the DSP (or card stock) is not important, and just varies the height of the final bag, the board suggests using lengths between 4″ (10 cm) and 12″ (30.5 cm) In the video the card stock that I used was 10 x 6″ (25.4 x 15 cm)

The punch may be a little stiff, use the board on a table and stand to punch.

Have fun!

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Hannah Wilks

Stampin’ Up! UK Independent Demonstrator

 

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I Think You’re Great!

Stampin' Up! UK I think your great ink smooshing

I have been playing with ink a lot recently, making a great big mess, but having loads of fun too! I get a lot of inspiration from watching some of the wonderful card makers on YouTube (Jennifer McGuire and Kristina Werner are two of my all time favourites!) and I recently spotted this super cool technique, Ink Smooshing (I haven’t done a tutorial for this one, but check out this great video from Kristina)Stampin' Up! UK I think your great ink smooshingTo create this card I first heat embossed that great sentiment from I Think You’re Great using Clear embossing powder.

I used three colours of ink; Bermuda Bay, Crushed Curry, and Melon Mambo. I use either my ink pads or re-inkers to put ink onto a large clear block or the glass of my desk top, an add water using an water spritzer. One colour at a time I make my ink / water mixture and pick up the mix using the clear sheet that comes with our Photopolymer stamps – you could just as easily using a piece of window sheet or other packaging – and smoosh the ink onto the watercolour paper. I added the Crushed Curry first, then repeated the process with Melon Mambo, and finally Bermuda Bay.

One of the great things about Stmapin’ Up! inks is how they work with water. Not only can you water colour with them, but also once your ink has dried you can drop water onto the ink, and wick away some of the colour – creating this great effect.

What’s your favourite technique at the moment?

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Hannah Wilks

Stampin’ Up! UK Independent Demonstrator

 

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June Online Workshop! Butterfly Basics…and a fancy fold!

Stampin' Up! UK Butterfly Basics Corner fold card

Hello!

Welcome to another Free Online Workshop! I am loving doing these, and am hopefully going to do one every couple of months. Let me know what you think and what you would like to see featured in these longer tutorials using the comments section at the end of the post

Stampin' Up! UK Free workshop

This time I have focused on the Butterfly Basics stamp set, I was so please to find it had carried over into the brand new Annual Catalogue! You can find it in the Artistic Expression section, page 124, where it is featured with the Butterflies Thinlits dies in a great bundle that saves you 15%!

Both the cards and the tag here use the brand new In-Colours; Mint Macaron, Delightful Dijon, Watermelon Wonder, Cucumber Crush, and Tip Top Taupe. These new colours are great additions, to the current range of colours, filling in gaps in Bright colours, and adding a wonderful new neutral. In-Colours change every year, and run for 2 years, adding 10 wonderful colours to our line, and giving your more options for projects.  In Colours are available on a great deal too! You can purchase all the ink pads and a multi-pack of card stock for the price of just the ink pads – that’s free card stock folks! Awesome!

Stampin' Up! UK Corner Fold Fancy Fold card butterfly basics free workshop class

Before you get to the workshop, I just wanted to mention the great joining offer this month from Stampin’ Up! Get 2 free stamp sets with your starter kit, just for signing up! Have I mentioned the great deal that is the starter kit – If you have a wish list of over £100 I urge you to think about becoming a demonstrator, there is no pressure to sell anything, you are more than welcome to be a hobby demonstrator and just get the 20% off! But if you have a wish list of over £100, you can pay just £99 and get to pick £130 worth of great products (anything from the current catalogue!), and those two free stamp sets of your choice! how cool is that!

Fancy Fold How To:

I love this corner fold card, I have to give credit to Dawn Griffiths, I have resized the card to fit A4 card stock 🙂

Cut a piece of A4 card stock in half, and fold in half to create your card base

Unfold your card base and insert, long side at the top, into your Stampin’ Trimmer. Cut at 13 cm from 2 to 8 cm using the trimmer attachment as a guide

Turn your card base so the short side is down at the top, and cut at 8 cm from 2 to 8 cm

Fold down the corner of the card, leaving the cut corner flat.

Inside pieces:

Watermelon Wonder – 14.2 x 10 cm

Whisper White – 13.8 x 9.5 cm

Outside pieces:

Watermelon Wonder – 6 x 6 cm

Whisper White – 5.5 x 5.5 cm

Stampin' Up! UK Butterfly Basics Corner fold card

As I mentioned in the tutorial, any order placed using the Hostess Code will receive a card kit with all the card stock pieces ready for you to make these 3 projects

4REM7CHQ

Thank you for supporting StampinByHannah

Please note this is a different code to my Code Club Code! Chose your code carefully!

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Hannah Wilks

Stampin’ Up! UK Independent Demonstrator

 

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Week In Review

Stampin' Up! UK Weekly Deals June 2015

Hello!

I’m live blogging again today, at 10:30AM my monthly online workshop will go live here on the blog, and on YouTube, please let me know what you think, I have great plans for these workshops (and am hoping to do one regularly!).

