Celebration time!

I haven't created anything new but wanted to make sure I didn't neglect my readers. I thought I would feature one of my favorite creations. This is a Celebrate card. I think it is fitting for my life right now. August and September are months full of birthdays in my family. There are 6 birthdays in the month of August in my immediate family (myself included). September is the month of 4 birthdays in my immediate family in the first half of the month. This weekend we are going on a mini vacation to spend some time with my family. We will be celebrating 3 birthdays on Sunday. This included my youngest ones 3rd birthday. She is going to be surprised because while she knows her birthday is coming, she has no idea we are celebrating it this weekend. So you won't see me post this weekend so I will leave you with this in honor of all the Celebrations. Have a great Labor Day Weekend and Celebrate!

Glue sticks

I have taken a few days away from making new cards. It's been a busy time as we get our oldest ready for school and taking last minute vacations. I figured I could use this time to talk about adhesives. How many of you use glue stick for your cards? I have made a ton of them in the past but haven't been totally satisfied with the quality of the glue sticks I have used. I don't remember what I used but I haven't tried a lot of them. I would like to try again. I saw this blog where you could sample adhesives from UHU and I saw they were sending sample of the UHU glue stick. I thought it was perfect timing to be able to give another glue stick a try. My sample is on it's way to me and I will post a review once I have a chance to give it a try. I am excited to see the results. For the time being if you want to try to get a sample of your own you can check our Maria Filosa's blog. She gives full instructions on how to order a sample of your own. She also has some great projects. Maybe we can all discover a great new product or fun ideas while I take a brief stamping break. :)

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

I am working on designing more Christmas cards. I came up with two designs this evening that I love. The first is done with faux stitching and gold embossing.

The second is more simple but elegant. I didn't stamp anything but I used gold foil stickers.

Here's the two together:

Winter in Summer?

I don't know what motivated me when it was 80 degrees with 96% humidity but I started on my holiday cards. I know I am going to need a lot of them so I figured I better start early. I thought I would try to create a holiday card while doing a sketch challenge but no matter how hard I tried I could not complete the challenge. I made about the biggest mess ever and spent about 3 hours just to make these 2 cards. It's not even like I was making 2 completely different cards. They are almost the same except I only had one snowflake button. WAIT! I just remembered that there was a challenge out there to use buttons. Now I will have to go see where it was. ...long pause.... I found it. It was over at Daring Cardmakers. So I guess I did fulfill a challenge.


So, like I said before. I only had one snowflake button but I wanted to make two cards. That's why you see the 2 different versions. The snowflake button is much nicer but the other one ain't half bad. And, as you can probably tell, these are non-Stampin' Up! images. It's actually from 2 different sets I have. I'm not sure of the makers. I purchased them as sets from Michael's last year.


Without further ado...here they are:

My favorite stamp set

Carla at Scrappers anonymous wants to know everyone's favorite stamps. I thought I would share. I think I already told the reasons why I use Stampin' Up stamps but one of the main reasons is that I love their images. I also love that they are sold in coordinating sets. My favorite set would definitely be Heartfelt Thanks. I had to force myself to start using other sets so they wouldn't get jealous.

Here's a few of my favorite creations with this set:

No stamping

So, I found a few sketch challenges that I wanted to try. I immediately had an idea of how to use some new supplies I picked up yesterday. The only strange thing for me was that I didn't want to stamp on this card. The idea I had really left no room for stamping on the front. For this card I fit a sketch I found at Di Hickman's blog and a challenge I found at Daring Cardmakers.

For Di's sketch I did a little altering because I don't generally make square cards. I still think it came out cute. After I had already glued down the squares I realized that I had forgotten the horizontal stripes. The card was missing "something" and I found a way to add the stripes. I used thin gold stickers. They didn't show up too well in the picture but it definitely added the little extra the card was missing. I also added tiny gold circle stickers at the bottom right.

I knew I wanted to try the Dot Dot Dot Dash Dash Dash theme when I saw it just because I like the look of those patterns together.

That's enough talk. Here's the card I created:

Marie's Card Sketch Challenge

I participated in a sketch challenge from Marie at Marie Loves to Stamp. I thought it was going to be a pretty simple design but it really took me some time to bring it all together.

