leaf turkeys

Mercy me!  It has been a month since I posted anything!  Where has the month gone?  I've been super busy but have still found the time to stamp and punch and create.  I remember when I was a kid we used to make turkeys out of different leaves.  I looked at the leaves on the Autumn Accents die and knew they would work for a turkey so I put the tail together and then thought on it for a few days before I figured out the rest.  I have seen lots of turkeys with a similar head using the Owl Punch so I used that idea for his head and added wings from 2 more leafs.

Here are the pieces I used except I forgot to put the owl punch in this picture.

I stacked the leaves and trimmed off the bottom for the tail, then I put 2 leaves together for each wing.  I used the smallest flower in the Boho Blossoms punch for the waddle.  I made 2 waddles from each flower.  I trimmed off a petal, skipped 2 and trimmed off another petal and cut what was left in half.  The beak is one of the little hearts on the owl punch.  I placed these on the front of the owl who had his feet and ears cut off (ouch!).  I had several sizes of wiggle eyes.  On the smaller eyes I also used the circles from the owl punch behind the eyes to make them large owl eyes. 

 I used regular tape runner to put the tail and wings together but I used red tape to adhere them to the purse.  I cut it without the flap and it makes a nice little box to hold candy. 

I filled it with some kisses, peanut butter cups and Hershey's mini candy bars.  I think it would be cool to put a little sign in each turkey with the names of your guests and use them for place holders at the Thanksgiving table!

Here is another turkey I made to put on treats.  I used the same owl punch turkey face but used the 2 3/8" Scalloped Circle and the 1 3/4" scalloped circle (2 of each) for the tail and the Bird Builder punch wings for the little turkey's wings.

I learned how to make a box with the Envelope Punch Board so I used the little scalloped circle turkeys to put on the front of these too.  They are a perfect size to hold an individually packaged  Reeses Peanut Butter cup.

 

I hope you have time to  make some fun paper turkeys for Thanksgiving.  They are easier to make than a real turkey but I don't reckon they taste as good! 

Test Drive Stampin' Up - An Amazing Stampin' Up Opportunity! And a couple of projects too.

Stampin' Up is making an unbelievable offer for the next week, until Oct 21st.  To celebrate Stampin' Up's 25th anniversary, you can try out being a demonstrator for just $25!  If you have EVER considered it, now is the perfect chance!  If you don't like it then you still have over $25 worth of Stamps and if you do like it you have a fun job that will introduce you to some amazing friends.  I love being a demonstrator and I especially enjoy my "wholesale account".  I'd love to have you join my stampin' team, we have a lot of fun! 

Click on the picture above to get more details!

Isn't this owl bag adorable?  There was one sitting on every table at the Holiday Retreat for us to put our garbage in.  Well, being the thrifty person I am, I simply couldn't throw it away with the garbage!  I dumped it out and brought him home with me.  I know Mary Robinson put lots of work into making all of the bags and hope mine wasn't the only one saved from the garbage.

Here is a nice Thanksgiving card I got in the swap at the retreat from a sweet friend, Mychael Allen.  I love the Off The Grid stamp, it is a single stamp, I need it!  There are also some splattery accents with the Gorgeous Grunge stamp set to add some texture to the background. She finished it off with the 2-step leaf stamps from Gently Falling and a sentiment from the Tags For You set with  the coordinating Bracket Punch.  As much as I dread Winter coming and know that Fall is bringing it on faster, I love the colors and harvest symbols of Fall.

This card was also made by the wonderful and talented Mary Robinson.  It shows the versatility of the Gorgeous Grunge stamp set.  The great background was stamped with 4 of the 5 stamps in this set to give an amazing textured card without the bulk.  She also used some fun Washi Tape across the card and placed a sentiment from the Tags For You set. Isn't it a great card!

 

Now, if you want to attend retreats, join in the swaps and get discounts on stamps and other great Stampin' Up merchandise, contact me or sign up on my website here.  I'd love to have you join the fun!

Swap and Holiday Retreat Project

The Stampin' Sister's Holiday Retreat was so much fun!  I sat at the table with some wonderful ladies and we had fun stampin' the day away.  In the morning we did a lot of 3-D type projects and it was very fast paced.  In the afternoon we did cards so we could relax a little but the cards were great.  We also did a swap after lunch so with all these classes and swaps I got lots of ideas for future classes.

I'll share a couple of things with you today, first of all is my swap card.  I had seen a video on Stampin' Connection (an idea share site for Stampin' Up demonstrators) that showed how to make the new thinlit flip cards with an extra flap on the right side so you would have more room to write a message.  I loved the idea and since I had just gotten my Label Thinlit die I got busy and designed a swap card for retreat.  I wanted it to be in Fall colors and decided to make it a Thanksgiving card.  Do you ever send a Thanksgiving card?  I have so many wonderful people in my life that I am thankful for that I believe I need to send out some Thanksgiving cards to them. 

