A Great Time To Sign Up To Be An Angel

The Angel Company recently announced a sign-up special for those of you that may have an interest in signing up to be an Angel Company demonstrator.

Most of my customers know that I signed up simply to get 25% back in commission on purchases I made for myself. It supports my passion. The minimum sales requirement is $100 every FOUR months, which can be purchases of $25 each month, or one $100 order towards the end of each four month period, or any combination. That made it a perfect fit for me and left me able to purchase my basic supplies at a discount and have money left over for some of the other toys I just had to have, like my Copic markers and my Cricuit.

For the current promotion, The Angel Company is also offering a choose your own add-on kit on top of the usual stamps, paper, and markers you are able to choose for your starter kit. Angels signing up before 5:00 Central Time on August 11th can choose one of the following to be added to their kits:

Option 1 - Simply Stamps

Choose an additional $50 worth of T-Codes stamps from the Fall/Winter 2008 Inspiration Book

Option 2 - Kit and Kaboodle

Receive one of each of the paper kits from the catalogue. Kit contains (1) Sydney Circle Album Kit, (1) Woodrowe Keepsake Album Kit, (1) Natalee Accordion Album Kit, (1) Pemberly Bay Matchbook Kit and (1) Rockin' Roxie Matchbook Kit

Option 3 - Gung Ho!

Go Gung Ho! and choose:

One (1) 19.95 T-coded stamp set from the Fall/Winter 2008 Inspiration Book
One (1) 15.95 T-coded stamp set from the Fall/Winter 2008 Inspiration Book, and
Three (3) $6.95 TAC Soar With It Paper Collections

For more information, leave a comment in the comments section with your e-mail address, or send me an e-mail at mmtm89@yahoo.com. The benefits are great!

FINALLY! Some Stamped Images From Clear Stamps I Can Live With

I've never really gotten on board with clear stamps. I purchased some a while back ago and didn't really care for them. They were sticky, slimy, smelled funny, feel flimsy and ripable, didn't give particularly crisp images, and yellowed and became brittle in a short period of time.

I guess I've been spoiled by my Angel Company stamps because they're real rubber, and so give better, sharper and more detailed images; unmounted so I don't have to store and work around a wood block; I can cut them close so that I have no problem lining up an image or restamping something where I missed part; and I truly haven't found any clear stamps that cost less. I've been paying approximately the same, and sometimes even less for an unmounted rubber stamp that has better definition and in my opinion the same "pros" as a clear acrylic stamp.

But I've been reading Taylor's blog and seeing all her cute cupcake images that were made from clear stamps, so I thought I'd give them another try. I purchased two sets of cupcake stamps and one set of music themed stamps, and then felt like I threw my money away because the ink just wasn't sticking to them. I'd put stamp to ink pad and see near to no ink on the stamp. I'd MASH the stamp into the ink pad and get ink all over the edges of the acrylic block, and finally got some results, but then it was almost as if the ink were puddling up on the stamp and splattering on my paper and looked awful! I read the care for the stamps on the back of the package and searched the internet to see if I could find something about fixing the problem and came up empty. So now I've had these acrylic stamps in my collection for a few months and not been able to use them. Talk about disappointment! Craft-wise, there are few things worse than getting excited about some new supplies and then getting poor results.

I was finally at the point where I was going to put out a plea for help on my blog to see if I could get some advice back in the comments, when my friend Dawnmarie came to my rescue. We were at our DIA gathering and I was complaining about how I couldn't use these stamps when she told me that new acrylic stamps come with a coating on them and I needed to scrub the coating off before I could get the ink to adhere properly. She recommended cleaning them with the Staz On cleaner, scrubbing them really well, and then immediately washing them with soap and water and rinsing thoroughly. I didn't have any Staz On cleaner (or at least I'm not finding it) but I did find a stamp cleaner that had one of those spongy scrubbing caps and I scrubbed some of that on and then used a soft bristle toothbrush to wash them again with the soap and water and FINALLY I can get a decent image from my stamps.

NOW I can stamp cupcakes, after months of drooling over other people's cards with the cute images on them! And hopefully, this post will help some others that may have been having the same problem. I'm sure I'll always like my unmounted rubber stamps better, but at least now I have options, and can use the clear stamps with the images I wanted so badly.

Mojo Monday Turned On It's Ear

Now that I'm back in town, I got a chance to work on Julee's Mojo Monday Sketch #47. The original sketch can be seen here.

I didn't have any stamps that would fit the oval if I created the card vertically though, so I turned the sketch on it's side, and this is what I came up with.



The paper is more from the Angelee collection, and the stamp set is Seeds of Blessing. I colored the image with Prismacolor Pencils and accented the wings with Crystal Stickles. The inner oval of the stamp is colored with beige colored pencil, but is difficult to see in the scan.

Diamond Island Angels 2008 Project 1

O.K. I promised some projects from my DIA trip, and here is the first one. This was a special date book that Dawnmarie put together for us. The paper is The Angel Company's new Angelee paper collection. A collection you'll probably see a lot of on my blog in the coming weeks because Angelee is the paper collection I've chosen for my board for the upcoming St. Charles Expo.

