Our Final Gift Pick

Are you still thinking about what to get? None of our ideas quite hitting the mark? How about our final gift pick for this year......................

Sarah's Cards Ltd Gift Voucher - £1 increments

It's not too late - we will e-mail the voucher to you in a PDF for you to print off and include with your card to that special someone

Happy Christmas from all here at Sarah's Cards Ltd xxx

Gift Pick - Day Sixteen

Day sixteen's gift pick is from me!  My friend is just getting in to cross stitch; these kits contains everything you need to complete your project, and this one is just her style.

Stitches by Sarah's Cards Ltd Cross Stitch kit - Hi Speech Bubble

Just one more gift pick to go, see you tomorrow!

Gift Pick - Day Fifteen

We hope you are liking the team's choices to date.

Today's gift pick is from Vanessa who says "Another one for my daughter, she is into cardmaking and doing her nails - these micro beads would be very well used for both"

 

American Crafts Pop! Microbeads - £3.75

Gift Pick - Day Fourteen

Another great gift pick today from Tracie who says: This is a great stocking filler for my granddaughters who love writing and journalling.

American Crafts Amy Tan Yes Please Slick Writer set - £9.99

See you tomorrow for another gift pick!

It's not too late....

...for the last Christmas post, or too late to whip up a few last minute cards for your nearest and dearest either!

Basic Grey's True Love range caught my eye whilst browsing the shop - despite being a valentine style range, something about the candy cane red, marshmallow pink and crisp icy blue colour combination cried Christmas at me, and so I decided to use the range to make some Christmas cards.

 As well as patterned paper from the range, my supplies included the amazing Die Cuts & Transparencies pack.

Now this is a big claim to make - but these may be my favourite embellishment pack I've ever bought! There is absolutely loads in there to play with, and a variety of textures - some are printed on card, some on vellum and some on plastic transparencies, far more economical than buying several different packs of differing types of embellies. Some of the pieces also pop into separate shapes and frames - giving you endless options and combinations. This really is an amazing-value-for-money-pack and I whole-heartedly love them!

I also got the stickers and elements sheets which includes a whole host of stickers which were perfect for my project.

To realise my Christmas dream, I added a new set of AC Peppermint Express stamps in to the mix:

Here are six cards I made, hopefully something for everyone!

This quick card was created easily by layering a vellum heart from the die cuts pack on top of a journalling sticker from the element sheet, over patterned paper from the range (Love's Garden and Vintage Love). I created the greeting using a variety of stickers from the alpha sheet and sticker sheet. Using some AC embossing powder in Powder blue, I stamped a border using different images from the pack, and cut out a stamped, embossed holly leaf which I added a few gems and a stick pin to.
I wanted to use the "Christmas" part of the "Merry Christmas" stamp, so covered the merry with a piece of washi tape when I inked it up, and whipped it off before stamping on to my card as seen below.

Card 2 above used a piece of Cupid's Shower as a base, on which I strung a garland of bunting made from the flag stickers on the elements sheet, and popped some tiny die cut hearts from the die cut packet in between for added depth. At the bottom of the card I stamped the reindeer, first in red, then in dark green. To achieve the lighter green reindeer on the left, I stamped him a second time without reinking first. The stamped greeting, a transparent arrow from the die cut pack and a couple of veneer stars completed the card.

Card 3 feels a bit more traditional with rich reds and greens making an appearance. I used strips of both sides of the Little Things paper as my background, punching three small scalloped circles along the bottom one - the perfect size for the bauble stamp to fit right into, stamped directly onto the card base before being coloured in. The floral border sticker from the elements sheet joined a strip of washi to make a base for my greeting, which I made using a mixture of alphas from the sheet and the Love die-cut transparency. To further decorate the blue side of teh true love paper, I stamped the baubles using a watermark inkpad.

