Here is another card I am working on. It is a mock up of a design I am thinking of using for one of my convention swaps. The "Thinking About U" set has been around for a while with SU, but they retired so many sets it's one of the few I have that I can use for swaps. I'm not sure about the blue behind the U. I may change that to more Bravo Burgundy CS. What do you think. I'm not sure about the "kiss" technique I used on the U either. It is done with Old Olive craft ink and then embossed with clear embossing powder. It's very time consuming doing the "kissing"! I think I will try it just using the U stamp and still embossing to see what it looks like.

A Card Going Around the US

This looks like a very simple and sparse card, but that is the purpose of it. This is my base card for and "Around the World" challenge. (Actually the card will only go about 7 or 8 places around the US, but we're not getting picky with the name.) At each stop along the way an embellishment will be added. Finally it will be returned to me and we will see what we get. This should be fun!

Denver Here I Come!

The stress of waiting for SU convention sign up and the aggravation of fighting my way through the computerized registration process are over and I'm going to my first SU Convention. I am so excited I can barely stand it. 4 days of time spent with other people who love stamping. I can't wait. I have very few friends here that I can share this passion with. My sharing is pretty much all done over the internet, which is fun, but I do wish I had people around me to have fun with too. At convention I will! So now I get to work on swaps and plan my yard sale to raise money for the trip. I have till July 24 to dream about it and what I hope to learn and who I hope to meet. (names from SCS will have faces!) It's interesting that the theme for Convention this year is "Dream With Us" As I get some swaps done I will post them here. I just had to share my excitement.

Its Fixed!

All is happy and the page posted below is now in my SCS Gallery. Seems it was a file name glitch causing it to get kicked out. So the recommendation was to simply change the name and voila it stuck. I haven't had time to do any crafting this week yet. Hopefully some time will become available tomorrow. I need to begin work on some quilted items for the Strawberry Festival at the Sandy Spring Museum. They have a lovely gift shop there where I have some items. The Strawberry Festival is a big event and draws a lot of people and so they are asking for more items for the shop.

I Don't Understand

Here is the controversial scrapbook layout that SCS for some reason doesn't want in their gallery. The moderators approve it and then for some reason they remove it. It's happened twice now. I have no clue why. If anyone views this and has any idea what might be objectionable about it PLEASE post a comment and let me know. I don't want to offend, but can't avoid it if I am clueless as to what I am doing wrong.

This page is from the scrapbook on our families Christmas Cruise in 2005. One of our port stops was in Ohco Rios, Jamaica. And while there my mother, Sister-in-law and I toured the Wassi Art Studio. These are pictures from there and a few of their artists at work. If you ever get to Jamaica I highly recommend visiting the studio and its attached store. The pottery is beautiful.

National Scrapbooking Day!

Today is National Scrapbooking Day in the US. In honor of that day I have taken part in an Internet Day of scrapbooking through Splitcoast Stampers. My flybaby group there. I have uploaded most of the pages I have done today there, but have a few extras that I did that are not part of that challenge a nd so I will show them here. These are pages that are going into the album that I am making about our family Christmas Cruise to the Caribbean in December 2005. Yes I know that I am slow, but I am getting it completed. IT was a 5 day cruise and I am up to day four. I am really enjoying working on this album as it is bring back a lot of fun memories. I really wish we could do this together as a family again, but am afraid it was probably it was a one time event. Unless I want to go back to work full time and make a big salary to pay for it. But if I did that I probably would be so stressed and depressed that I wouldn't want to do it anyway, so I guess for themoment I will be happy scrapping and remembering.

The LIST!

Well the long awaited list of retiring stamp sets is out. It in nice that Stampin'Up gives us lists sorted by item number and by name alphabetically. Check them out Retired List.
Its a long in fact a very long list. Right now I am glad most of my stamping income is made from sales of cards and gift items and not from workshop sales. After checking the list against my list of stamp sets I only have 16 active sets left! OUCH, that hurts. Fortunately I can still use all my sets to make items to sell. I am also thinking of holding a stamping retirement sale or yard sale to sell some of the sets I don't use to make things. We'll see.

I've Been TAGGED!

