Cleaning leads to Stamping MOJO!

Ok I know this is going to sound weird but; I haven't really had any stampin mojo for months! But.......................... I've been stamping like CRAZY the last few days and why you might ask? Well I have to go back to me cleaning. I'm not so high strung when my house is clean and when I'm not high strung I stamp better! So I'm not saying that my house is spotless, because it's not. My kitchen table still always has stuff on it, my dining room table well yes it's covered in my sewing projects, but......... the clutter around it is gone! My counter tops are all cleaned off and today I took all the appliances off of them and gave them a really good scrub down (both the counters and the appliances) and let me tell you they needed it bad, boy did that feel good so that led to me cleaning the fronts of the cabinets, and then the front of the dishwasher, and then washing the walls behind my counters. OK so now let me say I"m not a dirty person just cluttered and there is a difference. My dishes get washed everyday, my floors get vacuumed every day it's just that stuff seems to pile up on my tables and counters or anywhere really that it can. My husband calls any flat place that I can put things a horizontal junk collector, they are not tables or coffee tables or counters or buffet tables to him, they are horizontal junk collectors. He does like to tease me, but I can take it and he loves me very much.

Enough rambling, where I was really going with this is that because of all the cleaning I've been doing I've been stamping a lot more! And I have lots to share with you. So for the next couple weeks you will probably see a lot of projects done with stamp sets that are retiring, why you might ask? Well because I can! Ok really because I love these sets and want to use them as much as I can before they retire, and these sets are what I consider must haves for any stampers collection and if you don't have them YOU REALLY SHOULD GET THEM BEFORE THEY RETIRE! So today I'm going to share with you a card from the give thanks stamp set. I can't believe that they are really getting rid of this one! I think this is the perfect fall set! I love it because it works great for watercoloring and I LOVE to watercolor, it's so calming to me (back to the high strung thing I was talking about earlier). When I got this set out the other day I realized that I only have a couple sets that can be used for watercoloring and this one is retiring on me so guess what's on my list for the new catalog? Yup you got it new stamp sets that I can watercolor with. I used the Sunflower stamp for this card and used several different colors to get the effect that I wanted. Can you see my brads in the center of the flower? They are supposed to resemble the seeds, does that make sense? I used my paisley background stamp on the river rock and really rust layers behind the flower image. I love that background stamp and I am so glad that it's not retiring, I use it all the time. I used my 3/4" and 1" circle punches to give the card an unusual look! I then used chocolate 1/4" grosgrain ribbon to make 3 stripes under the flower image and also used the chocolate chip ribbon that was in the holiday mini catalog back in the fall.

So what do you think? I really like it and it was so much fun to make. Oh yeah I guess I should mention that this is a 51/4" square card which fits perfectly into a Stampin Up square envelope. I used a 81/2X11 piece of cardstock and then cut it at 10 1/2" by 51/4".

News from Stampin UP!

Hodgepodge hardware is 25% off until supplies last! So instead of paying $27.95 you will only pay $20.96. This is a great time to stock up or try them out for the first time. Once you use them you'll wonder how you crafted without them.

Our new line of home decor products are now available to purchase starting today! Here is the link to check out the line of Decor Elements!

Retired stamp sets are available to purchase until August 10th, but the accessories will be first come first served so if you have a special accessory you really wanted to get you might not want to wait until the retiring accessory list comes out. Remember that this includes all In-Color products including: cardstock in all sizes, ink refills, ribbon, stamp pads (in the in-color family). So just give me a quick call or e-mail me to order your in-color products.

Ok that's all I promise. Have a fantastic day and happy stampin!