Elzybells

Another swap card - and the same one in another color. When I find a design that I like, I will usually make it in a another color just so I have a couple of extra cards on hand.

The little girl I am sure you recognize as an Elzybell and the sentiments are Hero Arts and Savvy Stamps. I used the Nestabilities for the scalloped rectangle and the CB Swiss Dots folder for the white layer. Polka dots were added with a white gel pen and everything is colored with Copics. The ovals are SU. So, as the card says...enjoy!

At Last!

Cards - lots of them! This one is for a swap that I participated in:

Most of the ingredients should be obvious. Fluffles is colored with Prismacolor pencils and I used one of the Bride's Flowers from Michaels, colored with a Copic parker and cut apart for the leaves around the verse.

These are some samples that I made for Stamper's Alley (all of the stamps are by Printworks):

      

I used the Fiskars Read Between the Vines Corner and Border punch on the one on the left, and the background is stamped with a CHF Backgrounder (I love those things!):

       

     

Thanks for stopping by and if you have any questions, just ask.  Enjoy your day :-)

My Studio - a video tour

Since I got a new video camera for Mother's Day (thank you, sweetie!) I decided to try my hand at a video tour of my stamp room. It is not the best quality although it looked perfect before I had to convert it to a smaller file. The camera does a wonderful job but making it a small enough file for the Interwebs makes it a little lower quality. Anyway, I hope you don't fall asleep, I shortened it up quite a bit. Enjoy!



Let me know what you think, but be gentle. If any of you other bloggers out there have suggestions for a better quality video, I'd love to hear them!

A New Look

I finally found a way to change the template and not lose the widgets! It's here and I tried it the way they suggested but it didn't work, so I reversed the process and edited the template before I uploaded it, cutting and pasting the widget information into the new template rather than editing the template on Blogger. That will make sense after you read their instructions, I think.

Cupcakes - what could be better????

Used Stamp Sale and A Little Reorganization

The used stamp sale on Saturday at Stamper's Alley was a big success! There were a LOT of stamps and other stuff for sale at really good prices. This is what the tables looked like just before it opened (click the photos for a larger view):

See what I mean? LOTS of stuff. There were accessories as well as stamps and I got a few pretty good deals on a couple of retired SU sets but I gotta tell you that many of the SU sets were way overpriced and didn't sell. People are expecting near-garage sale prices at a used stamp sale, regardless of manufacturer. Ah, well. This sale is held every year so if you didn't make it this year and are in the area, it's definitely worth coming for next year.

Mandy and Janet were the first to arrive, about half an hour before it opened, and they even brought their own chairs - and breakfast as well. Good thing the weather was nice and they didn't need umbrellas, too! See, I told you I'd post it on my blog, girls! Don't they look cheerful so early in the morning?

After a day of being on my feet all day and doing some not-so-heavy lifting I thought I'd do a bit of reorganization in my stamp room (till 1:30am!). I sold quite a few stamps of my own at the sale and had taken all of the ones I kept (still alot of stamps!) out of the boxes to display them on the shelves. I liked that for a while, but again began to feel I couldn't see the forest for the (stamp) trees so last night I put them all back in boxes and re-labeled them.

I keep some of the SU sets together and some I just put in the box with similar stamps. I group them by category - flowers, leaves, birthday, etc. I don't have as many boxes as before so I can fit most of them on one shelf. It feels less crowded and cluttered in here now so I think I will keep them this way. I still have my clear sets in notebooks and these are on the shelf as well. They are in the blue and green notebooks in the center.

I label them according to what's in them:

I also put my Cuttlebug, Sizzix and QuicKutz dies in a notebook, using slide and photo sleeves. I was using baseball card pages until I saw this post on Wife2TJ's blog and I like the slide holder pages much better. The small dies and folders fit snugly now, but in the baseball card pages they tended to slip out too easily. Thanks, Samantha!

The Sizzix and QuicKutz dies fit perfectly as well and the larger CB folders are in 4 x 6 photo pages

I found this at a local Habitat for Humanity Restore a few weeks ago and it holds all of my colored pencils beautifully. The tag said it was a flatware caddy for a dishwasher.