The technique on card 3 is a bit of a tried and tested method of card making for me! It's a great way of using scraps and pulls a pretty card together quickly. I simply punched several squares from the different papers using a 1" punch, and arranged them on the red base piece of Simple Elegance paper and added a faux zig-zag stitch with a black pen. I punched a journalling spot from the grid side of Cupid's Shower which I popped my greeting on to; which was created using a mix of stickers from both the elements and alpha sheet, a die cut banner from the pack and the Merry Christmas stamp.

Card 4 has a clean, modern feel and was quick to put together. Again, Cupid's Arrow formed the base (grid papers are always so useful!), and a quick clusyer of embellishments was created using the vellum starburst and a cardstock scroll from the die-cut pack, along with the deer and wonderland ticket stamped images. A "shower" of stamped snowflakes and veneer stars completed the wintery theme.

The last card has a pretty, wintery floral feel to it.

Strips of both sides of Love's Garden formed the base, which I ran a strip of washi tape across. The main focus of the card is a large envelope-effect journalling sticker from the elements sheet, which I gave a festive customization to using the AC stamps. A little banner sticker from the alpha sheet (oh yessssss, you get more than just alpha stickers on there - thank you Basic Grey!!) and some heart die cuts accompanied a stick-pin button to add the finishing touch.

I was really pleased with how, with a spot of creativity, I was able to customise the love-themed stash to make festive cards for my nearest and dearest! The Basic Grey sticker and alpha sheets and die cut packs really are jam-packed with goodies - making them excellent value and really useful in your projects. Go on, treat yourself - it's Christmas!! ;)

Gift Pick - Day Thirteen

Another great gift pick today from Jen N who says: These fun sticky notes are perfect for my friend who likes to go through all her cookbooks and label the many recipes she wishes to try out next!

Hampton Art Ditto - Stickies Shapes - £4.99

Come back tomorrow for another gift pick x

Gift Pick - Day Eleven

It's day eleven already and only 12 sleeps till Christmas!  Today's gift pick is a great idea from Nat who says: Quite a few of my friends either enjoy giving their handmade creations as gifts or sell their crafts, and would definitely love from these cute stamps to incorporate a crafty feel into their product packaging! The perfect stocking filler price means I can treat more than one friend to them, too!

Basic Grey Capture 'Give Credit' Clear Stamp Set - £4.99

See you tomorrow!

Gift Pick - Day Ten

Ifa has chosen today's gift pick, about which she says:

"I know a young girl who would love to fill this mini book with her adventures and thoughts"

Amy Tan Day Book £9.99

Gift Pick - Day Nine

Today's gift pick is from Sarah who has chosen this fantastic Basic Grey Calendar Kit.  Sarah says: This is a great gift to make for family members, my mum would love it filled with pictures of the grandchildren.

The kit contains everything you need to create a gorgeous personalised 2014 calendar, just add photos!

Basic Grey 2014 Calendar Kit - £19.99

Gift Pick - Day 8

Today's Gift Pick is Jen N's, who says:

One of my favourite products, glitter tape can be used on just about anything and is ideal for the festive season. It would be ideal for my mum who likes to make her own crackers and place cards for the Christmas table and would jazz them up nicely"

 

American Crafts Glitter Tape - £2.99

 

Be sure to check back again tomorrow for another fabulous gift pick from our fabulous team - liking what they're choosing so far? Let us know!

Gift Pick - Day 6

Today's Gift Pick is from Tracy, who says:

"My Niece is expecting her first baby on Boxing Day. I'm thinking a Project Life kit for her to record all those precious moments of his first year would be the perfect gift for her"

 

Project Life Mini Kit - Baby - For Him £14.50

 

Be sure to come back again tomorrow!

 

Gift Pick - Day five

We hope you're enjoying our gift pick series so far and it's helping you out with a bit of gift inspiration.  

Today's pick is from Natalie who says "My friend had pinned a project to her Pinterest board using old jars for pretty storage with chalked labels - I thought these may make her project one step closer to reality, without the need for messy chalkboard paint!!"

My Mind's Eye Chalk Studio Chalk Label Stickers - £1.99

We'll be back tomorrow with another gift pick!

