French message today.

My fellow SU! demonstrator and friend Val, based in Lyon, kindly let me copy/paste this information detailing a Stampin'Up! competition. Have a go, why not???



Un concours avec Stampin up !!!
Voilà, c'est annoncé, et c'est dans la scrap astuce de ce jour... Le concours...

A l'occasion de la sortie d'un nouveau livre de carterie dans la collection Square des Loisirs, gagnez des sets de tampons Stampin’Up !

Ce livre "90 idées de faire-part et invitations" vous dévoile les techniques et astuces de Sylvie Corre-Lopès (auteur également "Des Cartes créatives pour toutes les occasions" pour réaliser des cartes personnalisées pour des moments uniques comme la naissance, le baptême, le mariage,...
Des faire-part classiques aux plus originaux, vous découvrirez beaucoup de modèles réalisés avec des tampons et notamment comme ceux de la marque Stampin'Up !.

Notre challenge "Tampons" en partenariat avec Stampin’Up !
Votre challenge : vous devez scrapper une page (format 30 x 30 cm) mettant en scène une photo de votre collection de tampons !
Envoi des participations par mail.
Date limite du challenge : le 17 juin 2008.
Toutes vos créations seront publiées dans la galerie CréaPassions. N’oubliez pas une légende présentant votre création et l’explication de sa réalisation ainsi que vos coordonnées postales pour que nous puissions vous envoyer votre lot.

Le (ou la gagnante) sélectionné(e) recevra un superbe lot de tampons (Petits pois et cachemire, Des tonnes d'amour, Avec toute ma gratitude) offert par Stampin'Up !.
Alors à vous de jouer !
à vos agendas : Stampin'Up ! organise des Ateliers découverte en juin (infos et inscriptions sur le site Stampin'Up !), le samedi 21 juin à Marseille, le 23 juin à Paris et le 24 juin à Bordeaux.
dernière minute : autre challenge proposé sur le site Petit Punch de Séverine et Emma autour de leur nouveau livre "Customisez vos créations en tissu". C'est un challenge objet kitch et insolite ! et vous avez jusqu'au 21 Juin.

Mother's Day

Sunday 25th was Mother's Day here in France. Here's the photo frame Ryan presented me with on Sunday morning. As is his tradition, he continues to spoil me with gifts hand made in ASM's colours of blue and yellow. I still have a blue and yellow necklace he made at school when he was 5 years old. I did wear it for a few days like all the other proud mums but then kept it aside to wear (under my jumper) for good luck at rugby matches! Greg's present was a poem he'd memorised at school, cute.

It was a bit late in the day to take a photo of this card I made for a friend so I'll post a brighter one soon. I bought some acrylic stamps in Lyon the other week and I loved the card that was on the back of the packet. I changed the colours and used Stampin'Up! inks and papers to make the flower heads. It has definitely convinced me how much I prefer using rubber stamps (thankyou Stampin'Up!) to acrylic ones. they may be easier to store but they are not a patch on my 'caoutchou' stamps. Having said that I like the design of these 'Amy Smyth' stamps.

Hand made album.

Today I have some pictures of an album I made (yes, really, I made this myself) at Anne's scrap association at Lempdes last Tuesday afternoon. We started off with our bits of cardboard and material and walked out with the finished thing after Anne's expert guidance! She's looking for new students from September and places are limited so get in touch via her blog if you want to join up. I've wasted half an hour trying to turn the 'inside' photo the right way round but I can't, sorry.

As usual, I'm behind in actually printing off photos to go in the album but I had great fun learning how to do this.

I have been making cards this week but they've been for my friend Michaela's 40th so I can't show you them yet.

The 'chorale' that I wasn't really looking forward to last night turned out to be really enjoyable. All the songs were on an African theme and the kids certainly looked like they were having fun. Late night though and quite difficult to get the kids up for school this morning!

Miserable weather today, but, that's okay as it gives me a good excuse to hide away in the craft room!

Busy week again.

Not much blogging time this week I'm afraid. On Tuesday night I did a Stampin'Up! party in Chateaugay at Aline's house. We had a great time and managed to polish off a nice Black Forest gateau after finishing our cards. Thanks again Aline and I'm glad your order arrived so quickly, you can now play this weekend! I've heard the weather forecast is bad!

