Loop to Loop!

Today was Stamp-A-Stack. I had to wait until Tara finished making these before I could photograph them for you. There were only so many rub-ons, and there weren't any extras for me to make a sample for her to work from.

She did have the original card to use as a reference. I turned the layout from horizontal to vertical, so that I could basically use the same pieces I was cutting for the materials I was cutting for Christy's cards. Hers use the pieces from the original layout, also utilizing rub-ons similar to that card.

It took a long time for the gals to complete their cards this time around. Too many stamped pieces to cut out...oops! I'll have to keep that in mind for next month. Hope you have had a good weekend.

Hand Drawn Coffee Card Redux

Well, the boys are downstairs playing Halo 3, so I have the evening to do as I please. What pleases me is to read blogs and make cards! As you know, I'm putting together the cards for this Saturday's SAS. Nothin' like the pressure of a deadline to spark creativity! I'm half serious about that. Being a journalist in another life, I know that my brain can be trusted to come through for me in the "11th hour".

This afternoon, I went back to this cute little card I made last week. I wanted to adapt it to a full-sized card, but I didn't want to use a normal fold. I made a z-fold card 2 years ago, and I couldn't remember how I did it. With this in mind, I searched SCS this morning before work to see if anyone had posted the scoring measurements, and even played around with some grid paper to try to figure it out. I got frustrated and ran out of time, so when I came home I abandoned that approach and something else came to me--the matchbook fold!

A 4.25" x 11" slice of Baja Breeze card stock--sorry, I'm stuck on that right now--is scored at 4.5" and then 1.25" in from the other end. This creates a place to tuck the top flap in, thus creating the "matchbook." The bottom of the card front doesn't go all the way to the bottom of the folded up flap when it's tucked in, so the only thing I had to do was make sure I placed the adhesive to keep the flap closed below where the card front tucked in. (Didja follow that?)

Adapting the rest of the card's original elements to the larger size wasn't all that difficult. I went to my Creamy Caramel scrap stash and found several pieces that seemed like they would work. The main mat for the image is 2.5" x 4 1/8". I added 2-1" x 4.25" strips of Riding Hood Red across the top and bottom. The Very Vanilla piece is 2.25" x 3 7/8". I stamped the cups in RHR this time instead of BB, and cut them out--very carefully around the "steam"--and then colored them using my blender pen for the BB and the Stampin' Write CC marker. I popped them up on dimensionals, and the natural light creates the shadowing they need to look grounded!

The sentiment is from Best Yet, recently retired from the Hostess line in the last catalog. The hearts are punched using the 3 Heart Punch; tired of hearing me mention that tool yet? It's great, I tell ya! You NEED one! I added the Whisper White Taffeta ribbon to give a little more visual interest to the overall look.

What do you think? What do you do for fun when the rest of your family is otherwise occupied?

Hand Drawn with Catalog Colors

EDITED TO ADD: When I was making this card, I was thinking about who I'd send it to. I have many friends I can count on, and I'm so thankful for this reality. For this reason, I'm entering this card in Papertrey Ink's contest for friendship cards. I was flipping through the Spring-Summer 2009 Catalog again yesterday, and I was struck by this color combination I saw on pg. 133. Chocolate Chip, Baja Breeze, Riding Hood Red, and So Saffron. I loved it and had to do something with it. It's just so warm and beautiful.

I walked into my craft room and pulled out each of these and their accompanying bags of scraps and started to create. I wanted to do a different sized card than the standard, so I went with 3.25" x 6". I only had 1-12" x 12" sheet of card stock in the palette, so CC became the base. The rest is just scraps that I pulled out and arranged until I landed on something I liked.

The BB strip with the hearts is something I knew I wanted to do with that image as soon as I saw it. The heart reminds me of a card I made YEARS ago, before I was photographing my work. I tore hearts from rainbow colored pieces of tissue paper and they overlapped across the front of the card. On the inside was one torn from gold tissue. The sentiment I wrote for it was: "Just like the colors of the rainbow, all of us touch each other...thanks for touching me with your love." A little sappy? Perhaps...but she's the only person who has ever received that sentiment on a card!

