More is More

Have you ever had one of those days where nothing seemed to go quite like you planned and you just had trouble focusing and really accomplishing anything?  Well today was one of those days.  I’m not really sure why, but by dinner time I was close to tears.  In reality several important things did get accomplished like the oil change for the car and the guy from the alarm company coming to check the system along with several other things.  There were lots of little frustrations like a check I deposited being lost by the bank (not yet resolved) and being charged for a missed appointment by our Doctor when in reality Curt did cancel the appointment (I got that one taken care of).  It wasn’t an unusual day but for some reason I just felt frustrated and icky.

Fortunately the day ended on a wonderful high note when I had the opportunity to stop by the 16th birthday party of Deanna (my friend Darla’s daughter).  I had offered to go over and take some photos.  Deanna wanted to do a craft at her party (a girl after my own heart!) and I was happy to help with that.  She and her Mom found these notebooks at Big Lots – Kraft with a red fabric band at the top and black coils.  They are approximately 6″ x 4″ and come with a matching pen.  I made up a sample a few days ago to give the girls some ideas and then I cut up a bunch of different designer papers and solid cardstocks for them to use.  I also bought some alphabet stickers and ribbon along with loaning some stamp sets and ink pads.  I could hardly wait to see what everyone came up – I wasn’t there while they were crafting.

Didn’t they turn out cute?

The top middle one is my sample and the rest are what the girls came up with.  I’m so glad they enjoyed the project.  Of course once I made my sample I had to run to Big Lots to buy a bunch of these notebooks at $1.50 each.  Most of the ones I got have a black fabric band rather than red.  I guess now I’ll need to incorporate them into a class sometime in the future – be on the lookout.  *wink*  So much for my self-imposed ban on buying alterables.  I just couldn’t resist!

Here I am with the birthday girl.

Remember being a teenager?  LOL!!!!

Those rabbit ears just never get old!  bwahahahahahahaha!

I’ll be attending a bridal shower tomorrow (for the goofy girl in the turquoise top in the front row – she’s not a teenager.  Hi Heather!)  so I’ll share the card I made for her soon.  I need to get a photo before I go tomorrow.  Have a wonderful weekend.  Thanks for taking time to stop by.

Happy Monday!  I promised a cute and easy project, so here we go.  For my third project in class Friday night I had originally planned to teach Reverse Spotlighting (to go along with the Spotlighting project – scroll down), but after struggling with two UGLY samples I gave up on that idea and decided to go with some super cute magnetic clippie frames made with coasters. (I can’t settle on what the heck to call them.  LOL!)

I got the idea from my friend Debbie Jackson who used a similar project for her StampMania shoe box last year.  She told me she got the idea from SCS so I really don’t know who originated it.  First I made up a bunch of them for my friends who came from far and wide for StampMania.  There is a group of us who chat almost daily – some of us for several years now.  The group consists of about 20-25 women from around the country and there were 14 of us here for the SCSM weekend.  I think that is the most ever in one place together.

I made these red and white (actually it’s ivory in this retired SU designer paper) with a bashful blue accent to go with the SCSM color scheme.  I packaged them up in cello bags with some blue curling ribbon for a simple presentation at dinner Friday night.

For class I decided it would be fun to cut up different papers so each person’s project would be unique.  It was more work on my part but so fun to see the results!  Start with a chipboard coaster.  You can get these at restaurants like Chili’s and Outback Steakhouse (they will be printed) or you can get blank white ones from eclectic Paperie.  I’ve found different versions of the magnetic clips at several places.  The square ones I used for class (see photo below and the one on the right in the photo above) were from Office Max and come in a 6 pack for $4.29.  For these you can use a 1″ circle punch to decorate them.  The other type of clippie (left in the photo above of the red ones) is from Big Lots.  Those come in a 2 pack for only .88 and you can decorate them with a 1/2″ circle punch.

Here’s a photo of the completed projects my girls made Friday night.  Aren’t they cute?

 Click on the thumbnail to see it larger.

Simply cut 2 pieces of designer paper 4×4″ and use a corner rounder on all corners.  Adhere the paper to the front and back (back is optional with the blank coasters) with glue stick.  I gave everyone 2 coordinating colors of cardstock cut 2 1/2″ x 3 1/2″ – one of those pieces will be the photo mat and the other piece they used to punch both the scallop circle and the photo corner.  They were also given a 16″ length of coordinating ribbon and one ink pad.  I had Big Flowers and  Riveting on the table.  Riveting is retired and I would have prefered to use Circle of Friendship, but I don’t have it.

