...Good weather for Oatmeal...

Ed  - Yep Sue that's the one! it is lovely! I used a slightly light brow sugar in mine, so mine does not look as dark, but it tastes fabby!

Well it's been doing a lot of this recently here, which was making me very happy until I saw the news reports and heard just how much disaster this lovely white stuff was causing the sheep farmers. Sobering news reports all week about folks trapped and animals dying under the snow. Look how deep it was along the side of the road below. Granted some of that was thrown up by the snow plows, but there's a lot of it even so.

Where we are had only a foot or so of snow and I was rather enjoying the return-to-Christmas feel that was in our house this week. The wee folks are off and well and truly under my feet, so I have not gotten much crafting done. Baking is the one thing they all love to do though and so there was been plenty of that going on...

Above is Nigella's gorgeous sticky ginger cake, so I can't give you the recipe (but you can try this link, found for us by Sue) for that but I can pop you the recipe for the oatmeal cookies below, since I made it up just this morning.

10oz Butter
10oz Oatmeal
4oz Plain Flour
4oz Caster Sugar
1/2 teaspoonful of Baking Soda
4 tablespoonfuls Honey

Cream the butter and sugar and then mix everything else in well. Dough should form a ball. Roll out the dough and cut out cookies with cookie cutters. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 150˚C for about 20-25 mins. Get the kettle on for a cup of tea!

Hope it tickles!

Waltzingmouse Stamps Friendly Feature

Today we introduce a new monthly feature on the Waltzingmouse Makes blog – a Friendly Feature of some of our most loyal fans and customers, and it’s especially exciting to feature our friend, Deborah Frings.

Deborah has been a true cheerleader for Waltzingmouse Stamps since the beginning, playing along with Blog Parties, and our sketch challenges week after week. Today Deborah bring us two adorable projects. Let’s take a look.

Hi everyone! Keeping secrets can be really tough, especially if you’ve been asked to guest blog for your favourite shop. I was jumping up and down with delight when I got an email from Lynn and Claire inviting me to “strut my WMS stuff” on the blog. So here goes!

I decided to make a card and a household project. I used some stamps that haven’t seen ink for a while. This pretty birthday card features the lovely Earth Angel set and some paper from the newly released Folk Art ‘Clean Collection’ 12 X 12 digital papers.

The background paper comes from the “Clean Collection” and I know that you might be wondering how I got green paper. I opened the image in Adobe Lightroom, photo editing software, and then applied one of the colour treatments which resulted in a pretty pale green which I saved separately.

During the recent Blog Party I saw Tara’s card and really liked the way she used the Folk Art frame - so I CASE’d (Copy and Share Everything) it. I stamped the frame in Versamark, and heat embossed it with white embossing powder, cut it out and then painted it with Twinkling H20s. In real-life it has a lovely shimmer.

I stamped the Earth Angel twice, once on white cardstock and again on the green paper. I coloured her face, hands and shoes and cut out the image. I painted over the green dress with a light wash of lilac paint and glued it to the cut out image. To make the wings I stamped in Versamark on vellum and heat embossed with iridescent embossing powder. I added some colour to the reverse of the wings with pencils.

For the inside I cut a panel of green paper and white cardstock, stamping a bold sentiment and a couple of medallions.

I got the idea for my next project from Jennifer Holmes - she made a beautiful Recipe Book last year when French Country was launched. I made a box to store my recipe cards – I needed to update a lot of my recipes since moving to the US, so this is an on-going project.

For my box lid, I was inspired to use the colours from the fruit bowl I made a few weeks ago. The base is deep jade (almost an exact match to Island Indigo), pale yellow and a pale blue/green colour.

I stamped the pattern onto a sheet of A3 white cardstock. It was so easy to make - here are a few photos showing the steps:

I used my Fiskars stamp press to stamp all the images - it really is easy to line images up with this tool.

 The second photo shows the paper on its way to completion as I filled in the white spaces.

This last picture shows the completed page.

To cover my box lid, I put the lid onto the reverse side of the paper, drew around the box and then extended the lines to show where to cut.

Once cut out, I applied Perfect Paper Adhesive all over the card and put the lid back onto the cardstock and folded the over the edges, keeping it as smooth as possible.

