Banners & Ceremonies

As I'm so bad at keeping this blog up to date on a regular basis, sorry about that. I've got so many events and things to tell you about. So let's get started.

The Banner!
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I'd promised last time that I'd give you guys an update on the banner that crafty Lou and Chris had painstakingly created for our Sir Stampalot's Christmas Launch weekend held over the August bank holiday weekend.
Here's a picture of the banners in it's new home:

slightly closer:

and here's some detail shots of some of the pendants:

Lou has been using all sorts on this pendant from cuttlebug embossing folders to nestabilites, versacolour cubes, stardust pens and stamped images.

Lou's used Woodware chipboard shapes to get the photo corner, the brilliant puff white embossing powder to give the snow effect, where would Lou be without a little cream shrink plastic (now back in stock) for the Tilda tag, and the Art Impressions grove of trees design.

This one is my favourite, Lou's used one of the latest designs from the Cling Collection from Hero arts, to create a wish list for Christmas and then shrunk it down on the cream shrink plastic, along with one of the journalling tickets from Tim Holtz. What a neat idea.

The backing papers on most of the pendants are the latest collection from My Mind's Eye. Here Lou's shrunk (surprise surprise!!), Tilda with hood along with the lamppost, moon and robin to create a little scene and of course some puff white embossing powder to finish off the look of snow at their feet.

Chris used little winter Japanese girl from hero and given her some bling with self adhesive gems and shaped the character by using silicone gel to adhere her to the pendant.

Chris loves those "inchies" by Inkadinkadoo and she's used the stamp design from the winter set very creatively with winter jelly embossing folder and decorative squares embossing folder, and some freehand doodling with the inkessentials pen. The inchie stands proud of the pendant by using a inch chipboard square shape from Bazzill, which fits perfectly.

Here's another inchie design from Chris along with ribbons, bling, background stamping, snowflake stamped designs and one of the squares cuttlebug embossing folder as used from the previous set.


All these pendants are now on our online gallery (currently page 1 but that'll change as we put more and more online), Although the pictures are on the gallery, I've still to go back in and detail each one of the pendants, so that will take a little longer.

If you want see more of Chris' fabulous artwork, her blog is 'always about colour'

and crafty Lou has finally taken the plunge and has started her own blog and you can keep up to date with her artwork here, "Crafty Lou's Small World"


Thanks to you both for all your hard work at preparing the banner and to your helpers Fleur and Jo.


SDU event
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Over the last 7 months, we at Sir Stampalot have been running a course for scrapbooking called SDU or "Scrapbooking Design & You". And all the girls completed the course recently, so yesterday we held a little graduation ceremony for them all.

From left to right, Kim, Clare, Lorna, Kay, Me, Lisa, Manita, Henreietta and Jenny.

Kay had been very resourceful and worked out how we could all make our own Mortar Boards, using just 3 sheets of Bazzill cardstock, a tassel and some thin black ribbon - thanks Kay.

The lovely Lorna made a superb Maderia cake:

(luckily there's some left over to have with a cuppa later this afternoon)

And by a stroke of luck, Manita's son turned up to support Manita and we managed to coerce him into taking the photos (and he knows what he's doing more than my Andy):

Thanks Scott. Previously to that, Brenda (Floral Fantasies) and hubby Eddy had popped in and helped out with setting up the photo area. Additionally, a gentleman was with his wife shopping in our store and helped out tremendously with sorting out our indoor lighting - thank you sir.

And if you are in the Peterborough region and require a photographer, it's worthwhile checking out if Scott's available, here's his website with contact details: www.alexander-scott.com

Here's a shot of some of the girls receiving their certificate:

Lisa (our new scrapbook tutor at Sir Stampalot)

Clare

Manita

Jenny

Lorna

Kay

Henreitta

Kim

Well done to you all.


Phew, that one was a big long wasn't it. I'll try not to keep you waiting so long for the next update. I've still loads to tell and show, so hopefully I'll be back soon.

Next weekend we are exhibiting up at Port Sunlight in The Wirral so hopefully see some of you there.

Happy crafting
- janice

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