Summer mini Launch Party!

...weeks of preparation, a flurry of activity leading up to the night: cutting cardstock paper and scoring all the projects, measuring lengths of ribbon, pondering colour combinations, experimenting, last minute printing and packing and so much anticipation ...

Last Friday night was my first Mini Catalogue launch party!

I had a very exciting time and the three hours of paper crafting flew by, it seemed everyone had a fun night and I deem it to be a success because all of my gorgous ladies at my table completed the three projects before 10pm and went home happy with what they made...

Here is a photo of the wonderful women on my table ...

And here is a glimpse of the three projects that we made(and name cards you can see on the table above - we used the "in the stars" stampset and "Lovely Letters "alphabet for our initial).

The first one is a matchbox-fold card using Pumpkin pie textured cardstock and bali breeze DS paper, Rose red stitched ribbon, the large oval punch, scallop-edge punch and scallop-square punch.

We used the single markers to colour (direct to rubber) the bird and flower branch of the "Live your Dreams"and the ribbon is folded in a tailored bow style, to sit flat and neat.

The Second project was a Lolly hand-bag made from the Afternoon Tea DS papers in the new summer mini.

And our third project was a matchbox-slide box:

We made them using the Bali breeze papers (from the Summer mini catalogue) for the sliding cover and the Prints DS paper (from the Certainly celery and Rose red paper packs on page 136 IBC) for the little box.

"Embrace Life" - love this stampset, especially for watercolouring which many of you had a go at colouring on Friday night.

Most of us are not frequently called on to watercolour and it takes some practice to get it right so I am planning a little tutorial on my blog in the next week to show you how I am endeavouring to improve my skills.

Here is another version of the box in the Bali breeze DS paper and the Stitched ribbon in Rose red.

We used the styled silver hodgepodge from (you guessed it) the Summer mini catalogue.

It comes with 100 pieces of hardware! Ten 0f each piece (including large chunky brads with flowers, stars and words embossed onto them) and over 100 small silver brads.

So, thank you to everyone who made the night a success for me, I hope that you will encourage me to do the next Catalogue launch in April 2009.

Can't wait that long ... I can do a mini launch at yours or a friends place ... and wait until you see the great little stampsets that are being offered FREE in the Jan-Feb SaleAbration!!!

I am off to practice my watercolouring ...