Beautiful New Stampin' Up! Products - The 2008 Spring Mini Catalogue

Well I don't know about you but I haven't worked through my Wish List of items from the Stampin' Up! main catalogue yet. But this didn't stop me from pouring over the new Mini Catalogue, items from which go on sale today (1 August) until the 30 November 2008.

In my humble opinion, it's Australia's best Mini Catalogue yet. There are some great new stamps sets in it, including a groovy Christmas set, Season of Joy. In fact, there's lots to get you going on your Christmas paper-craft. Stamps, Decorative Paper, Chipboard, Embellishments and gorgeous Satin Ribbon. You know you can never start making your Christmas items too early.

If you enjoy water-colouring, there's Bloomin' with Beauty - I can't wait to colour these images. There's also a really funky little set called Tart & Tangy which is loads of fun and inexpensive as well.

Want to see what I'm raving about? The new Mini is now online. If you'd like a copy to hold in your hands, or an Adobe PDF of the catalogue, please email me.

Now I'm excited to be heading away for a weekend of paper-crafting with other Stampin' Up! demonstrators. While I'm away I'll be working on projects which I'll demonstrate at my open house on the afternoon of Saturday 16 August 2008 to showcase items from the new catalogue. I'll give you more details soon but please, save the date in your diaries.

Love from Crafty Kim

Want a free subscription to For Keeps Creative Paper digital magazine?

Have you seen the new For Keeps Creative Paper magazine yet? It launched in June 2008 and arose from the combination of For Keeps Creative Scrapbooking and Australian Paper Crafts magazines. So far, it has featured several projects using Stampin' Up!® stamps. Here's a picture of the cover of the current edition (August 2008).


While there is nothing quite like a hard copy in your hands, the magazine publisher, Creative Living, is offering a free six month subscription to the digital version of the magazine. Might be a good way to check it out and decide if you want to purchase the printed version in future?

For full details, please visit the magazine web site at Creative Paper Magazine.

And please remember that I offer 10% off the regular purchase price of any Stampin' Up!® item featured in a magazine project. Just mention the magazine article when placing your order.

Hope you enjoy reading the digital magazine and find it inspiring.

Love from Crafty Kim

The Only Tiling I Recommend You Do

Anyone who has tiled their bathroom or kitchen with ceramic tiles knows how tedious it is. Which is why I keep clear of the whole scene. I prefer to make tiled cards.

There's a few options when it comes to tiling images for cards. Here's what I call "real tiling" which is where you cut up your stamped image into pieces or tiles and stick them down after sponging the edges of each piece with ink to make the edges highly visible. Alternatively, when you stick the tiles on the backing cardboard, you can leave spaces between the tiles so the colour of the mat board comes through.



This card is made using one of my favourite sets, Blossoms Abound (birthday gifted to me by Cassandra) and was inspired by the work of Alisa Tilsner. Colours used are Apricot Appeal, Ruby Red, Olive Green and Sahara Sand. I've added a piece of Pewter HodgePodge and Always Artichoke narrow grosgrain ribbon. I like to sponge the edges of cardboard with sponge daubers inked from my ink pad because it gives me more control and a better finish.

Then there is "Faux Tiling", otherwise known as the Grid Technique. An example of this is shown below in the Lovely As A Tree card. The main tree image is on a tiled surface.



This card was inspired by the work of Angela Sargeant and Alisa Tilsner. The colours used are Brilliant Blue, Garden Green, Black and Certainly Celery. Both wide and narrow grosgrain ribbon is used. The background stamp on the Brilliant Blue card is Weathered and in keeping with this I've used the edge distressing tool in the handy Cutter Kit (four tools in one) to rough the edges of the Garden Green mat.

It may be a little difficult to see the tiles so here's a close-up picture:



This faux tiling is easy. Please follow this link for a full tutorial by Beate Johns on the Grid Technique. If you give this a try, please let me know if you have any questions. And please email me at ktonnet@bigpond.net.au with some photos of your work.

Thanks for reading my first craft post.

Love from Crafty Kim

A New Craft Resource is Launched: My Blog

Hello World,

This is my first post on my own blog so bear with me please. A humble beginning I know but I'm planning on improvements as I go along. I will be posting regularly but to save you checking back frequently, please consider subscribing to my blog which results in an email being sent to you each time I update my blog. Please see the panel on the right to sign-up.

I'll be back soon with a craft-related post but in the interim, I want to let you know I've created this blog to share my stamping passion (some would say "addiction") with my craft friends.

Thanks to Cassandra Grambau and Marelle Taylor for their help in setting this blog up. I really appreciate your support. Thank you also to Teneale Williams for giving me the extra motivation I needed to finally create a blog. I'm fortunate to have these ladies as my friends.

I welcome your feedback on my posts and look forward to making new friends all over the world. I hope to convince some friends to make an appearance here via guest blogging. And please, share your paper-craft creations with me. There's nothing better than receiving a hand-made card in the post but an email with a picture of your latest creation, well that's almost as good. And please send me your requests too, if you've got a burning craft question, I'm here to answer if I can.

I'll share this funny stamping quote with you before I sign off:

"here I had been paying this guy sixty dollars twice a week, for five years and I was still depressed. So I quit analysis and started buying rubber stamps. Now every week I spend one hundred dollars a week on stamps and I have never been happier. If only I could get health insurance companies to rebate...."

With love from,

Crafty Kim