But I digress...the card also used the "friend to friend" stamp from Love You Much, which was the perfect size for the .25" strip I found in my stash of RHR. The sentiment is from the Loop to Loop Rub-ons that came with the Hand Drawn Bundle. I like these and hope they make it from the Hostess line into the regular catalog come Fall. I was compelled to use my 3-Heart Punch again. That thing's just so handy, although I don't know why it does a little bit of wonky cutting on the curves. If you look closely at the upper left heart, you'll see what I mean.

As I've said before, decorating the interior of cards is the latest fad, and I knew that this card would benefit from color inside, so again I went to the scraps and came up with this look. The stamped hearts underneath the rub-on look really good, don't they? That little stitched look on the front and inside is from the rub-on sheet.

If you like this set, let me remind you that the only way you can possess it is to place an order for $500 or more from the catalog. Do YOU have to come up with an order that size yourself? Although some of you could, most of you probably wouldn't think of doing so, unless the government was sending you a check in the mail and making you spend it!

You could, however, host a class at your house (or some neutral, cleaned by someone else location like my house, Starbucks, or the subdivision clubhouse) or an online catalog show and collect orders from friends totaling that amount, and you, the hostess with the mostest, would be able to choose this set as one of your hostess benefits. You'd also get $60 in Hostess Dollars to spend--FREE MONEY! Give it some thought. Read my next post and see why you really should think about this...I'll give you a hint. FREE STAMPS!

Cupcake Love

This is a simple sign my boss Kimmy asked me to create. I am so thrilled that the heart and the cupcake from the Hand Drawn Hostess Level 3 set match the theme of the coordinated effort I had with my Starbucks to bring a little love, via cupcakes and valentines, to the families at the Ronald McDonald House in Atlanta off the Glenridge Connector.

Our goal was to partner with our customers to donate 300 cupcakes to this facility that serves families whose children are in Scottish Rite Children's Hospital. How we underestimated the generosity of our patrons! To date, they have donated over 800 cupcakes!!! That's WAY more than just the one Ronald McDonald House can handle, so we expanded the reach of our love to include the other Atlanta Ronald McDonald House that serves families with children at Emory Hospital.

Even those two organizations can't handle that many cupcakes, so the Forsyth County senior center and two nursing homes in Cumming will also be receiving some cupcakes. Spread the love, I say! The more the merrier! I'll be chauffuerring the cupcakes tomorrow, since I have the biggest vehicle among the partners at my store, and because there was NO WAY I was not going to see firsthand where these love bundles will end up.

Although it's almost not necessary to explain this, I'll just share that I used my Stamp-A-Ma-Jig to position and plot out the border, and I inked the heart in Riding Hood Red and the cupcake in Close to Cocoa. The punched hearts are from the Candy Lane DP.

I hope to get some pics to share tomorrow. It's going to be a fun fun day!

Declaring My Love...

for COFFEE!! After almost 18 months at Starbucks, I still don't prefer the stuff straight, but espresso with soy milk and some toffee nut syrup steamed into a foamy cappuccino, and I'm THERE, baby! It's damp and rainy outside today too, so that has me in the mood for somethin' warm and yummy.

This new-to-me tastebud experience is what I was thinking about as I played with a stamp set, Hand Drawn, that I acquired during the demonstrators' catalog sneak peek. It's now available from the new catalog, but only to hostesses or those who place a $500 net sales order. What I like is that it combines a stamp set, rub-ons, and Candy Lane DSP so that you can experience SU!'s brilliance in creating coordinating products!

I stamped the coffee cup on Very Vanilla--a scrap I had laying around leftover from the Ronald McDonald House cards--with Baja Breeze ink. I'm really enjoying that color, for some reason. It's soothing. Then I colored the "coffee" with my Stampin' Write Creamy Caramel marker and the cup with a blender pen and some BB ink.

I also had hearts scattered about from the 3 Heart Punch, so I gathered one of each and this card is the quick result! The base is BB and it's 3.5" x 4". A strange size, yes, but I was using up a scrap, so it was just right! The strip of Riding Hood Red is complemented by some twill ribbon and two little brads.

Would you be interested in earning this as a hostess benefit? It's as easy as contacting me to host a workshop. I come to you wherever it's most convenient for you...home, work conference room after hours, a local Starbucks, your subdivision's clubhouse. You name the spot and we'll stamp together! Consider gathering your friends and making a memory. Everyone will benefit. To contact me, just leave a comment or get my email address from my profile.

More to come from this set--stay tuned!