I realize now that I didn't exactly follow the directions. For the 3 middle blocks it was supposed to be patterned paper. Oh well. I like the design anyhow. I guess I have to create something different to participate in this challenge.

Here is the card I came up with:

More about me and this blog

Since I have had a few more recent visitors I thought I would share a bit more about my stamping and this blog.

Stamping
One thing that you will notice is that most of the stamps I use are from Stampin' Up!. I have recently ventured into trying other companies stamps but I usually go back to my old stand by. I love that Stampin' Up! sell their stamps in sets. I know that other companies do too but most of the sets I like from them are acrylic stamps. I have not tried acrylic yet but I think I will be in the near future. I am the kind of person that doesn't always take well to change so straying from my wood mounted stamps will be difficult for me. Who knows, once I try the acrylic I may never go back to wood mounted again.

Another thing is that I use a lot of retired stamps. That's because I have a very limited stamping budget. I mostly restock paper, adhesive and a few embellishments. I pretty much use whatever I have laying around and stay with very simple embellishments. I try to pick up deals on retired sets because I do like to have "new" sets but I can't afford to purchase a lot of brand new sets. I have about 35 sets and I think only 2 of them are current. I don't mind using retired sets because I still like the designs and really could care less if it is the latest and greatest.

This blog
I think I found a direction for this blog and a way to be motivated to post on an almost daily basis. If you have read any of my previous posts you will see that I recently started participating in sketch challenges. I am making it my goal to find a new sketch challenge to try at least a few times a week. When I create something from a sketch challenge I will post it here. This way I can accomplish two things: Creating more cards and posting to my blog. It's a win-win situation. So keep checking back to see what new things I will share each week.

Friday sketch challenge

So, I could really get into this sketch challenge thing. I found a Fun Friday Challenge over at Whirlpool of Imagination. This was a sketch that Laura's daughter Meg created. I knew I would have to create something with this.





Here's is what I came up with:

What do you think?

Altered Art Challenge

I also decided to try an Altered Art challenge that I found at Card Inspired by Maria.

There are so many things that we use everyday that can be turned into something beautiful and useful. Well, the drink of choice in our house in a generic Crystal Light lemonade drink. I can't tell you how many of these containers I have thrown away. Today was different. I saw that empty container and got a vision.

Here's the container before:

And here's the container after:

My First Sketch Challenge

I participated in my first ever sketch challenge. I found it at Mama Dini's blog. I have been tempted to give a sketch challenge a try but until I saw this one I never quite caught the bug to actually do it. I saw this sketch and knew immediately that I had to try it out. It was fun and only took me about 10 minutes to pull it all together.


Here's the card I created:

So what do you think?

There hereeeeeee!

I received the Make a Wish stamp set from Stamps for a Cause. I love every single one of the stamps. There's even a bonus stamp that I think is my favorite. If you check out GinaK's blog you will see what I mean about the bonus.

I am sure there will be lots more in the near future but here are the cards I made today:

Make a Wish

Would you like to help a very worthy cause and get some great stamps while doing it? Check out Stamps for a Cause to find out how.

GinaK has designed a beautiful stamp set and $7 from every purchase is going to the Make A Wish Foundation. I had to get in on that action.

Look at these beautiful stamps.

Can you just imagine the beautiful cards you could create with this set? This is such an all purpose set.

Now go to Stamps for a Cause and check out the cool card samples and find out how to order your very own stamp set.

Altered Purse

So, this isn't really stamped at all but I wanted to give it a try. I found these really cute wooden purses at Michael's for somewhere around $3.99. I thought they would be fun to add paper and embellishments. I played with this over a few days and got it almost complete.

Here's is what I did:

You might ask why I said it was almost done. Well my 2 year old found my paints. She had them all open and most of them dried out. Do you see where I am going to go with this? She decided she wanted to paint. She painted the other side of this purse with a nice Kelly Green color. I tried to wash it off but all that did was succeed in removing a few layers of the paper even through the coating I had applied. I was just a little bit angry but she didn't know any better so I really couldn't be mad at her. I was only mad at myself for not putting the paints in a place she couldn't get to. I just haven't had the heart to try another one.