So Susan has tagged me and now I need to tell a little about my self. Seven facts about me and then tag seven other people. The seven facts will be easy, I think. The seven people may take more time. I'm not sure I know seven bloggers and I can't count Susan since she tagged me.
So here are the seven facts:

1. I absolutely love crafts of all types, but especially quilting, stamping, scrapping and knitting. If I could figure out a way to make a living doing crafts and not have to have a "day" job I would be a VERY happy person. (Heck I'd like to figure out simply how to support my craft addiction, forget about the living part!)
2. I love my Lord and the wonder of sharing my faith journey with a group of 10 other wonderful women on Monday morning's at our church.
3. I love to cook and especially to bake. This certainly doesn't help in the weight department around our house as there are no longer any growing kids around to eat the goodies. So I seek out opportunities to cook for other groups. Currently two groups at church. (I'm make them fat rather than myself. LOL)
4. My DH and I have lived in the metropolitan Washington DC area for over 30 years now and I am ready to move on to a calmer quieter area of the country.
   
5. I love my little robotic vacuum cleaner "Robbie". He gives me more time to craft and spend on the computer since I don't have to vacuum the floors anymore. (a side benefit is I do have to keep the floors free of clutter so he can do his magic!)
6. I very much enjoy teaching those who want to learn. Not so good at teaching kids or adults who don't want to learn, but are told by others they must learn something they don't want to.
   
7. I love to travel and would love to see the whole world. I've done pretty good seeing the US. I think there are only 7 states (including Alaska and Hawaii) I have not been to at least once and many of them I have been to multiple times.

So there are my seven facts. I hope if anyone reads them they find them of interest. I will come back at a latter time with my seven people as I really must get about my daily activities which include a haircut and final preparations for the weekend boutique. Ta-ta!

Not just tiles!

Besides the tiles I have stamped and colored I also have done these wooden blocks. These are really fun to work with and very inexpensive to make. I purchased the blocks from Oriental Trading Co. They come in a package of three. I really like the distressed look.

The blocks work well with stamping and coloring or with decorating with papers and embellishments. As with the tiles when I stamp an image on these I use Stazon and color in eith my markers. When using papers I run the size paper I need through my Xyron and then adhere it to the front of the block. The stamped and colored blocks I do spray with a sealer. Because of the rustic look I use a matte spray. I think and added shine of a glossy sealer would take away from the rustic flavor.

I really like the way these turned out. I hope visitors to our craft boutique do as well.

Stamping on Tiles

Well, I continue to work on items that will be for sale in our Quilt Show boutique next weekend. I have been working on various designs for decorative tiles. This is one I have done. The tiles I use are not ceramic tiles as they have a coating that makes them very slippery to stamp on. These are a rougher unfinished tile which has a lot of texture to it. I have made about 14 of these with various stamped designs. I stamp the basic image using Stazon ink because of the shine on this tile, which is caused by coating the like with Utee Ultra Thick Embossing powder, you can't see that I have attached a small button on the heart. The stamped image had a button here and so for a three dimensional effect I glued on a small button after everything was sealed. I not only seal the inks with the Utee powder but then spray the tile with and acrylic sealer.

A number of people make these tiles to use as coasters. I don't like them for that purpose as I don't think they would absorb the water because of the sealant used. If you didn't use the sealent I would be afraid the markers would run when they got wet. So I place these in an easel mount for a decorative accent in your home.

I purchased the tiles I use for the pardware store. I think they are Italian tiles.

Jr Leagal Pad Project

This is a sample of a line of gift items I am making for the quilt show boutique. I is a covered junior size legal pad. They are really fun to design and easy to make. This particular one uses handmade paper that has stitching on is. I thought that appropriate for a quilt show. I also used prima type flowers as embellishments. In order to make the cover stiff enough it is actually two layers of card stock. This way I can make my stamped and embellished cover and then essentially line it with a inner layer of cardstock that covers all the ribbon ends or brad and eyelet pieces. I use my Xyron machine to apply adhesive to the entire sheet of liner cardstock so everything is well attached and secure.

I'm back!