I used Pumpkin Pie card stock for the base of the cards.  I pulled out the tried and true Lovely As A Tree to stamp the card and the new Tags For You Thanksgiving sentiment.  I love that the Tags For You set has a matching punch, the Label Bracket Punch.

Open up the card and see the flap.  I used the Autumn Accents die to cut the acorns.  The Designer Series Paper is from the Quartrefancy pack.  I wouldn't have thought about using that paper on a Fall card but the yellow was perfect for this one!

Open the flap and you have plenty of room to write a message inside.  I thought about putting Whisper White panels inside to write on but the plain Pumpkin Pie is good too.  Besides, I was making 33 of them so that was the first thing to go to save time!

 Here is a fun project we did at the retreat.  What a great idea for the large stamp storage boxes!  We put the DSP cut to size inside the cover of the box and then used Sticky Strip to add a Chevron ribbon handle.  We made cards to put inside the box, what a great gift!  For some reason my computer won't let me add the picture though so maybe I can put it in the next post.  Technology kind of drives me nuts sometimes!

 

Well, I reckon I need to go gather more pears.  They should be all gone by the end of the week.  As much as I will enjoy the "fruits of my labor" all Winter, I'm going to be glad to have those hours spent cutting and canning over for the season.

A Swap Card and 2 Layouts

Wow, I can't believe it has been over a  month since my last blog post!  I came home from convention and visiting the new grandbaby to lots of grapes that needed to be made into grape juice, 42 quarts to be exact.  I love grape juice so I was pleased to get nearly a quart a week put up.  Then the apples came in and I had to get busy canning those.  Before the apples were finished the pears got ripe.  I even made some apple/pear sauce and juice!  Yummy stuff.  There are still lots of pears to can but I think I might have a little breathing room now. 

I have had very little time to stamp the past month but I have found a spare minute here and there.  First though, back to convention.  This is one of the swaps I made for convention.  I made 120 of these, whew!   I used the En Francis background stamp in Crumb Cake and then took 2 sizes of smaller blocks, inked the actual block up and stamped those on for extra dimension on the background.  The Oh, Hello stamp set provided the other stamps and the sentiment was stamped with one of the Teeny Tiny Verses stamp.  There were a lot of steps but it didn't take too long by doing them assembly line style.  I did decide to leave off the die-cut edge on the right and made all layers straight. 

 

I went to a crop a few weekends ago and did some more cards and a couple of scrapbook pages.  These pages both use the Tea Shop DSP that retired with the new catalog.  I do love that paper!  Have you noticed that the new Afternoon Picnic DSP is the same design, just different colors?  It's kind of nice to have the wonderful designs around for another year.

 The first layout has a ton of banners on it.  I love the look of banners but maybe this one is a bit overdone.  I still like it.  I'll put pictures on the 4 Very Vanilla banners on the left page and maybe another one on the circle.  I haven't decided what pictures I will put on these layouts yet.

I hope to get back to stamping regularly soon.  And another post should be just a few days away, thanks to everyone who is still coming to check out my blog!

 

 

There's No Place Like Home!

I finally got back home last Wednesday night.  I loved the trip, especially getting to spend so much time with the grandchildren in Colorado but it is good to be back home.  I'm still trying to get back in the swing of things.  When I was fixing supper Wednesday night I was standing in the kitchen trying to remember which cupboard I kept my plates in!  I'm starting to remember things now but it has taken some time. 

Today was day 1 of grape juice season.  The grapes did a lot of growing while I was gone and I've got quite a crop!  I wonder how many quart jars I need to get out of the attic to can all the juice they will make.  I didn't even pick half of them today and I have over a bushel.  I love, love, love homemade grape juice!

It has been so long since I posted, let me post a few more things from convention.  I actually found the time to make a card Saturday but I'll save that for later.  I'm going to post some scrapbook pages to hopefully inspire me to get busy on a scrapbook for the 5 week vacation I just got home from!

I love the banners!  One for stamping and one for journaling is a great idea.  The DSP on this page is from the Soho Subway package and the stamp set is the Ronald McDonald house set for the year, Tag It.

The triangle punch background in this set is great, I'd put more pictures on the page though.   

I love this I Dig You page.  There are many great little touches and it is a fun page.

More banners!  I like the splattered ink look background she put on the page too.

