The Sarah Hurley Designs 50% Sale Starts Today!

My 50% off end of year sale has started today, with over 50 products with 50% off including Craft CD's, Digi Kits, Cutting files and embellishments. This will be the last chance you will have to get hold of some of them too as they are being discontinued when the sale ends - don't miss out on your favourites! You can see everything here in my shop

Thanks for dropping by today!
Sarah x

Colourful Christmas Embossing

My last post before the big day! I hope you're more prepared than me, I still have a few pressies to wrap, eek!

Today I'm sharing some cards with a technique that proved very popular when I demoed for Sizzix at Donington and on my Create & Craft shows - Coloured Embossing. This first card is using a mixture of metallic and regular Promarkers...
I ran the card through my Big Shot to emboss the baubles, coloured over the raised areas then highlighted with Stickles for a festive feel...

This second card uses one of my favourite Basic Grey / Sizzix embossing folder which I coloured with seasonal Promarkers (I've done this one lots for shows and never get bored of it!) and again highlighted with stickles...

Here is a little close up...
Thanks so much for dropping by today, I best get back to wrapping *sigh* or maybe I can delegate... ;o)

Sarah x

Christmas with LOTV - One Stamp, Two Ways!

Today, I have two cards to share using one stamp, from LOTV. Again, you may have spotted these in my recent Create & Craft shows...

This card uses some gorgeous MME papers and pompom ribbon, the image is coloured using some of the limited edition seasonal Promarkers and is highlighted with stickles.
Here is a little close up...
The second card uses the same image, also coloured with Promarkers. This time I've made my own paper and sentiment using the Letraset hot foil machine that I showed recently...
And a little close up....


Thank you for dropping by today!
Sarah x

Christmas at Home Card

Today I'm sharing a Christmas card you may have spotted on some of my recent Create & Craft shows, it's one of my favourites as It reminds me of Christmas at home...
The fancy shaped card blank is from Craftwork cards, the pearlised card has been cut using a Sizzix Framelits die and embossed in a snowflake embossing folder. The village parts were stamped onto bleed proof card and coloured with Promarkers before being layered onto the card.
I finished it with a Tim Holtz Sizzix Snowflake Rosette, one of my favourite Sizzix dies of this year!

I hope you are more prepared for Christmas than I am, I still need to finish writing a few cards and wrapping all of my presents (though I usually rope in some help! ;o) )

Thanks for dropping by today!
Sarah x

Christmas Words - Free SVG File!

Today I'm sharing my last free SVG file of the year! This time some Disco style Christmas words...

You can see more of my die cutting designs (and my other craft products) here in my shop or here in the Silhouette online store.

Thank you for dropping by today!
Sarah x

The Lookbook Magazine - Volume 2!

After much hard work behind the scenes, I'm pleased to say that Volume 2 of the Sarah Hurley Lookbook is now available online for you, over 90 pages of crafty inspiration from myself and my lovely design team! You can view it here....
The magazine also includes some sneaky peeks of things coming in the new year - not to be missed!

I hope you love it as much as the first issue! As ever, my thanks to my lovely design team who made such fabulous projects for this issue! We look forward to your comments and feedback. We will be opening submissions for volume 3 shortly, so keep an eye out for more guidelines.

Thank you for dropping by today!
Sarah x

Sharing my Secrets! A 'typical' day at Hurley HQ...

I haven't done one of these Sharing my Secrets posts for a while, but a lot of people ask me how I fit everything in and how I juggle things so I thought I would give you a behind the scenes peek at a 'typical' day for me.

First off, there is really no 'typical' day here at Hurley HQ - at any minute I can get an an email for an urgent deadline, a magazine write up, a commission, a piece of artwork or a last minute show and I will have to drop everything and focus on that - it's all about prioritising!

On a day when there is no crisis, I would usually get up around 7.30am. I start every day with a hot bubble bath (I know thats indulgent, but I like to start the day right!) I spend about 20 minutes in there while I check my emails and orders on my blackberry. I then grab a coffee on the way to my desk and fire up my pooter. While thats coming to life, I'll catch up on my tweets and facebook page on my iPad and scan over my diary for the day.