Thursday morning I had Nicki, Laurie and Collette making cards at the house. I love it when Laurie comes as she always has some new and different ideas. She used the Stampin'Up! watercolour wonder crayons to colour in the magnolias on her card. Nicki needed a graduation card for her son (the favourite babysitter of our boys), and Collette was making a personal card for her husband.

In the afternoon, another French friend came to visit and after coming here for 6 months and making hundreds of cards, she's decided to become a stampin'Up! demonstrator. I'm really pleased as I'll be her 'marraine' (hope I've spelt that correctly). With Anne and Fabienne, I now have 3 recruits, we're already planning a weekend in September together to share ideas and create some masterpieces. Anne has 2 recruits from Bretagne and they want to spend a weekend in the Auvergne also.

We have visitors from Scotland until tomorrow, they're off to watch ASM play Brive tonight, I'm not as it's the school concert which unfortunately I couldn't get out of. They'd better sing good!

Have a good weekend.

Michaela's Stampin'Up! party.

This morning was my friend Michaela's Stampin'Up! party. There were 10 of us and we had great fun before continuing the 'papotage' at a restaurant for lunch. I thought I'd show you the cards everyone made, it's interesting to see that even though there was a base model, every card turned out differently. That's the beauty of stampin'Up! stamp sets and inks, they're so versatile and easy to use to get different effects. I love the butterfly that Diane ended up making because she had cut out the flower wrongly, mistakes in crafting often end up turning out better than the original idea. We used the 'Pick-a-Petal' stamp set from page 50 of the catalogue and 'French Flair' from page 56. It was Laurie's idea 2 weeks ago to add the 'watercolour wonder' crayons to the French Flair card, using 2 or 3 colours then makes it easy to add co-ordinating embellishments like buttons or pearls. Such a quick card to make.

The last photo is of other things you can make with 'Pick-a-Petal', I found a lot of the ideas on the 'Splitcoaststampers' website which there is a link to on the left hand side of this page. The next party is at Aline's house in Chateaugay on Tuesday night, I'm looking forward to it.

Long time, no messages!

Apologies for the lack of messages, it's been a busy time since the 1st of May. My mother-in-law (Liz) was here on holiday and went home yesterday, much to her grandsons' disappointment. I said that her visit was a surprise for them both and above are the pictures taken when they saw her the afternoon she arrived.

The weather has been great, I think we ate lunch inside one day and the rest of the time it's been 'al fresco'. Liz always wants to do the odd job in the garden when she's here which I don't mind one bit, it looks much better and ready for the summer now. Gran changed one of their football goals into a rugby post which Ryan loves although the surrounding trees and plants are taking a bit of a beating. Water balloons have been popular (and noisy) in the garden over the weekend! We spent a day at the animal park in Cezallier last Friday with friends and had a picnic lunch.


















So, you will have gathered that there hasn't been much time for card making! Last Tuesday we went to Ikea and filled the car up with furniture and shelves to fit out my new room. We arrived abck at 4pm and Liz got straight to work building it all up. The boys (or I should say Ryan as Greg was no help whatsoever) were bribed to help lift all my materials from the dining room upstairs to my new domain. I'm not finished arranging everything but the room is operational and I even finished a few cards Liz had asked me to make. Here are some photos although I'll take some better ones when everything is in it's place.

I think that's enough for this message. The boys are away to a fun park today called 'Le Pal' which is about 2 hours away. I have the whole day to myself and need to get organised for a Stampin'Up! atelier tomorrow morning at my friend Michaelas' house. There is of course housework to do but I'm going to satisfy my craft withdrawal symptons instead. A bientôt.

Happy Birthday Greg, 7 today!

My little boy is 7 today, where did those 7 years go? Here he is waiting to open his parcels and cards and then being slightly pleased with some euros found in a card! Cake tonight, cake tomorrow at school and then next Wednesday, cake at the indoor bowling at Clermont where he's having his party. Greg skips his way through life, is friends with everyone and it's a privilege to be his mum!

Photos from last night.

Okay, here are a few pictures of last night's 'stamp-a-stack' party. We managed to make 80 cards (really - 80 cards) in just over 2 hours. Everyone seemed pleased with their results, and happy to be stocked up with cards for a month or so. We had a good laugh and spent another hour or so gossiping in the kitchen afterwards with some wine and some nibbles. I'm looking forward to the next one if anyone's volunteering to be hostess! I'd like to thank everyone who was there for being my guinea pigs for my first card evening and especially to Nicki who let us use her house.