More is More

Are you feeling left out because you can’t make it to the CHA Craft Supershow this week?  Well some of the Baker’s Dozen and I were feeling the same way, so we got together to create some fun Taylored Expressions shopping specials of our own.  Because you know…

We’re throwing our own little party and you’re invited!  

Each of us perused the TE Store and  

chose a favorite product to bring to you  

at 20% off!!

My Pick: Picket Fence Border Die

Wanda’s Pick: Crafty Cuppie

Jodi’s Pick: Sweet Celebration

Karen M.’s Pick: Wings of Joy

Tori’s Pick: Sprinkled with Love

Regina’s Pick: 1/16″ foam tape & 1/8″ foam tape

Charmaine’s Pick: Take Note Die 3

Melissa’s Pick: Kitschy Kitchen Cardstock Stickers Homemade and Retro & Tag Collection

PLUS We’re bringing you the actual Show Specials to you so you can feel like you are there!

• Purchase any 4 full-size stamp sets (including those on sale listed above) and receive a FREE Mini Binder Box! (Do not add the Binder Box to your cart, it will automatically be included in your package upon shipment.)
• The first 10 orders each day (Thursday – Sunday) beginning at 8am PST will receive a free A la Carte stamp of our choice.
• All orders placed  Thursday through Sunday will be entered into a random drawing to win our CHA Prize Package (pictured below) which includes two exclusive stamp sets never available for sale.  This prize package is valued at over $100! The winner will be announced on Taylor’s blog on Tuesday. 

ALL OF THE ABOVE  OFFERS ARE VALID THURSDAY JULY 21ST AT 8 AM PST THROUGH SUNDAY JULY 24 AT 10 PM PST while supplies last.   

Shipping Notes

• Shipping is suspended from Monday July 18th through Monday July 25th while the TE Crew is away at CHA.  Shipping will resume on Tuesday July 26th.
• Remember that shipping is FREE on all orders over $75 within the United States every day! 

My choice was the picket fence die because it’s so versatile.  I’m continually amazed at the cards created by the Baker’s Dozen using this die.  My sample above was the 3rd card we made in my class last week.  Seriously, if you don’t have this die YOU NEED IT!  And 20% off is a great deal!  Think of it with outdoor sets like In the Park, A Day in Paradise,  Garden Party Critters, etc…with florals…with blimps…with hot air balloons…and on and on!

My card features the new stamp set In the Clouds (withthe coordinating die set) and Alphabet Soup – Girl papers from My Mind’s Eye.  We hand cut the rolling hills and used the cloud border die both on the front of the card as well as the inside.  Notice that’s the same cloud die, but since it’s 6″ long, we just used different ends of the die for a different look on the inside.  Cute, huh?  I love that fresh fun color scheme with the pops of red!

I believe several of the mice girls are planning to post new samples featuring their sale picks, so you might want to hop around to check them out.

• Charmaine Ikach
• Jodi Collins
• Karen Motz
• Melissa Sauls
• Regina Mangum
• Tori Wild
• Wanda Guess

Glad you could join us!  Hopefully our little party wil help ease the pain of not being at the SuperShow in Chicago for all of us!  I’ll be back tomorrow with a new Taylored Expressions Sketch Challenge.  Thanks for stopping by.

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.

A couple of days ago I came home to an awesome surprise box on my porch.  I had no idea what it was but thought it might be a birthday present.  I opened the box to find an adorable Vera Bradley bag.  But here’s the REALY WEIRD and super neat part…

Just last week I was in a little nearby boutique looking for a Valentine gift for a friend and they had a beautiful display of Vera Bradley items.  I looked for a long time, finally deciding that my favorite fabric was Mod Floral Pink.  Then I looked at (ok actually I touched) all the different styles of bags until I chose the Little Betsy.  After all that I decided I wasn’t ready to commit and I left without my chosen bag.  How weird is this?  It was exactly that bag in the surprise box!  I was giddy with excitement!

Thanks Friend!  It’s PERFECT!  

When I looked at this week’s sketch I thought it would be fun to make a card inspired by my new Vera Bradley bag.  What do you think?

