Saying good-bye to give thanks day 2

Ok, after yesterday's lengthy post I'll keep this post to a minimum. Here is the 2nd card I did in a set of 4 using the Give Thanks stamp set. I watercolored the apples in green and red and then covered them in crystal effects to give them that shiny, waxy look that they have when you buy them at the store. I used kraft card stock and real red cardstock. On the craft layer right under the gingham red ribbon, I used my paisley cuttlebug embossing folder to give it that extra touch. If you look close at it you would realize that the part that should be raised up is actually indented into the cardstock and the part that is normally indented is the raised up part, why you might ask? Well I tried to sponge on some red ink on the front side and when I did it just looked horrible so what did I do, what any good stamper would do, turn it over and use it this way, I bet if I didn't tell you, you wouldn't have noticed. I then added my vintage brads and really that's it. If you click on the picture, you should be able to see the crystal effects on the apples.
I guess that's all I have to tell you today, Oh yeah one more thing, I'm having my For the love of stamps downline meeting tonight and we are doing the cutest project that I will be showing you at a later time and the best part is that I'm going to be offering it as a class for my local customers. Ok that's it I promise have a fantastic day and happy stampin!

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!

Blossoms Abound - Retiring so sad!

So here is a card that I made today and it took all of maybe 10 mins. I used one of my all time favorite stamp sets, blossoms abound(I can't believe that it's retiring whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!) and used the carousel notes from the mini catalog( Monday is your last day to order from the mini catalog). I used my coluzzle circle cutter and cut out the biggest circle out of vanilla paper. I used ruby red, groovy guava, mellow moss and always artichoke for inks. I used my crop-a-dile to make the raised circles around the scallop part of the card and then in the center of the raised circles I used my white gel pen. I did also stamp leaves on the brown envelope but it's kinda hard to see in the picture. I used mellow moss kraft ink to do that part. These carousel notes are really fun to play with! I hope everybody is having a fantastic day, happy stampin!

Crafting but not the paper type

So I have been doing some crafting of sorts just not the paper kind. I have been making hooded baby towels and changing pads to sell at upcoming craft fairs. Check them out entire line here.

This is my 6 month old in one of the towels isn't she adorable, ok maybe I'm biased but hey that's what moms are supposed to be right? So back to paper crafting tomorrow I promise. Have a fantastic day and happy stampin or craftin!

farwell carte postal

So this stamp set is retiring and it is such a lovely set, but to be honest with you I've only used it a handful of times, so I figured I better use it while I still can. I chose fall colors: Ruby red, Pumpkin pie and close to cocoa, along with very vanilla. Such a nice color combination. I edged the ripped layers of cardstock with some close to cocoa ink to give it a little bit more texture. This is a pretty easy peasy card not really much to explain, so have a fantastic day and happy stampin!

Supplies;

cardstock: close to cocoa, ruby red, pumpkin pie, very vanilla

ink: ruby red, chocolate chip, close to cocoa

accessories: vanilla taffetta ribbon, vanilla buttons

The Stampin Up Retirement list is HERE!

Well I know you have all been waiting and so here it is, the Stampin Up retirement list that is.
Retired list (alphabetically)

Retired list (by page number)

Take a peek and make sure to place your orders before these sets are gone forever. Have a fantastic day and happy stampin! I have lots of errands to run so I'm not sure if I'll get a card up today or not.

Boy birthday card

My nephew's birthday is tomorrow and I actually had the card done yesterday! Can you believe it! This is a 51/4 x 51/4 square card. This is really a fun size to work with. I used blue bayou, soft sky and so saffron for my colors, I think that they work really well together. I also used my eat cake stamp set. This is my go to set for birthdays, I love using this set. What I did was stamp the cake 3 separate times, once in soft sky, once in blue bayou and once in so saffron. I cut out the soft sky and so saffron parts of the cakes and popped them up on stampin dimensionals to give my card more dimension. I used 3 square buttons again in the saffron color. (I love how all of Stampin Up's products match, you don't have to go looking for products that the colors match.) I of course added glitter to the card, I added some to the right side of the cake and to the candles. I also added it to the soft sky background to give it an all over shimmer. On the smaller piece of blue bayou cardstock I used my happy birthday cuttlebug embossing folder. I love the texture that it gives to the card. This is probably my most used embossing folder. Well I hope you enjoyed the card today.

Have a great day and happy stampin!

Guess what I just found out. This stamp set is on the Stampin Up retired stamp list. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO the agony, I love this set! Ok enough whining, have a fantastic day.

Color challenge

Hi everybody,

My 3rd level upline Cindy L. has put out a color challenge to her downline the color challenge was black, white and any other one color. So I picked groovy guava, I love how both of these cards turned out!

I asked my husband which card he liked better and he said the one on the right. So I asked why and his answer was that he doesn't like white on a card, isn't that hilarious, because the main part of the card is white, it doesn't appeal to him. I thought that was interesting.

I thought that I would extend the challenge to all my readers. Come up with a card using only black, white and one other SU color and e-mail me the picture and I'll post them on my blog!