For the label I cut a mat layer in Island Indigo cardstock and a white panel on to which I stamped the Box Label from my French Country stamp set that I bought when it first came out and have been meaning to make a recipe box for ages. I was so pleased to finally ink up the stamps.

Before attaching the label to the top of the box I applied a thin layer of the paper adhesive all over the lid and label to protect them – giving it a slightly waterproof layer.

To finish the box, I made several recipe cards. I bought some 5” ×8” index cards and simply stamped a selection of border stamps along the edges - using the same colours that I used on the medallion pattern. Here’s an example of a finished card – I still need to make many more!!

Thank you so much for your time today. I hope you’ve enjoyed the project I made with my Waltzingmouse Stamps. I’m very lucky as I have all Claire’s stamps and a quick look at older cards show that I use them a lot.

My favourite set is Free Spirit Boy and I use it often, but I thought this would be a good opportunity to play with some of my less used sets.

Thanks to Claire and Lynn for inviting me to “strut my WMS stuff” - I’ve had a blast!

***************************

Supplies

First Project:

Stamps: WMS – Earth Angel, Folk Art Labels 25, Folk Art Medallion; My Favorite Things - Favorite Sentiments

Inks: Memento - Tuxedo Black; Distress - Shaded Lilac

Dies: Spellbinders - Labels 25 (S5-077) # 3

Accessories: WMS - Folk Art “Clean Collection” design paper; Twinkling H2Os - Iridescent Green, Irish Mist, French Lilac; White and Kaleidoscope embossing powders; Stampin’ Up! - Wisteria Wonder card; Promarkers and Copics; White luster cardstock and vellum from stash.

Second Project:

Stamps: WMS - Folk Art Medallion, Little Box Labels, French Country, Pic-Nic Patterns, Off Beat Backgrounds, Gingham & Co., Heirloom Patterns, Chicken Wire 

Inks: Memento - Teal Zeal, Pistachio; Stampin’ Up! - Baja Breeze, So Saffron, Daffodil Delight, Gumball Green

Dies: Spellbinders - Labels Five (S4-229) #5 & 6

Accessories: SU Card - Island Indigo; Promarkers - Canary, Khaki, Pastel Beige, Oatmeal; A3 white card; Large (8½” × 11”) index box; Index Cards 8”×5”

...Quick cheaty Easter Eggs

 Feeling completely inspired by this gem of a card below made by Tosha and shown here on Tosha's blog during our recent release, I rushed out and bought white chocolate! Tosha's card gave me an idea for some super easy Easter treats! Love this - so super simple and raises a laugh too with the wee folks.

 I bought the Marks and Spencer white with the vanilla, because I love it. It tastes fab, but does have small black specks in it (the vanilla) just in case you get to thinking that my fried eggs look a little funny...

I started with a largish bar of white chocolate and broke off two thirds of it for melting to make the white parts of the fried eggs. Melt your white chocolate using your favourite method - I zap it in the mic for 10 seconds at a time, because I have neither time nor patience for faffing around with a bain marie...

Drop large spoonfulls of  your white chocolate out onto baking sheet I have that clever non stick poly sheet stuff from Lakeland - which also makes a great sheet for sponging ink on...)
I got a bout a half a dozen 'splats' out of my 2/3 bar. If any of your egg splats have a little raised dimple in the centre upon hardening, shave it off carefully with a knife - you want a nice flat base for the yolk. Let these bases harden before you add the yolks.

When you are ready for yolks, melt the remaining 1/3 of your white chocolate bar and pop in a drop or two of yellow food colouring. At this point - and this happens to me all the time - your chocolate may seize and not want to play any more. Do not panic. Boil the kettle and pop yourself a herbal tea on.

Take a spoonful of boiling water and drop it into the seized chocolate. You may need another spoonful, but stirring vigorously at this point with the boiling water should bring your yellow chocolate back to something like a smooth glossy pourable gloop again.

When I was making my eggs the chocolate seized as soon as I dropped in the food colouring, but you can see from the pic, the boiling water trick fixed it right away.

The best thing is to drop a spoonful of the yellow choc in one place and let it settle all by itself, it will naturally spread out in a circle.

Mmmmm......

I popped mine into a little greaseproof baggie (glassine bag) and added a paper topper that I had cut from some of our new Digital Folk Art papers. I made the topper up as I went along, it's basically a rectangle folded in half with little flaps to one of the sides.