These are my PaperTrey, Lizzie Anne and GinaK stamp sets, all nicely labeled and organized. The clear labels are hard for me to see, so I printed some with my label printer and trimmed them (a little crookedly) to fit on the ends of the CD cases. The little cubes are from Staples, they were a gift and came in a set of three, one of which had 2 drawers that I use to store some flowers in but not in the cube.

I have way too many flowers (is that possible??) and am working on getting them all in these cute little glass jars that I can get at Wal Mart for 77 cents each.

If you are still here I will reward you with a photo of my George Clooney Shrine that hangs on the door to my stamp room. I got the hat and poster when I went to see him in Salisbury (that almost sounds like we had a dinner date, doesn't it?? If only!) and he autographed the poster for me...*sigh*. We saw the movie when it came out last month and really liked it!

Wow, this was a long post - thanks for sticking with me! Have a wonderful evening and thanks for stopping by.

One thing fixed

I found a thing called BlogRolling.com and imported all of my Google Reader subscriptions. Yes, there are a LOT of them! I have gone through and weeded out a few that I know have moved but if you find any that don't work, please let me know, ok? I am going to add back my email address on the left in a minute and you can either post the bad link here or send me an email and thanks for your help!

When to leave well enough alone

You may notice that my blogroll along with other items on the left are gone. Well, that's because I tried to put up a new template and said Yes when it told me that all widgets would be deleted, thinking that I had saved the previous template and all would be well. Apparently it doesn't save the content of said widgets. I should have known better, but I will add them back a little at a time and if you would like to be included it would sure save some time if you could post your blog address for me!

I was able to get my shared items back at least! Stoopid computers! If anyone knows of a way to import URLs from Google Reader, please feel free to share it with me. Their help files aren't terribly helpful, I'm afraid.

So, hang in there and all will be back to normal soon (I hope). The other template was really pretty though :-(.

Just a couple of cards

Yes, I finally got around to making a new card or two and actually taking photos of said cards! I have seen this color combination several times on blogs and other places, but it is not one I would have come up with myself. I like it, though, I think the colors go well together and it is bright and cheerful. I love that Doodlebug Sugar Coated paper that I used to punch the flowers out of, it is yummy!

Recipe: Hero Arts Stamp, Nestabilities for the scalloped ovals, Cuttlebug embossing folder, and EK Success Corner Adorner punch. The flowers were punched out of Doodlebug Designs Sugar Coated Cardstock using a Marvy flower punch.

This is a flap fold card and they are so easy to make! The instructions are on the Scor-Pal website and are so easy to follow! The card ends up being pretty small - 3-1/2" x 4-1-4" but it is the perfect size for a gift card. If you don't have envelopes to fit it, you can use this trick by Julie Ebersole for making a square card fit in an A2 envelope (to avoid extra postage) and just adapt it to this small card. There are also instructions on the Scor-Pal website for making your own envelopes of any size and I made one just to test it. I made it out of some really hideous old paper that I had so I won't post it, sorry, but it was really easy to do - even if you don't have a Scor-Pal (you don't???? why not???). I am not sure of the postal regulations on size (guess it matters to them - LOL!) so check before you send one out.

Recipe: SU stamp and label punch, flowers (Wilton) from AC Moore (yes, AC Moore, not Michaels) in the bridal section, Making Memories magnets for closure (those puppies are strong!), patterned paper by Karen Neuberger, blue paper is Bazzill, button and bling flower by Hero Arts, ribbon from Hobby Lobby.

I hope you enjoy your day wherever you are - it is a beautiful spring day here in sunny NC and I get to go out in it and go grocery shopping. I can hardly contain my excitement. I'm just kidding - I am just glad to be able to get out and be fortunate enough to be financially able buy groceries these days - there are so many that can't. Be thankful for the small things in your life, they are what make it enjoyable.

Party on, people.

A Sweet Gift

Sherri over at ILoveFlipFlops made this adorable little business card holder for me last week and I am finally getting around to posting it. Thank you so much, Sherri!