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Who doesn't love a clearance sale?!?! For those of you who love a bargain, Stampin' Up! just created a new Clearance Rack section in my Online store today - be sure and stop by for savings as great as 80% on surplus inventory. Please note that these are items that have retired so that once they're gone, they're gone for good! Hurry, supplies are limited... click on "Shop Now" using this link here.
* please note that these clearance items are only available by shopping in my online store *
Check out the great make-n-take that my Design Team member Gwen Goulder created for my downline meeting last night. I love the monochromatic color scheme and you could mass-produce this card very easily to give as a gift for Christmas! You could take a single sheet of 8-1/2" x 11" whisper white cardstock and stamp the images from the Razzle Dazzle set all over it and then cut it into 4 pieces to get a set of 4 cards in no time! Change out the color from Rich Razzleberry to another In Color that has matching polka-dotted ribbon and you'll change the whole feel of the card.
Supplies used on the card include Rich Razzleberry cardstock, ink and polka-dotted ribbon along with the scallop circle and 1-1/4" circle punches, whisper white cardstock, ticket corner punch and Uniball Signo white gel pen. The monogram letter is from the Lovely Letters alphabet set, one of my favorites!!
If you'd like to order these products to make your own set of personalized notecards, please give me a call, send me an email or place your order online by clicking "Shop Now" on my demonstrator website here. While you're there, be sure and check out the new Clearance Rack section! But hurry, these supplies are limited!!
Thanks for stopping by... hope you go and stamp a card today!
I have a new Scrapbook Club that met for their first of six monthly meetings last Monday and wanted to share this Halloween 12" x 12" layout that they got to make. (The other layout was this one that I used for my Big Shot club last month and can be seen here.)
I based the layout (colors and stamp set) on this Convention card swap that I received that I absolutely love... it is the reason that I *had* to order the Twick or Tweet stamp set from the Holiday Mini catalog!! There is no name on the back so I am unable to give proper credit to the creator.
Back to the scrapbook layout... the base of the page is a 12" x 12" piece of elegant eggplant cardstock and then the 2 corners are 6" x 6" pieces of basic black and sage shadow cardstock. I really like color-blocking on scrapbook pages! When I mounted my stamp set, I cut the words off from the stacked pumpkin stamp and mounted them on the side of the wood blocks to give me more versatility.
The "b-o-o" banner was created using the tag corner punch on pieces of only orange cardstock that had been stamped on with the Schoolbook Serif alphabet set. I applied soft subtles brads in certainly celery to the tops of each and popped them up on the page with dimensionals. I then took crochet yarn and carefully wound it around the brads and knotted the ends. Easy-peasy!
I'm one who likes to put a lot of pictures on a layout and this one can hold at least 6 pictures with room for journaling. The Top Note die cut from the Big Shot works great on scrapbook pages and can be used for a photo mat or for journaling. Dress it up quickly and easily with a knot of ribbon... here I used the dusty durango polka-dotted ribbon.
If you'd like to order any of the products needed to make a Halloween scrapbook page, please contact me and I'll be happy to assist you or you can place an online order directly via my Stampin' Up! website using this link and clicking on "Show Now" here.
Thanks for stopping by - I hope you're inspired to stamp on your scrapbook pages!
On Friday night I held my Holiday Mini catalog Kick-Off and Open House - it came a little late in the month because I was busy getting ready for Founder's Circle. We had a lot of fun and I think everyone enjoyed the make-n-takes!
This first project is a quick and easily duplicated 3-D item which would be great for sticking in a gift basket or as a nice little pick-me-up for a friend - it is a tea bag holder that I created using 2 die cuts from the SU! Top Note bigz die for the Big Shot and the Cold & Cuddly stamp set in the holiday mini. After scoring and folding over one of the Top Note die cuts, they were adhered together on the sides and bottom using sticky strip to form a pocket to hold the tea bag. You could use this idea for a gift card holder, too, if you changed out the sentiment. I love the color combination of real red, bashful blue and whisper white. There were quite a few punches used, too, which made this go together super fast: 1-3/8" circle and scallop punches as well as the curly label punch. The penguin and mug were colored with markers so that you could achieve different colors on the same solid image stamp (love that we can do that with our markers!). The accents were added with a Uniball Signo white gel pen that Stampin' Up! carries... it adds just a little something extra to the project that makes it look great.
