A roaring good fun tissue pack holder and news of SWU contest and award

First, an apology. I haven't hopped to as many blogs as I would have liked this week, or even blogged as much as I would have liked.

The hotel I've been staying in for the training course is so convenient (my room was on Level 2 and the training room was on Level 1), the food is great (breakfast, second breakfast (aka. morning snack), 3 course lunch and afternoon snack all included and yes I am now a hippo, lol) but the internet arrangements are rubbish! It's something like £15 a day for internet connection. I already pay about a tenner more than that a month for my mobile broadband dongle that I took with me but I couldn't get a strong enough signal in the hotel to use it. Coincidence? I suspect not. After a couple of days I found a local coffee house that had a good enough signal but we don't get much time free within their opening hours.

It's back to Cardiff this afternoon for another week so please bear with me if I'm slow to stop by.

Now - onto the crafting. This week's challenge on Stamp With Us is to create anything but a card. I make plenty of boxes week to week anyway and so I decided instead, to make another handbag tissue holder (see here for earlier version). I love SU punches because for once, they're actually designed for use with card - so many on the market are only designed to punch paper. This project uses no stamps, just card, ink and punches:

Recipe

Cardstock: Close to Cocoa, More Mustard, Chocolate Chip

Ink: Chocolate Chip

Punches: Scallop Circle, 1-3/8" Circle, 1-1/4" Circle, 1/2" Circle, 1/8" Circle, Large Oval, Boho Blossoms, Corner Rounder

Non-SU: Small pack of tissues

The design is based on the one here by Angie Kennedy Juda. I adapted it for the punches that I have available. As we don't yet have the Small Oval punch over here I used the Large Oval, reinserted the Oval into the punch (as Angie does with the Scallop Circle to make the mane), to create a smaller oval (cut in half for the legs) and used the remaining piece for the tail. The 1" Circle punch is still on my wish list (I've gone for the new Butterfly, Heart to Heart and Eyelet Border punches, greedy aren't I, lol) so I used the 1-1/4" Circle punch instead. The tissue pack is then stuck to the inside back cover.

Please go take a look at the rest of the Design Team's creations and I hope that you have chance to play along this week. We have two new great incentives; a brand new blinkie award for the SWU top spot and a chance to win free entry to the Stamp With Us Winter online class.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Sara xx