More is More

I just watched my beautiful 42″ flat screen tv be snuggled up in a tv cozy (blanket thing shaped to fit over it) and then wrapped and wrapped and wrapped with the most humongous roll of saran wrap I’ve ever seen and then wheeled outside into a waiting van.  *small tear*  Night before last it made a big POP noise and then the picture was gone.  It’s just less than 2 years old, but here’s the really awesome thing – we bought it at Costco and they provide an extended 2 year warranty.  So I’m thinking “well that would be great if I had any idea where the receipt was!”  But it gets better!  Curt called Costco and they had record of the purchase and they scheduled to have a technician come out and look at it.  We just called them last night!  The guy said it would probably take a week to ten days and they will have to put in a brand new panel.  I hope everything goes smoothly, but at this moment I am just thrilled that we made that purchase from Costco!

While waiting for the tech to get here today I had a chance to play the Sketch Challenge on SCS.  This week was a particularly interesting layout in that it involved a tall card (9.25″ x 4″) with the front panel folded back and an oval added for the focal point.

I already had the image of the girl colored with Copics (I think she’s Stampendous – I could have sworn eP had this stamp, but I’m not finding it there now) so everything was built around her.

I have such a hard time photographing tall cards like this – it’s really much prettier in person.  I started off by finding that this Basic Grey Stella Ruby paper looked nice with my colored image and decided to use SU Basic Gray (color) cardstock as the base.  Only problem was that my Stella Ruby was on a 6×6 pad and there would be a seam in the paper.  I simply covered that seam with Pomegranate stitched ribbon by punching a little hole in the crease of the card with my slot punch.

The circles are punched out of another sheet of Stella Ruby and both the circles and the scallops on the oval are embellished with Adorn It Tiny White Pearls.  The River Rock cardstock for the inside of the card was edge punched with a large corner rounder for the scallops and then wheeled in Basic Gray ink with the Leaves a la Carte jumbo wheel.  For a finishing touch I glittered the Stella Ruby panel with Dazzling Diamonds glitter by tracing around the flowers and leaves with a Sakura Quickie Glue Pen – I wish that showed in the photo more because it really makes a big difference in the card.

I never would have put together Basic Gray, River Rock and Pomegranate on my own – that’s what’s so fun about designer papers sometimes.  Overall I really like this card.  My one issue with it the scale of the oval – I think it should be larger or the height of the card should be cut down some (maybe a couple of inches), but I wanted to stick to the sketch and I was afraid I would ruin what I had done by trying to trim it.

This was a really fun sketch to play with and I’d encourage you to try out this challenge this week if you haven’t already. 

 ETA: My friend and customer Kathy stopped by and she had her sketch challenge card with her.  It’s beautiful!!!  You can see the picture by clicking here (although it doesn’t do the card justice) – go leave her a nice comment in her gallery if you have a minute.

Thanks for stopping by.

At StampMania each participant brought a hand stamped door prize (valued $5-10), plus we had a table overflowing with awesome Sponsor Prizes.  Emily does a great job of contacting companies and coordinating the prize donations.  Plus Emily, Joy and I purchase some prizes out of the SCSM budget.  There are truly prizes galore and we give them away all day long!  We are so grateful to the Sponsor Companies for helping to make the day so special!

Everyone filled out a door prize ticket when they turned in their prize during registration.  As soon as they finished up at the Make&Take table they came over to me at the podium to draw a name to give their prize to.  This is such a fun way to do it because you get to meet the person who made the prize you won and you get to meet and personally give the prize you made to someone.

I won the door prize brought by Laura Phillips.  She’s a rep for Jordan Essentials so she brought yummy Black Raspberry Vanilla Shower Gel and a Candle.  She made a super cute vellum wrap for the candle and finished it off with huge primas.  Thanks Laura!

For the Sponsor Prizes everyone gets a numbered raffle ticket and Emily calls numbers throughout the day.  I was sooooo excited when Emily called my number!  I got to go over to this huge birdcage and pick out a plastic egg (I picked a pink one of course!).  I opened the egg to see which numbered prize I had one…#32 was this awesome A Muse package!!!!  I was jumping up and down!