I gave it a fancy edge with a Spellbinders Edgeabilities Classic Postage Stamp die. I popped two little holes along the centre fold for ribbon.

This is the topper flipped right side up - I am loving these digital papers.

The whole notion of Folk Art cries out for handmade embellishments and so I cut out two 'leaves' with my Spellbinders 2012 Heirloom Ornaments dies and added a little stitching to reinforce the leaf idea. Don't those ornaments make fabby leaves!

Popped it on the baggie with a flower made from felt - and cut with a Spellbinders Blossom One die. The finishing touch was the Keep your sunny side up sentiment from the A Good Egg stamp set. Easy peasy!

Now I want to make millions of little mini fried eggs and give them out to the wee folks buddies!!

Hope it tickles!

March Blog Party Recap...are you the Lucky Winner?

The March Blog Party was filled with wonderfully lucky images and creative designs. There were lots of green and shamrocks along with imaginative combinations that conjured up images of luck and love. The versatility of Waltzingmouse Stamps images make it easy to bring together images from a variety of sets to suit a totally different need.  If you haven’t had a chance to see all the fantastic projects, it’s not too late, they can all be found here.

The following three projects really caught my eye.

This card by Laurie Jones caught my eye because of the creative way you combined images from My Heart and Irish Blessings. Her imaginative way that she embraced her glittery shamrock with the various shamrocks from the Irish Blessings set.  Lucky in love...what a wonderful thing.

The next project is one created by Vickie Zimmer. Vickie worked up a fun ensemble bringing the fun of a leprechaun hat and an invitation to celebrate using Make Your Mark and Join Us sets.  Look at the adorable waltzing mouse with its mug of green ale. So very creative, Vickie!

And lastly, there is a beauty from Marybeth. While she didn’t use the word “luck” or “lucky”, the semi-circle of shamrocks surely convey the wish for a lucky birthday. She used images from the Say it Loud and the Join Us sets for her greeting.  It’s a fun way to wish someone a happy birthday, wouldn’t you agree?

It’s always a difficult task to select only three projects to showcase here because all the projects were amazing in their own way.

As promised, we have randomly chosen one person from all who participated  to receive a special code, good for one free Waltzingmouse Stamps set.  Congratulations goes to this month’s winner:

VERA

Please e-mail me at Lmercurio at sbcglobal dot net and I will provide you with a code to use upon checkout in the store. The code is good for several months, so if you want to wait for the “set of your dreams” feel free. I request that you please use BLOG PARTY WINNER in your subject line.

We appreciate EVERYONE’S participation and support of the “Blog Party”.  We hope you had as much fun creating your projects as we did getting all the inspiration from them.

...waffle...

Ever have one of those weeks? Yep? I'm sure you have...nothing major, just a thousand little things all calculated to usurp every waking second...sound familiar?

We had a cracking little release last week and like every release, after we get all of the little envelopes out the door I always have a little list of stuff that I have promised to do for folks, but have put off due to the release. Normally it's something like - ok, I must clean out that rabbit, or maybe it's a pair of trousers that needs to be turned up. Last week it was more exciting, I wallpapered a mansion, from top to bottom. The fact that the mansion was in 1/12th scale does not in any way detract from the achievement...

Yep, an aunt has a passion for miniatures and recently got a beautiful dolls house kit - being a fellow fan of all things miniature and more than a little crafty, even if I do say so myself, I immediately assumed project management and embarked upon the construction and interior decor myself. Had a ball.

Spent a day assembling and papering a house which was nearly as big as the room I was working in, and then launched into the next job on my list - children's party. My middle chick turned 9 and we baked, and we baked, and then we baked some more...and then we iced and then we entertained a dozen 9 yr old girls and then we ate it all, and then we went home and did it all over again for family...

In between work and all this I kept the house immaculate...and in case you are waiting for the punchline, this bit is true because we had several viewers to the house last week (we have been moving house at a slugs pace since last year). Come the weekend I was punctured and husband declared a national holiday. We went out for a spin on Sunday, St Patrick's Day and this is what we found, snow on the hills, isn't it lovely!

I know Lynn will be here tomorrow with a round up of the St Patrick's Day blog party and I am looking forward to a mug of tea and a snoop round those later tonight, the entries look fabulous in the thumbnails!!

