On A Mission

Turbo Tax threw a hissy fit yesterday. Well, not really. Turbo Tax is my friend...it just told me I'd messed up somewhere and to go back and check it, or consult an accountant before I proceeded. Bah. So I decided to stamp something instead.

I thought maybe I'd start using my last stash of Papertrey stuff I had so carfully placed into the bowels of the Craft Room prior to my workshops last weekend. I caved when they came out with their first release of their Perfect Match papers, ribbons and inks and bought all of it, as well as a few stamp sets...to justify the shipping, of course.

So I grabbed the box out of my Storage/Wanna-be-Craft Room and set to work. The original idea for this project came from one of the many blogs I read this past week. I spent 1/2 hour this morning looking for it, but alas, I cannot find it. It was a basic card with a single flower on it, and she'd made several cards and a whole set of matching tags with sentiments and stuck them on a piece of acetate (I think). The person who got the cards could use whatever sentiment they wanted by taking it off the acetate and sticking it on the card. I thought this was a very clever idea, and wanted to try a variation of it to sell at my Farmers Markets this summer. If you know whose blog it was, please let me know so I can give direct credit for the idea.

I seem to be incapable of using the two Perfect Match colors of green together, even with the coordinating patterned paper (see, I told you I bought a lot of stuff!), so I gave up and went with just the Moss.

I did not buy the Out on a Limb set, but I did buy a similar Hero Arts stamp on my last LSS binge, so I used that, inked with SU Choc Chip and Mellow Moss markers.

Recipe: Stamps - limb by Hero Arts, sentiments by Papertrey, Ink; Paper - SU Whisper White, Papertrey Spring Moss c/s and Everyday Blessings patterned paper; Ink - SU Choc Chip and Mellow Moss markers, SU Basic Brown; Other - Papertrey Spring Moss dotted ribbon, SU gold cord, Cuttlebug and CB scallop dies.

I decided to make a set of five cards with five different sentiments, so the cards are all the same except for the sentiment on the tag. I used one of my clear boxes I got a few years ago, so I am actually using something from my stash! :-) When I first got into this biz, I had thought about offering gift boxes of cards, or card sets like this one, but it's never worked out. This may be the year!

Below is the box all assembled and holding the five cards plus envelopes. The ribbon made a pretty hefty knot, so I turned every other card backwards in the box to distribute the bulk.

The last thing I did before assembling the box was apply one of the SU rub-ons to the bottom right corner of the box, just to dress it up a bit. This rub-on is Olive, even though it looks white in the photo. Just blame the photographer.

I got two sets of five cards out of one roll of PTI ribbon. I'm making all sorts of progress today! :-) But there's more!

Next I actually tried (again) to use the two greens together. I think the only reason this one almost works is the background paper contains so much of both colors, and I mounted it on white. Okay, maybe I can do this, but it is way easier to work with one color only.

Recipe: Stamps - Figures of Speech by SU; Paper - Whisper White, PTI Aqua Mist c/s and Everyday Blessings patterned paper; Ink - PTI Spring Moss; Other - PTI ribbon, 1 1/2" circle punch, blue Marvy circle punch, Coluzzle.

On to the Aqua Mist color. I was rummaging through my box of white scraps looking for something I could salvage and use to hold a sentiment for the Aqua Mist card, and I discovered a piece of card stock with a whole bunch of preprinted sentiments! How convenient was that!?!? I remember printing these last year, but in the whirlwind that is my Craft Room, yeah ... like I'd ever find anything in there I was actually looking for (for which I was looking, for you grammar geeks.) This discovery reminded me of a saying someone at work has on their desk: "Neat people never make the exciting kinds of discoveries I do." Amen to that!

Recipe: Paper - Whisper White, PTI Aqua Mist c/s and Everyday Blessings patterned paper; Ink - Aqua Mist; Other - PTI ribbon, computer-printed sentiment.

