15% off Butterfly Bundle Promotion

Each month Stampin' Up! has a great promotion on offer. From 29 August through to 30 September, they have a great butterfly promotion with these two great products...

... the Itty Bitty Punch and Papillion Potpourri Stamp Set.  The offer is for 15% off.  Depending if you are a woodmount person, or a clearmount person determines the price.

Woodmount bundle - $51.77 - which gives you a savings of $9.13.

Clearmount bundle - $45.82 - which gives you a savings of $8.08.

Get in touch with me today to take advantage of this great offer!

Pearl & Rhinestone Makeover!

My favourite Stampin' Up! embellishments are the Pearl & Rhinestone jewels.  They are the perfect way to finish a project to give it that little extra something and a touch of bling.  

But sometimes, a white pearl, or a silver rhinestone just doesn't quite work.  Sometimes you want your little bit of bling, to be a specific colour to match in with your beautiful colour scheme.  Here's HOW you can do that!  

It's a simple recipe.  Crystal Effects (#101055) & re-inkers, in whichever colour you choose! 

I'm going to be Coastal Cabana-ing everything for this tutorial, so I put a drop of the re-inker (#131164) into my Crystal Effects on some waxy paper and mixed it in.  

And then you paint it on!  

Allow 12 hours for the Crystal Effects to dry and you have yourself a beautiful personalised jewel.  I love the subtleness of the pearls, but love how the shape of the rhinestone changes from the faceted surface, to a smooth rounded dome.  It gives the rhinestone a whole different look, but is still pretty and shiny like we want it to be on our projects.  

Which one is your favourite?  Mine is the large rhinestone!

DIY Coloured Brads

Have you heard of the new Candy Dot System? This is the replacement for the colour collection brads that retired with the last catalogue.  It's a much more versatile system and the best part is it is cheaper! But I'm not here to tell you about how wonderful the Candy Dots are (maybe another blog post?).  I want to show you a different, fun way to make your own coloured brads.

You need a couple of things to make these.  Firstly you'll need the Candy Dot Bases (#132293) which are only $4.95.  Next you need some re-inkers, in whichever colour you have.  If you don't have any, luckily enough they are $4.95 each too! And lastly, a bottle of trusty Crystal Effects (#101055)!

Ok, now to make these coloured brads.  Pick out a couple of brad bases.  You will need them to stand upright while you work with them and to dry, so I like to use a little moulding clay - but you could use blu-tack too.  The beauty of using the moulding clay, it is dries and you can hold onto them and re-use them every time you want to make these!

Next you will need to squeeze out a dollop of Crystal Effects onto some waxy paper.  On top of the CE, add a drop of re-inker.  

HINT: If you want the end result colour to be softer/lighter, don't add your ink directly onto the CE, drop it out onto another surface and transfer over a small amount of ink using a paintbrush.  

Mix the ink into the CE and you are ready to go.  Using a paintbrush, load up the tip with the tinted CE and dab it into the centre of the brad base.  Keep dabbing it onto the brad until there is an ice little dome of CE.  

As always, CE takes about 12 hours to dry, so carefully move the brads to a safe place to dry.  

If that isn't pretty enough for you, there is one last thing you can add... glitter!!  Once you have your coloured CE in the brad setting, just carefully sprinkle a little bit of Dazzling Diamonds Glitter (#102023) on top.

How sweet does it look?  

Oh boy, I'm loving Crystal Effects!!