March is a Lucky Month–So Let’s Party

Hello and welcome!. We are thrilled that you stopped by today! You are in for lots of fun and inspiration today as we host the March Blog Party! Are you ready? If so, let's get this party started.

This month it’s all about the LUCK of the Irish. so we have chosen the theme of LUCK. You don’t have to go with a St. Patrick’s Day theme, although that’s perfectly acceptable, but we also encourage you to yield to your mojo and create a card, scrapbook page or 3D item in the manner in which you interpret LUCK. A four leaf clover, an upside down horseshoe, a special date that you consider lucky; however you feel inspired to express your version of LUCK - we are anxious to see your Waltzingmouse Stamps creations.

Here’s how the party works works: Upload your entries to your blog or on-line gallery and then enter your direct URL link your creation using the inlinkz tool at the end of this post. We will leave the links open for 24 hours so that everyone will have a chance to play along, even if you haven’t created anything yet!  Then after you link your project, why not take a little time and check out all the other inspiring projects by just clicking on their link.

Be sure to include the Blog Party Logo (seen at the top of this post) on your blog to easily identify your participation). How fun and easy!

The festivities begin right here, according to your location, as indicated below:

UK - 5:30 p.m. 17th March- 5:30 p.m. 18th March

USA (New York) 1:30 p.m. 17th March- 1:30 p.m. 18th March

Australia (Sydney) - 4:30 a.m. 18th March- 4:30 a.m. 19th March

Canada (Calgary) - 11:30 a.m. 17th March- 11:30 a.m. 18th March

Malaysia - 1:30 a.m. 18th March- 1:30 a.m. 19th March

Norway - 6:30 p.m. 17th March- 6:30 p.m. 18th March

These times are different that what was posted as a reference on this post, because I forgot to take into account that the U.S. moved to daylight savings time last weekend. So please note the different times in your part of the world. At the end of the appointed time, the linking option will be closed.

As we mentioned before, you have 24 hours to link up your creation!  And we all look forward to see your creative and inspiring projects.  Be sure to check back on the 20th of the month right here where we will highlight a few of the entries that really catch our eye. We are looking for projects that showcase extra special effort and creativity! We will also select and announce our winner of the FREE stamp set of choice, using a random generator from those participating in the Blog Party! Will you be the winner?

Let the fun begin and enter your direct link to start the party.

...St Patrick's day Vintage Freebie image

A charming FREEBIE vintage image for a little girl holding up a lucky four leaf Shamrock - perfect for St Patrick's Day cards or just general good luck cards....click the image to go to the download page.

It's become a little tradition with us to pop out a freebie image for St Patrick's Day, and if the little miss above doesn't tickle your fancy how about these - also free, click the images to go to the freebie section at the store:

St Patrick's label image digital stamp

Shamrock Bunch digital stamp

So, I'll be expecting you on Sunday then for the blog party....no excuses now ladies!! lol!! Feel free to tell your friends, we would love to see as many folks as possible, and everyone is welcome to use the free images!

March Design Team Blog Waltz Winner–Drumroll, please!

We had an amazing March release and the Design Team did an incredible job with all of their samples during the preview days and the Blog Waltz we held on March 8th. We were thrilled to have our newest Design Team members joining us and WOW...what creativity they brought to an already amazing team. The entire team is pleased and honored that so many of you stopped by, left lovely comments and showed great enthusiasm during the WMS Design Team Blog Waltz.  

As promised, we have selected a lucky winner of a free Waltzingmouse Stamps set of choice.  Each member of the Design Team selected one comment from their group of comments, and from those, we have selected a lucky winner.

CONGRATULATIONS GOES TO: craftymom205

To claim your prize, please e-mail Claire at Claire.brennan1@ntlworld.com.

Please provide Claire with your contact information and set choice, and she will get your selected set on its way to you.

You all have our most humble gratitude for taking the time to stop by our blogs and for your wonderful uplifting comments on our projects and the new release sets.

...Moday Evening mooch...

So I'm up to my neck in admin after the release on Friday and I had no Monday morning make for you...so how about a Monday evening mooch around one of my favourite places to shop and browse in Belfast - Sawyers. It's been around since the 1890's - you can see the original shopfront below - this I pinched from their site, which you can visit here. I hope they don't mind...don't think  they will...lol

It's an absolute gem of a place and I don't think there is anywhere else like it in the North here...full to the brim with all sorts of interesting goodies - I hadn't been in Sawyers in a little while and I called in last week for some cheese, I could spend hours browsing the goodies here, they even have some goodies from USA - Reese's peanot cups etc, that sort of thing. You could easily spend an hour or two in here just looking!