When you have an irreverent sentiment, why not dress it up a bit? If the card looks like it is classy, people certainly would not expect a sassy statement, now would they? It's cards like this that keep my Farmers Market customers coming back to read and laugh, and sometime they even buy!

Well, I am fading. I was up at 3:45 am this morning to go to work (one of the hazards of working with computer systems) and I was home by 7:00 am, which is pretty good, and started stamping! I think all the caffeine and sugar have worn off, though, and now I cannot keep my eyes open. Might be time for a little nap. I think I'll go curl up with the cat and take a little snooze, then do a Stampin' Up! version of one of these cards that I can use for my April workshops.

The New Me!

ETA: I have removed the previously-mentioned bitchin' site and made up one of my own! ;-)

Thanks to Jan for pointing out that "Bitchin'" site! (See the new link/logo on the right side of my blog.) Now I will no longer subject my beloved two (or maybe three) readers to my occasional rant. Instead, this site will revert back to its intended purpose - STAMPIN'! Now I might slip up at some point and sneak in a little tirade, but I promise to keep this site as close rant-free as possible.

There, I feel so much better now! :-) I think I'll mosey on over to the other room, load up some Anti-Virus software on the ol' PC (I got my laptop back in shape, finally!), and work on my taxes! Then later today I'll stamp something and maybe even share it, if it turns out to be blog-worthy, that is. :-)

Rant(s) Du Jour

Don't get old. I know, everything changes, and we need to bend before we break, but there are a few things I think are common courtesies that no matter who you are or how young you are or or how different "things" are today, you just do them because it's right.

Rant #1: I go past a small Whole Foods market on the road I take from work to get to the highway. When it first opened I thought it was very cool to have one so convenient for me. WRONG! Since it is small, and it is inside the Beltway, and anyone who lives in the DC area knows that "inside the beltway" has it's own driving rules (like "I live here, therefore I have the right-of-way"), this conveniently-located store became a thorn in my side. Let's go back many years, when I picked the wrong day to drop in to pick up "a few things". It was one of those days when the shopping center had hired a group of full-of-themselves boy-scout-esque 20-somethings to direct traffic. Yes, I said "direct traffic" in a parking lot. See what I am dealing with? Well, this guy directed me to a parking spot right next to a car where the driver had gotten out, opened his back door, and was getting his child out of a car seat. Being a reasonable person, I waited. But nooooooo, the guy with the flag started yelling at me to move already! Uh, excuse me? I really did not want to hit the guy and his kid ... to which he yelled that I was holding up traffic. So I calmly drove straight out of the parking lot and never went back. Never. I did write a letter to the store when I got home, but I am sure since someone behind me took that parking spot and shopped in their store, they really did not care.

By the way, this store is still a thorn in my side since the same people seem to shop there, they still have people directing traffic in the parking lot, and they still back up traffic onto the main road because they are incapable of driving like normal people. JMHO.

Rant #2: Same shopping center, same parking lot, blessedly no one directing traffic. I needed to stop at Whole Foods on my way home last night, so since traffic was not backed up from the store's parking lot into the main road, I decided to ... give it a try. I pulled right into the main aisle in which they have cleverly posted signs with arrows to tell you that you may not turn into any side aisle from the main one...you must drive to the end and come at the side aisles from the other side. I guess this is supposed to keep traffic flowing. So I pulled up behind the only other car in the half-empty (for a change) parking lot, and this woman just stopped. Stopped dead. Then she put her car into reverse and started to back up! BACK UP! Wah?! Turns out there was someone in a parking space who had not even begun to back up yet, so she should have driven on past and just parked in the next row. But noooooo, she needed THAT spot, so she backed up to let him out. Unfortunately I was behind her, and when she waved frantically at me like "move already!" (do we see a pattern here?) I backed up, she backed up, the car in the parking spot backed up and left, she pulled right in, and I drove past the 18 other empty parking spots and left the lot, never, never, never, NEVER to return. NEVER!!! Oh, by the way...on my way out of the lot, someone turned left past the No Left Turn sign and parked. See - they live there, so that sign does not apply to them. Never going back. Never.