Gift Pick - Day Four

Today's Gift Pick is from Jen G, who says:

"Some of my teacher friends would love any of these paperclips. This Allison Kreft pack is the perfect price for Secret Santa at work too!"

 

Allison Kreft Designs - It's Christmas! Bubble & Star Paperclips - £4.49

 

Check back tomorrow for another great gift pick!



Gift Pick - Day three

Today's gift pick is from Tracie who says "Because of the time of year i have gone with stocking fillers with my granddaughters in mind".  We think this is a great fun choice as a stocking filler for kids who love stationary and crafts.

American Crafts Amy Tangerine Photo Op Roller Date Stamp - £4.99

Check back tomorrow for another great gift pick!

Gift Pick - Day Two

Today's gift pick is from Helen, who says:

"One of my friends is getting married - this would be the perfect gift to display her photos"

American Crafts 12"x12" Postbound Cloth Album - Grey with Embroidered Damask - £23.99

Be sure to check back tomorrow for another gift pick!

Gift Pick Day 1 - Let the countdown begin!

Hello lovely readers!  

To help you get ready for Christmas, we'll be posting one great gift idea a day until Friday 20th December to help provide some gift inspiration.  Our team have chosen their favourite gift ideas covering all price points, be sure to check in each day for some great gift ideas!

Day 1 is from Ifa who says: "I am getting a set of Simple Stories Sn@p! stickers for my friend Amanda. She would enjoy labelling her jars and her folders."

Simple Stories Sn@p! Label Stickers - £4.99

See you tomorrow for more another gift pick!

A Twinkling Halloween

If you're itching to get your Christmas lights out (I know its waaayyyy too early!), I've found the perfect project to give you the excuse.  Halloween Lanterns!

Its a really straight forward, but effective project, all you need are a stack of clear plastic cups (from the party-ware section in supermarkets), your scrapbooking papers, your usual embellishments and your creativity.  

Firstly, cut with your craft knife, a cross in the bottom of each cup, this is where you will poke the lights through - they will hold.

This is the trickiest part of the project, gradually roll the cup along a piece of paper tracing the movement with a pencil at the top or bottom end of the cup, then carefully roll back again tracing with a pencil at the opposite end.  Once you have a long enough piece, join the sides and cut out.  This will be your template to use to cut out the pieces for each cup, from your chosen paper.  I've used Basic Grey's Persimmon range.

After covering each cup, you can then decorate and embellish as you wish, its as simple as that.  I have inked the edges of each piece of paper, used a ribbler on some.  Covered the edges with trims and borders.

And then hang!

Thanks for looking and keep checking back, the girls have some fab projects coming up.

Embellishing your Chistmas!

If you're as unorganised as me, it's that time of year when any spare cash is being plunged into (starting!!) your Christmas shopping, and the odd festive scrapbooking treat for yourself may well be pushed to the back burner. With that in mind, I decided this month to choose just a few brand new select seasonal embellishments that I could easily mix in with paper and other bits already in my stash, so as not to break my budget and to help me feel good with a bit of stash busting.

I plumped for the gorgeous Sleigh Ride vellum embellishments from Crate, a star mask and some tin badges from Studio Calico....and then, as you can see from the picture below, ever a slave to my patterned paper addiction, I crumbled when I saw the sweet "Rudolph" paper in the Crate collection!

The first page I made with my goodies records a recent "Santa Jog" my fiance and I took part in for the British Heart Foundation. I started my love-hate relationship with running earlier this year when I embarked on the C25k programme, and although I still can't profess to being able to run 5k yet, I really have developed by running ability more than I thought I ever would and it has helped me to loose 24lbs so far. My commitment to the programme does dip when I find it challenging - so my "darling" other half entered my into the Santa Jog without me knowing as a way to step up training efforts!

Click on the picture for a larger image

I began by using the rear of the Rudolph paper as my base - I loved the geometric tree pattern in pale ice blue. Wanting to get those cute deers in on the action - I popped a slice along the bottom of my page. I love that scrapping in A4 allows me to use a patterned paper as my base sheet and still have some left over - especially when they are gorgeous double sided designs like this.