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The second make-n-take is a Christmas card using the Delightful Decorations stamp set along with the matching ornament punch and Holiday Windows dies for the Big Shot (works with the Movers & Shapers bigz xl die). I love that you can just cut your cardstock in half (11" x 4-1/4") and the Big Shot does the rest - cutting out the window and scoring the card!! I went with colors from the Merry Moments Designer Series Paper (DSP) pack - chocolate chip, real red, very vanilla and old olive. The window cut-out is just a tad larger than the matching ornament punch so you can have it peek out from inside the card - I popped it up with a dimensional to really make it stand out and added glitter to the center of the stamped image with a 2-way glue pen and dazzling diamonds... after all, what is a Christmas card without a little bling?! The strip of designer paper is from the Merry Moments DSP pack and the sentiment inside the card is from the Christmas Greetings stamp set.
If you would like to order the products needed to make either project, please contact me and I'll be happy to give you a list of everything you'll want to order or you can place your online order at any time using the link in the sidebar.
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a wonderful week~
This week's featured product for Fabulous Friday over on the Sisters In Stamping blog is Shimmer Paint - a wonderful new ink that is available for purchase in our Holiday Mini catalog (found on page 27). This product comes in 3 different color options - champagne mist, frost white and platinum. The champagne mist is the most translucent with platinum being very opaque and the frost white somewhere in between. All are gorgeous and you can do so much with them! The easiest way to use it is to apply color directly to a stamped project with a stampin' sponge or dauber - just shake the bottle up and then lift the ink from inside the bottle top (a little goes a LONG way!). You can also ink up your stamp with the shimmer paint, using a dauber to apply the color directly to the rubber. But work quickly because it may dry on you.
Something I tried out with my Techniques club yesterday was to create my own shimmer mist by mixing 1 oz of rubbing alcohol with 1/2 tsp. of champagne mist shimmer paint and 15 drops of soft suede reinker. Here is the result of that - I used the spray to CASE a card created by Andrea Walford. This image is what is left over when you use the SU! Tulipe die in the Big Shot.. I added Dotto repositionable adhesive to the back and used it as a stencil. Unfortunately, my camera does not adequately capture how shimmery this card is in real life.
Because this shimmer paint is so translucent, the shimmer worked great on a lighter colored cardstock like the naturals ivory in the card above. Since I had a lot of the mixture still remaining in the bottle, I wanted to see if I could play around with it and get it to work on a darker cardstock so I added some very vanilla craft reinker to the mix to give it more opacity. Here is the result - a shimmery scrapbook layout with the From the Crypt Halloween stamp set! Hope you like it... I cut out the "B" and "O" with the Serif Alphabet dies on my Big Shot and laid them down on lovely lilac cardstock, spraying the shimmer mist on top. Once I lifted the letters off the page, the B-O-O remained purple while the rest of the cardstock became shimmery. I cut tiny strips off this piece and flipped them and adhered them back down... the contrast made the letters stand out more in my opinion. Again, my camera does not do it justice.. in real life it is very shimmery and ghost-like! I used the same shimmer mist on the baroque image in the middle of the page and also on the entire piece of 12 x 12 basic black cardstock, but I am not sure if you can see that in the photos. I also embossed my black images to give the page more texture...
Thanks for stopping by on this Fabulous Friday! Be sure and check out the other wonderful Shimmer Paint projects on the Sisters In Stamping blog after Noon EST today. You will find it by clicking on this link here.