Rant #3: Tonight I made my usual Post Office stop to have a bubble envelope of stuff weighed to get the postage. It is a quick in-and-out task. I am (surprise!) one of those people who thinks other people's time is as important as mine, so I try not to waste it - theirs or mine. Silly me. I had no idea that you could bring a shopping bag to the Post Office, and take that opportunity to try out all the bubble envelopes and boxes offered for sale to see which one fit your item(s) best. Then you can get out of line, start to pack up your items, then get back in line later, but since you got there so long ago, you can just cut in front of whoever is closest to the head of the line, then you can spend 10-15 minutes discussing shipping options with the clerk, go back and forth to the shopping container area, then you can start to tape up your box, then begin to look for the address you need to put on the shipping label... Why is this okay? I take great pains to have my items packaged before I get in line. What is wrong with people that they think this behavior is okay!?

So, am I too old to go out in public any more? Should I move to an island somewhere? Or maybe a farm in the middle of nowhere? Please, tell me what you think! I really want to know...really!

Oh, and I simply LOVE Whole Foods, but I shop at the very large store near where I live; the one with the very large parking lot with mostly very courteous drivers.

I think I need to go stamp something.

Back in the Saddle

My March workshops are behind me, I've actually put almost everything away already, tabletops are ... well, they were clean, but it's been two days! C'mon!

First, let me take a moment to quote Jan Tink. She had the most wonderful few sentences in one of her blog posts earlier this week, and every time I repeated them to someone (a stamper, of course, because who else would understand?!), that person was in awe of the wisdom there-in. The quote:

"At least half of the things you buy, you buy just because you LIKE 'EM, not because you have any particular project in mind. You're not buying the material or object, you are buying POTENTIAL."

Yeah, POTENTIAL, that's it! I have a whole wanna-be-craft-room full of POTENTIAL! That certainly made me feel a LOT better about my, um, ... recent purchases. HEY, you must support your local stamp store ... and I was invited to a special sale ... not everyone was invited ... so I was special...and I had to go ... and it was ON SALE!

But I guess that does not explain the, er, Emerson stamps I bought because of a darn enabling ad on SCS. But seriously, who could resist an image of a woman wearing a t-shirt that says "Objects inside shirt are larger than they appear." or "Ever since I went on that pretend diet I feel thinner." Oh, and an American Art Stamp sentiment that I have plans to use for Mother's Day: "Mom, I will always love you, but I will never forgive you for cleaning my face off with your spit." Soon to be a classic, I am sure. I had to buy them...I just had to! I say they have potential to be cards I plan to sell this summer at the Market. Yeah, that works! :-)

Given the plethora of goods coming to my door in the next few weeks, I decided to get off my butt...well, move my butt from the couch to the table, and stamp something! I get inspiration from all sorts of weird places. One of the ideas flittering around inside my head this past week was inspired by a cake done for one of the cake challenges on the Food Network. What these people do with cakes is amazing! The one that stuck in my brain was a white layer of a large cake, and this layer had black stripes coming from the top of the layer down the sides. At the end of each strip of black was a white flower. It was GORgeous! So my sicko brain decided for some reason this would make a good card, and I finally got around to it yesterday. Here is my first pass:


Recipe: Paper - Basic Black, Whisper White; Other - 1/2 pearls from the Pretties Kit, Red grosgrain ribbon, Fiskars embossing plate, Cuttlebug.

I must have also been influenced by a Black & White & Red card I made last Summer that looked like a tuxedo, which is where the idea for the red bow came from. I think the card has potential (!), but it needs some more work. I am very proud of my resourcefulness, though (past self on back.) I originally had a piece of striped vellum on there, but it totally disappeared into the white card stock, so I got the idea to use one of my Fiskars embossing plates and my Cuttlebug to add the stripes to the white card stock so they actually stand out more. Like I said, it still needs work.