These will be perfect for a photo cropped to 2 1/4″ x 3 1/4″ or it would also be cute with a tiny tear off calendar.  These would make great party favors.  I honestly just love this project!  And I feel it was well worth the extra time I took to allow each class participant to create something different and all their own!  If you’ve made some of these leave me a link – I’d love to see them.

Last night I was craving cake so I busted out a devil’s food mix and baked one up in a 9×13 pan.  The best part of a chocolate cake like that is eating a piece hot from the oven with butter on top.  Curt loves it too, but he was laughing last night that I think it’s *normal*…apparantly other people don’t eat hot chocolate cake with butter?  That’s just crazy!  Growing up we didn’t have dessert every night after dinner – only ocassionally.  Sometimes my aunt would bake a box chocolate cake and put it in the oven just before dinner was ready so it would be fresh and hot just when we finished dinner.  We would slather it with butter and enjoy.  Mmmmmm.  Then the rest would be frosted the next day, but the frosted cake was never as good as the buttered cake.  Am I the only one who loves hot buttered chocolate cake? If you haven’t tried it, you really MUST and then report back.  Go on….right now…you know you have a chocolate cake mix in the cupboard.   And it’s Monday – you deserve a treat!  Mmmmmmmmmm.

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.

I’m so excited – I have new hair!  Well, ok…it’s the same old hair, but it’s curly now!  I took the plunge and got a perm.  🙂

I’ve wanted to do this for over a year and finally got up the guts.  I showed my hairstylist Carole pictures of my friends Beth and Lori from when they were out here for StampMania last year.  I have so many friends with naturally curly hair – Jen, Taylor, Jess, Emily – and I think a lot of them have fought their curls..here I am paying to get them.  *chuckle*

Carole has done my hair for over 20 years so I asked her straight up if I could get their naturally curly look with a perm and she said Yes!  She told me she would want to send me home in the perm rods to keep them in for 5 hours so the perm could air oxidize before I took them out and just rinsed my hair (no shampoo for 3 days).  No I didn’t take a picture with my hair in rods and my head wrapped in trash bag!  LOL!  That first night was a little rough as I discovered at 11pm with a soaking wet head of hair that my diffuser from 15 years ago didn’t fit my current blow dryer and I realized I had failed to purchase any hair products for curls.

I called Lori while standing in the beauty supply store the next day to make sure I got the right stuff.  Everyone I have talked to swears by this Curls Rock stuff and I must say it’s awesome! Once I washed my hair and dried it with a diffuser with the Curls Rock products I was thrilled!

Enough babbling about my hair – can you tell I’m excited?  LOL!

Hope you had a wonderful Easter.  We had a lovely day – Sunday School and Church in the morning, a family lunch in our backyard (ate way too much), a nap, and the day was capped off by Fish Taco Night at church (’cause you know Jesus ate fish to show his disciples he was real after the resurrection!).  No stamping yesterday to share today, but thanks for hanging with me anyway!

I’ve been wanting to invite a particular group of gals over for lunch for several months now, but it just never seemed like the right time for one reason or another.  I finally decided to just do it!  So despite the fact that this is one of those weeks where I feel I’ll never be able to finish the to do list, I spent a couple of hours yesterday afternoon making invitations.  I mean what fun is it to just e-mail people?

I had no idea/inspiration to get these started yesterday so I just started going through all my stamp sets looking for something to *hit* me.  This sentiment from Time Well Spent seemed to fit the bill perfectly “time spent with friends is time well spent”.  I think it’s so easy to get caught up in the busy day to day of life and feel like we don’t have time to just spend with people, but that time truly is *well spent*!  So  I decided the sentiment would be my focal point.  I didn’t want to use the other stamps from the set because I didn’t want to do a lot of coloring, so I kept looking.  Big Flowers and Little Flowers seemed like they would work well.  Next I had no idea what colors I wanted to use so I started looking through patterned paper and found this happy little design in a Basic Gray 6×6 pad Gypsy.  I only had 2 6×6 sheets so I cut up strips – enough for 8 cards although I later realized I only needed 6.  The only problem was that the Gypsy paper did not really match my SU cardstock very well.  Good thing I have a huge slab of Prism cardstock for just such situations.  From the Prism I chose Frosted Cobalt. Desert Coral Dark and Intense Kiwi.  I stamped the Big and Little Flowers with white craft ink on the Frosted Cobalt Panel and pierced the bottom corner of the panel.  The sentiment was colored with Copic Markers and covered with a Spica Glitter pen and stickles.  Tiny Adorn it pearls finish off the flowers.  Then some doodling seemed to be in order for a border around the sentiment.  The Primas in the bottom corner were an afterthought really – the cards just seemed too plain. 