I started the day on Saturday catching up with friends and getting photos with those I had not had a chance to do so with yet, including Rebecca Bernzweig of MA here. Check out the pillows made with fabrics that match our Cottage Wall DSP!! Wish we could have brought one of each home...
I had my session of My Digital Studio training at 11 am with Penny Thomas and Susan Elise Morton sitting on either side of me. I learned a lot and the possibilities with this new digital scrapbooking software are endless! Afterwards, I grabbed lunch with Debbie Moczek, Susan Elise Morton and Bonnie Thurber - here we are at the dessert bar. We opted for the lemon pudding - it was quite refreshing after our gourmet pizza buffet lunch.
While everything I had learned in my MDS session was still fresh in my head, I decided to go and retrieve my laptop from my room and sat with Laura Milligan of OH, Patty Bennett of CA and Dawn Griffith of MI to work on pages for a Founder's Circle scrapbook that I hope to have printed before the end of the month.
Look at this great photo I got of the fabulous Stampin' Up! event team who put this retreat together for us - they are the best! Corey, Kelly, Kellie Sue and Bonnie are just simply amazing! I guess they are Shelli's Angels!!
Later that evening we had a bus ride out to a secret location for our finale dinner - turns out it was the same country club that we went to last year, just a different facility on the property. We walked through a rose trellis to reach our tables... the view was amazing and the company was even better!
My table mates included, from front left: Patty Bennett, Ruth Bingle and Dawn Olchefske as well as Kelly Acheson and Debbie Moczek. We started with a yummy fruit and spinach salad and I chose the pork entree for my main course. When we sat down we were specifically instructed not to open the boxes at the table. Being curious, I shook the container thinking it was another beautiful necklace. When Shelli announced that we would all be opening our boxes simultaneously to release 2 live butterflies I cringed, thinking I surely had killed my butterflies. Luckily, as you can see, they were only slightly dazed and one crawled right to the floral centerpiece and posed for this picture!
As this gorgeous sunset took place, I received this wonderful dessert sampler of tiramisu (my favorite!), carrot cake and a chocolate covered strawberry. Shortly thereafter a huge storm blew in, forcing us all inside. Bonnie Thurber shared a wonderfully uplifting story about her sister and we ended the night with one more pillow gift of a beautiful silver butterfly charm which I am now proudly wearing all the time... sorry, I haven't had a chance to take a photo.
Once we got back to the hotel, I decided to hang out in the lobby and get some last-minute sharing/chatting in before going to sleep... I spent some great time getting to know Heather Stevens (one of the Rising Stars) and laughing with Jeanna Cable and Colleen Magness. It was almost 2 am when I finally called it a night. It was so sad knowing it was going to be over in the morning... which came very early since I had an 8 am shuttle to catch back to the Las Vegas airport for my flight home.
Thank you so much for sharing my Founder's Circle experiences with me! I do feel so blessed to have been able to attend for a second time and will work very hard to try and earn a spot again next year. Thank you to all of my wonderfully supportive customers and downline who have helped me to get there!!! You ROCK!!
Are you ready for more Founder's Circle photos? On Friday night we had a pajama party, business share and swap... it was so much fun! The Gathering Place was set up and decorated with so many goodies in the gardening theme... see the fruit cups in the terra cotta planters? The cupcakes were decorated with hand-created chocolate butterflies... yummy!! And they had lots of fruit smoothies - I chose the one that tasted like a pina colada... pineapple and coconut. Above I am pictured with the other 2 Deb's at Founder's Circle - Debbie Moczek of FL and Deb Valder of NY.
How cute is Dawn Rapsas of NJ (#1 Demonstrator of the Year - you go, Girl!) peeking out from behind the cupcake table?!?!?
