New - The Stamp Man - Limited Edition Shabby Chic Bag Giveaway!

We have another gorgeous Shabby Chic bag to give away to a lucky Stamp Man Shopper!!!

From yesterday until Monday 19th March 2012, all orders placed on our website will qualify for a chance to win this fabulous shabby chic bag filled with lots of shabby chic loveliness!

Just two of these limited edition bags have been handmade by our newest Design Team member Caroline, Craft Mix, and this is the last... as the other was won by Lynn before Christmas!

Lucky, lucky Lynn, and now maybe lucky lucky YOU!   I could REALLY, very easily, have snapped up one of these bags for myself, they are fab, but Caroline very kindly made them for us to give away, and so we are.

I gathered lots of lovely goodies together and I can tell you that this bag is FULL to bursting with all sorts of things including some of the Stampendous Shabby Chic embossing powders that are proving to be very popular at the moment for Fran's Encrusted Jewel Technique, I think it works so well with the shabby chic style.

I've also included some of my precious ribbon, yes, precious!!  It is the most loveliest ribbon I have stroked for a long time, (not literally, I haven't physically touched it all, just mentally stroked and hoarded the whole roll to myself.  OK....I've only used a little of it, honest!).  I have lots of other ribbon that I love too, but this one is just... the one, and I'm sharing it.... just saying!!

I made a You Tube slide show of most of the contents a while ago, it doesn't all feature there but it will give you a good idea of what you could win, click HERE for a little peek.

To help spread the word I've made something for you below to copy and paste into your sidebars, it would be great if you could share the news about the give away with your friends.  I know that I'd want to know about it!  Shame there's no chance for me to win it though :-(

We have a vintage style embellishment kit poised for a give away here soon too, so call back for a chance to win that too:)

Thanks for visiting!!

Jill x

Shrink plastic buttons from last Monday's show

Same basic idea and instructions as the previous 2 cards but on this one I made use of some of the Shrink Plastic scraps to make buttons, well you can't waste it can you? So use your punches or nesties to make them. If the buttons are for embellishments, so what if they are square, triangle, octagonal or oval!

I meant to mention this before, you may find that you get little shreads of plastic around the edges when you cut a shape with a punch or die cutting machine. That was what I was doing on the show when I stood there sanding the edges, but didn't explain. When I watched the show back I saw it was still a bit tatty, but Shrink Plastic is very forgiving though and it does hide a lot of imperfections when shrunk. If you do have a sanding block then it doesn't hurt to tidy it up a little.

Since the show I have been asked which colour Shrink Plastic I used, it was translucent.

Stamp the swirl stamps onto the Shrink Plastic with white Briliance ink for a nice elegant look then use an office hole punch size to make the holes (1/4"). Using anything smaller will make it difficult to thread ribbon, threads or cord through, and life's too short to spend 1/2 an hour threading ribbon!

Of course, you can stamp in any colour for the buttons that will match your project, just remember they will be darker once shrunk, so don't apply too much colour. If I want to make a coloured background to simply stamp over, I wipe the pad, direct-to-shrink style, then wipe a lot of the ink off with tissue before I stamp on it, it really needs to be very pale.  You may wish to try just sponging a little ink here and there on.

For this button I doubled up the ribbon, tied a knot at the fold, then threaded each end through the button holes to the back. I fixed the ends inside the card. It makes a nice knot with no loose ends.

Again I was Cuttlebug obsessed on the show, I just love the white embossed effect, has had me hooked for years, but it is SO much easier to do than dry embossing using a stencil and takes the blandness away from a plain piece of card.

This wasn't one of my favourite cards I made for the show, it was one of the last I got together and why I stuck that bow on I'll never know!

Anyhow, I can't hide it as it does show how you can use a Shrink Plastic button or in fact any button. Maybe if I make the picture of the button big, and the picture of the card small, you won't notice how bad it is.

I decided it is about time I decorated the blog, I hope you like the changes.

I think I've waffled on enough, thanks again for reading!

Jill