Christmas Card Purse

I had a wonderful quiet morning (hubby took the kids away overnight last night) so I could spend time crafting. I had hoped to get more done but I couldn't help doing the laundry (darn that new time of day pricing) and it took me a while to work on these card purses. I'm really happy with the result and I think they're beautiful (if I do say so myself)

Each card purse holds 4 note cards and co-ordinating stamped envelopes. I love how the jolly holiday paper uses the old olive and cherry cobbler and very vanilla together. I stamped the notecards with the new peaceful season hostess set (talk to me about how to earn this set free!)The scalloped circle sentiment on the front is from the perfect punches set.

Here's the problem. I am going to put these on the table at the craft show I'll be at in November. My opinion is that these handcrafted gifts are priceless. Well, at least worth "one million, trillion, dollars...wa ha ha ha!" (I watched Austin Powers last weekend)--sorry about that.

Really, how do I price handcrafted items? There is such a mentality that anything more than a dollar isn't worth it because you can get things from the dollar store. There is no way I"m charging a dollar for these lovely babies! I am thinking maybe $7? There's such gorgeous old olive satin ribbon handles.

In my opinion, it makes far more sense to purchase some standard supplies that you will have forever (stamps and ink) and then make your own hand crafted gifts rather than buying something that you only have once.

Owl Punch and More!

I was surfing on the Stampin' Up! demonstrator website and what do I find? This fabulous picture posted by a fellow demonstrator of all the things that can be made using the Owl Punch! How amazing is that! It appears she used some other punches as well but still, that is so cool! I had to show you all.

Thank you E. Ruegemer for sharing your picture!

Ho Ho Ho

I just did my Halloween TV spot on Daytime York region today so now I feel like I can officially move onto Christmas crafting.

I made 14 Santa chocolate bars today. Okay, I bought 15 chocolate bars but only 14 made it to the crafting block. Hey! I had to taste test the chocolate, right? This is one of the items I will be selling at the craft show in November. They were fun to make but I have no idea what would be a good price to sell them at.

Look! No stamps!

It's true! This card doesn't use any stamps at all. I just used that versatile top note die with the big shot and then the 3/4" circle punch. The stampin' write marker for the forehead scar and mouth. I've seen so many variations on this idea from the Stampin' Up! demo website that I had to try my own. (Sorry, I can't take credit for the creative idea)

I think I'll call him " Funny Frank". He's too cute to be scary.

Haunted House!

Here is my finished haunted house. I love it and it was so easy to make. First I painted all the pieces then assembled it using sticky strip. I covered the windows with vellum that I stamped with the various images from the wicked cool set (cobwebs, bats, candles etc). I embellished with the bats. The little details that I love but you can't see in the picture:

gold smooch spritz on the roof, black spritzes on the white cardstock using the colour spritzer tool and black waffle paper coming out of the chimney.

I put a electric candle under the house to give it that eeerrrieee glow. I can't wait until halloween night to turn off all the lights and have it in the foyer.

This was so easy and fun I am thinking of buying more to do with the kids and cousins as a Christmas house craft.

child labour?

I started working on my design a house that I have dreams of turning into a haunted house. This is an extremely inexpensive way to get the kids involved in something crafty while making a little seasonal decoration. The house is available in the holiday mini catalogue for only $7.50

My eldest was moping around saying he had nothing to do...sooo....I put him to work painting my house.

The house instructions were extremely easy. The key thing is to stick it together using sticky strip. Sticky strip is this magical double sided adhesive which sticks like crazy. My house isn't falling apart. Stay tuned for the final product!

spooky

Here's another fun halloween card using the wicked cool set. Doesn't the bat punch out popped up with the stampin' dimensional totally make the card!? Add a little colour with the cajun craze marker and we're done!

So easy!

lice!

Kevin's school had a outbreak of lice. As Kevin said, "it was a lousey day"

He had a lice specialist come in and her passion is to help parents through this difficult time by providing education, selling lice combs providing de-licing services. Kevin requested a special lice thank you card for her.

Sigh. I have never made a "Thank you for helping de-louse our school" card before.

The is the best I could do.

It kind of looks like a baby card with the soft colours but hopefully the lice lady will like it. I used the retired love bug hostess set and coloured with markers. The window was cut with the movers and shapers big shot die. A little ribbon seemed to complete the card and help it not look too plain. The confetti white cardstock also helped add some interest...almost looks like little lice all over!!! Ha Ha!