The elements of the card are quite simple since the sketch is fairly complicated.  Card base is Chocolate Chip with layers of Tempting Turquoise and Tangerine Tango.  The dp is Junkitz Salsa.  The stamped flower is from SU Petal Pizzazz.  I stamped it in Pink Passion ink, adding some So Saffron with a marker and some doodles with a red marker and cut it out.  Embellishments are SU rub-ons, a clear button and a variety of rhinestones from Zva Creative and Kaiser Craft.

Let’s check out what the rest of the Cupcake Crew has cooked up!  (Big HUGS to Ana and Sherrie who are both under the weather!)

This week’s Featured Sampler is the oh-so-talented and oh-so-sweet Jodi Collins at Stamping A Latte.  And of course check out Taylor’s blog for her sample and all the deets on how you can play along with us!  Thanks for stopping by.  Hope you have a great weekend!

It’s time!  It’s time!!!  The new Stamp a Sweet Impression release is now available for your shopping and stamping pleasure!  You need to go to Taylor’s blog first to get all the detailed info and then you can head over to Taylored Expressions The Store to shop your little heart out!  Taylor has put together some awesome Bundle deals that are available through this weekend only. 

Tonight the entire Bakers Dozen has more samples to share.  The one stamp set we have not yet really talked about is A Year of Sweet Sentiments.  I LOVE sentiments and I LOVE this set.  This is by far THE most versatile sentiment set I have ever seen and what an incredible value.  With 30 year-round sentiments you pay less than .75 per stamp.  And remember that’s deeply etched pink RUBBER already on EZ-Mount coming to you on a sturdy 3-ring panel with a full index on one side.  You simply choose a sentiment, slap it on an acrylic block and it will stamp like a dream!

The sentiments in this set were specially chosen to coordinate with all of the images in A Year of Sweets 1, 2, and 3 to make adorable cards and scrapbook pages for occassions year-round, but these sentiments will also work fantastically with lots of images you already own.  And check out the cute fonts!  Oh and many of them work well with punches like Word Window and SU ovals!  Ok so is it weird that I sometimes get more excited about sentiments than image sets?  I just love having the perfect saying to really *make* a card!

For my sample today I chose one of several sentiments that works well with the June image from A Year of Sweets 2 (the June picnic is my very favorite image of all 12 – what’s yours?)

This card is 6-1/2 x 3-3/8 to fit inside an SU small open ended envelope.  This is a fun size card to work with and if you ever have to mail a check to a friend this is just right.  All the cardstock and patterned paper, as well as the heart brad and Starfire glitter used here are from the Valentine Key Ingredients.  The image was stamped with Memento Tuxedo Black ink onto TE’s new Choice Snow White cardstock and colored with the Copics in this photo.

I didn’t check my full Copic chart for all the best matches to Key Ingredients, but I did check the chart for the approximately 60 Copics I own and these worked well for my scene.

The flower embellishment to the right side of the card (close-up seen at the top of this post) was created by punching the flower out of one of the KI dp sheets with a circle punch and putting it on the back of an Amuse scallop circle clear sticker.  Then Starfire glitter was adhered to the sticky scallops not covered by the paper (I learned this trick from stampin royalty JulieHRR).  That piece was then glued to a square of the dp layered over a square of red cardstock.  Some Zva pink crystals finished it off.  The main image was cut and embossed with a Nesties rectangle and layered onto a scalloped rectangle where I added more Starfire glitter with a Sakura Quickie Glue Pen.

Tonight’s samples are somewhat of a free-for-all so there’s just no telling what the rest of the Bakers Dozen has in store for us…I’m off to see for myself…wanna come?

I’ll be back by 8:00 am tomorrow morning (or maybe even sooner) with a card for the Taylored Expressions Cupcake Challenge.  I hope you’ll check bak and play along.  Thanks so much for stopping by!

A week without stamping???  AAACCCKKKKKK!  I can’t remember the last time I went a whole week without stamping!  I even missed Taylor’s Sketch Challenge today (my apologies to the Cupcake Crew!)  And I have a good sized box from Stampin’ Up! (all MINE) that’s been sitting untouched the whole week!  Tomorrow is World Card Making Day and I promise to be back to post a card tomorrow!

It’s been a long week for sure, but lots of good things have come of it.  I will share photos of the bedroom make-over as soon as I can get some taken.  We’re about 80% done in there and it’s already gorgeous!  Curtains are the only major thing we’re missing and I’m crossing my fingers I might find some tomorrow.  Then there’s a whole list of little details to be completed.

