THE Demo Day

Well, it came and went, Sir Stampalot's 4th Ultimate Rubber Stamping Day and what a day it was. The girls had loads of fun demo'ing, their projects were out of this world, the weather was okey dokey, the food was yummy and plentiful and the customer support from you guys was wonderful.

Louise
Copic Louise's demo table was adorned with the most beautiful cards and projects all gorgeously coloured with copic markers.

Louise loves the Tilda range from Magnolia as well as the Molly Blooms designs too:

I love the gift idea of the sweetie topper she's created for the bag of sweets and lollies you can see here in the bottom left of the photo:

I may have to "lift" that idea for a few Christmas presents :)
One of the brilliant techniques Louise was demo'ing on the day was the use of stamp and bond and glitter to create an all over glitter effect on any die cut - check out the tree below, and also the way she's decorated the lamp post die cut from Marianne Creatables:

And one of my favourites is the way Louise has created this card using the Molly Blooms postcard and frosty stamp (cut with the postage stamp punch as it fits beautifully), with the tilda peeking over the top, the very useful Christmas verse from Woodware and the Martha Stewart punch around the page snowflake design framing the magnolia sheet of pattered mini paper.

Keep up-to-date with Louise's artwork by following her blog : Just Love To Stamp.

Crafty Lou
Crafty Lou was in her element again with versacolour cubes, magnolia stamps and cream shrink plastic:

Here's an adorable card using one of the latest stamp designs from Magnolia : Tucked Up Tilda in Stocking. Love the coordinating paper patch on the stocking heal that Lou has used which matches the background layers.

Leading upto the demo day, Lou was busy decorating this fab Kaisercraft tree:

Lou's used shrink plastic (funnily enough!) to shrink down stamp designs by both Molly Blooms and Magnolia, along with one of the latest Tim Holtz decorative strip dies : Festive Greenery.
Pumpkin 1 , Pumpkin 2 and a Halloween Tilda feature at the base of the tree to complete the look:

And here's some more of her fabulous artwork she was demo'ing on the day:

To find out more about Lou's creations, you can follow her blog at Crafty Lou's Small world.

Gina
Gina demonstrated the very versatile Rubber Stamp Tapestry sets:

This sample below used the lovely new set from Rubber Stamp Tapestry - Poinsettia Twist and part of the Art Impression sentiment.

Here's the new gingerbread set and the Art Impressions script sentiment.

And you guys were loving this one using the Marianne Creatables cut and emboss die Frame along with the Noel Rubber Stamp Tapestry set.

Here's another example of those two products:

In the same range as the Marianne Creatables die Frame, they also do this wonderful half frame too, called Swirls:

And of course there was plenty of glitter!! You can't use the words Gina and Christmas without also incorporating the glitter word!

Kim
Kim Reygate joined us this year after bad weather conditions last year meant she missed coming up for our 3rd Ultimate Rubber Stamping Day. Kim was busy inking up her projects with the brand new Winter series set of distress inks and the Fall set too.

She had some of the latest stamp releases from Hobby Art to show you as well as favourites from Penny Black and Woodware to name but a few wonderful.

You can see more of Kim's creations on her blog Kimx

Brenda
Now, Brenda had been very productive with her series of patterned paper wreaths (based on a design one of our lovely customers had shown her). Brenda had them displayed all around her demo area:

Here's a close up of one:

She very kindly produced an instruction sheet of how to make it (which you can pick up instore or download from Brenda's blog - Floral Fantasies).

This technique I just adore, the end result is so stunning:

Brenda's created the card by doing some simple brayering and sponging with Adirondack inkpads. The fence is hand-drawn, but the stag and tree are from Art Impressions and the sentiment stamp is from Penny Black.

Here are some more scenes Brenda created on the day:

And some more cards she brought along with her:

Brenda's Blog : Floral Fantasies

Chris
Now, I expect you've all seen Chris' fabulous advent calendar using the Kaisercraft kit: well, she's adapted the kit and used embellishments and patterned papers to create this goregous jewellery box:

Chris also demo'd the crafty edger punch system, frantage embossing powders from Stampendous, and used this lovely script stamp from MSE

And I loved this card Chris created on the day using Molly with Holly and lots of patterned paper and gems and templates from the I-Rock system.

Here's an overview photo of lots of the projects Chris created for the demo day:

See more of Chris' artwork on her blog : Always About Colour

Lisa
Our scrapbooking guru and altered art favourite Lisa Maybank needed the most table and display space to show you guys lots of her stunning artwork:

And she even found time to decorate her table with icicles - very festive.