The night started with everyone lining up, basically snaking through much of the first floor of the hotel, for a 120+ person swap. I was fortunate enough to be one of the first to go through, so once I had swapped with everyone I got to go in and grab a seat in the Gathering Place. How lucky was I to be able to sit this close to Shelli Gardner and her daughter? Shelli forgot to sign the back of her swaps, so I asked her to sign mine and then snapped her photo! Isn't that a gorgeous quilt - many of the pieces on it were cut out with the Big Shot!! Best of all, the swaps I received were spectacular and I plan to display and CASE many of them!!
Next came the business share - our fabulous Bonnie Thurber led that session and many demonstrators took the mike to share their ideas.
Afterward, I found these fabulous boots as our "pillow" gift of the night. How cool are they?!?! I have them proudly displayed on a shelf in my stamping studio... of course, my husband thinks I have finally lost my mind. I begged him to put a shelf up and when I put the boots on it I think he left the room shaking his head, LOL!
Within a few minutes of shrieking when I saw the boots on my bed, I heard a knock at the door and found Jeanna Cable of WA (left) and Colleen Magness of VA (right) giggling... I had run into them in the lobby and Jeanna was wearing her boots. I asked her about them and she totally lied through her teeth to me... it was funny! And then Missy Shipman of NY, my next-door-neighbor, came prancing over in her boots. It was crazy that we would all go ga-ga over a pair of rubber boots!!
What a great way to end a great day!!
On Friday, Stampin' Up! offered a bus ride down to Kanab, UT, where the manufacturing plant is located. I went last year but had to go again because the 2 hour drive is so scenic and beautiful and the trip was a lot of fun! Here I am with my bus buddy, Stella MacKay of CA. We played a get-to-know you game and Bingo on the way down, sadly I didn't win. But we were all winners because they gave us each a roll of real red polka dot ribbon and the On Board Ho Ho Ho pack from the Holiday Mini so I was thrilled!
This beautiful rock sign was a favorite picture-taking site and I was one of the lucky ones that was in the front of the line! Since so many demonstrators opted to take this trip, our bus (there were 2) went into a Q&A session with some of the key employees in the beautiful conference room of the facility and then later we separated into smaller groups for the tour.
I just love this sign... I truly believe that Stampin' Up! cares for its employees and is proud of each and every one of us! We were not allowed to take photos in the plant, but I'll post some pics that we were able to take in the reception area as well as in Shelli's private residence above the plant.
At noon, we headed to a local park that Shelli had built for the town of Kanab. What a beautiful place to bring your family! We had a catered picnic lunch that was served in a really cute tin pail (brought mine home, of course!) and dessert was creme brulee.... YUM!!!
After lunch we had some free time to "play." The material in the playground area is actually shredded up rubber from the plant - a good way to use the waste! The best pictures were from when you actually got down in the rubber... enjoy, these are some of my favorites!!
Sadly, we had to get back on the bus to head back. But Shelli rode back with us and we had a very good Q&A session with her, sharing our suggestions, concerns and requests for future product lines. It was great! Can you tell I was sitting near the front of the bus? I tend to get car sick so always try to grab a front seat.
Our pajama party and business share was that night after we returned to the hotel. I'll share those details in a separate post!
Wow, where has the time gone? I tried posting again from the hotel last week, but the internet connection was sketchy and I got frustrated and gave up... I do apologize! The Fabulous Friday post was one I had done prior to leaving so that is why it got done, thankfully! Okay, back to my wonderful trip...
Day 2 was a fun day of relaxing and just hanging out around the hotel... I spent most of my day in the breakfast area with some other demonstrators sharing ideas. In fact, we sat so long that lunch service started! Here I am with front row: Linda Heller (FL), Martha Armstrong (NC), Patty Bennett (CA), back row: Debbie Moczek (FL), Joey Pogorel (FL) and Ruth Bingle (CA). Lots of great ideas were shared and I can't wait to implement many of them in my stamping business!!