The stamp set is called Gorgeous Grunge, it is one of the sets we got at convention this year and I can already tell that I am going to use it a LOT!  It makes a great background for this page, doesn't it?  I love the big flowers with the button centers too.  This is actually a wood frame but it would make a good scrapbook page too.

 

Well, I reckon I better get to bed so I can start juicing those grapes first thing in the morning.  We are under flash flood warnings till around noon tomorrow so I might not pick the rest of the grapes until tomorrow evening.  I've got enough to keep me busy anyway though!

Convention display boards

There are thousands of great samples of cards, 3-D items and scrapbook pages posted on display boards at the convention every year.  Here are a few of the pictures I took this year.  I'm sure you will find some inspiration here!  I love Stampin' Up!

Have a great day everyone!  I'm still in CO helping with the new grandbaby so I will be having a good day!  I reckon I'm beginning to look forward to getting back home though.

Still On My Way Home

I am in Colorado now.  My grandson will turn 8 on Wednesday so he is excited about his birthday.  I'll be home next week and I can get some time to ink up my stamp sets I got while at convention.  3 stamp sets come with our registration to make the projects with and I won 4 other sets so I have 7 sets that need to see some ink!  I only have 2 ink pads with me and almost no paper so it would be hard t actually come up with a card design that would use my limited supplies.  I might need to figure something out though, it's been too long since I created!

I showed a couple of the projects I made at the 3-D shoebox swap last week but I didn't show my project.  It was 2 pieces of 4X4 chipboard covered with DSP and a strip of cardstock along one side to attach the 2 pieces together and look like a book spine.  The ribbon serves a purpose -

 You tie the ribbon around the spine of the "book" and place money through the ribbon on the inside to make it a money book.  My grandson's birthday is Wednesday, I reckon I should make him one and put lots of money in it!  I told him I was getting him pink underwear.  I think he would like a money book a little more than pink underwear!

 Here is a project we made in the 3-D swap.  We used the chalkboard technique on the black paper and stamped in white.  It is so pretty that I hate to cover up the glimmer paper with a picture!

 I don't know who made this 3-D card swap but I love it!  There were some great projects shared at the pre-convention activities that the LNS group hosted.  I need to get home so I can create some of the things I was inspired by at convention.

Undefined is here! Plus a couple of scrapbook pages

 

One of the announcements at convention was the release of a new product called Undefined.  It is a stamp carving set so you can make your own stamp in your own design.  Very cool!  Sometimes I need to make something with a specific theme and I can't find a stamp that is exactly what I want so I'm excited about this new product.  They gave everyone a piece of the special rubber and there was a booth where you could go to use the carving tools to make a stamp but the line at the booth was always so long that I never got my stamp carved.  Here are some of the designs that were carved though.  They had a big board with paper on it that the people who waited in that long line could stamp their creation on. 

If you want to see the kit or think you would be interested in carving your own stamps, click here.

There are also some images posted on pinterest here.

I loved so many of the scrapbook pages posted on the display boards at convention!  First is a fun layout with lots of strips of DSP from the Gingam Garden paper pack.  I love the way she also cut the journaling into strips and stamped flowers on it!  I must remember that in a layout very soon.  If you look to the right of the layout you can see a tiny peek of a card that I'm definitely going to put in my next card class.  It is beautiful!  I bet you can't wait to see the whole thing.
 

Another fun layout was this one that had octogons and the title sewn on.  I love the look and after all, isn't this one of the reasons I have my sewing machine in my stamp room?  I need to use it on my scrapbook pages more often! 

 

Speaking of DSP, did you know that it is on sale through the end of July?  Yes!!!  It is Buy 3 get 1 FREE all month!  If you love our Designer Series Paper, now is a great time to get stocked up on all the new paper in our new catalog.  Have you seen the new catalog?  It's great, LMK if you need one.  The link is on the right.

I'm still in Salt Lake City.  I'm having lunch with my husband's aunt today so I am looking forward to that.  She is the only one left so it is great to still be able to hear about his dad growing up from her.  I love family stories!  They also had ancestors who crossed the plains pulling handcarts, some of them died before reaching the Salt Lake valley.  This is facinating to me, I wonder if I would have made a good pioneer . . .

 

Tomorrow is Pioneer Day, a state holiday in Utah.  They have a big parade and the floats are wonderful!  I got a chance to go to the expo center yesterday where they had all the floats lined up and you could walk around them and take pictures and then you could vote on your favorite.  I took pictures with my cell phone so they aren't great.  They were all wonderful floats but there was one that I felt stood out as the most beautiful float there.  It was amazing!  The theme is something about anchors so there were 6 or 7 of the floats that had boats on them, a couple of Noah's arks that had the animals carved out of big blocks of foam.  Totally amazing!