I had just been saying a couple of days earlier how owls are so *hot* right now and, with all the bird images I have, I didn’t have any owls!  Plus pink and celery is one of my very favorite color combos and I do love these 4 bar note cards!  The package even came with the card in the picture above – how stinkin’ COOL is that?  My favorite little detail on the card is the owls eyes are covered with Crystal Effects (or something like that) for the perfect little touch of dimension.  I will be doing that probably every time I use that image.     The sentiment *Hoo loves you* really makes the whole thing *grin*.

And here’s my first card with my prize goodies.

The 4 Bar Note Cards are 3.5 x 5 and come with envelopes.  I decided I wanted to try a tent topper card so I cut down the note card to 3.5 square.  I stamped the oval image with Certainly Celery ink on shimmer white cardstock and then added the owl image (using a stamp-a-majig) with Palette Hybrid Noir Black ink.  The image was colored with my Copic markers and I used the Colorless Blender pen (cordless blender – LOL!) to tap onto the owls for a bit of feather texture.  I just love their little pink bellies and of course I used CE on the eyes.  Then I punched the image with a Marvy Mega Oval punch and layered it onto shimmery pink cardstock punched with a Marvy Giga Scalloped Oval punch.  I added some Polymark pearl paint and attached the oval over the ribbon with some foam tape.  The stripes at the bottom are strips of pink and white shimmer cardstock and the final touch is the SU pink rhinestone brads.

Last night we watched the movie Michael Clayton on pay per view.  I didn’t like it nearly as much as I expected to…if it hadn’t been for George Clooney I would have had a hard time even finishing it.  During the movie I colored several images with Copics so hopefully I’ll have some time this week to turn them into cards.  I really need to be productive tomorrow – I’m behind on so many things around the house.  I did catch up on laundry, but can you believe I still haven’t gotten groceries!?  It’s bad – really bad!  I must be almost recovered from StampMania though…I’ve already come up with an idea for another really big event.  We’ll see if it pans out.  Go ahead – say it – I’m crazy – I KNOW!

Hope you have a great week.  Thanks for stopping by.

Here’s another card I made with an image colored last weekend with Joy’s Copics.  I just added about 10 more Copics to my own collection so I’m up to about 30…I need to sit and color more!

Isn’t this little Penny Black mouse just the cutest thing?  (I don’t see it in stock at eP at the moment, but I think it will be there soon.) I was so happy to see that this paper from my new Basic Grey Sultry 6×6 pad coordinated so well with my already-colored image!  Cardstock is Barely Banana and Garden Green.  This card is proof that you can salvage almost ANY mistake!  The mouse image was originally matted evenly all the way a round with the rosy dp and the Garden Gree layer.  I had done the piercing and decided to add some holes with my cropadile in the rosy layer up both sides.  The first side came out fine, but the cropadile punch guide slipped while I was punching down the second side (obviously I didn’t tighten the screw properly) and it was too late by the time I realized it.  The holes were totally uneven and some of them went all the way into the white layer – UGH!  Before trashing the entire card and walking away I decided to try trimming off both sides.  Funny thing – I actually like it better now than the way I had originally planned!

My monthly Stampin’ Up! Class is next Friday so I spent some time today working on those projects.  I still have some openings so if you’d like to come let me know.  The registration fee is $12.  I hate to admit it, but I’m still really tired and got very little done today.  It turned out to be a pretty busy week and I still haven’t fully recovered from all that StampMania fun!  I hope you’re having a good weekend.  Thanks for stopping by!

I wanted to take a minute to share this bright fun card I made yesterday for the SCS Sketch Challenge.  I colored the adorable Stampendous Bee image when Joy brought her Copics over on Sunday for a bunch of us to play with…and she even brought us each a packet of stamped images.  (That Joy is such a sweetie!)  The image fit perfectly for the sketch and the colors were already determined by the Copics I had used…so this was a pretty quick card to put together.

The Summer Sun layer is stamped with the Paisley Background in Summer Sun ink and the Gable Green layer is stamped with the CHF Geometric Flowers II Background in Green Galore ink and highlighted with a white gel pen.  I love how the black layers tie in with the Bee’s body.

Tonight I got to have dinner with friends Jen and Debra.  Debra and her family have been out here from Michigan on vacation in conjunction with SCSM and they leave SoCal tomorrow.  I was so glad to get to see Debra one more time.  And now I guess my StampMania week is officially over.

All that’s left is to finish the recovery process…I’m still exhausted!  Oh..and I still need groceries!

Thanks for stopping by!

but just barely!  LOL!

