It’s 1st January 2015. Happy New Year! To usher in 2015, I thought I’d welcome January. I’m not usually terribly fond of January; it’s often bitterly cold here in New Jersey, I’ll have said goodbye to my parents for quite a few months and I frequently seem to get sick. This year I think I’ll try to be nicer to it – it shouldn’t be as hard this time. I’m going to spend three weeks at spanish school in Barcelona!

Maybe the pear pizzazz splodges, looking rather like murky water, aren’t being that nice to January, but I do love pear pizzazz with lost lagoon. The splodges come from the Stampin’ Up! Perpetual Birthday calendar set which is in the new Occasions catalogue which will be launched next Tuesday. The January is from the same set.

I cut out the lovely hello – isn’t the typeface great? –  with the Hello You thinlit dies. I had intended on adding more splodges in another colour, but decided that less is more. As I usually do.

I read the instructions on the thinlits envelope and Stampin’ Up suggested running the die through the big shot three times. I tried it – as well as using the wax paper – and it works much better for getting rid of loose bits of card. I have read that a dryer sheet also helps but I ended up with some of the drying stuff on the next piece of card that I ran through the big shot and the dryer sheet wasn’t helpful enough to make it worth having to clean the plates each time!

Did you make any resolutions? Perhaps this is the year that you’ll take the plunge and sign up as a demonstrator. I’d love to have you join my team. There’s no pressure to sell or even demonstrate. You can even just join for the discount – even for just your first quarter and then drop. There’s no penalty. Although I’ll say that with a 20% discount for demonstrators, it’s pretty easy to sell $300 of stuff each quarter because your personal purchases count as your sales.