I have a few more card ideas floating in my head that I hope to get to paper this week. And if you have any suggestions for improving that Black & White number, feel free to suggest away! :-)

The Chronicles: Workshops minus 12 hours

The winds are howling outside, and I have already lost my Internet connection once today, but that is the least of my worries right now. I could probably live without the Internet - heck, I could stamp or something, ya know? But when I am connected to the Web, I like to know I am protected by powerful Anti-everything software. I spend a lot of time (too much) on the 'net, so when I am online I need to know my bank transactions and all my logins are not being recorded or monitored by a Bad Person, or worse - Spyware, slapped onto my computer by a Bad Person! So I am very good about buying and renewing my Anti-Virus software each year.

Until this year. It was due to expire on March 8th, which is today, and since I get a discount on it through work, I had to send myself the link from work so I could download it at home. Now how difficult do you think it would be to remember to do that? Huh? Well, when you get old you forget what you forgot, and then you remember when it is too late. I found myself remembering when I fired up my laptop each evening this past week that I needed to get the link and secret password for the software, and I finally sent myself a reminder to do just that, and I had the link and password and was ready to go last night.

So to make a very long and very painful story very short, I spent most of the night on Friday and most of Saturday trying to recover my laptop. Not pretty. I am currently sans Anti-Virus software, but the old Microsoft Firewall will save me from those demons until I can get this resolved on Monday. Personally, I think if this stuff can expire on a weekend, then their support staff should have to work the weekend...it just seems right.

Anyway, while I was waiting for software to download and computers to re-re-boot, I started to get ready for my workshops which start tomorrow morning. I can barely get into my Storage/Wannabe-Craft-Room because of all the s-crap I've stashed in there, but the main room looks just fine! Check it out!


Here we have the floor that just a few short hours ago was host to about 3 boxes of stuff that needed to be addressed. The big box of shoes - all packed up and dropped off at the Post Office this morning. The Box with all the scrapbook supplies - in the other room. The Book - on top of The Box (in the other room). The partially-completed scrapbook - on top of The Book on top of The Box (in the other room). The box of Papertrey Ink merchandise - next to The Box (in the other room) - no way it was going on top of that stuff. Sheesh, we'd have an avalanche some time around 3 am and I'd be rudely awakened, and we cannot have that! I need to be well-rested so I can clean the bathroom tomorrow morning. Aaaaand, we all lose an hour of sleep tonight! Gotta change those clocks - Spring Forward. Boo.


And here is the Dining Room table, mostly ready for tomorrow. I just have a few more small items to put away.

Hard to believe that just three days ago that table looked like this.

After a long month, The Chronicles have come to an end ... for real this time! I have come to accept that as long as I live in a place this small, this monthly cleaning frenzy will just be my lot in life.

So, to celebrate the completion of preparation for tomorrow, I decided to ... stamp something! Most of The Ladies that attend my workshops are not the least bit interested in making a Baby card, so I am on my own here. This is a design totally CASEd from Lauren Meader's blog. It was just too cute to pass up!

Recipe: Stamps - So Many Scallops; Paper - Whisper White, Bashful Blue, Regal Rose; Ink - Bashful Blue, Regal Rose; Other - 1 3/8 Circle punch, Scallop punch, bone folder, eyelets.

Aren't they adorable? So much potential here. They could be made out of pretty patterned paper, or colored card stock ... I chose white card stock for my first attempt. Lauren's blog has all the instructions for how to punch and measure for the sleeves, so I will not bother to repeat what has already been done, and quite excellently (is that a word?) I might add!

These are just so stinkin' cute! After I am done with Tuesday's workshop and the room is back to its non-workshop configuration, I may have to break out the Cuttlebug and try some of the embossing folders on part of the front. Oh, the possiblities!