Once I've answered all my emails from overnight (usually takes around an hour) I'll print off and gather together any orders and send them via email (for digital products) or pack them and bag them ready for B to take to the post office when he gets home. While I'm gathering together the products for orders I take a quick look over the stock and make a note of anything thats running low to reorder later in the day. (Fuzzybutt usually crawls out of bed at this point and trots downstairs to lay next to me sleeping some more until B gets home!) Once this is done I start on my first job of the day, this is usually illustration or design of some kind, whether it's for a client, a craft product or just ideas I had kicking about in my head. Sometimes I have kits or new products to photograph for my shop or my NOTHS shop.

Around lunch time, B gets in from work, he'll grab the bags of post and head straight back out to the post office while I put on the coffee machine and find something for lunch. We take a quick half an hour to eat lunch and have a coffee together and then I get back to my desk. Sometimes B will help me with organising stock or chasing up payments or orders, otherwise he does things around the house and takes Fuzzybutt for a walk. We also spend time taking in deliveries of stock or new products from clients and the normal post etc... most of which B deals with! I get back to my illustration until around 5. B then cooks dinner while I reply to emails that have come in throughout the day. After a quick dinner togther I have my second bubble bath of the day and unwind, sometimes I have a half hour power nap on the sofa while B watches TV. B goes off to bed around 10pm and I'll then head to my studio to create things for magazines, shows, clients or my blog or I'm back at my desk to work on illustrations and other projects until around 2am I then try and spend around an hour doing some writing for my book before I go to bed around 3am. I'm usually just dropping off to sleep as I hear B's alarm going off at 4am for him to head to work.


It's a hectic schedule and it keeps me very busy but I love every second of it! :o)

Now I must be off for that dinner and bubble bath before I head back to my desk for the night - I'm finishing off volume 2 of the Sarah Hurley Lookbook, and it's coming together a treat - I can't wait to share it with you all later this week!

Thank you for dropping by today.
Sarah x

Christmas Snowflakes Card

Today, as promised, here is card number 2 in my Christmassy Set of 2 (I showed number one yesterday)...
This one uses a fancy card blank from Craftwork Cards, the Blue Bazzill and bleedproof white cardstock were cut using the Sizzix Fancy Labels Framelits dies which fit perfectly with these card blanks! The blue label shape, I embossed with a snowflake embossing folder. The swirl is also a Sizzix die (and one of my current favourites!)
 
I stamped the Hero Arts stamp and coloured with Promarkers. the snowflakes were cut from white, ivory, blue and Kraft Bazzill and layered up, I then added a touch of stickles to finish.

Now, I must get back to work, I'm putting the finishing touches to Volume 2 of the Sarah Hurley Lookbook magazine - so exciting! If you haven't had chance to look at issue one yet, you can see it here.

Thank you for dropping by!
Sarah x

A Christmas Easel Card

Well, just as yesterday I was lamenting the fact that I am nowhere near being in the Christmas spirit (despite their being only a few weeks to go) today I woke up to a real life winter wonderland! There is nothing like snow to get you in the festive spirit fast! So now I have Christmas songs on, tucked up drawing (ironically, I'm drawing lovely springy things!)

Today I'm sharing a Christmassy easel card, I originally made this as part of a set of 2 for Making Cards magazine, but at the last minute they didn't have room to fit them in the December issue so I can share them here instead!
The Circles are cut using my Martha Stewart circle cutter (don't know what I'd do without it!) the blue one is from Bazzill cardstock and embossed with a Sizzix embossing folder.
The smaller white circle is cut from bleedproof card and stamped with  a Hero Arts stamp which I coloured with Promarkers and then added stickles to.
The snowflakes, dove and swirls are all Sizzix die cuts from 3 shades of bazzill cardstock, once they were all positioned and layered with 3D foam I added stickles to some of them for a frosty finish!

I'll post the second card in this set tomorrow for you to have a look at.

Thank you for dropping by today!
Sarah x