I had met some of my friend Jacque Craig's downline from Hawaii at Convention and caught up with Jane Nishiguchi (Rising Star, 2nd from left) and Naoko Page (2nd from right). I also met Cindy Baughman (left) and Cathy Daimon (right) and they let me be an honorary Hawaiian for this picture!! Cindy brought the most delectable chocolate/toffee covered macadamia nuts and was kind enough to share those on our bus ride to Kanab - WOW! Check out the glass panels behind us - this photo was taken in the lobby... so beautiful. Stampin' Up! really added a nice touch all over the hotel!!
Because I am so bad about finishing my make-n-takes whenever I attend a Stampin' Up! event, several of us decided to work as a team and get them all made. Here we are in the Gathering Place getting them done... what a relief to be able to bring home finished projects!! And I still got to do what I love best... talking and sharing ideas with my friends!! Here I am with Debbie Moczek, Linda Heller, Robin Merriman (VA) and Tiffany Bauer (IN).
And while we were in there Shelli Gardner walked in so of course I had to take my picture with her! She is so amazing and really made herself available to all of us during the time at the hotel. How many CEO's do that I wonder?
That evening Robin Merriman put together a fun dinner at the Olive Garden, which was just down the street. She made arrangements for 70 of us to dine there!! The only rule she had was that we needed to sit with people we didn't know... okay, I cheated just a little because I had met Barb Mullikin (WY) last year. But, Ann Clemmer (CA, to my left) and Dawn Griffith (MI, far right) were new to me and such a fun bunch to share a meal with!
Afterwards, we had an optional trip to see Aida at Tuacahn theater. I didn't attend last year and heard that I shouldn't let that happen again, so here are Dawn and I on the bus ride over. She is so funny! There were these women sitting behind us talking throughout the whole show and at the very end the stage props were being pushed back together in the dark and they missed... one of the women said "OOOPS!" so loudly I am sure the poor stage hands heard. They attempted it once again and sadly missed again... "OOOPS AGAIN!" is all we heard... Dawn began giggling and I didn't think we were going to be able to stop. And did I mention how extremely gorgeous this outdoor theater was? The production was good, too, besides the little oopsie at the end.
The night ended with another great themed pillow gift... this time it was the book, The Secret Garden, and it was personally signed by Shelli for all of us. WOW!
What day is it? Why, it's Fabulous Friday... over on the Sisters In Stamping blog, that is! This week's featured products are the Sweet Treats cup and Sweet Centers stamp set from the Holiday mini catalog.
I chose to focus on the Sweet Treats cups... so many demonstrators are doing such awesome things with these so I racked my brain all week to come up with something original and here it is... snowman soup! Inside the package you will find hot cocoa, Hershey kisses and a candy cane along with the mini marshmallows in the snowman's belly. There is a poem that goes along with this idea that I found online and have printed on a tag that hangs on the back. It reads:
If wintry weather is making you droop,
Here’s the perfect trick!
Add hot water to chocolate dust,
And stir with a magic stick.
Throw in a kiss to give it flair,
And top with snowy goop,
Make a wish and take a sip…
Tah-dah! Snowman Soup!
This package is basically a 2-4-6-8 box, but I altered it to make it from a full sheet of cardstock so I scored it at 2-1/2, 5, 7-1/2 and 10 inches along the long side of the cardstock and rotated it and scored at 2" along the short (see photo above).
I wanted the recipient to be able to get to the marshmallows without destrying the container, so I came up with a tab that slides down behind the sweet treats cup and lifts up to reveal the marshmallows. I filled the marshmallows, closed the tab and then assembled my package using sticky strip adhesive tape.
The rest of the snowman was assembled using various punches - that was fun! Let's see if I can list all the punches I used: 1-3/4", 1-3/8" and 1-1/4" circle punches, small star, trio flower, word window, modern label, snowflake and designer label punches. Here's a close-up... can you see the white shimmer paint that I sponged on the snowman's body and along the base of the container to mimic icy snow? In real life it is very shimmery!
Thanks for checking out my Fab Friday project... please be sure and stop by the Sisters In Stamping blog after noon EST to see what my friends came up with this week!
