Crafted by Alison

Hi everyone, Thank you for visiting but unfortunately there won't be a blog from me today. Even though my Mum made it through hip surgery & returned to her nursing home she has unfortunately deteriorated & the staff are not expecting her to be with us for very much longer. As such, though I intended to finish off the planned cards for this blog, my focus has been on spending time with Mum.  I feel that the next few weeks will be busy & difficult so I'm taking a little bit of time off from posting but will be back in a few weeks when things are better. Thank you for your understanding. Take care, XX Alison

 Hi everyone, For those of you who regularly follow my blog, thank you for visiting today. You may have read Sunday's blog where I talked about how I hadn't been able to complete that blog as Mum had had a fall & broken her hip. Well good & bad news. Good news is that the Doctors were able to operate successfully to repair her hip & she survived the anaesthetic at the age of 94! As wonderful as that news is the flip side is that it has meant I have needed to visit her daily around my work hours as she has been very disoriented in a strange environment. This has left me very little time to complete my scheduled blogs. More good news though is that she went home to her nursing home today! We were so happy with this news. All that aside, I regrettably wasn't able to have my scheduled blog tonight but with Mum back this will allow me to return to my regular crafting. My sincere apologies for missing two posts in a row.  On Sunday I will be featuring the Seaside Bay

 Hello, welcome to my blog, This week I was intending to showcase a beautiful new stamp set from the January to April '23 mini catalogue with gorgeous seaside birds, shells & seaside themes. However. In the early hours of Saturday morning my Mum's nursing rang to say that Mum had had a nasty fall & was heading off to hospital. As it turns out she broke her hip & shoulder & wacked her head. I then spent most of Saturday sitting with her & discussing what her options were with the doctors. As she's 94 there are many risks with the impending operation but the drawbacks of not having it are a poorer quality of life.  Because family, especially Mum is a very big priority for me this means that I did not finish the cards I intended for this post. My sincere apologies but I'm sure you all understand.  As I don't know what the outcome will be I am unsure whether I will be able to create my scheduled posts in the next few weeks. I will either have my post

 Hello & welcome to my blog, My name is Alison & I am an independent Stampin' Up® demonstrator in Melbourne, Australia.  I love creating cards & gifts for my loved ones & this blog will show you how to create something special for those you love. I blog twice a week, once on a Sunday where I mainly showcase a stamp set or dies & sometimes special DSP. My second blog is mid week on a Wednesday where I look at techniques, colour challenges, card sketches, fun folds, tools & equipment & ways to make or improve your projects. That's what this blog is about. Today I will be sharing a technique that uses Versamark to create a water mark finish. Most people know Versamark as the ink that you use when you want to heat emboss so this is a slightly different way of using it.  Firstly, here is the completed card which I based on the sample in the mini catalogue on page 22. Here are the materials I started with.... Crumb Cake cardstock, Versamark ink pad, Seasid

 Hello, welcome to my blog, My name is Alison & I am an independent Stampin' Up® demonstrator in Melbourne, Australia. I love creating cards & gifts for my loved ones & this blog will show you how to create something special for those you love. If this is your first time here, thanks for visiting, I hope you enjoy what I have to share with you. If you're a returning visitor, thank you so much for supporting me! 😍  This week's blog is a little different from some of my other blogs. It has a stamp set & dies but the stamp set only has sentiments & the dies create tags or labels that fit the sentiments. Handy huh? So, I went a little crazy with the stamps & dies this week! Once I got started I decided to create a whole bunch using the beautiful Hues of Happiness DSP as it makes super easy cards really quickly. Some DSP, maybe some contrasting cardstock, the sentiment on a tag plus some bling or ribbon & it's done! Here are 4 complete cards plus

 Hello & welcome to my blog, My name is Alison & I am an independent Stampin' Up® demonstrator in Melbourne, Australia.  I love creating cards & gifts for my loved ones & this blog will show you how to create something special for those you love. I blog twice a week, once on a Sunday where I mainly showcase a stamp set or dies & sometimes special DSP. My second blog is mid week on a Wednesday where I look at techniques, colour challenges, card sketches, fun folds, tools & equipment & ways to make or improve your projects. That's what this blog is about. Today I will be sharing a lovely fun fold with you. This was created for a card swap I'm participating in with my Stampin' Up team. It's a variation of a Z fold & I'm so happy with how the cards turned out & wanted to share them with you. This is such an easy card to create. I'll break it down for you into the materials you'll need. 2 pieces of main colour cardstock mea

 Hello, welcome to my blog, My name is Alison & I am an independent Stampin' Up® demonstrator in Melbourne, Australia. I love creating cards & gifts for my loved ones & this blog will show you how to create something special for those you love. If this is your first time here, thanks for visiting, I hope you enjoy what I have to share with you. If you're a returning visitor, thank you so much for supporting me! 😍  Today's blog features a card using the beautiful Honeybee Home stamp set. It is based on a card from the annual catalogue (pg74) & has a honeycomb design which I really love. I hope you like it too. Here is my finished card... ...and here is a comparison of mine next to the the Stampin' Up catalogue version. Isn't it lovely? To create this card I started with some Basic White & Mango Melody cardstock plus some Happy Forest Friends DSP. I chose Honeybee Home stamps along with the matching Honeybee Blooms dies & a brand new die set t

  Hello & welcome to my blog, My name is Alison & I am an independent Stampin' Up® demonstrator in Melbourne, Australia.  I love creating cards & gifts for my loved ones & this blog will show you how to create something special for those you love. I blog twice a week, once on a Sunday where I mainly showcase a stamp set or dies & sometimes special DSP. My second blog is mid week on a Wednesday where I look at techniques, colour challenges, card sketches, fun folds, tools & equipment & ways to make or improve your projects. That's what this blog is about. Today I will be sharing a card sketch with you. The card itself was featured in Sunday 29/1/23's blog but this blog explains the sketch used. This is Card Sketch number 7. There's a rectangle, square & circle to start with. This can be in portrait or landscape. I chose portrait as I was making a card for a special friend & felt that the pieces all fitted better in this orientation.  H