In the middle of working on these I really didn’t like them – they didn’t feel like me.  But somehow they grew on me and now I think they’re cute.  They’re off in the mail today and then starts the waiting for RSVP’s for next week’s lunch.  Oh the agony – will anyone actually come?  This is mostly a group of women I don’t know very well, but I hope we will all be great friends.

Happy Monday and thanks for stopping by!

Wow!  I am overwhelmed and humbled by all of the wonderful comments left on my first Blogiversary Give-Away post.  You guys are so sweet!  Stay tuned for the winner of that give away to be announced sometime in the next couple of days.

I wanted to share a few more things I really loved at CHA.  First my very favorite new paper line was Cosmo Cricket Honey Pie.  I was delighted at how many people I talked to said the very same thing – everyone seems to love this paper with the look of cross-stitch.

The first time I stopped by the booth I was approached by a gal who noticed my badge and asked is your name Jami with no “e”?  I said “yep” and she said “me too”!!!  We had a little bonding moment before talking about Cosmo Cricket when she mentioned that her brother Eric is the designer.  (Hi Jami if you’re reading!).  The next time I stopped by the booth (to take pictures I failed to take the first time – duh) I got to meet Eric himself and tell him that his paper was my show favorite!

My second favorite paper line was Crate Katlin.

I love the texture of Crate Paper and these colors are so yummy!  They just need to come out with a 6×6 pad!

Another product that really impressed me was the soon to be released ribbon trough from Clip It Up.  I got to speak with the designer of this product too.  I don’t have her name written down (sorry), but she was such a gracious lady.  It was a pleasure to talk to her.

You may have seen in the SCS gallery how some people have purchased rain gutters and turned them into holders for ribbon and punches.  Well this ribbon trough takes that idea and makes it awesome with lots of wonderful details. There is a bar to hold your spools in if you want to leave them in and just cut off what you need, but the spools still lift out freely when you need them too.  There is a place for ribbon scissors at each end of the trough.  The trough is exactly 36″ long so you can easily measure out 1 yard of ribbon and it will come with inch markings as well.  How cool is that?  Plus there is a clip it up bar and hooks at the bottom to hook pieces of ribbon too small for a spool – or for other accesories.  The only thing I didn’t care for was that it only comes in black.  I asked if they might have a white version and the gal said that it is a durability issue at this point and the white materials they have looked at are not as durable as what they are using in black.  The other piece of teriffic news is that will also be coming out with a Clip It Up Mini for those of us who just don’t have room for the current large version.

For more of my write ups on CHA as well as posts from several other fabulous ladies be sure to check out the SCS CHA blog.  We are still posting trying to get all caught up over there.

I was very excited to stop by the A Muse booth for two reasons.  First my oh-so-fabulous friend Her Royal Rubberness Julie Ebersole was working the booth and second there were samples of the Elzybells Spring release (going on sale tomorrow).  Unfortunately they didn’t allow photos of the new line, but they are adorable.  And as a huge bonus I got to meet both Linda Carnell and Emily Montenero in the booth. Sweet!

While there talking with Julie a gaggle of my DD/DDA buddies showed up and it was the perfect photo op of us with our Queen!

The back row is Jeanne S, me, Stamps4FuninCA (Tosha), Kittie and the front row is Linda D (seriously – she reallyis that short!  Love ya Linda!) JulieHRR, BadSherry (eyes closed – sorry!)

Good times!

Oh my goodness I just went to get the link for Elzybells and I see that the Spring line is now available for purchase.  Curt got a new phone – a Tilt – for Valentine’s Day and he told me to pick out some stamps.  Those Elzy’s are calling my name!!!  I need some from the Friendship release and some from the Spring release!

And now it’s time for Blogiversary Give-Away #2  🙂

This prize package includes:

Cute plastic pencil case from Marvy Uchida

Package of 60 Fabric Flowers from daisyds

Heart charm

Wood Mounted rubber stamp from G-Rated Rubber Stamps

Clear stamp – Squiggle Arrow- from Pink Paislee

Sakura Stardust Gelly Roll pen (everyone needs one of these!)

To be entered into this drawing please follow these directions carefully:

**Tell me your post # – if the person before you did not indicate a post number then simply look back to the last person to give a post number and take the next number after that.  Anyone not indicating a post number will not be in the drawing

**Tell me your name in your post

**Post a comment telling me your favorite type of stamp projects (cards, scrapbooking, 3d altered art, etc)

One post person for this drawing – you can enter each drawing I post this week – with one post per drawing.  Posts for this drawing will close Wednesday 2/20 at 6:00am Pacific time and the winner will be announced sometime later this week.  Good luck!

Lots more fun to come this week – be sure to check back and send your friends. *wink*  Thanks for stopping by.