Okay it's time to kick my butt and get it in gear. I can't believe its been well over a month since I posted hear. I have been working on some projects both stamping and quilting. It is the time of year once again where I am preparing for our annual quilt guild show. I didn't get anything done on time to enter in the show itself this year, but I will have plenty of items for sale once again in the guild boutique. My goal this year to to make enough to go a good way to paying for my trip to Denver in July for the Stampin'Up convention. That is quite an ambitious goal but, well we'll see how it turns out. For anyone who should happen to stumble across this Blog of mine and live anywhere near the Washington DC area come and see me at the show. Here is a link to information on the show. Friendship Star Quilt Show . In my next post I will show one of the projects I have been working on for the boutique.

Well I did do quite a bit of stamping today. It had been awhile and so it felt really good to get the creative juices running again. Unfortunately I don't have any to share as I didn't scan any of them and they are all being sent off to family members who have requested cards. For the fist time I used prima flowers. I think that is the correct name for them. They were sent me as a RAK. I really like them and would like to some time get more and continue to use them. I am noticing that I am beginning to use many more embellishments on my cards. I guess they provide even more opportunities to be creative.

Busy Time of Year Starting

My sister-in-law's and son's birthdays tomorrow mark the start of the busy birthday season in our family. Feb through May host the vast majority of our family birthdays so I am needing to get serious about birthday card making. The cards for tomorrows celebrations were mailed earlier in the week and her is one of my newer cards. I used a new stamp set, Doodle This, which will appear in the Stampin' Up Spring Mini Catalog which comes out in March. I never thought I would say this, but I love the Doodling stamps. I've rediscovered coloring only this time around rather than using crayons I use various watercolor media, markers and pastels. They all give different looks and are much easier to use than I thought they would be.

I also have decided to get more serious about selling my cards and other crafts. I really want to go to Denver in July for the Stampin' Up convention and so need to raise about $750 between now and the end of July. I'm not very good at marketing or asking people if they would like to buy my crafts but I do have the FSQ Quilt Show boutique in April and I need to get more items sewn for the gift shop at the Sandy Spring museum. Maybe now that I have a goal I will get more serious about it.

This week is that wonderful week for love. Valentine's Day is Wednesday. Here is just a sampling of some of the cards I've made for family and friends. The pink one was especially fun as I tried a new technique. The "Love" and the heart are stamped with "craft" ink (pigment ink) on a melted crayon background. to make this background I had to cover the sole plate of my iron with aluminum foil. When it was heated I rubbed crayons onto the foil. They immediately melted and then I pressed the iron onto plain white cardstock. It was a bit messy and you need to be careful to not end up with muddy colors, but it was fun. One warning though don't use a box of crayons that you ever plan to color with again!

Card for Challenge and an Anniversary

Well I am certainly late in posting this! I actually made it for a challenge given by Daring Cardmakers from the end of January. The challenge was to use metal on your card. I decided it was time to break into my hodge podge hardware that I have been hoarding for a year now. (I think I'm afraid to use it cause I love it and then it will be gone: I know silly me!) Anyway I used a buckle and two brads on the designing of this card. I'm pleased how it came out. Now I need to come up with more ways to use this wonderful hardware kit. It's not doing anyone any good or giving anyone any joy sitting on the self in its nice tin box.

Since I gave recognition to my sons wonderful wood burning on my Christmas present bookshelf I also thought I would give recognition to the present he made for his dad. It is of Delicate Arch in Arches National Park outside of Moab, UT. This is a spot we have vacationed in three times now, so I guess you could call it a family favorite. On our first trip out there in 1995 several family members walked out to the Arch after dark during a full moon. This wood burned picture depicts that view.

Here are two of my recent non card stamping projects. They are both easy to do and fun. They make great gift items and I will probably make some to sell at our quilt show boutique and other craft events.

The "Notes" and "To Do" boards are actually metal picture holders that I found at Target. They were very inexpensive, but also very plain. I decoupaged card stock and designer paper onto the metal. Then stamped on the card stock, places a strip of ribbon over the seam and then decoupaged over it all. The flowers on the "To Do" holder are real dried flowers. I decoupaged over them as well. The magnets on the boards are shown close up in the first picture. They are glass discs that are flat on one side and rounded on the other. These I purchased at a $ store. I stamped a design on the flat end using stazon ink. Then painted them using metalic acrylic paints. You could also use pearl-ex mixed in lumiere. Finally I coated over the whole back side of the disc with a white acrylic paint and attached a magnetic disc. Voila, another nice little gift item.