Altered clipboards

I always thought these were cute but my biggest question always has been: What would you use this for? Feel free to leave me some comments to let me know how you use yours.

At a recent Stamp-a-Stack we made an altered clipboard. I saw just how easy these are to make. I think mine turned out pretty cute. It was fun to see how we all were provided with the same supplies but they all turned out so completely different. I did add the butterfly stamp to mine at home.

Here's mine:

I decided to buy the supplies to make a few on my own. I think the one I did came out cute but I still think it is missing something.

Here it is:

Improvements

I know I am posting a lot at once but I wanted to make sure I got this blog up and running. I figured that if I posted enough at one I would me more inclined to keep the momentum going. I am not saying that I am going to post new things daily but I hope to at least be able to post on the weekends. I haven't really decided at this point but I might post all the different cards I made but just posting one or 2 daily. We'll see how that goes.

Hopefully as you can see from the first few cards I mad up until now a huge improvement. It's kind of funny to me to look at those first few cards. I really had no clue what I was doing. I haven't tried too many new techniques since then. I am starting to follow a few sketch challenges and I might start participating in those. I also have tried to expand into a few altered projects. I will share those shortly.

Becoming a Demo

Later in the year I discovered stamping I found out about a special that Stampin' Up! was doing to recruit new demonstrators. Since direct sales was nothing new to me and my current direct sales business really wasn't doing much of anything I really considered joining Stampin' Up!. My husband saw how much I was enjoying stamping and my birthday was just around the corner. He decided to "let" me sign on as a demonstrator.

Even if I didn't work my business I was going to get a ton of stamping supplies at a really great price. In August of 2005 I signed on as a demonstrator. I got all my supplies and gathered as much information as I could.

As with all of my direct sales businesses I didn't do all the work I should. I got a few people interested in having a show but nothing really panned out. Life happened and before I knew it I didn't have enough sales and I became inactive in this business. It certainly didn't mean that I didn't still enjoy stamping. In fact here is where my stamping really improved.

Here are some pictures of a card holder I created and a few of the cards I did with a One Sheet Wonder:

My Stamping History - Part 2

After returning home from the Stitch & B**** weekend I gave my husband a card that I made just for him and told him how very much I enjoyed stamping. I'm not really sure of the reaction I got from him but I really hadn't thought much about stamping after that.

Fast forward a few months...I was invited by my cousin to a Stamp-a-Stack her friend was having. She told me that for $10 I could make 10 cards. I was super excited to have the opportunity to give stamping another try and to get some direction on how to do this. I really had no idea what this Stamp-a-Stack really was but I was definitely game. We made 10 cards and it was so much fun and something I knew I wanted to continue doing. Since I was a direct sales consultant I ordered the Business Memos set to make cards to give to my customers and hostesses. I'm not sure what else I ordered but this was the start of my addiction.

Here are some cards I created at my first and subsequent Stamp-a-Stacks:

My stamping history - Part 1

I started stamping in March of 2005. It all happened sort of by accident or divine intervention.

I belong to an online community. Most people discover this community if they are representatives of any direct sales company. It was started for candle consultants and that was the reason I originally started visiting. I have been a part of this community since 2003.

This community held what they described as a Stitch & Bitch weekend. It was a weekend that everyone was invited to and it was basically meant to be a crafting weekend although you could go even if you just wanted to take part in the bitching part. There really wasn't much stitching or bitching. It was just a ton of fun hanging out with these people that you have come to know over time. I brought along my cross stitch supplies. I don't think I even once opened my bag. A lot of the girls were stamping and scrapping. I was showing a lot of interest in the stamping and one of the girls offered up her supplies to let me give it a try. It was fun and I made some super simple cards because I really had no idea what I was doing.

Here are the cards I made that weekend:

Another Blog of mine...

Hi Everyone and welcome to my stamping blog. This is just one of many blogs I have started and my hopes are that this one will be a bit different. Why? All the others sort of fizzled out. I find that it is difficult to keep the momentum going.

Why did I start this blog? I have been stamping since March of 2005 and have watched many stampers dive into the world of blogging. I want this blog to be a place for me to chronicle the cards and stamp projects I create and to see how my hobby develops over time.

I plan to share my hobby from the beginning and to show how my style has developed. Follow along if you please.