I'm Stampin', I'm Stampin' ...

Once again, I fulfill my life's purpose by showing you my work space just one week prior to a Clean Sweep:

How does it get like this?! Oh, wait a minute, I know. My brain is so fried by the time I get home from the Day Job, and I have so many card ideas that want to work their way out of my brain and become one with the card stock and ink that I have at least five (5) partial projects going at any given moment. So you see, I cannot put anything away until I am done, and I am never done. Such is my lot in life.

BUT, all this mess, believe it or not, can be quite inspiring! Stuff just lands next to something else and voila! A new color combo is born! I swear to you, half of my ideas that are not CASEd come to me in this manner - Happy Accidents one and all!

See? I stamped something! This card was made from items from my re-discovered scrap heap when I cleaned off the table in The Other Room. ('Nuf prepositional phrases for you in that sentence? Oh, there was another one.) I decided to make a 10-pound card and put all of those layers together. I made four or five of these, and now all those parts-is-parts are gone, gone, gone. They now live in a box in my car, and some day maybe someone will even buy them!

Here we have another made-over CASE card. I was inspired to steal this idea, but I made it over by using different colors and adding, of course, some ribbon. One thing I really like about this one was my idea to fill that void to the left of the sentiment with a stamped image instead of hardware. And you will notice I did not do something crazy like try to stamp more than one image, as I could guarantee you it would not have been straight ... not even close. I know when to quit.

I made this one a Retirement card, and it will be the first and only card in my new Retirement section. I even had to make a divider for it a few minutes ago. A crafter's work is never done.

Here is another card that finally came together. Except for the white base, it is 100% scrap. Yay! The blue layer with the strip of DS paper is from the same Heap I mentioned above. I used the circle (because it was out), and it was stamped on a white scrap. (BTW, it punches out nicely with a 1 1/8" punch, but SU does not sell one of those, yet.) The dotted paper is Artichoke. The pattern on the white scrap was made using my Scor-Bug. And then of course, we have Maddie. :-) The sentiment (from Rosie's Roadshow, newly purchased from Angela's) is stamped on another white scrap and punched out with my new SU Modern Label punch. I love that punch, I really do.

Finally, I have a little Sales book I made for the kids that sell beverages at our market. They are not keeping track of what they sell (they figure it out later), so since I already taught them they DO know how to make change without a calculator ($1.75 plus what makes $2.00? 25 cents. $2.00 plus what makes $5.00? $3. Okay, so how much change do you give someone who pays for a juice ($1.75) with a five dollar bill? ... The light goes on ... $3.25!!! We DON'T need the calculator! My work for that day was done.), this week I told them I'd make them a book to keep track of their sales.

This is a mini composition book I made forever ago and it never sold, so I grabbed it from my stash of unsold and unloved items in The Other Room. It already had the paper on it, so I just added the cork letters that I picked up in a rare Mike's moment a few weeks ago. Done!

Being a total buttinsky, I made a sample page for them. If they do not know the tick-mark method of counting, they will next Saturday! I think this would be the simplest way for them to keep track of what they sell, and we all know it's ALL about what *I* think, right? RIGHT?!?!?!

I also am gifting them with a pack of colored pens from my stash. I bought them years ago on sale somewhere thinking they were glitter gel pens, but they are not ... just glittery-looking pens... and now I have finally found a use for them. I'll suggest they be kept in their money till so they do not get lost. :-)

Okay, that's all to which I will subject you today. I'm off to rustle up some grub. No, I have not eaten yet, as the 20+ Jalapeno Poppers I consumed last night instead of dinner have been having a field day in my tummy and I just have not been too hungry. But now I am ravenous, so I'm thinkin' left-over poppers chopped up and mixed in with some eggs. Yum! I'll be f-i-i-i-n-e.


Thanks for stopping by!