A birthday card for a welcome change!

Finally, a card other than a sympathy card! Made this for and mailed to my brother for his birthday. I find myself using the SU watercolor paper a lot! I love it and with the stamped images and either watercolor crayons or pencils it almost looks as it I can really draw and paint. Ha! Fooled you! Now artistic talent of that sort here.

More sympathy cards

Yet again more sympathy cards. It seems that these are the only type of card that I have made this year. These were made for the family of my husband's Aunt. That's three family members to die this year and one family friend. I think it is now time to move on to joyful family events, right? I guess all these funerals also are hard because they are a sign of my aging. Not many like to face that prospect even though we all know intellectually that it is inevitable unless you are the one sympathy cards are being made for. When you look at it that way I guess getting older is not so bad after all.

On a Happier Note

This is a very special Christmas present made for me by my son. It is a bookcase being used by me to hold DVD's in our family room. He made it extra special by wood burning quilt blocks along each side. And I didn't even know he knew how to do wood burning. Such talent! Do I sound like a bragging mom? Oh well to bad cause that's exactly what I am! Thanks Nate! Now the whole world can see your talent if they want too! Love ya!

By the way the blocks he chose were designed by Carol Doak and are from her book 40 Bights & Bold Paper Pieced blocks. A favorite book of mine. Now maybe I should make a quilt to go with the bookshelf.

Sympathy Cards

Well I did finally get back to making some cards. Unfortunately they are all sympathy cards for family members. I just sat down with my sympathy stamps and a couple of my favorite stamp sets and began working. I wanted them each to be different in case the various family members should happen to see each others. Once again though it was a sad process it gave me time to reflect over the time I spent with my Aunt (she is the one who died) so that was a good thing.

Yeah I finally actually got something finished. I made these Christmas ornaments for each family member that we will be spending Christmas with this year. I had fun once again combining my two loves; quilting and stamping!
The tree pattern is a design by Carol Doak. It is paper piecing which is a block piecing technique which I really enjoy for its ease and precision. Rather than stuffing the ornament I choose to do it like I do my fabric postcards using a stiff fusible interfacing. I stamped the back with year and a sentiment and decorated the front with Swarovski crystals and metallic thread. The edges are overcast with a heavy thread and then I hot glued the star on top with a gold cord hanger. The only problem is I forgot to make myself one!

Nothing to upload!

It's been awhile since I have been here. My lap top was not a happy camper and so it was hard to do anything on it for some time. Now I am happy to say I have a new lap top and am back in business. However as it is now the Christmas season I have no time to do much of anything. Plus I have been busy helping a friend whose first floor condo was water soaked when sprinklers went off in the condo above her. It's a real mess, but given time and elbow grease we will get it all fixed up and put back together. Hopefully in the next week I will get some time to be creative. Actually I have some quilting I need to do so that might take precedence. Then there are Christmas present to wrap and cards to send out so it might be a while till I get to be creative in any way! I'll really try though.

Get Well Cards

Well I finally was able to get Blogspot to upload my photos. Seems every time I have tried lately it just keeps loading and never finished so I would just quit.

Now I hope that the up coming cold and flu season isn't bad, but if it is I'm ready. I sat down the other day and made a batch of Get Well cards.

It took a while to get into a creative mind set but when I did I was able to come up with a variety of designs. I also had the help of being in a card making challenge on SplitCoast Stampers. They gave the basics and I came up with my design. It was a great deal of fun and a very productive weekend for card making.

Time Certainly Flies

Well, It's really hard to believe that it has been a month since I have posted anything here! I have been doing things including making cards, postcards and piecing a small wallhanging, plus a vacation thrown in for fun. The main problem with posting is that my computer is not feeliing well. The fan does not work any longer so the CPU over heats and the whole thing crashes...so I have it sitting in front of a portable fan which blows on the vent hole when I am using it. This is noisy and rather cold easpecially now that fall weather has come on with a vengence. AND though I can now use it this way it is functioning much slower than it ever used to...I think it's days are numbered. Then I don't have a clue what I will do. I hate to admit it but I don't think I can function without a computer anymore! Isn't that sad. Not only do I communicate with people from all over the world on it, but I keep my financial records on it, I design on it, it's my personal recipe book and the list just goes on and on.....anyway. I tried to upload some photos a moment ago and either my computer or Blogspot was not cooperating. I will try again later. Gotta get some pictures here. Words are fun, but they work so much better with pics.

