Last Two Valentines

Well, I guess since Valentine's Day is here, the time for valentine cards is quickly running out. Too bad, since I'm without a doubt a pink, hearts and flowers kind of girl. So I thought I'd get my last hurrah in in case some of you are still looking for ideas.

The first one is the one I made for my husband with the Jerrica stamp I got from Stamp Oasis when I worked our booth at the Rubber Stamp and Scrapbook Expo last fall. When I purchased her, I specifically had her in mind for his valentine's card, and this is the first time I've played with her. I did most of the coloring with my Copic markers, except for the skin, which I used my Skin Tone Pencils for. The paper is one of the Die Cuts With a View Mat Stacks, and I added a few brads that I picked up on sale at Michaels.



The second one is one that I sent to my sister for Valentines Day. It's made with paper from the same Die Cuts With a View Mat Stack, black paper, and graduating sized scalloped heart punches. The sentiment is from the retired Valentine Mice set. I got the inspiration for it from another blog when I was surfing last week.




Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

More Valentines

O.K. I've got some more valentines ready. The first one is another card made using the retired teddy bear set I used in my last post. The bear was again colored with Copic markers. The paper is left overs from some New Year's cards, and the larger panel was run through the Cuttlebug.



The next one is a fun card that started with a pre-made Die Cuts With a View Matchbook card. I ran some of our Lilly Anna solid cardstock through the Cuttlebug to get the raised hearts design in the background. The I used some Catelynne patterned paper to make the stripe on the side, and the heart in the center. The heart was attached to another panel of Die Cuts With a View solid paper edged with brown ink. The Xs and 0s were cut from a Cuttlebug die, and the edge was embellished with a brown Winchester ribbon.



My last card is my very favorite. I started with brown cardstock, punched the bottom with a Fiskars border punch (I think it's called Running Water). Then I punched out small hearts from our Lilly Anna solid cardstock using a Martha Steward punch and glued them over all the holes in the Fiskars border. I layered on strips of Mimi patterned paper. I ran a ribbon across the middle panel. Then I layered a Mimi patterned scalloped heart on top of a larger brown scalloped heart and attached it with foam tape. The finishing touch is the I Love You from our Trendy Greetings stamp set.



I hope you enjoyed my valentine eye candy.

Teddy Bear Valentine

I've been working on Valentine's Day cards this week for one of the ladys at work. She wants one to send to her Mom, one for her daughter and son-in-law, one for her son and daughter-in-law and two for her two young grandsons.

This is the one I made for one of the grandsons.

I used The Angel Company's retired Bear My Hugs set. I colored the bear with Copic markers, and matched it up with some Catelynne patterned paper and Lilly Anna solid blue on Red cardstock. I punched out some hearts to make an accent along the bottom instead of brads.

No Reservations

Tonight, after I finished my last post, I did some blog surfing. I read Debbie Rivers' Simply Inspired Blog where she talked about Yuki's "roadtrip" speech from Escape last week. It got me thinking....and I realized that, with respect to my crafting, I rarely have any reservations about my abilities. I look at things in that part of my life, and automatically assume I can do them. Some of them may be goals that take a long time, but I generally don't worry about how long it will take, or how my final projects will turn out. And most importantly, I think, I don't worry about whether I CAN do them. I just do. And the "just doing" of them without worrying , has lead to some wonderful success.

A perfect example of this would be Ranger's Melting Pot. At my first winter retreat with TAC in San Antonio, TAC hired Suze Weinberg from Ranger to come and show us how to use her Melting Pot. I was enchanted. I'd been eyeing it in our catalogue, but didn't know what it could do, and nobody I knew, knew what it did either. But I watched Suze, and then I went home and got one as a half price item from the catalogue. I'd barely had a chance to play with it when my upline, Pat, called to tell me that Michael's was opening a store three blocks from our houses and they were looking for instructors. She was going to be teaching papercrafting, but thought I might want to go and teach the Melting Pot. So, after only an hour or two of playing with my Melting Pot, I walked into Michael's, bold as you please, and told them I could teach classes on it. I came home, made up a poster-board of samples and took it in a few days later and suddenly I was a teacher. After a test run with the product, and an hour or more of observing Suze and reading her newsletter (she now has a blog), I was confident that I could teach it. No reservations. And I stayed at Michael's as an instructor until last spring when the organization decided that it was cutting out the classroom.

Today, I went to The Art House, a local frame shop that sells my cards for me, and picked up a scrapbook page that I asked them to frame. It just so happens to be of some very dear friends of mine at their wedding that I used as one of my samples for that original Michael's Melting Pot board. Check it out for yourself. (The Art House did an incredible job of finding a mat and frame that accent the scrapbook page perfectly!)




