Hey Everyone,

Well after a long break I’m back ready for a new year…but before I get started on 2010, I should finish the wrap up from 2009.

As many of you know, I finished last year by having a holiday with my family to Bali. This trip was actually a present for my middle son Tristan as a reward for completing Grade 12. He was very happy to be finished school and even gave up Schoolies on the Gold Coast for a trip to Bali. We took the whole family and also Jareds Girlfriend Shannon came along with us. The entire trip was fantastic, but a highlight for Dave and Myself was that we were celebrating our 20th Wedding anniversary whilst we were in Bali and decided to re-new our wedding vows, with a Sunset Beachside service. Here are a couple of photos…

firstly a family shot,

  Left to right – Jayden , Jared, Nicki (me), Dave, and Tristan.

And then whilst the photographer was taking some other shots my Darling Dave was down writing a message in the sand….If you can’t read it, it says Dave loves Nicki XXX – isn’t he the best hubby in the world???!!!!

It was truly one of the most romantic things we have ever done. And, having the boys with us was just fantastic. Each of them played a part in our wedding. Jared escorted me down the aisle, Tristan gave the most amazing and emotional speech and Jayden was our ring bearer, and Shannon was my bridesmaid. It was wonderful, I still get misty eyed just thinking about it…..

But then of course, it was back to reality and Christmas and New Years both celebrated with friends and family and it was fantastic to spend all of this time together. Of course I wasn’t just sitting around eating and drinking, and sleeping….I actually spent a little bit of time stamping and heaps of time planning.

I was hoping to be able to announce the location of our retreat this year, but I am just waiting to hear back about some final details, so keep an eye out. Meanwhile, tech classes are back from the 9th of Feb at the the same time as last year.

And PMS days  and nights will resume shortly after this, I will update my calendar and include a full list just as soon as I have the retreat info available.

But now for some stamping, I have seen these beautiful paper flowers being created and wanted to give them a shot, so I grabbed all of my circle punches, punched out heaps of DSP cirlces, roughed up the edges with the SU distressing tool, crunched them up and then layered them into flowers. I love the shabby chic look of them. Here are a couple of samples I came up with the other day.

These two both have a kraft base card, then I have used some very vanilla for stamping onto and the Haiku DSP.

The stamp sets are – leaves from Petal Pizzazz, greeting from Curvy Verses, Thank you from Short and Sweet.

Here is a close up of the flower….

 I hope this makes it a little easier to understand.

Finally, here is another flower card using the Raspberry Tart DSP….

This one also uses the Build-a- brad for the centre of the flower. I have used the Autumn flair, level 2 hostess set for the leaves behind my flower and the Happy Everything set for my greeting. Jayden is taking this one to school for his new teacher on Wednesday as he is not only starting a new grade but also at a new school, so he wanted to say hello to his teacher with a card, aahhh….

Ok, so that should be enough for one post, I’ll be back soon with some more cards, I made 10 new cards yesterday so I’ve got plenty to share with you.

till then, happy stampin’,

Hey There,

I promised a couple of posts ago, that I would post some photos of the World Card Making Day event at my home earlier this month. It was such a great day, that we are already planning another. I’m sure once you see the photos and the cards that we did you will be as keen as we are for another day.

Now if the cardmaking isn’t enough to tempt you, check out the homemade cupcakes  made by Nicki and Kym and Kym’s famous danishes. These were both super yummy.

Yet again, my wonderful mum and hubby did the rest of the catering. These two make the best sandwiches in the world.

Yep, we did make some cards as well…..

This is one of the male cards, using the Teachers Pet stamp set, with the Definitions alphabet. The colours are old olive, choc chip and the Windsor Knot DSP’s.

Wow, I know it is such a surprise to see one of my favourite sets was used, Just Beachy is soooo cool, I just love it. It works wonderfully here with the Urban Garden DSP, and Not Quite Navy. The greeting is from the It’s your Birthday stamp set.

Have you had enough yet??, theres some more to come tomorrow, so make sure you come back and check out some Christmas cards and tags.

till then,

Happy stamping,

I’m here , I am so sorry I have been absolutely flat out.

First with doing Christmas Cards for my husbands business. We had to do 2400 cards yep, not a typo. Two thousand, four hundred…..Luckily, I wasn’t alone to do them, I had my mum Jan, and our sales secretary Katrina on hand to help. On the second day of stamping my buddies Steph and Kym came over to help as well. That day we also put our house on the market, and we had someone that wanted to do an inspection that very day!! So then we put down the stamps and all of us tidied and cleaned my house from top to bottom, including mulching my front garden. Talk about some amazing friends and my mum is pretty amazing too.

Where do you start when making 2400 cards? With the cardstock, we needed 61 packets of Very Vanilla.

Check out these piles, then I cut them all in half.

Mum scored them all !

Katrina and I started stamping, and stamping, and stamping.

Mum and I have been colouring the design and Katrina has been glittering them all, so they are almost finished and then all the staff can start writing them out ready for posting.

Now, I have never been a person to only do one thing at a time, so I have also had quite a few Christmas Stamp a Stacks at my home with plenty of ladies all going home with some Christmas cards ready to post, we have also had our World Cardmaking day event at the Hemmant Community Hall.

Check out these ladies having a great day.

Now many of you may wonder how our families feel about us constantly doing all of these wonderful stamping days??? Well, they are all there right along side of us…..

This photo shows the three of us (Vicki Dean, Steph Pike and Myself) as well as our hubbies, our kids and two of our mums! I have to say a special thank you to my mum, she comes along and makes all of the sandwiches for everyones lunch. She works so hard all day just to help us out – so thanks mum – love you heaps!

So that leads me up to the last week, which has been spent doing 4 workshops, so I am now back on track and ready to post heaps of cards for you as inspiration.

My next post will include photos of all of the cards we made at our World Cardmaking day.

so till next time

happy stamping