Gotta go change the clocks and hit the hay. Tomorrow there's a bathroom to clean!

The Chronicles: Workshops minus 36 hours

Okay, kids - we're down to the wire once again. I am going to spend tonight and most of tomorrow clearing off tables and finding homes for things so I can handle a full house for my classes this weekend. I am about 36 hours from when the first ladies will begin to arrive, and there is much to do yet.

I've left these photos small so as not to blind you with the clutter, but feel free to click on them (gosh, I hope Blogger cooperates this time and allows for that!) if you want to see any painful details.

This is the main table about 24 hours ago. I had carted off an armful of punches and put them away, so I stopped to take a shot of what was left. I did play some more last night, so this got messier before it got cleaner.

But then I got smart and started to put away the scrapbook stuff so it all stayed together. That way I can take it out next week and pick up where I left off. My plan was to put it all in the box from whence I'd retrieved The Book. You remember The Book, right? It's the horribly over-filled, detailed log of my road trip.

The Book.

Also note, however, that in the fuzzy background behind The Book are stacks of things that have been staged for the workshop projects. See? I've sorta kinda started getting ready. Um, that was a lie. I stage these things so I do not have to put them away. I tell myself it helps me to remember all the things I need to have out for each card so I do not forget something, and that works for me. Much easier than putting things away and then having to get them out later, don't you agree?

And this is The Box from which The Book was originally retrieved:

As you can see, The Box is no longer empty. In fact, it is fuller than before I started this scrapbook business. That is because I cleaned. I put all the scrapbook-related stuff from the tables into The Box. Unfortunately, (1) The Box is pretty full and I am not done cleaning, (2) The Book has not been placed back into The Box yet (and apparently now it cannot be ...), and (3) I now have a 50+ page scrapbook that contains half the s-crap from the Craft/Storage Room, and I need to store it somewhere.

Oh, but there is more!

This is the table tonight. There are remnants of my Tutorial photography session from last night, but most of it is stuff left from the scrapbook extravaganza. It just needs to be put away. Somewhere.

Also taking up valuable floor space near the tables is this box of merchandise from Papertrey Ink I simply had to have in an unfaithful-to-SU moment, and as things go around here most of the time, any box that enters the front door gets "stored" somewhere in the Dining Room until the workshop cleaning frenzy begins and I have to find it a home. This one will be tough. I guess I can stack it on top of The Box once I find it a place in the Craft/Storage Room.

Also sucking up valuable floor space is a huge box of shoes that I ordered (I have hard-to-fit feet, but that's another story for another day), and since none of them fit, they all have to go back. This means filling out the return form, packing everything back into the box and stuffing it with all the SU packing paper that currently litters the part of my floor I am too embarassed to photograph, then taking it to the PO tomorrow morning to return, thus freeing up all that floor space so people can get in here on Sunday. Sounds like fun, huh?

Oh, and can you see that SU box peeking out from under the huge box of shoes? That is part of an SU shipment that, once the big box has left the building, I will triage and distribute to the bags of SU merchandise waiting to be picked up on Sunday.

Here is a fuzzy shot of the side of my long table where I usually have my paper cutter. Also prominently displayed are two boxes of scraps that I have scavenged for the scrapbook. They will get put away within the next 36 hours, and the cutter will be stashed ... somewhere... After I make up all the kits, of course!

And the cutter cannot be stashed too far away, since I am The Crooked Stamper, and also The Crooked Cutter. At least one piece of card stock will need to be trimmed during a class this weekend...trust me.

Ah, here is the Kitchen Table, repository for all things postal. In that pile of mail are the usual suspects - catalogs, junk mail, all my sent-to-self Mini Catalogs and also my own copy of the SU catalog. And oh, look! One of the two hot-water bottles I bought over the Internet.

