Christmas in July projects

Its been a long time between posts, I know... My boss went away for the entire school term, which meant I started working 4 days a week. Pat and I are struggling a little in the office. Its now only 6 weeks and 5 days until the end of term! Not that we're counting down!! LOL
As my 4 day week started earlier than expected, I asked Michelle to substitute for me at a workshop and she kindly accepted. Apparently she made a good substitute teacher and she was a font of knowledge about many things for my lovely ladies!

These are the cards I designed for the workshop. This first one is inked using a sponge on the Medallion stamp. I masked the inside with a circle punched from a post-it and sponged ink first with Garden Green, then Old Olive and finally Kiwi Kiss around the outside. When I'd stamped the image, I thought it looked a bit plain, so I went back with markers to rubber on the holly from Christmas Classics. I used alternated Old Olive and Garden green holly around the Medallion. I then used Real Red to draw over the berries again as they weren't "popping" enough for me! After that a few drops of crystal effects (which I then stuck my finger in before dry!!) on each berry to make them gleam! Oh, and I used the sponge I'd inked the stamp with to decorate the edges of the card. I'm so pleased with the result! The Medallion stamp has to be the most versatile and EASY stamp to use, creating a beautiful single layer card in seconds!
The next card was meant to be a CASE of one of Jayne Mercer's cards. In the end, apart from the layout and using Kraft and Pale Plum, it looks very little like her original! But similar enough to see where the CASE came from.
Because I see the same group of ladies every month, I find it difficult to come up with new box designs with which to WOW them. This one is an adapted "Sevens" box - score at 7 cm all around an A4 card and fold in this complicated way! Once closed, you can fit a chocolate or two inside. When open, the card folds right out so you can put quite a large message inside. Its very cute and quite easy to do. Considering I threw this together, I'm very pleased with the results. I'm going to miss using Kiwi Kiss at the beginning of September!

Which nicely leads to the following information. Stampin' Up! Australia's 2010/2011 catalogue! Its coming! I will have copies in my hot little hands towards the end of this month and ordering from the 2010/2011 catalogue begins on 1 September. There are quite a lot of discounted items and here is part of the Last Chance list. I've sorted this list for the discounted items only first by catalogue page, then alphabetically. Please don't use this PDF without permission. I will post more information in the next couple of weeks. Don't panic about some of these "Last Chance" items. Many of the punches are being re-configured to a new flatter style punch which is great for storage. However, the old style punches will be available until 31 August (or while stocks last).

Anything but Mother's Day cards

So I was looking for inspiration for a card the other day and wondered if any Elite Challenges had been posted. I'm a member of Angela Sargeant's downline and every month Carol Dunstan posts challenges in which any member of the Elite team can participate. So here's my answer to the May colour challenge, Razzleberry Breeze, and also to the stamp set challenge. I was so glad to be making something other than Mother's Day cards, and other than chocolate boxes!
So here's the reason I wanted to do something different - these are the chocolate pillow-boxes I made for my children's school Mother's Day stall last week. All the tags have the "One of a Kind" (c) Stampin' Up! stamp on the back, which I find endlessly amusing when I'm stamping out 300 Mother's Day items!
These are bath salts I put together at the last minute. Neroli, Lavendar, Rose and Patchouli. I should have done Lime for the last lot - Patchouli didn't sell well! The labels were printed up on the computer.
While I was sitting selling raffle tickets with my leg up and an ice pack on my ankle (short version: I sprained it on the way into the school while carrying the box of chocolate things), I made some more tags. I'd already stamped them out and run some tape along the back of the card-strip, so it was just a matter of punching them out. We sold them 2 for 50 cents and they were quite popular. I have stacks left over though.
I didn't manage to take a picture of the 100 Mother's Day cards I pumped out. The camera battery went flat! They were all single layer cards without embellishment and with matching envelopes. They sold reasonably well too - I've some leftovers, so I'll post the results when I've taken photos!