Stamping Withdrawals!

While I had a good time with my husband at Kohler, I did have a small period of time where I went through some stamping withdrawal (which was quickly overcome by an infusion of chocolate and caramel!)

However, as soon as I got home, Tom needed to run an errand, and I got to make one card while I moved clothes from the washer to the dryer.

Here is the card I made at a co-worker's request for a wedding she is attending soon. She likes cards that have movement of some type to them, so I decided to make a shaker card. I used a 12 x 5 1/2 piece of paper and scored it every 4 inches. I embossed the middle panel (that would end up being the front of the card) with the Love Language Cuttlebug embossing template. I punched a hole out with my scalloped square and stamped some doves from The Angel Company's retired Wedding Wishes set on acetate. I colored the doves with Souffle pens and filled the shaker section with wedding confetti that I picked up in Target's dollar spot last year. I ran a ribbon around the card and tied a heart shaped tag with "It's Your Day" stamped on it into the ribbon. Then I folded the left panel (with a piece of paper that matched the ribbon adhered to it) behind the center to cover the ribbon and foam for the shaker part of the card. I added some Stickles to the wings of the Doves to give them a little sparkle.

I'm hoping my co-worker will like it.

The American Club

This weekend my husband and I went away to Kohler, Wisconsin to spend the weekend at The American Club for his 40th birthday. He had been reading about The American Club somewhere years ago, and said that someday he wanted to go there. I tried to think of a bunch of things to do for his birthday, but finally settled on asking him what he wanted to do (how novel). Since we'd had this in the back of our minds for a while, we decided that Tom's birthday would be the perfect occasion, and away we went.



The American Club is supposed to be very cool in that it's right across from the Kohler factory and every bathroom in the hotel is different. While we would have loved to have had a room with it's own steam room/shower, that was a bit out of our price range, and we settled for an average room upgrade, which was actually it's own suite (sweet!) and had a HUGE whirlpool tub that I took full advantage of.





The hotel is very old and is set up so that all rooms look out over various courtyards filled with beautiful flowers and foliage.









It's also next door to the Kohler Waters Spa that boasts all the regular spa amenities, but also has some unique water treatments (that we didn't take part in) and various steam rooms, saunas, pools and hot tubs.

We spent yesterday checking out the Kohler Design Store that had every kind of kitchen sink, bathroom set up and water decoration imaginable, including the tub that is filled by water pouring from a hole in the ceiling. I just had to stick my hand under that spout, just like everyone else did! It was a lot of fun to see all the kinds of things that are out there for kitchens and bathrooms, even if most of them are things I probably will never have in my home (like the toilet that had a blue light under the rim and wafted warm air across your bum when you sat on the seat).

It was a really great trip and we had a lot of fun. It'll be a memorable birthday for Tom.

Card Candy

I know I've talked about Card Candy before, but I don't think I've ever posted any pictures. Card candy is something that Rita introduced to us at Diamond Island this summer and it's addicting. Basically, card candy is anything made from layering various punched out paper layers, some raised with pop-dots, accented with stamped and colored images and Stickles.

We used card candy as our make and take at the St. Charles Scrapbook Expo, and it was such a hit that we'll be using different designs for our make and take at the Rubber Stamp and Scrapbook Expo next weekend. We'll also have some stamp sets available at the Rubber Stamp and Scrapbook Expo that lend themselves really well to making Card Candy: Christmas Circles, Sweet Goodies, Christmas Minis, Wee Ones and Food Family & Friends. And if you buy and of these sets at the show, you have the choice of purchasing an add-on pack that comes with two bottles of Stickles, kits to make two different card candy images using the stamps, plus a photo for reference. There is a different add-on pack for each stamp set. Here is a sample of one of the card candies that will be available with the Christmas Circles add-on pack (it was one of our most popular from the last show).



Card candy can be used for all sorts of things, images on cards, embellishments on scrapbook pages, decorations on gift wrapped packages, or tags. Here's a card I made using our Angelee paper and the card candy principle.



Last weekend I went to Target and found some Mickey Mouse Ears silhouette punches in different sizes. I used them to make these card candies with magnets on the back for my sister to decorate her metal door with when she goes on her Disney cruise in a few weeks. They're a little blurry because my camera couldn't focus on the detail well enough, but my scanner was putting too much shadow around them because of the pop-dotted layers. Hopefully you get the idea.