Weekly Deals

Stampin' Up! UK Weekly Deals June 2015

What a great selection again this week! I used the Decorative Dots Embossing folder in yesterdays project! and I may just go back and order some more! The And Many More stamp set is a great addition to your stamp collection with really useful sentiments for all occasions from birthdays to valentines, mothers day to graduation.

Classes and Workshops

Have you checked out my latests Classes and Workshops? I have 3 events in July, my usual Technique Class – each month we feature one stamp set, this month we are using An Open Heart – A brand new Kit Class – making that wonderful Perpetual Birthday Calender – and a Stamp-a-Stack – a brand new class where we make 10 cards in two hours (2 of 5 designs) this months theme is Birthday!

Stampin' Up! UK July Technique Class 2015 An Open Heart

All my events are listed on Facebook and my Stampin’ Up! Web shop – please RSVP by the date shown, email me for more information or to arrange payment

Family Life!

This week has been super busy here at crafty towers! We are now 7 weeks away from our wedding, so at the weekend I headed to Alton Towers with some friends for my Hen celebrations! We had such a great day even if it did rain continuously! But that just meant no queues and more rides.

I only have 2 days off from the day job this week, today and tomorrow as so am cramming in some much needed crafty play time with some brand new products that landed on my doorstep last night, as well as some much needed wedding planning time; orders of service and table plans are the order of the day I think!

Can’t wait to speak to you all again next week!

Happy Stamping!

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Hannah Wilks

Stampin’ Up! UK Independent Demonstrator

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Ink and Embossing

Stampin' Up! UK letterpress ink Embossing folders

I have been loving playing with lots of techniques recently, and you may remember a few weeks ago I shared a great stamping technique using your embossing folders. Well, I’ve been doing it again, but this time I’ve added my Big Shot!

Stampin' Up! UK letterpress ink Embossing folders

 

This card uses the Large Polka Dot Embossing Folder, along with the Crazy About You stamp set. I am so pleased this set has carried over into our Annual Catalogue, It has a great collection of words and phrases to create some great sentiments, and it will be featuring on my Father’s Day cards this year (Nope, I still haven’t made them yet! Eeeek!). That Crazy About You set also includes  that lovely flower image, which coordinates with the Flower Medallion Punch (another carry over item!)

Instructions:

Cut your card base and Whisper White (Or Very Vanilla) matt layer.

Grab your chosen Embossing folder, and ink up the side which presses down into the card stock when you run it through your Big Shot – in this case, I inked up the Polka Dots side of the folder. Run your ink pad carefully across the embossing folder as not to get ink on the sunken areas

Insert your card stock layer into the embossing folder, closing the folder carefully so not to move the card stock inside

Run this through your Big Shot using your normal Embossing Folder sandwich

Stampin' Up! UK embossing folders decorative dotsThe ‘Thanks’ was stamped on Whisper White, and punched out using the 1 1/4″ circle punch, and layered with the Flower Medallion with dimensionals.

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Hannah Wilks

Stampin’ Up! UK Independent Demonstrator

 

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Telford Make and Take

Stampin' up! UK training team

I have been meaning to share this card for ages! You may remember I attended Stampin’ Up! UK Regional Training back in May, where we had heaps of fun learning about the new catalogue, getting up close and personal with new products, meeting loads of other demonstrators, swapping projects, and generally having a great time!

Well, I made this card then! I know, I know, I should have shared it before, but life has been a little crazy over the past month (and it ‘s about to get crazier in the final countdown to the wedding in August!) and I completely forgot about this lovely card!

Stampin' Up! UK Awesomely Artisitic Telford Make and Take

It uses the brand new set; Awesomely Artistic, along with 3 of the new In-Colours; Mint Macaron, Delightful Dijon, and Tip Top Taupe. I will be the first to admit – this is so far removed from my usual style of card making I was totally intimidated! I mean, that gorgeous dragonfly – well, it was supposed to be fussy cut – I do fussy cut (sometimes) but really its rare, so I just stamped it (after spritzing with water) straight onto watercolour paper.

The Thanks! sentiment comes from another new stamp set; One Big Meaning – which is definitely on my wish-list!

I even remembered to stamp the envelope! I was quite impressed with myself, and a great finish to a wonderful card and a fantastic weekend away crafting with new friends!

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Hannah Wilks

Stampin’ Up! UK Independent Demonstrator

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Cardmaking 101 – Tools for Cardmaking

Cardmaking 101 - tools for card making

Cardmaking class UK free

Welcome to the second in my series of Card making 101 – this week I thought we would look at some of the tools I most regularly use in my card making.

Stampin' Up! UK Stampin' Trimmer Cardmaking 101

 

Tools are so important, they say you judge a craftsman by his tools – and card making is a craft! I have used a heap of trimmers over the years, but the Stampin’ Trimmer is by far the best! I just love the wide foot-bed, this means that to cut a card base (which is what I use my trimmer for by far the most!) I don’t need to swing out the extension arm. Saying that I love that this trimmer extends to 14″ – way more that I will ever need. The blades are so easy to replace, and you get to choose between the standard trimmer blades or the rotary attachment!

