More is More

Happy Friday.  It’s time for another fun sketch from Taylor PLUS a very special opportunity for you to use your stamping to be a blessing to someone.  Today Taylor is kicking off a Dragonfly Card Drive to benefit the neo-natal unit at Sanford Medical Center in Sioux Falls SD.   Families who have suffered an infant loss are given a dragonfly card while they are in the hospital as something to hold on to, cherish, and comfort them after the quiet time spent with their son or daughter.  In addition to the cards, the parents receive a small ring with a poem, a prayer shawl for the mother (symbolizes God wrapping his loving arms around the patient to comfort her), baby footprints and baby molds (if the parents wish).

We’re asking you to help us by sending in your hand made cards featuring any dragonfly image.  You can use the dragonfly from the TE set Discover Your Wings or any dragonfly from any stamp company.  My sample today features one from Stampendous.  You can use today’s sketch to get you started or you may use any layout you’d like.  You have until March 25th to get your cards in.  As a special thank you, Taylor will be holding a drawing for a Gift Certificate to the TE Store.  Your name will be entered into the drawing once for every card you send in.  All the details are on Taylor’s blog today. 

Please also grab the badge and display it on your blog (and link it on your FB status as well) to help us get the word out!

Here’s my sample for TESC101 and my first card for the Dragonfly Card Drive.

I rummaged through my stamp collection until I came across this dragonfly and floral image from Stampendous and I was so excited at how the size of the images was just perfect for the sketch.  I wanted a soft vintage look so next I went looking for some designer paper and rediscovered a Basic Grey 6×6 pad called Perhaps that I got a few years ago.  The soft pretty colors were perfect.  I paired the papers with SU River Rock (dang I really really miss that color!) and Prism Razzleberry Md.  I just really had fun playing with this card.  The dragonfly was actually paper pieced with small pattern from Perhaps and then covered with Glossy Accents and a little glitter.  It was mounted with foam tape to the Nesties Label 5 frame that had first been embossed with a CB folder.  The floral image was colored with Copics and then the entire panel was covered with Versamark and clear ep and heat embossed.  The crochet trim is from TE.  The sweet little flowers are by Prima and were a gift from my wonderful friend (and fellow Sketch Crew member) Lori.  The started out ivory and I simply colored them a bit with a copic marker.  Sentiments are SU.

Now let’s see what the rest of the Sketch Crew has created:

Wouldn’t it be fun to get some friends together to create some cards for this great cause?  Check your calendar and set aside some stampin’ time!  Have a great weekend!

I’ve been under the weather for a couple of days and didn’t think I’d have anything ready for this morning, but I just couldn’t stand to miss out on all the fun today.  All the new Taylored Expressions stamps are available in the TE store NOW!  We’re all so excited about the new line Apple Doodle Ink as well as the new Stamps A la Carte department starting with the Whimiscal Wishes Animals in Love.  And since it’s Friday, we of course have a new sketch from Taylor to play with – TESC99.  My take on the sketch features the Flamingos in Love A la Carte image along with a sentiment from Animal Love Sentiments.

Check out what the rest of the Sketch Crew has cooked up:

Both of my cards today were made with the Spa Key Ingredients Kit (cardstock. patterned paper, Ribbon, fabric flowers) and images were colored with Copics.  My 2nd card features the new Apple Doodle Ink set Bakery Business.  I actually made this card a few days ago, but didn’t get it photographed until today.  I had to laugh when I saw Jodi’s sample on Wednesday where we had used the same small curved rectangle die and similar coloring for Tena.

I know you’ll want to see what the Baker’s Dozen girls have created for Release Day:

And of course you want to head over to Taylor’s blog to see her samples and get all the TE Release news along with the sketch for today!  TE has an awesome Special available for those of you who want to get all 8 A la Carte images along with the coordinating sentiment set – you’ll get $10 off your next order!

Thanks so much for all the warm and wonderful birthday wishes through blog comments, e-mails, and FaceBook messages.  Unfortunately I spent the day with a sore throat, body aches and feeling generally yucky.  Even so, I kept thinking about how thankful I am for all the love in my life from family and friends (and of course Tessa in my lap all day) and just how blessed I am. 🙂

Happy Friday and Happy Shopping!