Fixed Page!

Here is the fixed page I talked about in previous post. Empty space is really nasty in my humble opinion. It needs to be filled in with something even something simple. I almost always use background stamps or watermark images for this reason. And in my quilting I will rarely use solid fabrics. They read empty and on close inspection are empty. I will use tone on tone fabrics which are similar to watermarks or using a background stamp in the same color as the card stock. At first glance you don't notice the design, but on closer inspection it's there and you can see it.

Evolution of a Scrapbook Page

I am in a 6x6 Christmas scrapbook page swap. I've not really done 6x6 pages before so this is a new endevor for me. I was worried about how to get a design on the page and still have enough room for a photo. I've done scrapbooking before with Creative Memories products, but never worked on a page smaller tham 8x11. I new I wanted to yous the Cool Play set and have a snowman on the page. My first attempt I was not happy with at all. The snowman was too small I though and there was too much open space. Also though I liked the effect of using Dazzeling Diamonds glitter on the snow flakes in the background it was way to labor intensive to do the 20 pages I need for the swap. What to do?

I still liked the basic design elements so I tried enlarging the snow man and instead of a single stamp snow flake with the glitter I used a snowflake jumbo wheel and whisper white craft inl for the back ground snow. Of course that meant I couldn't use the white for the "let it snow" stamp so I switched it to black. I liked the fact that I now had room for some extra color in the form of the cap and scarf. It's still pretty labor intensive as I have to cut out the snowman, scarf and hat, but I had to do that on the other page as well anyway. So here is my swap page!

Now I am not one to just throw away work I don't like so after staring at it for a few more minutes I decided to try adding a second "let it snow" in white above the little snow man on my reject page. And voila: IT WORKED! I like it now. Just filling in the empty space really helped I think. You can see this card in my next post. I still won't do it for the swap just because using the glitter is more involved and messy than I want to deal with right now.

The lessen here is work with ideas you try that you don't at first like. Chances are there is a fix that will make it work!

Still Crazy, But Taking Time

I think I have given up on life slowing down any and I'm just going to make sure that each day I take time for either sewing or stamping. Yesterday I made time for a card and several 6x6 scrapbook pages, which I will deal with in a later post. The card I made is one that I would have preferred not to have to do as it is the above sympathy card. It was for a very special quilting friend whose husband unexpectedly died of a heart attack on Sunday. As much as I don't really like having to make sympathy cards I do find that they provide their own special blessing in that I seem to always spend time praying for he grieving person the card is being made for. I think for this reason I may never make sympathy cards in advance, except to sell to others. I will make mine as needed so as not to miss the time of prayer.
The birthday card I made last week, I actually made two of these cards just in different color-ways so that I could keep as sample. The other one I made for a very special person who shall remain nameless at this point in case she happens to log on to this sight and read it. She won't get her card for a week yet. Now I've probably given it away. I love the stamp set I used for this. Favorite Teddy Bear by Stampin Up. It has so many accessory items to go with the teddy bear that I think it will be used a lot!

A Break from the Craziness!

I really needed to take a break from all the business of the week. So I stamped. This is my latest card. It is in celebration of fall. These are colors I love. I designed it for my SU Sisters September SYI Swap and made a few extras for myself. Other than this card I haven't been doing much "crafting" this week. Too busy getting ready for the big church picnic tomorrow. Though I guess the 4 display boards I put together might count as crafting???

I also did get to bake a cake today for the cake walk at the picnic. Don't get to bake much anymore with only two of us in the house. And I still have two pans of apple crisp to make. While they are baking maybe I can squeeze in another card for a special birthday girl this month. Not saying who in case she reads this.

CRAZY!!!

Life has been absolutely crazy around here for the past week. Don't anyone even ask me what I've been doing cause I don't think I could answer, but I know I've gotten alot accomplished. Just nothing in the world of Stampn or Kwiltin. But I did want to check in here and say that I hope tomorrow is a different story. For today, though it is 6:22 pm I am off and back to work. Ain't life grand!!!!