The Angel Company's Fond Farewells

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Well, it's that time of year again, only the time has changed. Now that The Angel Company is issuing two catalogues a year, we also get two retirement lists. Stamp sets on this list will be honored with retirement on December 31, 2007.

Some of the stamps on this list were favorites of mine that I turned to again and again to help me with my creative process. I will truly miss Retail Therapy, my standby for creating invitations inviting the girls for a day of shopping and camaraderie or for making the Black Friday coffee holders my sister and I use the day after Thanksgiving. And I don't know what I'm going to do without Luscious Leaves, my staple for festive fall cards and scrapbook pages. For me, these stamp sets leave my main stash in favor of new and exciting images from our upcoming catalogue, but that doesn't mean their usefulness ends for you. If any of the stamps on this list are ones you've been eyeing, but haven't gotten around to purchasing for your collection, they'll be available for just a little while more. So order yours today, and then get ready for the new idea book and catalogue to be issued January 1st.

Fabulous Fall

Yes, I'm one of those people that loves fall. I love the cool temperatures, I love the colors of the leaves, and the general feeling in the air. I love back to school time, and Thanksgiving. It's just one of those seasons that I really enjoy.

Last weekend I had a Taste of Home Entertaining party with a chocolate theme. The girls came over and we checked out a bunch of cooking and entertaining products and had a LOT of chocolate. But being a rubber stamper, I couldn't resist the opportunity to use my stamps and papers to gussy up the table a bit. The place cards shown above told all the guests what kinds of food we had to go with our chocolate and were super simple to make. I folded pieces of green and brown 4 1/4" x 8 1/4" paper in half, cut pieces of 4" x 4" white paper and stamped leaves and pumpkins from our Mini Sampler set in one corner with black ink. The rest was coloring the leaves and pumpkins with watercolor pencils, blending quickly with a water brush and adding lines and hatch marks around the remaining edges with a black pen and a ruler. Then I just stuck the white paper to the colored folded pieces with double-sided tape. In some instances I tented them on the table next to the food, and for others I taped the folds shut over a wooden skewer that got stuck into the food. And voila! everyone knew what they were eating and had a nice table to look at. The whole process took about 30 minutes for 10 place cards. This idea could easily be converted to place settings for people at Thanksgiving, or name tags at a fall gathering or party.

Behavin' Like Five Year Olds

My husband and I are just back from our vacation. We went with my sister, brother-in-law and niece on a Disney Cruise. Disney excels at entertainment and kids, so it was no surprise that they would do a cruise well. We had an awesome time, and I would recommend a Disney Cruise to anyone that likes Disney or is traveling with kids. Since they know how to entertain kids, we only saw my niece when we went and pulled her out of Kids Club because we wanted to spend time with her. Most mornings we did breakfast, visited with characters and took pictures and then she went off to Kids Club and most of the time we didn't see her again until dinner. In fact, when we wanted to take her on excursions at our ports-of-call we had to tell her that Kids Club was closed so that kids could go ashore with the adults, otherwise she didn't want to come with us.

On our excursion in St. Thomas, we went on a snorkel trip. We took a catamaran to a shallow shipwreck about an hour from the port. We snorkeled around and were then plied with free rum punch all the way back. Most of my family (except the five year old) were pretty tipsy by the time we got to shore, and my sister was farther along than that. In order to keep my niece from noticing that my sister was a little drunker than may have been prudent, we asked for her help in finding our shoes when we got off the boat and gave her several other little chores for the three-block walk back to the boat. Then, my husband put my niece "in charge". That poor child didn't know what to do with a bunch of misbehaving adults so she he relied on the only reference she had - pre-school. She started cracking the whip, ordering everyone to get in line and follow her and tried to keep general order. The guys, decided this would be the perfect time to get a little revenge for times when she didn't listen, so they started wandering off, telling her that they were tired and wanted to be carried and dropping the bags they were holding proclaiming them "too heavy" and generally having a great time. We all laughed all the way back to the boat....well all the adults did. My niece was nothing but frustrated, telling my husband and brother-in-law that only Mommy and Auntie Meri were getting candy and "you boys can't have any, because YOU DON'T LISTEN". In fact, my husband says that was one of his favorite parts of the trip. Who'd have thought that behaving like a five year old would be so much fun?

Oh, happy day!!!!!

Wow! I recently found out that a card I sent to Rubber Stamper Magazine (RSM) has been published in the September/October 2007 issue. It's the green card using TAC's Kallioppe set.

At one of the Stamp With Me Nights I offer to friends and customers, we decided to play with crayon backgrounds. We had a lot of fun creating backgrounds using various colors of crayon; and when one of the webgroups I'm part of mentioned that Rubber Stamper had a call for backgrounds made without using ink, I thought these would be perfect. So I sent 5 cards to RSM in March and promptly forgot about them. Imagine my surprise when I got a free issue in the mail letting me know I was published!

If you'd like to make your own crayon backgrounds, here are the directions (which are included in the magazine article, but are far to small to be readable in the scan):

Take a regular household iron and cover it with aluminum foil. Tape the aluminum foil to the top part of the iron. Turn the iron on and wait for it to heat up. Cover a heat resistant work surface with additional aluminum foil, newspaper or paper towels (so that you don't melt crayon onto it) and place a piece of glossy paper onto the work surface. When the iron is hot, choose two or three different coordinating colors of crayon and scribble all over the aluminum foil on the iron. Then quickly swipe or pounce the iron across the glossy paper. Several layers can be added to cover the original if you aren't happy with it, but be careful about your color choices, because too much melting and blending will muddy your color.

Princess Purse

I am getting ready to go on a Disney cruise with my husband, sister, brother-in-law and 5 year old niece. I can't wait, since she's so much fun to be with, especially when we go to the Magic Kingdom.

This time, since I have my Memory Purse, I decided to make it up using a picture of when my niece first met her favorite princess, Belle. As you can tell, she was star struck to be meeting Belle in person. We'll see if Belle will be flattered by the purse when she sees it in person.

Sneek Peek..... and my new fav. paper

I've been working on cards and scrapbook pages to display at the Tinley Park Rubber Stamp and Scrapbook Expo next weekend, and I've found my new favorite paper (for the moment). Here's a peek at some of the samples that I'll display on my board.

This paper seemed very natural to me. Every single card, scrapbook page and tag I made was something I loved. None of those "filler" creations that you sometimes use just because you need to have a certain number.

Besides turning out beautiful and coordinated projects, this paper has a masculine feel. I got some of the best cards to give to husbands, fathers, sons and other men from this paper. Cards for men are sometimes very difficult for me, but not this time around. I'm so happy!

If you're in the Chicago area and want to check out more Winchester samples I made, and meet some angels from The Angel Company, stop by the Expo and visit. For information on the show click here http://www.rubberstampexpo.com/ilinfo.html

Another find from the St. Charles Expo

Here's another thing that I had to spend my money at the St. Charles Scrapbook Expo. I picked up the pre-finished mat up from one of the vendors at the show. (If I can find my receipt, I'll let you know what vendor that was, but it's missing in action now - probably hiding from my husband).

All I needed to do was add a 5 x 7 picture of Tom and his guitar and a background I created from taking a photo of the pattern on his other guitar. I picked up a 12 x 12 scrapbook frame from Michael's and it's ready to go on the wall. I just need to get Tom to pick a spot (which probably means it will sit on the bookshelf until after Christmas. How do you motivate a man to do something again????)