ETA:  I apologize for the weird formatting – I can’t seem to fix it.

After over 6-1/2 years, when I wake up tomorrow I will officially no longer be a Stampin’ Up! Demonstrator.  This is something I have chosen not to talk about on my blog up until now, but honestly it has played a big part in my lack of consistent blogging in the past few months.  I did NOT want to give up being a SU Demo.  I have loved SU for many years – several even before I became a Demo.  I love my customers.  But it came down to the fact that I just could not sign the new agreement put forth to us last Fall.  While I could have *technically* continued both with SU and with TE it would not have worked on any practical level and bottom line – I just could not stomach having my speech regulated on my personal blog.  I had every intention of cutting the cord with my resignation letter before the end of 2009, but I found that I just couldn’t write the letter.  And today was my very last chance.

This has been a very emotional thing for me.  I have not wanted to badmouth SU in any way and yet I feel hurt and disappointed.  I’ve heard some other Demos describing it like being asked for a divorce.  Yep, I feel like I’ve been a good Demo with consistent sales who has always tried hard to abide by all the rules and now I’m being kicked to the curb. In all my time as a Demo, I’ve never even been on the pending list until this past quarter when I was locked out of the ordering system for failure to sign the IDA.   “Drink the kool-aide or get out!” 

I know that I must trust the Lord and be aware that He has a plan for me in all of this.  Over the past few months I’ve been able to focus on that sometimes better than others.  Sometimes I have felt ok and ready to move on and other times I have just been so sad.  I am not someone who embraces change in general and certainly not when it goes against my preference, but the Lord has been working with me on this and I am looking to Him to help me embrace the change and look to whatever may be ahead.  I know many Demos who have cleared out and sold off all of their SU product never to be touched again.  I am certainly not there.  I do intend to continue being a customer of SU albeit in a very limited capacity, but right now it’s just hard to stamp with SU.  I just got an order of new goodies from the Mini and I’m hoping I can have some fun playing with it next week.

I am very thankful to the Demo friends I have who have helped me and are helping me to finish out the committment I have to my wonderful Club customers.  And to all of my friends who are remaining Demonstrators – I want you to know that I hold no resentment toward you and I’m truly happy that you could remain unaffected by these issues.  I hope you will not be upset with me for expressing my feelings here. I mean no disrespect to you.

To anyone who has ever been a customer of mine – I want you to know that I truly appreciate you.  I have had a wonderful ride!  I plan to continue teaching stamp classes since that’s the part of being a Demo that I loved most!  My future classes will be NVR (No Vendor Restrictions) and I’m guessing that they will mostly be a combo of TE, OCL and some SU.  I promise they will continue to be high quality FUN and I hope you will continue to attend.  There’s a big wide wonderful stamping world out there and I now have the freedom to show it all to you!  Also I will be e-mailing out info soon to all customers on my mailing list regarding some area Demos who are friends of mine so you can continue to shop SU if you’d like to.

I never got around to sharing the project we created at my December Club meeting, so now seems like the perfect time.  I won’t go into a lot of detail, but we made card sets using the SU Sunny Day Scrappin’ Kit and a coordinating ribbon share.  We also decorated a TE Perfect Package.  I love the Sunny Day SSK and had a lot of fun creating this class.  If you have questions about it, let me know.

To all of my blog readers – wow – you just have no idea what it means to me to have people reading my blog.  I was stunned when several people came up to me at the SuperShow last weekend and said they knew me from reading More is More.  Wow.  I am so humbled.  Thank you!  I hope you’ll stick with me even if I’m not a SU Demo.

I have so much more to say…I could go on and on…but it’s very late and you don’t need to hear me ramble any more than you already have.  I’ve got a busy week ahead.  Did you know that it’s almost time for another Taylored Expressions release?  Yep – this Friday…some super cute new stuff…forging ahead!  🙂

WooHoo!  Everything you’ve been seeing over the past couple of days is now available at Taylored Expressions. 