Holiday Promotion

Select product bundles are available for 20% off! What an easy way to get going on those Christmas projects. Make sure to check my website for all the details!

Halloween Crafting

I started crafting in earnest yesterday for Halloween projects. That evening somebody e-mailed and asked me if I'd started my halloween projects yet. What a coincidence. So, just so you all know, I am madly crafting in preparation for halloween due to the tv segment on the 29th. My husband always asks me: "Is it still fun when you are under all this pressure to finish projects?" My answer is always the same: YES!!!!

Here's a card I made using the Wicked Cool set and co-ordinating DSP. I am loving the new bat punch. A bat punch out makes everything look great! I also played with the new waffle paper in the holiday mini. V--eee---rrr--yy interesting stuff. It's called paper but it doesn't really feel like paper. It's thin but moldable. It allows you to get different looks depending how you shape it.

I hope you are all enjoying crafting...whatever you're working on now.

So cute!

Club member Pei Pei just bought the owl punch at the last club meeting. She made these darling owls and penguin. I never thought the owl punch could make penguins too! Now that's a super great value for that punch.

She put little magnets on the back and now they're perfect little gifts.

Thanks for sharing!

Simply Spooky Idea

Getting ready for a workshop tommorrow and I thought: "Time to give my booking basket a facelift!" (For those of you who don't know, my booking basket is a basket full of stamps. Anyone who books a workshop with me at a workshop or event, gets to pick any one stamp set out of my basket for free).

In keeping with the upcoming holiday, here's what it looks like now.

I plan to take the stamps out on Halloween and use it as a candy bucket. Decor Elements are so fast and easy to use and can create something beautiful (or spooky) in just minutes.

My ah ha moment with clear mount stamps.

I am hoping the pictures here will convey a thousand words since I am really up too late and should go to bed. I just really wanted to share something I learned at Regionals that totally opened my eyes to the "coolness" of the clear mount stamp system. Yes, we all know I love wood mount but I might consider having a little affair with these clear mount stamps for just this purpose. Check out the pictures below and see what I have done that can not be done with wood.

See, three stamps on one block. I ink them and stamp once. (with wood, they'd all be on seperate blocks and I'd have to stamp three times)

Then, put the birds, uninked, rubber down in the positions I want them.

Then, I put the clear block on top of the birds and they stick to the block. I then ink up the rubber and stamp once and all the birds are in the right position in their cages.

Okay, maybe all of you have been doing this with your clear mounts all the time and this is old news but hey! it's new to me and now I might actually choose to buy clear mount more often...especially for two step sets.

Happy Thanksgiving

So many things to be thankful for. I love the sentiment on the Day of Gratitude Stamp set: Gratitude can transform common days into Thanksgivings.

So true. For me, my mental attitude can determine whether I am joyful and thankful or cranky and grumpy. So far, my thanksgiving weekend has been...well...something to be thankful for!

Friday was a day of celebration. Two of our pastors at Cornerstone Church went through an ordination process and their ordination ceremony was on Friday. There was of course an after party (roast) that was so hilarious I spent much of it laughing. By the end of the evening, I was laughing so hard, tears were rolling down my cheeks. I'm hoping somebody will post some video footage of the evening on you tube so I can show you. The antics of our now "reverend" ministers Kevin and Jeremy were just too funny for words.

Here's hubby and I with the now Reverend Kevin White.

I spent Thursday at Lil Explorers stamping. It was wonderfully quiet and refreshing. I think the idea of my stamping there was to meet new people and introduce them to my business however not a single person showed up. I didn't even mind as I had my ipod on and was making these treat bags for each person for Thanksgiving dinner. Aren't they cute? I put a cellophane bag inside with chocolate pretzels.

in colour hello

I have been planning this card in my head ever since I was at regionals and saw a cute little sample from Stampin' Up guy Mark Jessen. I finally had a moment to try it and I think it turned out great. I used concord crush cardstock for the base and the concord crush dsp is from the hostess freebie. The heart stamp is from the hello again stamp set and I stamped in colours peach parfait, blushing bride, pear pizzazz and concord crush. The lines were created just from folding the square into quarters with the bone folder. This 3X3 love note is the perfect size to slip onto someone's desk at work or in a gift bag.