This whole idea of not worrying about what you can and can't do, and about what will or won't happen, fits perfectly with what Yuki talked about at our event. If you told her that she was going to leave her house for 2 months and drive 9,000 miles with all the trials and tribulations that happened on her trip, she'd never have pulled out of the driveway. But then she would not have seen the United States from coast to coast and visited places she'd never seen before and had so much fun. If you look at your various journeys, crafting or otherwise, and are concerned about what might happen, or what might not, you might be keeping yourself from doing something incredible! So I say (just like Nike did several years ago) "just do it" and see how high you can fly.

Another Awesome Trip to San Antonio!

Well I'm back from another awesome trip to San Antonio, Texas for the Angel Company's winter retreat. Several girls from the SASSY team I'm on made the trip, and we had a wonderful time, as always. Get a group of SASSYs together and you're bound to have fun.

The whole thing kicked off with the Club MED (Managers, Executives, Directors) dinner. We started with a huge piece of chocolate fudgy wudgy cake, because sometimes you just gotta break the rules. We also got big purple bling rings to wear all weekend.



The next day, we received a copy of the new magalogue. (Well, O.K., Club MED got a sneak preview, but we had to give it back). The Angel Company is returning to a yearly catalogue, which will be supplemented with a magalogue - combination magazine and catalogue. The magalogue has new stamp sets, embellishment ideas, samples on how to put a final polish on your creations, and even some technique tips. There are 44 new stamps in this magalogue, including new hostess sets. I think it serves a wide variety of tastes too. There are some cutesie stamps, collage stamps, elegant stamps, border stamps, retro stamps....something for everyone. I'm really excited about it. I've got a $300 wish list going for myself already.



We also had a couple of great speakers (my very own stamp-mom included) that shared with us their success stories, including how they manage their teams, and some of their party/class ideas.

We had some time to wander and enjoy the city too before going off to our own classes where we learned how to make some new projects.

Here are some of the general pictures I have from the trip:

On the bridge over the Riverwalk.



At the entrance to La Vallita, the craft market.



At the Scent-Chips factory and store.



Contemplating a Texas-sized sundae.



Then my camera ran out of batteries, and I brought the wrong charger. So I'll have to rely on the kindness of other angels to help me complete my scrapbook. But my SASSY sisters will come through. They always do :)

Same Card But Updated

Last year I went completely overboard with my Christmas cards. I'm not sure what I was thinking, but I must have originally been planning to send cards to an army. I made a ton of the same card. 75 of them went out in the mail to friends and relatives as intended, but that still left oodles of them in my craft room. To solve that problem, I thought I'd use them as trades at The Angel Company's Escape retreat in January. But I still came home with more than 50 of them. Were they multiplying in the dark or what?



The original card was made using Ranger's Cut n Dry Foam Pad. I put all of my snowflakes from the retired Snowflakes set on one large acrylic block and stamped it on the Cut n Dry Foam Pad. Then I added several colors of purple re-inkers. That custom pad lasted me for all of the cards I made! So that was the background. Then I used the snowman from the now retired Fun Filled Holidays set and colored him with Aquacolor Crayons and my water brush. The stars and his nose were colored with Prismacolor Pencils. Super simple! And away they went (except for the ones that stayed and bothered me because they seemed to have been wasted).

This year, with the craft show coming up, and the folks at the Art House offering to sell cards for me again, I needed to come up with a bunch of cards. So I looked at the old snowmen cards and tried to figure out how to update them into something different, but without adding too much additional work.

What I ended up doing, was cutting the front panel off all of the original cards, cutting them down by 1/4" on the top and bottom, and cutting the corners out with a corner punch. Then I added a few Crystal Stickles, and voi la! The same card but different. No waste, and I'm a happy girl.

Crafty Card Holder

What a weekend. Saturday I spent my day at the Shepard Craft show. Unfortunately, that was a bust. Not that I didn't expect it. In this economy, people are not necessarily purchasing the crafted items already made, they're wanting to make them themselves. I totally understand that. So, here's a little something that you can make yourself. It's a Christmas card holder. I want to say that I saw the concept on the Carol Duvall Show a few years ago, but I may be wrong.



I made mine with foam board, 4 pages of 12 x 12 scrpabook paper in two different patterns, adhesive, a ruler, a heated Exacto knife (using my Walnut Hollows Hot Marks Tool), but any box cutter or sharp straight blade will do, and 24 star-shaped brads.

First you want to cut two triangles from your foam board. The bottom edge will be 12 inches and the sides will be 13.5 inches.

Then you'll want to position and glue your paper onto them.

Once the adhesive is dry, you want to cut a 1/4"-wide slit from the top to approximately the 1/3rd point one one piece, and from the bottom to approximately 2/3rds up on the second. If you were to hold these up next to each other, the slits should meet.



Next, you want to make small cuts every 2 inches where the cards will go. These should alternate on each piece so that the cards don't bump into each other. For example, on one of the pieces, you want to start your slits 1 inch from the top, and make them every 2 inches, and on the other, you want to start 2 inches from the top and make them every 2 inches.



Now you're ready to assemble the tree. Simply line up each of the slits so that the tree becomes dimensional.




The final touch is to add the star brads between each of the card slits.



Now you're ready for the cards.