Another stamp set will be given away to blog commenters – see details at the end of my post.  Today I get to join the Baker’s Dozen again as we showcase the new Taylored Card Kits along with all of the new stamp sets available today.  You’re going to love the Taylored Card Kits as they are geared toward card makers and especially toward making it super quick and easy to make coordinated sets of cards.  All of the new release TE sets lend themselves well toward gift sets so today Taylor challenged each of us to use one of the new stamp sets along with one of the three new Taylored Card Kits to make 10 coordinating cards.

Each Taylored Card Kit includes:

10 Choice Cardstock A-2 card bases
10  A-2 envelopes
15 sheets of patterned paper sized for cardmaking at 4″ x 6″ (3 sheets each of 5 double-sided patterns)
20 sheets of 4 1/4″ x 5 1/2″ Prism cardstock (4 sheets each of 5 colors)
1 package of Kaisercraft Pearls
8 panels of Choice Cardstock size 4 1/4″ x 5 1/2″ (for images and layering)
5 yards of ribbon (2.5 yards each of 2 different styles)
1 Perfect Package Card Box

Plenty of supplies to make a gift set of 10 cards and even the Perfect Package to give it in,  plus there’s a good chance you’ll have supplies left over like I did!  My set features the brand new stamp set Sweet Occasions and the TCK Pretty Please.  My intention was to make a total of 12 cards (one set of 8 using Sweet Occasions and another set of 4 using Crafty Cuppie) by adding just one more sheet of TE Choice Snow White cardstock cut in half for 2 more card bases.  I’ve been feeling under the weather this week and I just couldn’t quite get the other set of 4 done.  In fact if you look close you’ll notice that I didn’t get the images colored on my last 2 cards in this set.  *oops*  I just hit a wall and knew I still had photos to take and a post to type!

I wanted to show you how I started on this set.  I laid out all of my card bases on the table and picked out which sheets of designer paper I would use – I wanted to have 4 pairs of matching cards.

Next I decided which solid Prism cardstock panels I wanted with which dp.  On the left you see the 4 card set that I didn’t get done.  In the upper left corner you see all the additonal pieces I had.  I could have worked those into this set of cards, but as it turned out I didn’t need those pieces because of the layouts I chose to work with, so I have enough stuff for another set of cards.  I just need to add in more white bases.  In fact as it turned out I didn’t even use whole panels of dp.  I ended up cutting each piece of dp in half and using one panel per 2 cards.  I also had plenty of ribbon and KaiserCraft pearls for at least the 12 cards.  My suggestion when you purchase one of the Taylored Card Kits is to buy a pack of the Choice Snow cardstock at the same time and you’ll be able to stretch your kit quite a bit further.

Taylor also has selected a group of 5 Copic markers to coordinate with each card kit.  Click here to see the Pretty Please Copic Kit.  I didn’t have all the markers in that kit, but here is what I ended up using and I was happy with my results:

My set of 8 is a pair of each of the 4 cards shown here.  I liked the idea of having a good amount of white space on these cards and that also had the effect of stretching my kit further.  I need to make several Christmas gifts with this stamp set *grin* so I’m very happy to have all the coordinating pieces at my fingertips.

As I was coloring my images I was thinking about how nice it is that Taylor and Nancy made sure the lines in this set are thick enough to make coloring easy and that attention was paid to how wide the open font  is for that same reason.  That was something we discussed as the set developed.  We’ve all had images that were too narrow and difficult to color and we wanted to be sure to make this a fun one to work with.  I’ve now colored these images with Copics, a watercolor brush and with Prismacolor pencils and they’ve all been a breeze!

Here are some individual close ups.  These are super easy peasy cards.  Each has just a little glitter or stickles added for some sparkle and all of the images are up on foam tape from TE.

Come blog hoppin’ with me to see what the Baker’s Dozen girls have cooked up with the Taylored Card Kits and all the new stamp sets today.

And now it’s time to go SHOPPING!  Have a great weekend!

Celebrate is right!   I’m doin’ a little happy dance this morning! 