This book is made with an accordion pleat in the center holding pink library pockets. To make the accordion pleat, you take a piece of 12 inch x whatever height your covers will be (slightly larger than the library pockets you choose). Score the entire 12 inch length of the paper every 7/8 inch and accordion fold. When you're finished, you should have 6 mountain folds when the end flaps are facing up. Then you would attach the end flaps to a piece of covered chipboard, covering the flaps and ribbon to tie the book closed, with a piece of cardstock. Adhere the library pockets back to back on each mountain fold so that you have a pocket for each month. Print the date/occasion cards on the computer, place them inside the pockets and embellish.

I embellished the front of my book with the Flourish Bet Level D Hostess Set from the current catalogue and some of the tags from the Angelee collection, stamped with a flower from Spring Dream.



The inside pages are decorated with the Swirly Gigs stamp, colored in with the Stardust Glittering Gel pens, and the Date Disks and Mini Occasions stamp sets.





I'm hoping that this little date book will help me stay organized when it comes to the cards I should be sending out every month.

Our plan was to have everyone from the cottage that has a blog, post their projects at the same time so you can see different versions of the same project. So check out the following blogs (and hopefully everyone's on board).

Rita: http://ritasangels.blogspot.com/
Dawnmarie: http://monkeybusinesswithdawnmarie.blogspot.com/

Back from my D.I.A. trip

Well, I'm back from my trip with the DIA. We had an awesome time being together, bonding, and inspiring each other with projects and ideas. Rita taught us all to make card candy and it's addicting! Best of all, since it's for embellishing cards and scrapbook pages, it doesn't increase your wasitline. Although we had plenty of wonderful meals that did that too.

I've come home with 8 different projects and will begin posting those in a little while. But for right now, I'd like to thank Debbie, Rita, Pat, Heidi, Dawnmarie and Teri for an awesome trip. You ladies are the best!

Summer in the City Inspires Me

Usually I keep my blog to quick stories and crafting items. I'm not the one that has the inspiring quotes and observations; that's my friend Debbie who can see inspiration in the smallest places. But today I was uplifted by something small on my way home from work. Tom and I are riding our bikes about a mile to the train and then walking three miles from the train station to work on nice days in an effort to get some exercise and save some gas. I actually really like the opportunity to ride and walk each day, even though we loose about an hour of time we normally would have had if we just drove 20 minutes to the the train that drops me off in the building I work in.

I work in downtown Chicago, and walking in the city is something of a challenge sometimes. You get caught up in the rush of a throng of people trying to get from here to there in a hurry. Like me, if they miss the train, they're loosing time they could have spent with family and other activities at home. But today I paused on my way from my office to the train for something unexpected and special. Stopped at a stop light on Michigan Avenue was a fire truck, and the fireman in the passengers seat of the truck must have been in a great mood (or just inspired by the moment) because he turned on the PA system and sang! Anyone who was in the vicinity of the stop light got serenaded with Summer in the City. He didn't have the best voice in the world, and the intercom kept crackling in and out, but I stopped and listened and then joined a handful of others who applauded him for trying to brighten up a stranger's day. Then I continued on my way to the train with a spring in my step in the 90 degree heat. Funny how something so little can have such a big impact.

Window Punch Tip

I figured out something amazing! O.K., well maybe not amazing, and really not even something new. It would be more appropriate to say I remembered an old tip and was able to apply it today. It always just *seems* amazing when you suddenly remember something you learned a long time ago, but haven't put into practice in a while. And I was able to combine it with another tip I learned from my friend Rita when we went to Ohio a few months ago.

So, here's the set up. Last night I had to give up some plans, but was then freed up to drop by for drinks for a friend's birthday. Since it was impromptu that I was going, I hadn't made a card and needed one. For the card I decided to make, I wanted to use my EK Success window punch. Unfortunately, the punch was just a tiny bit smaller than the words I wanted to use, so part of the H and they Y in Happy Birthday got cut off, along with the exclamation point at the end. I was pressed for time and I knew the person I was making the card for wouldn't care, so I'm ashamed to say that I went with what I had and didn't spend the time to try to figure out how to correct the problem. So of course, that would be on my mind this morning. It bothered me that the words were cut off.







This morning I remembered the tip that if you fold your paper in half and place it inside the punch so that the folded edge doesn't go to the end, you can make a shaped tag.





I applied this principal to my window punch. When I just folded the edge though, it wasn't clean enough to be unnoticeable under the stamped words. So I scored my paper with the Scor-Pal and folded it.





Then I punched it out with the window punch.



To make the scored line less noticeable, I used Rita's tip to turn the paper over and score the opposite side on the same line with the Scor Pal, which would help remove the original score.



Then I burnished the score line with the bone folder.



The original score line isn't completely gone, but it's much less noticeable, and now I have a larger window strip from my punch that fit the whole phrase perfectly!