Well, it is about time to go to lunch so I reckon I better go get my shoes on.  Did you know that I have always hated to wear shoes?  I went barefooted most of the Summer when I was a girl.  I still wait till the last minute to put my shoes on.  I'll try to post again soon.  I took so many pictures of all the great ideas that I want to share.

 

Stampin' Up's 25th Anniversary convention is in the proverbial books.

I suspected that Stampin' Up would pull out all the stops for their 25th anniversary convention and I wasn't disappointed!  It was a fabulous convention, there was so much information shared, projects created, milestones marked and prizes given!  Besides the fact that EVERYONE got a door prize (with values between $25 and $30 for the most part), we also got 2 other stamp sets each and a free Paper Pumpkin Kit.  More on Paper Pumpkin next week.  My head is so full of ideas that it might just explode all over my pillow if I lay down and relax!  It is nearly midnight after a long week of midnights so I reckon I should go to bed  but I wanted to share a couple of things first.  I thought I would have more time to blog this week but it has been a very full week. 

The green bicycle picture shows how a large city like Salt Lake City can help with transportation as well as keep the smog down.  I remember the past years it has been very hazy and I think smog was a bad problem here.  It didn't seem so bad this year.  I'm sure they have done more than the bikes to keep pollution down but I thought it was cleaver to have the bikes available to rent. 

This card is a card I made for a swap.  The Stampin' Sisters, mostly from the Nashville area and some other demonstrators from Wisconsin got together for supper Wednesday night before the convention officially started.  We had a swap with the 30 of us and this is the card I made for it.  I can't remember where I saw the idea for the band aid but I thought is was cleaver for a get well card.

Next is a card I made in a 3-D shoebox swap at the pre-convention events.  I love this step card, the DSP is called Venetian Romance, isn't it pretty?  The flower stamps are from a set called Stippled Blossoms, aren't they pretty!  The leaves are from the Secret Garden Framelits die set and a rhinestone is added to the center of each flower.  I wish I had written down the name of the swapper who created this for us to make so I could give her proper credit for this beautiful card.

I remember that this fun cookie card was in a shoebox kit that Kelly Mayou brought.  It features the fun Yippee-Skippee set for the sentiment.  That happens to be one of the sets that Stampin' Up gave all of the demonstrators today as a "party favor".  Isn't that fun!

Kelly's card is an easel card made with the scalloped circle framelit and a few punches.  The word "cookie" on the front of the card was made with one of our new polymer clear sets that has the small alphabets in it.  It is great to be able to spell out a word or name on your block and them stamp as many of them as you need to.  Wouldn't this card be fun for a birthday party invitation?

And last, a picture of our convention bag from this year, since it is our 25th anniversary then it stands to reason that the bag would have silver designs on it.  Isn't it pretty, cool, adorable, functional and just plain amazing???  I really like it!  The back compartment is padded so you can carry your laptop in it and one of the pockets has lots of dividers for papers and pens and things.  It is a great bag.

It's late and I reckon I better get to bed.  It's been a long week and I'm tired.  Happy but tired!

Stampin' Up Convention starts Tomorrow!!!

I am here in Salt Lake City anxiously waiting for the Stampin' Up 25th Anniversary convention to start.  I have been to a stamp camp on Monday and Tuesday as well as a shoebox swap both of those days.  I was able to make some amazing projects and will be ready for a year of great classes!

Tonight I'm going to post some of the projects from the shoebox swap yesterday.  First is a fun candy bar holder.  We just took a strip of Whisper White cardstock and put washi tape on it and punched a hole with the wide oval punch.  Then we used a smaller strip of white to adhere to the card front and attached a mini candy bar on that and tucked it in the hole.  A little tricky but easy and fun!

This one is a fun idea for children or grandchildren, whether you are taking them somewhere in your car or are taking them to church or a dr appt where they may need to wait quietly for a while, this cute kit will help.  The little box will hold 6 colored pencils or 5 crayons.  Just stamp a bunch of outline type stamps that kids will enjoy onto cardstock that  has been cut out with the Top Not die, make a cover and adhere the crayon box onto it.  This would keep either one of my granddaughters busy for quite a while.

I was going to post more pictures but my computer isn't cooperating.  I reckon it knows the connection isn't what it is used to.  I'll be taking lots more pictures tomorrow and should be able to post many of them this week.  I know I'm going to be seeing a ton of great projects on display at the convention and get lots of wonderful swap cards.  I only got 100 cards made so far, I might have a little time to make 10 or 20 more in the morning before I go to the convention.  I might have trouble sleeping tonight but I doubt it.  I'm tired from all the fun!  I'm thinking I'll wake up about 5AM and not be able to fall back asleep though.  Maybe I can make it till 6AM!