Not only is it Day #2 of the Taylored Expressions Sneak Peeks, but the set we are featuring today is MINE!!!  Well, it’s not exactly mine…I’m just so excited…it’s the very first stamp set I’ve ever completely concepted.  I’m so fortunate to have had the chance to work with Taylor and Nancy McKinney to get this set from my head into actual rubber!!!

So I was in the shower several months ago and this idea came to me for an all ocassion stamp set with some framed main images that included a sentiment big enough to really carry the front of a card.  Plus I wanted each image to have at least 2 sentiments for inside the card along with a coordinating little decorative element for backgrounds, inside, envelopes, etc.  I sat down and sketched out my idea.  I totally cannot draw – which is why I love stamping so much – so I sheepishly sent my elementary school drawings to Taylor.  I was beyond thrilled when she said she loved the idea and would pass it on to Nancy to work her design magic on it!  After an incredible team effort we are introducing Sweet Ocassions!  Honestly this is a dream come true for me.

Sweet Occasions will be available tomorrow morning ( Friday12/4) at 8:00 am PST.  You can enter to win this set – see the details at the end of my post – it’s easy!  In the meantime I have a few samples to share with you.  The first one is what I originally thought of when I pictured this stamp set – simple one layer cards that you could make in a hurry or when you need sets of cards for gifts.

It doesn’t get much simpler than this, but stil cute, right?  I just stamped the *thanks* image on TE Choice Snow White cardstock and colored it with Prisma Pencils and blended with gamsol and stumps (haven’t done that in forever!)  I added a some Dazzling Diamonds glitter to the letters with a Sakura Quickie Glue Pen and a red Rain Dot to the cherry.  I scored some lines using my Scor-Pal and cut little slits with a craft knife for the ribbon.

My next sample is a little more my regular More is More style and features my favorite color of cardstock – black.

I had some Melon Mambo DSP from SU and wanted to create a card in the combo of Melon Mambo, Black and white.  I stamped the *friend* image on black cardstock with white craft ink and heat embossed it with white ep.  The letters and the little flower were filled in with Pink Sparkly Fluff using a quickie glue pen.  The border of the heart was colored with a white gel pen and covered in Frosted Lace Stickles (it looks more white and less silver IRL.)  The image frame was paper-pieced.  The separate little flower was stamped on the black panel inwhite craft ink.  The flourish bling is from a pack of shaped ZVA crystals and the clear rhinestones around the scallops are Taylor’s Tiny Twinkles.  I used Nesties rectangles and Scalloped rectangles to cut and mat the image (I beleive these are on order and will arrive soon in the TE Store.)  These images work wonderfully with the Nesties, but they are also very easy to trim out by hand which is what I did in the set below.

I have a special class coming up next week for my Club girls and we’ll be using the SU Sunny Day Scrappin’ Kit.  I had all the stuff out from making my class samples when my TE rubber arrived and I thought it looked great with Sweet Occasions so I whipped up this set.  Card bases are Confetti White and the images are stamped on the same using black craft ink and heat embossed with clear ep.  Each image was watercolored with an aquapianter and ink from SU markers smeared onto a cd.  Notice the hint of black cardstock on each card?  I love black with brights – really makes them pop.

Little special touches on this card are Crystal Effects on the dish, Stardust glaze pen on the letters and ice cream toppings, red stickles on the cherry.

Each image has at least 2 coordinating sentiments.  Inside this card could say:

*Happy Birthday with a cherry on top!*

-OR-

*success is oh so sweet*

**********

The little special touches here are Crystal Effects on the frosting (yep that heart is supposed to be a sugar cookie in keeping with the whole *sweet* theme), orange stickles on the flower and stardust glaze pen on the letters.

Inside this card might say:

*you make life sweet*

*that was sweet of you*

*I’m so glad that you’re my friend*

 **********

Didn’t Nancy do an awesome job on that sweet little gingerbread house?  I wanted to include a *congrats* in this set because I’ve had so many friends buy houses and move in the the last couple of years.  I added glitter to the snowy roof and stardust glaze pen to the letters.

