Do you sew? Or would you rather create and journal?

First of all, I know you want to see a great project so here is one of the cards that was on display at the Spring Retreat.  I love the boots!  The clouds embossed on the colorful background go perfect with the rain boots too.  I wish I had written down who made it, isn't it adorable?  I am looking forward to Spring, and I'm not appreciating the cold and snow on the first 2 days of the grand kid's Spring break!  They enjoyed playing in the snow though.

 

I started sewing my own clothes when I was 11 after making doll clothes from scraps my mom gave me from the time I was 5 or 6.  I still have the first 2 of dresses I made for myself but I sure wish I had some of those doll clothes I made when I was in grade school!

Speaking of sewing, did you know that Stampin' Up has put their fabric on sale?  50% off, what a deal!  And it is on all their fabric, not just a selected few.  My first question was, does it include the Tea For Two fabric from the Spring Mini catalog, and yes, it does!  Both of the fabrics from the mini are included in the sale.  I'm going to order the Tea For Two fabric just because it is so pretty and I think I'll get 2 of the Twitterpated because I think it will make an adorable dress for my granddaughter.  I might get the Flirtatious for my other granddaughter.  All the fabric is so pretty, how do you decide???

I need some new curtains for my stamp room too.  How many packages would I need for curtains?  The fabric 28" X 18" per piece and there are 3 per package.  I'll need a yard stick and calculator to figure that one out! I think that is what I will do with the Tea For Two fabric, it is so pretty I could look at it all day. 

The sale started yesterday, Monday, March 25 and goes until Sunday, March 31, 2013 so you just have a few more days to grab some pretty fabric.  What will you make with yours?  Here is the link:
http://www.stampinup.com/ECWeb/ItemList.aspx?categoryid=1014

Another fun and wonderful product Stampin' Up just released is their This and That product line.  It is a fun journal you can create to ccapture your moments, thoughts, plans, ideas, sketches, hope, dreams—anything and everything! Our bundle includes the five This and That products will be in the upcoming 2013-2014 annual catalog but you can get this set for 15 percent off through April 30!  Check it out here: http://www.stampinup.com/ECWeb/ItemList.aspx?categoryid=1448

Have a good rest of your week.  I've got a busy one, I might not have a chance to sit still again until after church on Sunday.  I'm glad I had the last 2 days to spend with the grandchildren!

Don't miss out on Sale-a-Bration freebies!

Sale-a-Bration ends Friday.  I'm so sad, I love being able to help people get extras!  Also, I'm not far away from a sales goal so I would love to add your order to the one I'm sending in tomorrow.  email me or call me with your order!  wrightplace4 @ mindspring . com

And here is something else fun that Stampin' Up is doing, a monthly kit!  You can get a box with lots of paper and goodies, including inks and stamps delivered to your door every month.  I have confidence that there will be amazingly beautiful and fun things to create because Stampin' Up's creative artists are wonderful.  More details are here!

I need to go back to working on Easter projects for the Winter Market on Friday.  I'll share what I come up with soon!

 

Stamped Diffuser Necklace Class

Tuesday afternoon I am holding a Stamped Diffuser Necklace Class.  If you have ever heard of Essential Oils you know they are great for mood enhancement and healing.  I've been wearing this one I made about 6 weeks ago and have been putting an oil blend called On Guard on it.  That oil blend is supposed to have an antibacterial and antiviral effect on the body and it must work because I haven't been sick since I made this necklace!

I made another one that I have tried other oils on and I really like having the scents waft up now and then and soothe me.  If you have a stressful environment there are oils you can use that will be helpful for you.  This is a very inexpensive class, I'm basically just charging for the materials so it will average $5 per necklace with a little vial of your chosen oil.  I have lots of stamps to choose from to stamp your clay with and a variety of beads if you want to add them to your necklace.

Let me know if you can come so I will have enough tables set up, I hope I'll see you Tuesday!

Come on Spring!

This hasn't been an overly cold Winter and it has barely snowed here but I'm still over it.  I don't like Winter.  My buttercups are blooming, the crocus has come and gone and iris and tulip leaves are up and it is March.  So why is it going to be below freezing tonight AGAIN??? 

Maybe I can help bring on nicer weather by posting bright Spring projects!  Here is a great project we did at our Spring retreat last month.  Yep, Spring retreat in Feb.  Remember, the one we got trapped in a huge snow storm in Alabama.  The plates were found at Old Time Pottery, a great base for this Spring decoration. 