Lisa loves her tilda's too:

This was her main project she was creating before your eyes on the day:

Lisa just can't get enough of all little trinkets and embellishments - they make a world of difference to the finished projects and give such a uniqueness. And just check out all these mini books she loves to create:

And here's one of her amazing altered art projects:

If you enjoyed checking out these projects from Lisa, keep an eye on the class schedule, Lisa runs lots and lots of classes but they fill up quickly so book early to avoid disappointment.


Next class schedule for the first quarter of 2012 will be released at midday on Monday 19th Dec 2011.


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Eddy and Steph where on catering duty and acting as runners and did a brilliant job as always, thanks guys. And if you didn't see the most amazing pumpkin on the day, here's a couple of piccies:

This was a couple of hours creative carving by Steph, isn't she just the best?

Thanks from me and the team at Sir Stampalot and the demo'ing girls to everyone who came and supported us; it wouldn't be such a wonderful day if you weren't there!

And well done to Marilyn from Woodston, Peterborough - she was the lucky lady who won the prize draw. She is now the proud owner of all these goodies (including a Slice machine and a digital camera) and boy was she excited - like a child in a sweet shop. Well done Marilyn, wishing you many more happy hours crafting.

We've decided that it would be nice that next year's Ultimate Rubber Stamping Day (our 5th!) should also be held that weekend around Halloween, so pencil in on Sat Oct 27th 2012 (to be completely confirmed later next year).

Right then, that's all for now folks.

Happy crafting - janicex

Festive Antics

During the Bank Holiday weekend in August, we at Sir Stampalot held our annual Christmas Launch.  We had 3 days of wonderful demo's from 5 different, wonderfully creative, crafting ladies.

CLARE ROWLANDS

We started on the Saturday with Clare Rowlands and Gina Martin.  Clare, who is the designer and inspiration behind the cute Molly Blooms stamp range, demo'd for us with lots of beautiful projects as always:





Clare's eye for colour combinations is something else:

 

This card features Clare's mitten border which has been paper pieced, along with Molly at Christmas and the Jolly Snowman postmark.


And Clare often has a little comical aspect to her projects, below, you can see the gingerbread man is disappearing into the Snowy Postbox!.   The winter cabin makes a great background scene behind the aperature featuring Molly with Lantern.

 

Here's a selection of cards and projects Clare brought with her to share at our demo day:
 

GINA MARTIN

We gave Gina a little bit of a challenge to try something other than her normal routine of stamp range.  This time, Gina was playing with Rubber Stamp Tapestry peg sets and clear sets and she came up with some wonderful cards.  Of course there had to be glitter too!
 
 
This card features the peg set Winter Night Sky and the clear set Flourish Plate 2 which has this gorgeous font - love it.

Gina's taken a normal easel card to the next level here, and has created a double easel card using the Deer Forest peg set and again that lovely font clear stamp set.

Gina also demo'ed how to use the Marianne Creatable dies and embossing folders:
 

This mini poinsettia die set looks great with patterned paper and the framed embossed die just on white paper is really elegant.



LINDSAY MASON
 First time appearance at Sir Stampalot for Lindsay Mason, and hopefully not her last.  
 

Lindsay was demonstrating some wonderful techniques using the Staz On Spritz Cleaner and alcohol inks.  Check out this background sky effect:

The stamps are her new stamps she's released for Christmas and the star has been created merely with a white gel pen.


here's some other creations Lindsay created especially for our Christmas Launch weekend:


This set by Lindsay is called Build a Snowy Scene.  Such a wonderful wintery set of stamps.




These elves are sooo cute.  The holly punch around the page set is from Martha Stewart and I'm loving it. Lindsay has coloured it with distress inks and used red stickles to make the holly berries stand out.


CRAFTY LOU AND CHRIS

These two are just amazing, they keep you all entertained for hours!

 

Crafty Lou was demo'ing the ever popular Tilda stamps from Magnolia.  Here's a selection of her artwork:






clicking on each card images above will take you to the online gallery, i'm hoping to detail the cards this weekend so you can see exactly what Lou used on each one.

And Chris was having too much fun playing too, here's some of her cards.

Again, if you click on the card it'll take you to the online gallery and i hope all cards mentioned here, will be detailed over this weekend.  

Chris also created a wonderful wreath made out of lots of yummy Christmas papers and stamp designs, which deserves a blog post all to itself.  More on that to follow.....





Date for your Diary
Sir Stampalot's 4th Ultimate Rubber Stamping Demo Day usually takes place the first weekend in December here at Sir Stampalot, Peterborough.  Due to recent years bad weather, we've brought that date forward.

The girls will all be back in action on

Saturday 29th October

if you can only visit Sir Stampalot one day this year,
this will be the date you really wouldn't want to miss.


happy crafting

- janicex