Possible sentiments here are:

*on your sweet new place*

-OR-

*success is oh so sweet*

**********

The little touches here are stardust glaze pen on the letters, red stickles on the cherry and pink sparkly fluff on the frosting!

Inside might say:

*that was so sweet of you*

-OR-

*you make life sweet*

And just wait till you see the adorable fonts Taylor and Nancy used for all the sentiments.  Pure sweetness!  Plus the tiny coordinating images – oh my! 

I have a ton more ideas, but that’s all my samples for today.  I can hardly wait to see what everyone has…Come blog hoppin’ with me to see what the Baker’s Dozen girls have cooked up with Sweet Occasions today!

Be sure to leave some love along the way because one lucky commenter will win a Sweet Occasions stamp set! How cool is that?All you have to do is leave a comment on each Baker’s Dozen blog today for the best chance to win! One lucky winner will be chosen at random from all of the comments on one of the blogs, but the trick is that nobody knows which blog it will be! You have until 6am PST on Friday to enter. The winner will be announced Friday morning on Taylor’s blog.I’ll be back tomorrow with a new TE product – Taylored Card Kits.  Thanks for stopping by!

I’m excited to have the opportunity to participate along with the Baker’s Dozen to showcase sneek peeks this week of the new stamp sets that will be available at Taylored Expressions on Friday December 4th at 8:00 am PST.  The set we are featuring today is called Discover Your Wings designed by Nancy McKinney and it is GORGEOUS!  This post is a little long, but stick with me because there just might be a PRIZE at the end.  *wink*

Every three months Taylored Expressions introduces a new stamp into the TE Giving Tree Program to help support a specific charity for a three month period.  I love the concept of having a portion of my stamp purchase to go to a charity and $7 from the sale of each Discover Your Wings stamp set will be donated to a very special organization.  More about that below – first just a little about the card I created to show you today.

This card is a large 5.5″ square using mostly supplies from the TE November 20th Key Ingredients Kit along with some SU Purely Pomegranate satin ribbon and ink.  I started with Karen Giron’s Sweet Sunday Sketch, but I ended up veering off a bit.  That’s one of the great things about a sketch though – it can just be a jumping off point.  The large floral silhouette image was stamped on TE Choice Buttercream cardstock (this is just part of the image – it’s quite large) and then the image was covered with a piece of sticky page and run through my Big Shot with a circle nestie.  Then I was able to peel off the red protective layer and cover the image with clear microbeads.  It’s so hard to get a photo of something that has been beaded, but it’s so pretty IRL and really one of my favorite simple wow techniques.  The butterfly was stamped and cut out, then shaped just by working it with my fingers.  It was then covered in Crystal effects  and sprinkled with a little glitter on the edges and set aside to dry.  Later 3 Tiny Twinkles were added to the body.  The beaded panel was adhered to a larger circle made of two layers – cardstock on top of lightweight chipboard.  The “ornament” was attached to the card with just two small pieces of foam tape so it can be removed and hung up later.

This set has so many possibilites!  I can hardly wait for you to be able to see the whole thing!  Not only is the set beautiful, but partial proceeds will be donated to an incredible foundation called Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep which is a charity that serves families dealing with infant death. Their mission statement is “To introduce remembrance photography to parents suffering the loss of a baby with the free gift of professional portraiture. We believe these images serve as an important step in the family’s healing process by honoring their child’s legacy.” NILMDTS administers a network of almost 7000 volunteer photographers in the US and 25 other countries. This is a wonderful charity that TE is honored to support and I would encourage you to learn more about them by going to their website.

I am so pleased to help get the word out about this Founation.  My life was deeply touched by infant death 13 years ago when one of my very best friends learned early in her first pregnancy that her baby had a condition that would cause her to be either stillborn or to die shortly after birth.  It was a very rough time, but it was a privilege and a blessing for Curt and I to walk beside our friends Geoff and Brenda during that time and to witness the way the Lord carried them through the months of pregnancy and everything after.  Sweet little Emma only lived for about 45 minutes and although professional portraits were not taken, the family did take many pictures.  Those pictures have been so very important to Geoff and Brenda over the years – an integral part of the healing process.  Also Brenda created an entire beautiful scrapbook of Emma in the weeks after her birth and death.  Brenda has told me how theraputic that process was for her.  Knowing all of this, when I first heard about NILMDTS it touched my heart deeply and although I knew this would be a difficult subject to broach in the midst of the excitement of new stamps I also knew it would be worth it!