While I was there I was eyeing up the Easter goodies and I hope to have a little neat idea for you tomorrow - something simple and easy to make.  Gotta pop off and send out more shipping notes, chat to you tomorrow hopefully

March Christmas Card Challenge–In Color

Hello – There certainly has been a lot of activity around the “mouse house” with the new release yesterday. Today I’m  posting on behalf of the Waltzingmouse Stamps Christmas Card Challenge. Cassie Jones is our challenge host this month and I hope that you will consider joining us for another challenge, giving you the opportunity to make a few Christmas cards each month so that you won’t be in a panic come December. Because we all know that December brings enough panic what with all the preparation and gift buying without adding having to make 50 cards in one month!

Cassie has a wonderfully delicious color challenge for us, and here is just a peek of her beautiful creation.

For general guidelines for the challenge, please check out this post here.

You may join in the challenge by posting your challenge cards to your blog, and feel free to grab this cute little WMS Christmas Card Challenge logo at the top of this post, to include as well. You can post them in March or any month you have your project completed. Then, just pop into the forum and let us know you have posted your project....because we all want to see your creative projects, and we love the WMS inspiration – anytime of the year.

Have a great day!

...New Stamps for March

Welcome to the March release at Waltzingmouse Stamps! If you are new to us, we design and produce clear stamps made from the best quality Photopolymer (that's the good stuff) and today we have 3 new sets for you and few other goodies besides! Our free shipping over £50GBP offer still stands...

Design Team Blog waltz

Before we take another step, let me give you the links to the Design Team Blog Waltz happening right now where you can see some gorgeous examples of what you can do with the new stamps shown below, and we've been previewing for several days already so it's worth a scroll back to see what's new! Be sure to visit all of the DT ladies and Don't forget to comment, there's a prize!

Tosha
Becca
Clare
Kelly
Lynn
Jennifer
Belinda
Sandie 
Julia
Laurie
Sarah 
Anya  
Iwona  
Edna
Jeanne
Jen
Jean 
Karin
Kim  
Renee
Teresa

USA shipping for folks resident in USA

 We are expanding our USA shipping with each new release and all of today's goodies are available from our USA base. The most important thing to remember about our shipping scheme is that only selected items will be available from our USA base and if you order contains items that are not stocked at our US base, you will find that your entire order will come to you from our UK base as normal.

The way to tell if an item is stocked in USA is to look at the product page - you will see this graphic displayed on items that are available from USA:

On Products available from USA you will be able to click on a drop down menu to select the option for that item to ship from USA - Just be sure to check that all items in your cart read 'ships from USA' and you should be good to go.
 

Our free shipping promotion will still work for USA items and so If your order is over £50GBP you will automatically qualify for free shipping as normal!

And here are the New goodies for March

Folk Art Medallion
Set size – 6 × 8 inches

Folk Art Medallion cut files

A Free Cutting file set wth .svg and.dxf files is available, click here!
 

 

Folk Art Label No. 25
Set size – 3 × 4 inches  

This set fits a die from the Spellbinders labels 25 Die Template set.

A Good Egg
Set size – 6 × 4 inches - illustration shows examples as well as stamps

A Good Egg Cut File Bundle
Co-ordinating with, and extending the possibilities for our 'AGood Egg' stamp set, the cut files are also available.

Folk Art Papers - 'Clean' Collection 

12x12 Digital papers, downloads only.
You should find that these papers co-ordinate well with Stampin' Up ink colours such as More Mustard, Cajun Craze, Early Espresso, and Baja Breeze. 

Folk Art Papers - 'Dirty' Collection 

12x12 Digital papers, downloads only.

You should find that these papers co-ordinate well with Stampin' Up ink colours such as More Mustard, Cajun Craze, Soft Suede, and Crumb Cake.

 Our Chicken shack Template will be available from tomorrow - it will include traditional print and cut templates as well as cut files in .svg and .dxf format - and it's late because I had a sudden brainwave about something else I wanted to include in the pack! My apologies for the slight delay on this item!

Chicken Shack Template - available from the 9th March 

Hope it tickles!