I layered lots of the vellum tags on top of each other to create an area where my title would go - I loved that their translucent nature allowed the patterns to still subtly show through. The map tag was a must for my running themed page! For my title itself, I used some of the lovely letter stickers from the Echo Park Photo Freedom sticker sheet I used last month (read the blog post here). I created the date using a December sticker from the same sheet, and the one of the vellum numbers that are in the pack from Crate. 

You may notice a little silver star peeping out from behind the photo. I had a go at using the star mask and sweeping some Liquid Pearls through it. It was a little hit and miss; if you pulled the mask of too soon the pearls would pool into a blob, and if you left it on too long, the pearls would pull away with the mask and take a little of the paper with it too. But it was fun to try something a little different. I simply taped the mask into place, squeezed a little Liquid Pearls through each hole, and then swiped over it with an old store card.

 I topped each up as needed until the Liquid Pearls was flush with the top of the mask.

Underneath my picture I popped a row of punched hearts to represent the charity that organised the event. I punched them from some Kraft, but felt they needed something a little extra. So I took a scrap of card, and covered it with some washi tape. I added the strips at an angle as I wanted the striped to be reminiscent of candy canes.

After trimming the rough edge so it would fit, I popped it through the same heart punch.

This gave me a strip of candy-cane striped hearts. I cut a few free from the chain with a small scissorsand added them at random to my original strip of Kraft hearts.

 

The final touch to the page was adding some more of the badges to the corner of the page. I used some of the vellum numbers as decorative frames for them - they were the perfect size for the job!

For my second page, I managed to avoid patterned paper completely - a rare thing for me! I decided to use a piece of the delicious new dark Kraft for my base, and the star mask with some white Mister Hueys to create a background. I absolutely love filling the house with candles at this time of year, and wanted to record some of those little pockets of glowing light.

With this in mind, and looking at the "fading" pattern on the mask, where there is a heavy concentration of stars at the bottom and then fading away towards the top; I decided that I would pivot the mask around a point at the centre of the page, to create a pattern that appeared to be "glowing" right from the middle:

I wasn't too concerned about the overlapping marks you can see in the middle - I had three photos and I knew I was going to put them in a triangle formation (like a Christmas tree!) right in the middle so this would be covered. The important thing for me was to create an effect of the stars radiating towards the four corners.

Similarly, I wasn't worried about the untidy misting at edges where the mask hadn't covered (or the punched "nibble" out of the top left corner!), I always have a border to my pages and knew I could cover this up with that. However, this time, rather than mounting my page onto a sheet of card stock for this, I decided to make a border with some lovely wide washi tape. I created neat mitred edges by folding back the tape as you can see in the picture below, making a firm crease as a cutting guide, and then trimming the excess away with a scissors.

With my base completed, I was ready to start on the pretty bits! Here's my finished page:

 For my title, I altered the "Let it Snow"vellum tag to "Glow" using some of the stickers on the second Echo Park Photo Freedom stickers sheet I used in November. I kept the embellishment simple, allowing the photos and the misted background to be the focal point.

A few dotted pearls and wooden stars added a small, festive finishing touch.

Finally, for a very quick make, I whipped up a tag for a special friend:

I misted a scrap of kraft card using the star mask. The concentrated band of colour at the bottom of the tag was card below the edge of the mask that wasn't covered - I loved the contrast between the block of colour and the star pattern so decided to include it when I cut my tag shape, rather than trim it away. A quick strip of washi tape, a tin badge and wooden stars, and hey presto - a hand made tag in minutes.

 

As mentioned by Jen in her post, we can't at present share direct product links with you like we usually do due to the exciting happenings over at the shop! If you haven't already checked out the brand new and totally revamped website at its temporary address - go now!!!

That just leaves me to wish you a very merry Christmas from me, and a happy New Year!

See you in January 2013 xxx