Hot-water bottle? Well, my massage therapist will sometimes have this large, flat bag filled with hot water waiting for me under the sheet on the massage table. I've gotta tell ya, when your back hits that baby - instant aaaaaaaahs! So I had to get myself one (actually two) so I can enjoy that aaaaaah between sessions. It is so nice to get into bed at night and lay on top of that. Sooooo nice.

And last, but not least, introducing The Kitchen Bench. This is where my customers sit to shop and place orders, so it MUST be cleared off before Sunday. This is where I stage all the retired stamp sets I sell online. They sit here to remind me to take them to the PO to figure postage, then they sit here again until payment clears. Lucky for me I have another bench to sit on, but right now it has cat supplies on it that also need to be put away before Sunday. Actually, I rarely eat at this table. I am a couch potato to the max, and that's where I eat, if I have dinner at all.

Speaking of which, it might be time to feed the hunger pangs so I have enough sustenance to do some cleaning and cutting. I'll report back this weekend on the remaining efforts to clear out the s-crap and getting this place ready to host The Ladies.

Pocket Heart Template Tutorial

A month or two ago, I tried one of the SCS Monday "try a new technique" challenges. This particular technique was to make a card using a pocket heart, and they attached a template for you to use.

Well, I felt I did not need a stinkin' template. Heck, I could make my own! Actually, I was using my laptop that evening, which is not hooked up to a printer, so I opted to try and make my own template (how hard could it be) rather than go into the next room, turn on the 'puter and the attached printer, and print the template. The added bonus to this effort was that if I could use all SU stuff to make the template, too, I could use the card in a workshop. Gotta love that!

So I set off to make the template and I started with the Coluzzle. After much playing, I came up with a way to make the template almost any size you wanted to! NOT something you could do with a provided template!

One of my customers missed the workshop (we had much ice that evening), and she cannot come this month, either, and she asked me if I could tell her how I made the pocket heart. I tried to tell her in words, and then I had a maybe-in-hind-sight-not-so-brilliant idea: Do A Tutorial!

First, I must apologize to all my beloved two (or maybe three) readers...after I took these photos, some of them one-handed (they will be obvious), I uploaded them to my laptop and shrunk them first before applying my watermark. All this means is the watermark is REALLY BIG. Please just try to see past it... I'd appreciate it.

So here we go!

Here are all the materials you will need to make the template. I will also take you past the template into how to form the heart, so there are items for that, too.

- Coluzzle Circle template, mat and cutter.
- Piece of scrap cardboard (like part of a cereal box).
- Piece of double-sided paper.
- Scrap of paper (any kind will do)
- Ruler
- Bone folder
- Pencil
- Scissors
- Art eraser
- Hole punch
- Brad


Step 1: Take out your Coluzzle. You will note I have marked mine with different colors of Sharpies so I can find the other side of the circle when I cut something. This comes in handy for this project.

Step 2: With your ruler, measure the diameter of one of the circles. Here I used the black circle, which measures 2 3/8".


Step 3: On your scrap paper, draw a line the same size as the circle diameter.



Step 4: Draw the other 3 sides to form a square.



Step 5: Cut out the square and stick it to the cardboard scrap. Make sure you leave enough room around the square to cut out the arcs. Read on and this will make sense.


Step 6: Put the cardboard on the Coluzzle mat, then line up the Coluzzle that you measured (here I use the black circle) with the square. [Could I have made that sentence any more confusing? Hopefully the picture helps you decipher my words.]

Step 7: Using the Coluzzle knife, cut out the arc. You will end up with the arc of the circle touching the edges of the scrap-paper square.


Step 8: Cut out the other three arcs on the remaining sides of the square.


Step 9: Cut or punch out the cut-out and you now have ...your template!

Note that I labeled the template with the color of the circle I used from the Coluzzle and also the size of the square. This is only important if you are like me and would probably make multiple templates of the same size because you forgot you already had one.