I have to say that my house has been clean for 5 days in a row and it feels wonderful! I'm also getting more stamping done because I only stamp when my house is clean, I feel guilty stamping if my house is a mess I guess it goes back to when your a kid and if your where home sick from school you didn't get to do anything fun, so if my house is a mess (which cleaning my house is part of my job as a stay at home mom) then I don't get to do anything fun (stamping) so needless to say I don't get much stamping in. But hopefully that's all behind me and I can keep up with the cleaning. I seriously can't believe all I have done in a couple days. All the laundry (which in my house is a lot of laundry). Dishes have been done every day, cleaned the bathroom twice, vacuumed twice and mopped once, cleaned out the refrigerator, that was really over due. The list could go on and on but I'll stop boring you. So I hope you all have a great day and happy stampin!

lazy blogger and graduation gift

Wow I haven't posted in over a month. Sorry about that. Life has been very busy. My nephew graduated from high school a couple Friday's ago. I can't believe it. It seems like just yesterday I was changing his diapers and chasing him around. Here is the card that I made for him. It's a wallet that I filled with gift cards for subway, dunkin donuts, and a gas card and then I topped it off with some money for him. I was surprised with how impressed he seemed to be with the wallet. The wallet is very easy to put together and you can make it out of 1 piece of 81/2 X 11 cardstock. I originally got the idea here, she is a very talented lady! We did this at club this month also, we just used a different stamp set and geared it towards Father's day or a birthday! The ladies loved it. I added a belly band to the wallet to keep it closed, which worked out really well. Supplies: Great grads stamp set, cardstock: close to cocoa, pumpkin pie, not quite navy, whisper white. Ink: close to cocoa, chocolate chip, pumpkin pie
accessories: crafters tool kit, cutter kit, coluzzle circle cutting system. Stay tuned this week for other posts. Have a great day and happy stampin!

For the love of stamps - downline meeting

I had my downline meeting, on Saturday, for my team of demonstrators. We had a blast! We talked about business related stuff and of course had lots of fun stamping. At the end of our meeting we all swaped cards that we had made for each other. Here are the 2 projects that we did. The card is actually what I did at my workshops during April. It's a great card to demo because it shows 2 different accessories from our mini collection catalog. It show the new old olive twill ribbon( which is so nice, it ties easily and it's soft to the touch), as well as our summer days rub-on's. I saw this card
by Dawn and loved it. I loved the sketch and the color combo so I knew that I didn't have everything I needed to re-create her masterpiece so I used it for a starting point to create my own. What do you think?






And here is the other project that we did. Isn't this box with matching strawberries just adorable? It's super easy to make. I found the idea on this blog and had to try it out right away!

If your in the area and want to check out what it's like to be a Stampin Up! demonstrator feel free to come to our next meeting on June 7th 1:00-3:00 pm.

Stampin UP has done it again!

Stampin UP has 3 great promotions this month, not 1 not 2 but 3 promotions!



Get on board with Chipboard: May 1st - May 31st

Purchase $35.00 in products and get 25% off all of our chipboard products. You can view our chipboard products on pages 178-179 of our online catalog. Chipboard is so much fun to use on cards, scrapbooks or home decor.



Purchase our cutting mat and receive a hobby blade for free! The cutting mat can be found on page 184 of our online catalog.



New Recruit Special: May 1-31st Sign up to become a Stampin Up demo and receive 25% off of the starter kit (That's only $159.00) and also receive your choice of a hodgepodge hardware kit for free!

Don't miss your oppertunity to sign up to become a demonstrator, it's so much fun! I can't believe they call this a job! If your ready to sign up give me a quick call or e-mail and we can get you started today!



Click on this link to see more details about all of the promotions listed above.

As always have a great day and happy stampin!

samples from Spring Fling

Check out all these fabulous projects done using Stampin Up's Rub-On's. I want to try making the lamp shade, isn't it so cool. What creative idea's these ladies at spring fling had! Have a great day and happy stampin!

Spring Fling Re-cap

So just over a week ago I went to an event called Spring Fling. This is a event for Demonstrators put on by my up,up,up,up line. It was so much fun. There where different demonstrations all day, fabulous make and takes and lots of gifts up for grabs and guess what, I won the grand prize basket. Me who has never won anything in her life, I was so excited. The next event held by my up,up,up,up line Cindy Lawrence will be in the fall, so if you want to make sure that your there with me, Sign up to be a demo before then.

Check out all the fun items that I got in the basket. See those pajama pants to the left, yes that is my 3 year old. She really wanted to be in the picture, so there is the bottom half of her. Have a great day and happy stampin!

Baby Announcements

My Mary Kay director asked if I would help design her baby announcements and of course I said YES! So she came over and I showed her a few different designs of cards and she picked this postcard style card which I originally found this idea over on SCS and I tweaked it to fit her needs. She brought over a picture of what the nursery was going to look like and of course SU had colors to match (if you haven't heard lately, that's why I started with SU, was because all of our cardstock, inks, pastels, markers, ribbon all match I love that fact, that I don't have to go searching all over and then come home with nothing that matches, ok done with my rant for today) so then we picked out the matching colors of the nursery and I have to say I absolutely LOVE the way this announcement looks. Her husband really wanted to do a sail boat theme so it was perfect that we could pull that into the announcement for him. I love how the turquoise just pops with the chocolate chip and river rock. We added the silver brad just for that last extra touch and of course the scallop edge was done with the slit punch. Anyway here is the card and I just think it's adorable. On the right side of the card is where she will post the stats of the baby. I hope you enjoy it!