Hopefully these will give you some ideas.

Spooktacular Cupcake Challenge

Well, take a deep breath....this is the first weekend that is basically free, smack in the middle of 8 busy ones. So I took advantage of the time to play today, before the next wave of weekends out of town breaks.

Earlier this week I had actually stamped and colored some images from TAC's Spooktacular stamp set that I ordered a couple of weeks ago. I made this card first with one of the images, teamed up with the Cuttlebug Spiderwebs folder that I got last weekend and some torn pieces of orange paper.



I still had a few other colored images left over, so I decided to use one for Taylor's weekly Cupcake Challenge. Still needing to play with my new Cuttlebug folders, I decided to use both Spiderwebs and Pumpkin Harvest on this one. I added them as textures to the background too.



This was before I went for my dentist appointment this morning. And when I came home, I got a wonderful surprise in the mail....the Trick or Sweet stamps I purchased from Taylored Expressions on Wednesday night arrived. So of course I had to break them out and ink them up too. Here's the card I made for the cupcake challenge using the Pirate Cupcake from Trick or Sweet, the skull and crossbones from The Angel Company's Playful Pirates set for the Jolly Roger and the Cuttlebug's Skeleton Scroll embossing plate. Drum roll please - this is the first time I've been able to use a cupcake stamp for Taylor's Cupcake Challenge since I started following it.



I thought it would be fun to give the card some extra dimension by curling the Jolly Roger up so it looked more like a real flag and stuck off the card a bit. You can see the detail of the dimension with this picture.



All of these cards were a lot of fun to make. I really enjoyed my day of play.

Diaper Wreath

O.K. I'll try to make my absence up to you. Here is one of the projects I worked on while I was gone. It's a diaper wreath for my friend Leah, who's having a baby in the next few weeks.

To make the wreath, you need a wreath base to wrap the diapers around, approximately 20 diapers (Size 2 - so that they won't be needed immediately and the wreath can be enjoyed for a little while), a package of small clear or white rubber bands for hair, curling ribbon and a few goodies such as bottles, teething rings, pacifiers, stuffed toys, etc. to embellish the wreath with.

For mine, I ended up using 16 Winnie The Pooh Huggies diapers, a wire wreath form from Michael's floral section, and Goody hair bands that came in a pack of 52.

Making the wreath itself, took approximately one hour and pretty much consisted of me taking the diapers right from the package and folding them around the wreath. When you take them out of the package, they're naturally rectangular in shape, so there's no need to spread them apart any further, they simply wrap around the wreath form with very little work. You hold the diaper ends together at the top (one should be on either side of the wreath) and slip a hair-band over them, to hold the diaper in place. Continue working your way around the wreath adding diapers and pushing them together snugly until the whole wreath form is well covered. Once the entire wreath is covered, take your curling ribbon and tie it around each diaper, covering the rubber bands. Then curl the ribbon with your scissors. Use some of the ribbon to tie the toys, bottles and teethers on in a few spots as well. And that's all there is to it.

I'm baaaack!

I'm sorry to have been ignoring my blog for so long. The St. Charles Scrapbook Expo wiped me out, and going right from that to a craft show two weeks later with a holiday weekend in between was maybe a little bit too much to have undertaken.

The St. Charles Scrapbook show was lots of fun. We got to interact with some current customers and meet new people as well. Our make and take of card candy went over VERY well. In fact, I heard from people days after the show ended telling me that they loved our booth and the energy and fun we were having, and we got lots of reports that our make and take was one of the best at the show. So, with that in mind, we'll be offering our now (apparently) famous card candy as the make and take at the Rubber Stamp and Scrapbook Expo the weekend of September 20th too. If you didn't see us at the Scrapbook Expo (or even if you did) come on out and visit us at the Rubber Stamp Expo. We've got a lot to offer.

My craft booth at the Mokena Farm and Barn festival was a lot of work for a little return, but it was still a beautiful day spent outdoors, with great entertainment, and lots of nice people. If I decide to do it again, I'll fore go the staying up every night until well past midnight and still getting up before 6:00 to go to work, and will just rely on whatever cards and other items I already have made.

And until I get a chance to scan more cards, I'll leave you with this quick and easy card I made using the Winchester paper collection, matching cardstock, and the Spring Dream stamp set.



You can look for new posts soon, but I think I may just sleep right through tomorrow :)