Preparing for new catalogue

Hello, Crafters.

My day started off with two new visitors to our garden! First, we had a squirrel who has been absent for the past few years. No doubt hubby will start cursing them again once they start helping themselves to his vegetable garden!

After hubby had left for work, I went downstairs to get a cup of tea. I looked out of the window and saw a green parakeet (I think) feeding from one of the bird feeders. These birds aren’t natives to this part of the world but they have started breeding. See the fourth photograph.

This week I have been preparing my studio for the launch of the new catalogue. The first job was to sort out the retired stamp sets. I always keep a handful that I really don’t want to part with but this year, I’m keeping at least half of them! I’ve also sorted through my dies and embossing folders – I tend to keep all of these, unless I know someone who wants one. I still have to sort through my punches and will keep them all. I mark everything that’s retired and store them in a cupboard. I’m now working on sorting out my Designer Series Paper (DSP).  

Yesterday I prepared all the envelopes so they’re ready to post out the new catalogue to all my customers. (If you don’t have a Stampin’ Up! (SU) demonstrator, you live in the UK, the Netherlands, France, Germany and Austria – SU rules – and would like a copy, please email your details to janb@janbcards.com).  Today I’m working on an insert that shows the new In-Colours, so I can post the catalogues  out on Saturday – something similar to the third photograph.

All of this means I haven’t had much time for crafting so I decided to showcase a new product that will be available in the new catalogue and show the make-n-take we made at OnStage Local in Telford on 16th April 2016.

It’s called Foam Adhesive Strips and it’s brilliant for making shaker and spinner cards. Each sheet has twenty 9″ strips of foam with double sided adhesive. You can also use the two outside strips as well as the two end strips which are 2.75″ long. At 1/8″ thick, these strips are thicker than Dimensionals which are a tad thicker than 1/16″. My measurements are approximate. The catalogue measurements for the strips are 3.2mm x 22.9cm. 9.1m total.

For the make-n-take we used the Confetti Celebration Stamp Set. I was too heavy handed with the star stamp that we used to decorate the Melon Mambo frame so I covered up as much as I could by adhering some gold hearts and stars from the Metallics Sequin Assortment. We used the Brights Sequin Assortment – I picked out just the Melon Mambo shapes! – for the inside of the shaker. There is a new punch that’ll be available in the new catalogue called Sprinkles which punches out various shapes which are ideal for shaker cards.

That’s about it for today. Until tomorrow, happy crafting.

JanB.

PS If you look closely at the shaker card you can see I stamped the large yellow star upside down – it has the word YAY on it in white! LOL!