A Productive Day

Today is the last day of my long weekend, and I finally got off the couch and left the house. BIG mistake. OMG, it must be 536% humidity. Ugh. I managed to hit the Post Office, Mike's, Whole Foods, and even Chloe's (to do inventory - yes, I sold more cards!) before I began to melt and had to come home and cool off.

Once home, I made my tomatillo salsa recipe (posted earlier today). It's actually more like a sauce, or at least my version is, since I always cook the tomatillos in too much water. But even though it is soupy, it is de-lish! M-m-m-m-m! Have you seen the Ritz pretzel crackers? They're pretzel on the outside and Ritz cracker on the inside. It's like I've died and gone to cracker heaven. You MUST try them! I am using them to eat my salsa, and I cannot put them down! So good!

I did some wash, paid some bills, entered my SU Stamp Camp order, did some more wash, then I stamped!

I had my Stamp Camps this past Sunday and Monday, and they were well-attended and a lot of fun. For me, anyway. I'm pretty sure The Ladies had some fun, too! :)

This was one of the cards we made:

When I made this mock-up, it had taken me a long time, and I'd pretty much nixed it as a Stamp Camp project, but when I realized I was one project short, I made a fateful decision to include it anyway. I'm glad I did, because everyone LOVED it, but it was definitely the bottle-neck of the session. Lots of parts-is-parts and futzing to put him together. Not difficult, just a bit of work.

Speaking of parts-is-parts, this is the carnage left behind after the parts for 20 owls were punched out:

... and The Ladies humored me by saving usable spare parts:

What a hoot. (OMG, I didn't mean to be punny!) I hope to use these parts to construct more owls.

Are any of you watching Molly's Box? Molly is a barn owl, and she is currently sitting on her second clutch for this year. If you go visit the site, click on Blog and/or Video Archives. The pictures and streaming video are amazing. Check out some of the older blog posts with pictures of the first four owlets as they grew up and fledged.

Okay, back to the cards. As most of you know, I paint myself into a corner a lot. By that, I mean I make a card, then when I go to cut everything up for making the kits, I realize I don't have enough of something for everyone, and I back-pedal. This time was no different. Check out these cards:

When I made the one on the right, I realized I didn't have enough of the striped paper for everyone, so I selected a different paper of the same color that also had a horizontal pattern. It's a little lighter, but no one minded. They were so wow'd by the embossing and sanding (to reveal the white paper core) they didn't even bat an eye.

This afternoon, I still hadn't cleaned up the stations or put away the tables, so I decided to take the remaining kits and make the cards myself, then clean up behind myself. You know what? When someone has the cards designed and all the card stock pre-cut, this card-making thing is really fast and easy! :/ I made 12 cards (4 cards x 3 left-over kits) in about 2 hours AND I cleaned up after myself, so when I was done, everything was clean.

Also, when I do my Stamp Camps, I always leave out the rest of each stamp set we are using so The Ladies can (1) see what else is in the set in case they must have it, and (2) they can change up the images, especially sentiments. I like giving them options, and having those sets out has helped everyone a lot!

Several people switched up the sentiment on this next card, so when I made the extras, so did I! I had made all of my originals with Happy Birthday (they are already in my market box - I pulled one out for class), but today I made one with Thinking of You and two with Thank You:

I also got radical and turned over the papers for a little variety. I like to live on the edge.

This next card is the original I'd made as a sample:

... but several people pulled out one of the other sentiments from the set (yes!) and made this version:

... so I copied them!

Back to the owl card. Again, I'd left out the Fabulous Phrases set, so even though my sample used Happy Birthday (I gave them the option of stamping it straight), some people switched it up and used a different phrase, like this one:

CUTE! Did you also notice the owl now sports a little red heart? I stuck that on at the last minute Sunday morning. I actually think it completes him.

I also showed a few of The Ladies this card I'd made:

(here's a close-up so you can see the sparkle and the embossing):

I asked The Ladies what they thought I could do if I lost the contraband background paper and had to deal with white-on-white. Someone suggested embossing it with the folder we'd just used on the other project, so today, I made this:

I also scalloped the bottom edge of the layers to give it a little more interest. Here's a close-up of all that shimmer paper:

I like it. I like it SO much, I declare it the first of four projects for my September Stamp Camps! Yay, me! ;) People love heat-embossing, and we haven't done any in a while. Perfect!

On that note, I need to make a sandwich for dinner and go do another load of laundry. I cannot believe I have to go to the Day Job tomorrow. Sigh.

Thanks for stopping by!