A good pair of scissors is so important, and I would suggest two pair – a good pair of long scissors for cutting along the score lines of boxes and bags, and a pair of paper snips for fussy cutting, and detailed bits. A separate pair of scissors for cutting ribbon is also a good idea as paper will dull the blades and make ribbon cutting difficult. The Stampin’ Paper Snips are excellent, blades sharp right to the tip and comfortable hold.

Stampin' Up! UK paper snips

I also use my scissors for picking up jewels and pearls, candy dots and other little sticky things. But I mostly grab for my paper piercing tool for these sorts of jobs, I’m sure if you have seen some of my YouTube tutorials you will have seen me do this. A paper piercing tool is also great for adding pierced details to your cards and projects, as well as getting all those fiddly bits out of your dies when die cutting.

I think one of the most important card making tools is a good bone folder. For years I had a cheap plastic bone folder, and it wasn’t until I started with Stampin’ Up! that I changed to a ‘proper’ one, what a difference! A clean, crisp edge to all folded projects, cards and boxes. My plastic bone folder has now be relegated to re-inking ink pads!

Stampin' Up! UK paper piercing

The most random tool in my kit though must be my emery board! I use this so much, and it has several uses! Mostly it gets used when my trimmer blade needs changing, when card stock starts to cut a little fluffy, an emery board is great for sanding away the rough edges. Or for when you want that distressed look. Or when you catch a finger nail with your paper snips!

I hope you are finding these posts helpful, and if you have any questions about card making, stamping or Stampin’ Up! either drop me a message via my contact me page, or leave me a comment below

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Hannah Wilks

Stampin’ Up! UK Independent Demonstrator

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Freshly Made Sketches #190 – An Open Heart

Stampin' Up! UK Freshly Made Sketches 190 An Open Heart

I’m still playing along with some challenges this week!

Freshly made sketches 190

I have been so inspired by this sketch! I had a heap of ideas, but I am so pleased with the final card. I rarely use a sketch for card making, and as I have already mentioned, I am trying to push my card making at the moment and venture out into the unknown!

Stampin' Up! UK Freshly Made Sketches 190 An Open Heart

I have been preparing my July Technique Class this week, and so An Open Heart has been on my desk, along with the new In-colours. I grabbed a piece of Mint Macaron card stock out of my stash for that left hand piece, but it had a heart punched out. I went back into my card stock to find another piece, but when I tried it, I preferred the open heart! This piece has also be embossed using the Decorative Dots embossing folder.

The bird is stamped in Cherry Cobbler ink, stamped off once. I love the font in this set, and the Thank You was the perfect length for that banner piece. I finished this card with two further punched hearts using the Itty Bitty Accents Punch Pack

Stampin' Up! UK July Technique Class 2015 An Open Heart

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Hannah Wilks

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Hexagonal Gift Bag

Stampin' Up! UK candle gift designer series paper stack

These candles fell into my bag a few months ago during a mad dash around Ikea. I love Ikea candles, and this scent in particular is one of my very favourites – Vanilla Ice Cream, Yum! I often give them as gifts, but trying to package them is always a little awkward. Or it was, how cute is this gift bag!

Hexagonal gift bag

 

I adore the new Designer Series Paper Colour Collections, these use the Neutrals in Basic Grey and Sahara Sand. The collections have been re-configured this year, changing the patterns, so now each collection contains 40 sheets, 2 of each of 2 double sided designs in 10 colours (or 4 of each of 2 double-sided designs in 5 colours for the In-Colour collections). The designs are stunning; a diagonal stripe, a little floral print, a bold polka dot, and my favourite a wonderful script. They are fab!

Stampin' Up! UK candle gift designer series paper stackThese bags are quick and easy to make, as well as holding a good amount of whatever you choose. They are strong too, these both contain candles, without any danger of the bottom giving way! The base of the bag has 6 layers of DSP, making them super strong.

Measurements:

Designer Series Paper, or card stock; 11 x 8″ (28 x 20.5 cm)

Score on the long side at: 1 3/4, 3 1/2, 5 1/4, 7, 8 3/4 and 10 1/2″ (4.5, 9, 13.5, 18, 22.5 and 27 cm)

Score on the side side at: 3 and 6″ (7.5 and 15 cm)

Fold and burnish all the score lines

Holding the DSP in the landscape direction, with the fatter bit at the bottom, cut off the skinny end section, and cut up each one of the score lines to the first horizontal score.

Apply Fast Fuse to the skinny end section and fold to create a tube. This seam with be the back of the bag. Then apply Fast Fuse to 3 of the bottom sections and fold each section in to form the base.

Turn the bag so it is the right way up, pinch in the top, and make holes with the 1/8″ handheld punch.

Feed your ribbon through the holes, starting from the front of the bag and working your way around

Finish with a bow

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Hannah Wilks

Stampin’ Up! UK Independent Demonstrator