I am soooo anxious to see what the rest of the girls have created! Come blog hoppin’ with me to see what the Baker’s Dozen girls have cooked up with Discover Your Wings today.

 Ok – thanks for sticking with me….did I mention something earlier about a PRIZE???  Well…..

As you blog hop be sure to leave some love along the way because one lucky commenter will win a Discover Your Wings stamp set! How cool is that?All you have to do is leave a comment on each Baker’s Dozen blog today for the best chance to win! One lucky winner will be chosen at random from all of the comments on one of the blogs, but the trick is that nobody knows which blog it will be! You have until 6am PST on Thursday to enter. The winner will be announced Friday morning on Taylor’s blog.Good luck and thanks for stopping by.  I have a super exciting announcment tomorrow so be sure to come back then!

Oh my goodness!  Have you seen the Stampin’ Up! Deal of the Week this week?  It’s the Styled Vanilla Hodgepodge Hardware at over 30% off the regular price!  You can order it though Sunday July 26th for only $18.99 by clicking here to go my SU Business website.  Once you are there, click on Shop Now in the upper right hand corner.

Be sure to also check my SU site next Monday for the last Deal of the Week. 

So sorry that I do not have any stamped creations to share today.  I can hardly catch my breath from all that’s been going on around here.  Our carpet was installed on Friday and we spent most of the weekend begining to pull the house back together.  It’s going to be a slow process since we want to evaluate almost every item of furniture and accessories before putting it back where it was.  We will decide if it’s something we really love or something that needs to be passed along to someone else who might appreciate it more.  Have you ever watched Clean Sweep or Clean House?  Those shows have helped to transform my thinking about *stuff*.  I want less of it for a more peaceful life, especially since our house isn’t all that big and we’re short on storage space.  It feels good to have a fresh start!  I promise to share some pictures soon.  I’m waiting for my drapes to come back from the cleaners.

One of the next projects in line will be finding fabric and having kitchen curtains made.  I did order some swatches online – can’t believe I forgot to share them here – they came almost 2 weeks ago.  Click on this thumbnail to see it larger.   The fabric on the far left is a vintage t-towel I picked up awhile back at an antique store.  That is ultimately the type of fabric I’d really like to find – reproduction though – picks up the yellow and blue in our tile work as well as the red walls.  I could go for a floral or fruit pattern.  So far no luck.  My favorite of the other three is the black, but it’s just too strong to use for all the curtains.  Our front window is quite large.  I might use it as a band across a solid or small patterned fabric – or maybe to cover the banquette cushions.  I have a habit of making up products in my head and then not being satisfied with anything else I might find.  *sigh*

I just order these canisters from Gooseberry Patch.  They epitomize the look I’m going for in my kitchen and I can hardly wait for them to arrive!   Do you get the Gooseberry Catalog?  It’s always so fun to look through.  If you haven’t seen one before, don’t look through their products on-line, just go ahead and request a catalog.  It’s one of those little joys in life!

A couple of quick informational notes –

Taylored Expressions released the July 20th Key Ingredients Kit yesterday and it’s my very favorite one so far!  It features Cosmo Cricket Early Bird papers and it’s yummy!  Hope over to Taylor’s blog to follow links to samples from half of the Baker’s Dozen.

Dare to Get Dirty is coming up on SCS.  Thursday July 23 through Saturday July 25 all SCS Fan Club Members are invited to play along with Dirty Girls past and present in a ton of fun challenges.  Click here to get all the info.  If you are not yet an SCS Fan Club Member, now is the perfect time to join!  It’s only $24.95 for a year or $14.95 for six months.  Click here for all the details.

I’m off to work.  Thanks for stopping by.