If you just wanted to know how to make the template, you are done. Stop reading. Now! If you'd like to see what to do with the template, please read on!

Step 10: Trace the template onto your double-sided patterned paper. Hint: I find it easier to see the pencil lines on the lighter side of the paper, but that is totally your choice. Especially if you are young enough to see it, unlike me.


Step 11: Cut out the traced pattern.

Step 12: Cleanup. If you are like me and cannot cut anything out without missing part of the line, you will need to go back now and erase the left-over lines. I find that using an art eraser (I got mine at a local art store) is a much better idea than ever using the erasers that come attached to my #2 pencils. Way better idea.

Step 13: Line up your ruler with two of the corners and score with your bone folder.

It should look like this.

Step 14: Score the side adjacent to the first one. When you are done it should look like this.

When both scored sides are folded it should look like this.

Step 15: Now you want to punch a hole in the two folded sides to hold them together. The size of the hole will depend entirely on what fastner you plan to use.

Here is a side view of how I punched the hole.

Step 16: Put in your fastner to secure the two folded sides, which forms the pocket of the heart.

You are done!

Now all you need to do is put the heart on a card or on a scrapbook page! Here is the card I made and used for my workshop in February:

Thanks for reading this far! Now go forth and create!

A Plan Comes Together

I am pleased to report that most of my friends ended up with sugar comas last night, but they still had extra helpings of my desserts, so I guess the desserts came out okay. We kept them away from the children, though. The extras are going to be consumed by adults today at some horse event where the parents bring the kids and the kids do their thing while the parents watch, so I am sure the sugar will come in handy. :-)

Now back to stamping! ....

Remember all the ribbon I came across yesterday? Well, I made quick work of that this morning! Some of them will be filed in their Storage By Color boxes, and some will be used in my scrapbook. Done!

My next task was to make the 5th card for next weekend's workshops. I also wanted to try several other things, so this card became quite loaded up!


Recipe (All products by Stampin' Up!): Stamps - Phrases For A Friend; Paper - Old Olive, Basic Gray, Soft Sky, Whisper White, Spring Break DS paper; Ink - Old Olive marker; Other - Spiral punch, Dots Classy Brass stencil, Old Olive narrow twill ribbon, Dimensionals.

It all started with Captain Crafter's latest challenge. Using that as a guide, I took out a piece of SU's Spring Break double-sided Designer Series paper. The Old Olive and Soft Sky are opposite sides of the same piece of paper. At first I thought, "Ewwww", but the more I looked at it the more I liked it. Then more lightbulbs started going off, and this is what I ended up including:

1. Sketch Challenge. Check.
2. New paper to tempt my customers. Check.
3. New stamp set (to tempt my customers.) Check.
4. Used the Dots Classy Brass stencil that I had to have. Check.
5. Tied it all together with the new SU narrow twill ribbon. Check!

I really like how it came out!

Off to do some laundry so I can go to work tomorrow. Hopefully I'll also crank out a few more scrapbook pages, too. After I put away all that ribbon, of course.

I'm Likin' Scrappin'!

I finally finished card #4 of 5 for next weekend's workshops, so I celebrated by working on my scrapbook pages. First, the card:

Recipe (All supplies by Stampin' Up!): Stamps - Polka Dots & Paisley, Short & Sweet; Paper - Glorious Green, Summer Sun, Naturals White, Blush Blossom, Basic Black, Really Rust; Ink - Gloriuos Green, Pretty In Pink, Versamark; Other - Lg Tag punch, Sm and Large Oval punches, 1/4" Square punch, Scallop punch, Horizontal Slot punch, pencil eraser (for the rosy cheeks), Basic Gray marker, Wild Wasabi grosgrain ribbon.

Do not be too impressed; I totally CASEd this from this site, and I thank her for the inspiration! I think this will be a really fun card for The Ladies to make next week.

