Mega Week ....

What a week for Stampin Up this week, so much excitement for there best promotion of the year. Sale-a-Bration is here, it starts today, but also starting today the New Spring/Summer Seasonal brochure is launched, so at the moment you can order from the annual, the spring summer seasonal and until the 31st the autumn winter 2013 seasonal as well. Don't miss out on any products you have been waiting to buy, BUT the big bonus is, your now in the sale-a-bration period, and for every £45 you spend, you can choose a special sale-a-bration freebie. So enjoy browsing by following the links on the right and start making a list .... :)

More details on the specials and offers page :)

Bloghop ....

To celebrate Stampin' Up's fantastic Sale-a-Bration, Julies Jems (Julie Kettlewell's team) have organized a blog hop to inspire us all with some amazing designs and to showcase the new Spring Summer Seasonal catalogue, and the cool Sale-a-Bration freebies you can choose from when you place an order of £45 and for every £45 you spend (so yes, spend £90 and receive two freebies and so on). So here you are, you have arrived at my blog. Just in case the chain is broken somewhere, I have listed all of the blogs taking part below, you should have reached my blog from Fiona's http://www.the-create-escape.blogspot.co.uk/ and from me here, you should move onto Kylie at http://hellostamper.blogspot.co.uk but first I will add my project, a scrapbooking layout using the Free Sale-a-Bration papers called
Sweet Sorbet ....

There are also some hints of another possible freebie .... Petal Parade can you spot it :)
Karyn Davis -   http://kdcrafts.blogspot.co.uk
debbi taylor  http://beecraftyandstamp.blogspot.co.uk/
rebekah cornford  http://craftingbecky.blogspot.co.uk
julie mccartney -  http://craftyangelwings.blogspot.co.uk/
amanda bates    http://thecraftspa.blogspot.co.uk
julie kettlewell -  http://juliesjapes.blogspot.co.uk/
allie jolliffe -  http://jollicrafts.blogspot.co.uk/
sharon glynn  http://shari-anne-happycrafter.blogspot.co.uk/
angie hutton -  http://feathertassel.blogspot.co.uk/
kate martin      http://kraftsbykatemartin.blogspot.co.uk/
liz youd  http://stampinandcreatin.blogspot.co.uk
fiona cullen -  http://www.the-create-escape.blogspot.co.uk/
caroline lovett  http://carolinescraftsandmore.blogspot.co.uk
kylie henshaw -  http://hellostamper.blogspot.co.uk

Sale-a-Bration ....

Well it's my first mention of sale-a-bration which in my opinion is Stampin Up's best promotion of the year. Sale-a-Bration starts on 28th January and runs through to 31st March. If you have not experienced this before, in a nut shell for every £45 you spend you will be able to choose a free products from the special sale-a-bration selection. If you hostess a workshop that achieves over £150 in sales you will get extra rewards and you and your friends will all get sale-a-bration goodies on your orders of £45 or more (spend £90 get two freebies and so on) and if you sign up to become a demo (you can sign up as a "hobby" demo and just order your own personal products at discount) and again as it is Sale-a-Bration you will get extra value in your starter kit as an incentive :)
There's no better time of year to spend, sign up, or host with Stampin Up so contact me for further information or a brochure ..... even more exciting if you are an existing customer and think "you have everything in the brochure" we are about to launch the Spring/Summer seasonal, so if you order from that or the main catalogue, you will receive free SAB goodies on orders of £45 or more :)
I have borrowed this card from my upline Julie kettlewell, it uses some of the gorgeous freebies available.

Sweater Weather ....

As I said in my last post, I have been scrapbooking with some of the lovely Stampin Up winter seasonal papers. I have had the Sweater Weather papers since October but with the house move they went straight into a box, and although I unpacked them about three or four weeks ago, I had a few Christmas projects I needed to do first. So here are my basic Sweater Weather pages, what I love about this collection is that when you split the papers down and look at the front and backs, there are really two colour ways, to demonstrate this I have made two layouts. One with mainly the blues and one with mainly the browns, oranges and yellows. Both layouts will be heavily embellished and finished off, but these are the bones of the pages for you to see :)

I also mixed some of these blue papers, with the Winter Frost on the previous post.

Winter Frost ....

So I have had some lovely time off over Christmas and we have had the house to ourselves for just over a week, (no builders yay, so peace and quiet, well generally), and while Craig has been doing a lot of painting and I have been doing a lot of cleaning (just to keep up with all of the dust and dirt here), we have had some time to relax with golf for Craig, and crafting time for me. I was really looking forward to making a layout with the Winter Frost paper stack, but hadn't realised there are only two different papers in the stack, it gives you four patterns all together as they are double sided, but in hindsight as a scrapbooker, I should have ordered the 12x12 paper pack which would have given me 5 double sided sheets to go at. So I improvised and mixed the Winter frost stack with some papers from the Sweater Weather Collection. I have been looking forward to using these papers too, and am going to feature them on my next post :)

I have used a die on this layout, the little row of houses
that is not Stampin Up and two pins! (inspired by Christin Gronnslett)

Focus on fringe cont ....

Well here is the layout today, I have just about completed it, and also made another layout with the gorgeous Season of Style papers, now just to add some photo's and journaling :)

The second photo is a little dull but you get the idea. I used one of the Tag a Bag chevron decorated gift bags as a pocket on this layout and made a large tag to fit inside it, you can put additional photo's on the tag or hidden journaling :) Here's a little sneak peak too, on both layouts I have used an up and coming sale-a-bration item, see if you can spot it :)

Configuration Boxes ....

Hello, I just wanted to do a quick blog post before Christmas, today has been a pretty calm day for me compared to the last few months !!! I have had builders here every day, and it has been nice (since they finished work on Friday) to have the house to myself. Peace at last, which has been lovely these last few days on the run up to Christmas. Of course the house still looks like a building site, but at least there are no builders here, except for Craig who is now waving his paint brush around !!! So over the weekend I had a couple of exceptionally nice days, Saturday with ladies Christmas lunch and Sunday with some crafting pals. I invited a few friends round and said that I would provide these wooden houses which were left over from one of the retreat classes. Everyone brought loads of bits and pieces with them, and we all went to town in making our own unique projects. I haven't quite finished mine yet, but here it is so far ..... just out of interest if you google configuration boxes, you can see some amazing ideas :) enjoy.... not sure about all of the elements yet i.e. Santa :)