The flowers are made with some of the supplies from the Pop-Up Posies Designer Kit.  I still have a lot left over from the kit after making these flowers.  It has fabric covered brads, paper flower pieces, baker's twine, a stamp and some embossed tags.  Lots of pretty things to embellish your projects with.  I'll have to use the rest of it for some Easter treat toppers or something.  Easter is coming early this year so we get St. Patrick's Day and Easter in the same month, exactly 2 weeks apart. 

Isn't this card beautiful!  It is another one of the projects we did at the retreat.  That gorgeous paper is from the Spring Mini Catalog and is called Tea for Two.  I like the colors and the old fashioned quilt and wallpaper look of it.  The paper doily and the flower are on page 5 in the Spring Mini catalog, the flowers are from a length of trim, 2 yards but it has about 200 flowers on it so it goes a long way.

This card is a tri-fold card.  We folded it in half like regular but then folded the front back on itself to create a different fold.  The sentiment from the Oh Hello stamp set was cut with the oval Sizzlet die and mounted on another oval and placed with half of it on the front and the other half sticks out over the doily.  A bow and a brad finish off the vintage look of this card.

 

It is March already! Digital project

February is always short of course but it really flew by this year, didn't it?  It is March 1st and Easter is the last day of March so we need to move right into St. Patrick's projects, don't we?  I came across this quote and wanted to frame it.  I used some of the Day In The Life digital background paper in My Digital Studio and added the quote in a brush font.  After printing it I matted it on Wild Wasabi and framed it.  I cut Wild Wasabi and Certainly Celery butterflies with the Beautiful Wings Sizzlet to decorate the frame.

I know, crummy picture, huh?  What else does it need?  I'm thinking a 3-D flower would be nice.  I also thought about rainbows you see on St. Patrick's projects sometimes, maybe I should make the butterflies in rainbow colors instead of just greens.  I might like it better in a white frame too.  What do you think? 

I've also been working on green Flower Folds pins, I wouldn't want to get pinched on St. Patrick's Day! 

Stamping on Clay

I'm sure a lot of you have used your Stampin' Up stamps on clay already.  If you haven't then you should try it!  I had a class yesterday morning where we made necklaces with terra-cotta pennants.  Here is the one I made.  I thought my Valentine's roses made a nice back drop.  I used a stamp from the Just Believe stamp set.

 Here are some discs one of the ladies made for a bracelet.  She used one of my kitchen strainers to texture the background before stamping a flower on each one.  I bet it will be beautiful when she gets it finished.  She had to wait for the clay to dry before making the bracelet.

 One of the ladies had her 2 preschoolers with her.  They had fun too.  The 4 year old wanted a stamp with a spider so I went and found the Googly Ghools stamp set and he had fun with that.  He made a mummy and Frankenstein too!

Here are a couple of other unfinished ones.  They are stamped with a retired stamp set called Priceless, emember that set? 

We made the beads from the air dry clay because we wanted to use them with doTERRA Essential Oils.  Pictured is Breathe, which will help with not only relaxation but also helps with allergies and sinuses.  I put a blend called On Guard on mine.  That is for natural immune defense.  There is a nasty virus going around and I don't want to get it!  24 hours later the scent is still strong, I love it's smell. 

What a fun class, I love combining several of my loves into one class.  LMK if you want stamps or Essential Oils, I can help!

Pinewood Derby, Winter Market and Fire at the Crop

                                             
Today was Pinewood Derby day for my oldest grandson.  I love his car, Angry Birds.  He even put some feathers on it.  I'm not sure how aerodynamic that would make a car but it seems to work for birds  :~)  He placed 2nd for the Weblos troop.

I have been setting up some of my crafts at the Winter Market, the past month I have had a lot of Valentine's treats there.  I had already sold quite a few before I remembered to take a picture yesterday.  The lighting wasn't good but you can see some of the things I made for it.  I had a very good day there yesterday.  Since Thursday is Valentine's Day and the Winter market meets on Fridays I'll have to come up with some new projects to make.  I've been having fun with the Valentine's things though.

I didn't post about this but when I went to a weekend crop a couple of weeks ago the lodge we were meeting in at a Girl Scout camp caught on fire.  The back of the lodge where everyone was sleeping was clear but when you walked out to the crop room and kitchen, there was smoke everywhere!  I got up about 7AM and thought it smelled like something burning but it wasn't too bad so I was just sitting there looking out the window at how pretty the lake looked that morning.  Then the crop organizer came back telling everyone (very calmly I  might add) that the lodge was on fire and to get up and go outside.  She was so calm about it that I thought she was teasing!  We ended up going to the basement to wait for the fire trucks since it was so cold outside.  The camp is way out in the country at what is called "Land Between the Lakes".  We had 3 volunteer Fire departments respond with 6 fire trucks and an ambulance!  I think they thought there were little girl scouts there and they all acted quickly.  There was also a news van that came.  It turns out that it was a heating unit in the attic above the kitchen that caught on fire.  There wasn't a lot of damage done to the lodge and there were other heaters to keep us warm so everything turned out good.  Plus we got an extra photo moment and had a more memorable crop.

