Christmas Comes Early ...

What a fab weekend we've just all had. It was the Sir Stampalot Christmas Launch weekend and we had 2 days of demos from 4 very talented ladies.

Saturday we were entertained by Gina with her watercolouring techniques using the Art Impressions range of stamps including the new Shoppe windows that have just arrived:

Gina also decorated some little metallic plant pots with paints, alcohol inks and stamped images, and used them as sweetie pots and also to hold the lovely give-away bookmarks she'd been preparing one night when she couldn't sleep - bless!

We were also blessed with the presence of Kim Reygate:

Kim was demo'ing all sorts of techniques including the wonderful versamagic chalky inkpads, sticky embossing and anything asked of her - thanks kim.

We've been very lucky to have Kim staying up here for the past week and she's helped enormously getting things ready for this weekend along with our other daily tasks - not much of a holiday, I'm afraid Kim but very much appreciated and hopefully we haven't put you off and you'll come back again!!

And the weekend fun didn't stop there, on Sunday, we had the creative duo Crafty Lou and Chris keeping us completely enthralled with their demos of shrink plastic, stamping, inking, colouring etc. As Brigitte put it so lovely on her blog A Stamp for All Seasons, "that Chris and Lou were a double treat" and that, they truly were.

Both Chris and Lou have been busily preparing for Sunday's demo for weeks. They've been creating a festive banner using the latest papers and stamp designs that will adorn the instore Christmas Stamp Shelves. They've also created tree ornaments for the twiggy tree, card samples and display boards for the store. They are true stars. And also thanks to Jo James for helping Chris as Chris has not been too well recently and was nearly not able to come yesterday but I'm so pleased she was able to make it - hopefully not in too much agony today because of it.

Here's Chris in action, note the banner at the front of her table, one of the display boards on the left hand side of the photo, in front of the twiggy tree.

here's the twiggy tree, with the brilliant tags, miniature works of art and shrink plastic creations dangling:

Here's Craft Lou in action, again, with her fantastically created banner at the front of the table along with loads of samples and ideas she was sharing.

The girls were very thoughtful and created hand-made projects for a charity fund raising game.

Chris has a pail full of ribbons. If you guessed how many pieces of ribbon were in her pail and you were the closest guesser, you won some reels of ribbon from me and a beautifully created festive notelet holder and 3 Christmas Thank You Notelets, made with inchies from inkadinkadoo.

Louise Roache from Spalding was the closest guesser. Her lucky number 96 was only 2 away from the actual quantity of 98 pieces, well done Louise - she is one of the ribbon queens of Spalding and obviously has an eye for these things!


Crafty Lou's button jar was the subject of the 'guess how many buttons' game.

Sue Watson from Peterborough had a lucky guess with 2012 (picked as the date of the next Olympics) and was only 4 buttons out from the actual quantity of 2016 (I'm glad I didn't have to count all them to get the actual figure!!).

Sue has won herself, a tilda present stamp from me and Craft Lou has created a stunning notebook using a tilda stamp, swirly stamp from Autumn Leaves and a greeting word stamp from Printworks.


(close up of Chris' project and Lou's one will follow in another blog update).

It was only 50p for a guess on both games and we raised £123.50 towards MS Research. Thanks everyone who took part and big thanks to the girls for their brilliant projects.

We were so busy at the till (thank you my very loyal and lovely customers) that unfortunately i didn't get to watch the demo's. However, the card samples, projects and festive banner from the weekend, have remained at Sir Stampalot and will be on display around the store for you all to see and admire on your next visit.


Here's a couple of pics of the 'Christmas Stamp Wall' at Sir Stampalot, WITHOUT the festive banner made by Lou and Chris:

In my next blog, I'll get another pic of these shelves with the festive banner, once I've put the shop back together tomorrow (should have been done today but we've decided to stay home for some R&R - I'm currently typing this and Andy is snoring next to me on the sofa!)

Right then, time for a cuppa, and search the cupboards for some food!

Happy crafting one and all.
- janice

It's not the size that matters!

Long over due, but as promised here's some piccies of artwork Chris has made using the inkadinkadoo Inchies stamp sets - so called as most of the square designs on the set are just a mere inch in size.

And don't forget, if you like what you are seeing here, then go and have a butcher's at Chris' blog - "Always About Colour".

This is one of the projects Chris made for Sir Stampalot. She has already posted this on her blog a little while back but I just had to show you the detail that goes into some of her work.

Using versamagic ink to stamp out the Inchies from the Flower Garden stamp set, this is the front of a wallet that is kept closed with the lovely organza ribbon from Creative Impressions that has a lovely swirly design on it. This wallet opens up and contains matching notelets.

This notelet wallet project makes a wonderful gift idea for a birthday present or as thank you notelets to send someone for all the lovely Christmas presents we'll get this year (have we all been good??)

As part of the embellishments on the front of the wallet, Chris came up with, accidently, the 'peanut' flower look:

this is where she has inked the edges of Prima flowers (again with versamagic ink), and dropped the flower into clear embossing powder (this was the accidental bit if I remember rightly!). So she decided to gently heat set this flower covered in clear embossing powder - the texture of the flower and the colour of the ink assisted in the flower petals looking like peanuts! How cool is that?

The centers of the flowers are nicely embellished with cream shrink plastic circles stamped with designs from the same Inchies stamp set. And also a few separate ones adhered in a neat little row on the wallet front.

This is a brilliant, non-complicated card design that Chris came up with. Again using Inchies from the same set as before in 3 simple coordinating colours as the main focal point of the card (designs from the Flower Garden set).

And finished off with a greeting motif from the Woodware Clear Magic set - Circular Greetings, again using the same colours to match the Inchies.

Thanks Chris, these are brill. Just had a peep at your blog and love the new Sarah Kay card you posted on Saturday 1st - it's gorgeous. Looking forward to seeing the second variation you are working on - no pressure or anything!!

More Inchies to come next time .....