To celebrate, I went back to my scrapbook and Hannibal, Missouri, and finished a few pages. Along the way, I used up some more of my stash, and even broke out one of my new Cuttlebug dies and used it.

I think I am really going to like this die. This is actually only half of the piece I cut out; I cut it and put half on each page for balance.


The next item(s) I am very proud of having used are these brads. The center one is from a pack I got at the Target Dollar Spot, and the ones on the sides are from a Paper Wishes purchase frenzy from a few years ago...the one where you can get the coordinating paper, ribbon and brads for a "deal", and of course I did.

I am also proud of the fact that I used patterned paper from my stash. Yay!

And then we have ribbon. I just mentioned the Paper Wishes package deal, and, well, when I opened the box to get the brads, there it was ...

Ribbon. More ribbon. It must now be either used in this scrapbook or wound up on clothespins and put away in my nifty ribbon storage boxes. Sigh ....

Gotta run to my Pot Luck dinner tonight. Gonna send everyone off with a total sugar high with my desserts. ;-) They will thank me, I am sure.

It Had To Be Done

Someone once asked me, "Who decided you have to, or should, do something?" He went on to tell me that our daily "have to" and "should" thoughts are self-imposed, and based either on what other people think, or what society, in general, has come to embrace as "normal".

Well, anyone who knows me knows I am not "normal". I have come to live my life based on what *I* find rewarding or important. It was a very big step for me to take and accept. I remember the days of fearing the humidity because my just-dried hair would take on a mind of its own and rebel against the way I'd dried it and do what it wanted to anyway. I am so over that. Someone at work commented the other day that my hair looked curlier than normal, and my response was, "Must be humid out." See? I am over it.

But there are some things that just have to be done. Like paying bills or taxes. Come to think of it, you do not have to do those either, if you are willing to live with the consequences.

Okay, enough philosophy for one morning! I went down this path because I found myself being domestic again, and it is soooo not like me. I experienced two Moments last night. The first moment was when I remembered the Handyman that came over on Monday also took the time to drive in the third of three screws into my Elfa system in my Craft Room closet. I had been waiting for that to be done before I put back any of the heavy boxes. If you recall, my Elfa Meltdown forced me to empty out the whole closet, and there were still boxes that had not been put back yet. Surprise. So I put back one of the boxes and as I put away (folded up) the step ladder, I looked over and saw, really saw, my ironing pile.

Ironing - remember that? I have a lot of it because I can only wear cotton, and cotton is just this side of linen in the wrinkle category. As I rifled through the pile, I remembered all the clothes I used to wear, and realized I could vastly expand my current wardrobe if I just ironed something. Apparently this has not been high on my list of things to do in the past year or two.

So last night, instead of stamping or scrappin', I took out my ironing board and ironed. I was going to take a picture, but I resisted the urge. However, it might have been a good idea to chronicle that event since some of you may never have seen one. ;-) I think the last time I had my iron out was to do the Melted Crayon technique.

So now I am 6 shirts ahead of the game, and I rewarded myself by doing something else that had to be done. I have had the idea for this card in my head for a while, and I finally got it on paper. Check it out:

No, I am not nautical; not in the least. Not even close. But those nautical flags all have meaning. From left to right, the first one is "Whiskey (W), Require Medical Assistance"; the middle one is "Tango (T), Keep Clear"; and the last one is "Foxtrot (F), Disabled". What in tarnation does that mean, you might ask. Think about the letter represented by each flag and it will become very clear. If you still do not get it, email me and we'll talk off-line.

I had originally planned to do something a little different with the nautical flags, and I still might. For example, putting the R and U together mean "Keep clear of me; I am maneuvering with difficulty". And N+C mean "I am in distress and require immediate assistance". Just something I thought might be fun to put on a card (or a T-shirt!)

I now must go bake something. I am bringing dessert to a Pot Luck dinner tonight so I decided to make something high-calorie and high-fat, just because I can. You have to live a little once in a while, right? :-)