2 last cards from the retreat, I'll try to feature my favorite swap cards before I start having lots of new ideas to post from the convention.  I am on my way there, I made it into Utah this afternoon.  I'm at a friend's house in Monticello, Utah.  It is another 5 hours up to Salt Lake City so I will be able to easily make that trip tomorrow.  Not that easily, really.  I get so tired after 3 hours that it is going to be hard the last couple of hours.  Now on to what you came here for!

 

This cheerful card features the Gingham DSP and the Kind and Cozy stamp set.  I love the yellow and blue together.  It would certainly cheer me up!

 Again, Gingham Garden DSP and Kind and Cozy stamp set on this card.  It also has a few strips of Washi tape on it.  Washi tape is great stuff!  I love how it takes an ordinary card and steps it up without using extra products that make it hard to mail your cards.

I'll "see" you at convention next week!  I'll post some of my favorite projects hopefully every day.  I know I'll be tired but it will be so much fun! 

2 Cards Featuring Washi Tape

I am loving the new Washi Tape that I bought from Stampin' Up.  The colors and designs are bright and fun, perfect to embellish a card that needs just a little something.  These cards are cards we made at the Spring Retreat in June.  I've been so busy getting ready for a trip to visit my new grand baby in Colorado and then from my daughter's house to the Stampin' Up convention in UT that I haven't posted in a couple of weeks. 

 

The first card not only has Gingham Garden Washi Tape across the bottom but also behind the stamped circle like little tabs.  I love that fun touch!   The stamp set we stamped the gingham circle with is called Kind and Cozy.  I love how it looks like a plate with a checkered rim.  We also used A Round Array and Label Love stamp sets for this card.

 For the second card we covered a square of Whisper White cardstock with Gingham Garden Washi Tape going diagonally and then cut it out with the Beautiful Butterflies Bigs die.  The fun butterfly body is made with the new Candy Dots adhesive backed embellishments.  They can be used alone as in this project or you can get brad bases and stick them to the brad before adhering to your project.  I love these new Candy Dots!  The sentiment also comes from the Kind and Cozy stamp set.

More Washi Tape was placed along the bottom of the square of Gingham Garden Designer Series Paper for a great finish to the card.  Wouldn't you love to get such a cheerful card to remind you that someone was thinking of you?  I reckon I would love it too!

I'll be in Salt Lake City for the Stampin' Up convention next week.  It will be a crazy-busy week but I'll try to be better about posting, I will be taking so many pictures of great projects you will want to see so I won't have the excuse I sometimes use that I didn't have time to stamp!  I'm working on swaps for the convention too.  I have 130 that are pretty much finished and 50 others partially done, waiting for me to get a new stamp from the Holiday Mini Catalog to stamp them up.  Time will tell if I will get all of those done!

 

By the way, my new grandson is adorable and is a very good baby.  I am also getting to see 3 of my grandchildren I haven't seen in a year, they have grown so much! 

Tag a Bag

There is a new product in the new 2013/14 catalog that I really like, and the price is great!  It is called Tag a Bag Gift Boxes.  There are  8 kraft boxes PLUS clear acetate sleeves in a package for only $6.95.  That is less than a buck each!  We used one of these boxes for a project Saturday and I love how it turned out. 

The boxes don't come with dividers but it was simple to take a strip of Crumb Cake cardstock and score it and adhere to the bottom of the box to make the dividers.  The filling is shredded packing paper so that part was free. 

We decorated a tag which we clipped onto the new 3/4" Chevron Ribbon with the adorable mini clothes pins that came in the Tag a Bag Accessory Kit.  The pieces for the outside tag came in that accessory kit too. 

The cute little tags inside were punched from the new In-Colors.  Adding the acetate sleeve finishes it off so nicely.  What a great size box for many gifts, cookies, jewelry, lotions, etc would be perfect in these. 

There are also cute little kraft bags with chevrons in white that are so cute too.  10 in a pack for $3.95.  These will be fun to decorate and present also.  They look great with some of the popular Baker's Twine wrapped around them too.  You can save a bit if you get the bags or boxes combined with the accessory kit and they go so well together!

 

I have my monthly Bunco game coming up, I need to come up with something fabulous to fill a box with for my gift.  Sometimes I end up taking something in a plastic grocery bag - is that any way for a Stampin' Up demonstrator to treat a gift???  You know what they say about presentation.  Needless to say, the months when my gift is "wrapped" in a plastic bag it isn't the first one chosen!