Stampin' Up Retreat

There was a Stampin' Up retreat today in Huntsville, AL.  It was great but started out kind of bad.  I didn't even know they were expecting a bad snow storm between Nashville and the AL border!  It was such a surprise to be driving down the freeway on a beautiful sunny day and all of sudden we were driving in blowing snow.  Within 10 minutes I couldn't even see the road.  In 20 minutes time there was over 1/2" of snow on the ground!  We saw many accidents and slipped a little now and then but made it to the retreat without having an accident ourselves.  Then it go up to 50 degrees and ALL the snow was melted by the time we started home.  Crazy day!

 

The retreat was great, we made 5 cards and 4 other projects.  I'll find some time Monday to take pictures with better lighting and post them later.  I also got about 42 swap cards so I need to get pictures of those too. 

This is one of the cards we made.  The stamp set is a new one from the new Spring Mini catalog called Oh Hello.  And I really love that paper!  It is called Tea for Two.  We used it on a lot of the projects we did today and I was so glad that I put it on my last order.  It will be here by the end of the week so I can pull it out and make more projects with it.

Since I got up at 4:30 this morning I reckon I better hit the hay!  It was a long day but totally worth it!

Honeycomb and Bloomin' Marvelous Cards

I love the Honeycomb Embossing Folder that is in the new Spring Mini Catalog.  It is a great background, I brayered the folder with More Mustard ink before placing a 5 1/4" X 4" piece of Very Vanilla cardstock in it.  I love that effect!  A few More Mustard hexagons to fill some of the cells makes a great background for the sentiment and butterflies out of the Bloomin' Marvelous stamp set from the Sale-a-Bration catalog.  I forgot there was a bee stamp in the Nature Walk set, I reckon I'll have to make another honeycomb card to put some of those bees on!

 

Here is another card featuring the Bloomin' Marvelous set.  I used the Lacy Brocade Embossing Folder on this one.  It was in the Winter Mini Catalog but is still available, isn't it a beautiful design?  It has quickly become one of my favorites.  I put the Whisper White cardstock in the embossing folder sideways so it didn't go all the way down to the bottom of the card, leaving room to stamp the sentiment.  I punched the bottom of the cardstock with the Scalloped Border Punch and added a couple of silver brads and Primrose Petals ribbon.  I adhered the butterfly with a Stampin' Dimensional and added a few Basic Rhinestones for his body.  Did you know there is a little butterfly punch that coordinates with this stamp?  Much easier than cutting it out with scissors! 

 

Call me to place your order to get FREE Sale-a-Bration products or to book a workshop to earn even more FREE products.   There are a lot more great things besides stamp sets to choose from this year!

Ultimate Craft Room Shelves

I just realized that I haven't posted pictures of the shelves I got in my craft room.  This picture was taken during the building process.  I have the shelves nearly all full now but I want to neaten them up some before I take more pictures.  You can customize them to be as tall or short a space between them as you need.  Each division is 12" wide and the side pieces are routed out so you can slide in the shelves as needed.  I have a couple of them that are doubled or tripled but most of them have a shelf in every slot.  You can see a stack of the shelves on the floor that have been nearly all used up.  I used some L brackets to attach the unit to the wall so I wouldn't have to worry about the whole thing falling down!  I plan to make some kind of file with the location of each item I put on the shelves so I can fill them really full.  I have a lot more stuff than will fit in all those shelves! 

I posted a picture a while back of the wood flooring we put in.  It is so much nicer than that old red carpet that was installed in 1974!  Seriously, the carpet was THAT old!  It kind of fell apart when they were pulling it out.  I'm glad it is gone, the floor looks so much better now.  One of these days I'll actually get the room all organized and I'll be able to find things.  I sometimes spend almost as much time looking for items I need to do a project as I do creating the project with them. 

 

I bet you would like to see another Valentine.  I love how this one is blinged out, very nice.  I can't remember who brought it to the shoebox swap, there were 3 new demonstrators there I hadn't met and I've forgotten their names.  I'm very forgetful!  She used 2 colors of the Shimmer Paper, a few dots of Dazzling Diamonds and the Adorning Accents Embossing folder as well as a couple of the hearts from the Sizzlets set.  It all came together to make a great Valentine!

 

I'm going to a crop this weekend.  I got all my stampin' supplies packed and in the car last night.  I reckon I need to go pack my clothes, huh?