Loads of thanks

My son just had his birthday party with his school friends. He had a great time and also got some birthday gifts. I explained that it would be good manners to give thank you notes to his friends. A few days later I asked him to sit down and write them. Complaints, complaints from him. Not wanting to nag, I told him he needed to do them at some point. It seems like lately everything I ask him to do, it's like torture. The tears, the stomping the attitude! I don't think I"m asking too much...clean your room, write out and practice spelling words, take a shower...

If any of you are experienced moms, I would love some wisdom on how to deal with this. I"m getting nervous that my son is going to spend his life sitting around playing video games. Anyway, I stamped this card front today. I am LOVING my new Loads of Love Stamp set. I can't believe I never gave it a second glance before. I think I always stayed away from line image sets because I thought it meant I would have to watercolour and I don't think that's my forte. But with a set like Loads of Love, the markers are so perfect. I can colour inside the lines (mostly). The colours used here are pumpkin pie, daffodil delight, pacific point and sahara sand. I asked my son to colour the images but of course he wouldn't. He figured it was enough that he wrote the thank you's. I didn't argue with him because I needed the decompression time anyway...to pray about how to we could move forward from this stage we seem to be in. Honestly, stamping alone can be so peaceful and relaxing. I was happy with my creation. I wanted it to be really simple. I think the paper piercing at the top adds some simple interest. If you haven't taken out your stamping supplies in a while, just give yourself permission to stamp. It's cheaper than psychotherapy bills. Grin.

Halloween is coming...

I can't believe it's October already! The air is cooler and the leaves are on the ground. Time to check out some of the halloween cards I received from swaps. The spider web embossing folder was a HOT item this season. Adding some colour to the raised web surface gave such a spooky appearance. The pumpkin pie card had black sponged on top. The black one has silver shimmer paint sponged ontop. Both cards use the Dark and Dreary stamp set. I love the use of the waffle paper on the pumpkin pie halloween card.

I really have to start thinking about Halloween projects because I've agreed to do another tv spot on Rogers Daytime (I know, I know, I said I wouldn't do another one because of the time commitment involved but I couldn't say no! It's too fun!) I don't tend to do halloween projects...I"m too busy thinking of Christmas projects but I guess I'll have my chance now!

Disney scrapbook boot camp.

I know I promised way back to show some of my Disney pictures and share my experience. If you've wondered why I haven't been posted the last few days, it's because I have been working on my Digital Disney scrapbook album every spare chance I could get. I really wanted to finish it as I knew the memories were fading from my brain and journalling and getting pictures into a finished scrapbook would help memorialize (is that a word?) our fantastic trip. I'm proud to say that I finished it! I chose to to a hardcover 11.5X8.5 book. It ended up being 46 pages! That's a lot of pictures! Now, I"m just waiting for the UPS man to deliver it to my door.
Here's some pictures. I have such a hard time formatting the pictures and text on my blog so please excuse the confused layout here.
Disney hospitality is awesome. All the staff were so friendly and accomodating. They definitely know how to make kids smile. The picture on the left is a little decoration that the cleaning staff did in our room with the kids stuffed toys. We all laughed when we came back to our room after a long day at the park and saw the hanging nemos

We got the free disney dining plan with our package. It included one snack, one counter service meal and one full service meal each day for every person. What a ton of food! It allowed us to eat meals with characters like piglet and have fine Italian dining and give in to the kids requests for cookies and ice cream. It was all free. As you can see, the snacks were huge. The cookie is as big as the baby's head!

Of course, we took in as many disney attractions as we could possibly manage. 3-D movies (which were actually 4-D because you would get sensory experiences like water splashing on us, or smells like strawberry cake that would corrolate with the movie)

At the end of the day the kids were exhausted! The oldest would at times beg to stay in the hotel and watch tv because he was so tired. (he didn't have a stroller to sit in) but of course, when we dragged him out of bed to the parks, he was always happy.

Here's a few of my digital studio layouts. I learned some new things. I realized that I'm not limited to Stampin' Up! colours. There is a tool called a picker and you can pick out any colour from any one of your pictures and you can use that colours for your "paper" is that cool or what? I also took advantage of the ability to use any jpeg picture in my layouts. The picture of the castle, was one that I found on the internet.

I'll let you know when my book comes in so you can come and check it out.