No – really it was an awesome event!  Things ran pretty smoothly and I think everyone had a really good time.  We ended up with 125 people after some cancellations within the last few days.

On Friday night our team of volunteers headed over to the venue to begin the set up process – most importantly stuffing 130 bags with flyers, pens and goodies.  Then we were all back at it Saturday morning at 10am to finish up.  There’s no way Emily, Joy and I could pull this event off without a fabulous team of volunteers.  Here they are:

We began registration at 11:30 and were able to finish up right on schedule at 12:15 so we could get started with our welcome and a get-to-know-you ice breaker game…then it was on to a day filled with stamping and door prizes and sponsor prizes and M&T’s.  I emceed and I don’t think I sat down for more than maybe 5 minutes 4 or 5 times throughout the day.

Here’s an overview of just half of the room – click the thumbnail to view it larger.

We seat 4 people per round table and everyone rotates around (according to a numbered chart) to do 10 shoebox projects.  Plus we had two Make&Takes – our roster project headed up by Emily plus a card sponsored by Stampendous and taught by Taylor.  One of our main goals is for people to meet each other – not just to stamp projects.  It makes me the most happy to find out about friendships built or strengthened through our StampMania events.

Speaking of friendships….here I am with my event partners Emily and Joy:

We make a great team!  And we even had matching shoes this year!

There’s another picture somewhere of lots more red shoes – LOL! – but it wasn’t on my camera so I need to get it from someone who has it.  My camera actually died halfway through the day despite the fact that I had the battery in the charger all night the night before.  Not sure what happened there…but thanks Aubrey and Beth for sharing pics with me!

We took some group photos before we headed over to Frantone’s for an all you can eat Italian buffet!

People are already talking about next year and I’m still in that dazed StampMania hang over state.  I think I’ll need a few more days to recover!  I finally got some laundry done today, but we still have no groceries!  Oh – I stamped a card for the SCS Sketch Challenge today…haven’t photographed it yet, so I’ll try to get back to share that tomorrow.

If you’re planning a SCS Shoebox gathering Emily, Joy and I are more than happy to share our experience with you.  If you have an opportunity to attend one of these events in your area..or even if you have to travel a bit to get to one…DO IT!  You won’t regret it!  To see lots more pics from StampMania V click here.

Sorry I’ve been so scarce.  I should be back in the normal swing of things soon.  Thanks for stopping by.

It’s time for another Dirty Dozen Alumni Gallery reunion and this month we have an Inpsiration Challenge.

This photo from Better Homes And Gardens 100 decorating ideas under $100 magazine is our inspiration piece.

Required Element:  Create a Journal

Restricted Element:  No markers of any kind – SU, Copic, etc.

Obviously it’s been a crazy busy week and I’m setting this post a couple of days in advance.  Can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with!  Although it may take me a day or so to have a chance to even look!

Here’s my Inspiration Journal – I decided to have some fun with punches – I just played around until I came up with some flowers I liked.  I added some of those tiny little rhinestones from the nail art pack I shared awhile back along with some liquid pearls.  I took this inpsiration piece a bit more literally than I normally do, but for some reason I was really drawn to the vertical lines of the curtains and the pop of the color from the bouquet.

I had a composition book with a chocolate brown spine, so that worked perfectly without needing to cover the spine with anything.  Please forgive me for not giving all the recipe details…it’s all I can do at this point to just get this post up at all.  *frazzle*   I’ll be back later today or tomorrow to share more from StampMania.  Thanks for stopping by.

The fun has already begun and continues through Sunday.  I got to have lunch with three good friends (2 of them from out of state and 1 of them I met for the first time IRL today) and then take them to Fabric Barn (a.k.a. Ribbon Heaven) where we were joined by 2 more friends here from out of state.  At Fabric Barn we ran into a bunch more fabulous SCSer’s in town for StampMania.  Then a quick stop at Kohl’s for more people to but red polka dot Keds 🙂  before the group swelled to 10 for a Mexican dinner.  We finished up the evening by meeting up with a few more people at the church to get most of the set up done for StampMania tomorrow. 

I’m exhausted.

Tomorrow is going to be a blast.  I thought I’d stop by for a quick post to share my name tag – I really like it this year.

Everyone says that Elzy looks just like me!  *chuckle*  And I had to incorporate polka dots to go with my shoes!

Thanks for stopping by.  Hope you have a fantastic weekend!