Yesterday I helped at church with a western themed dinner for the Seniors.  My friend Denise was in charge of table decorations and I helped her.  They turned out really cute!

It’s a little hard to see in the picture, but we took mini hay bales (from Michael’s) and stuck in a bouquet of silk sunflowers wrapped with a bandana and then added a small cowboy hat.  Peanuts were scattered all over the table and lemonade was served in mason jars.  The menu was BBQ beef sandwiches, cole slaw, baked beans and apple or pumpkin pie.  After decorating I moved to the kitchen and helped with the food service.  Tickets were only available to folks 70 and better.  We had about 60 people and everyone seemed to enjoy it.  I loved being involved, but I was certainly exhausted when it was over.  I’ll definitley help again at the next one in the Spring.

There’s lots of Stampin’ Up! excitement for October!  The new Holiday Mini Catalog is now available AND in celebration of SU’s 20th birthday we have a Birthday Sale!  Spend $20 on regular priced mechandise and you may add as many of the sale sets to you order as you like.

You can never have enough birthday sets!  Be sure to check them out!  Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you get to stamp tomorrow.  If you need some inspiration check out the SCS home page – there’s a link there to their WCD Challenge thread.  There will be a bunch of challenges to play.  Enjoy!

Run, don’t walk over to Taylor’s webstore Taylored Expressions!!!

Yep – it’s time – the Official Release of the Taylored Expressions Stamp a Sweet Impression line of rubber stamps, unmounted storage, and Key Ingredients packages.  You can get all the deets at Taylor’s blog.

Tonight I have a project to share that utilizes the Sweet Celebration stamp set and the Birthday Girl Key Ingredients.

One of the papers in the KI package has this green corner border and it reminded me of a tablecloth so I set out playing with layouts until I came up with this.  The stamped image is colored with Copics and the cake plate was paper pieced.  There are dots of Liquid Pearls along all the scallops and stickles on the candle flame.  And Cuppie’s little cherry top is covered with a clear Rain Dot (also available at Taylored Expressions).  I have both the red and the clear and I have used them on several SASI projects.  I highly recommend picking some up at TE when you go shopping!  After finishing this card I realized the pink twill is not from the KI pack, but it is available at TE in the ribbon section.

Not only is it Release Day, but it’s also Cupcake Friday and time for TECC32 – Taylor’s weekly Sketch Challenge.

I hope you’ll try out this fun sketch – cupcakes are not required to play!  You can check out all the details on Taylor’s blog.

I decided to flip the sketch on it’s side this week so I could use a really fun image from Sweet Celebration along with papers from the Birthday Girl Key Ingredients pack.

This is a personal Congratulations to Taylor for scaling that cupcake mountain and making it to the TOP!  I’m so proud and so excited of my sweet friend!

Cupcakes were colored with Copic markers and the little cherry is a Kaiser Craft red pearl this time.  The sentiment was created with the JustRite stamper Small Letters (from TE) and highlighted with Kaiser Craft dark pink rhinestones.  (Kaiser Craft available at eclectic Paperie.) The two ribbons are just stuff I had in my stash.

For those looking for Copic matches here’s what I have for the KI packages:

Birthday Girl – RV34 Dark Pink, YR15 Pumpkin Yellow, YG25 Celadon Green or YG03 Yellow Green

Birthday Boy – BG15 Aqua, B39 Prussian Blue, YG25 Celadon Green or YG03 Yellow Green

Halloween – BV04 Blueberry, YR15 Pumpkin Yellow, YG25 Celadon Green or YG03 Yellow Green and you’ll want a very dark gray and/or black.

Plus you’ll want to think about what colors you might want to use to color the frosting faces 🙂  I tended to use Y21 Buttercup Yellow, E27 Africano, and R32 Peach. 

The Cupcake Crew has sketch samples for you and the Baker’s Dozen girls have release projects for you (several of us are on both teams) – you can get links to all the different blogs over at Taylor’s blog.  And if you want to see a bunch of our samples in the gallery at SCS (more to be uploaded soon) just click here.

WooHoo!!!!  Shop, Blog Hop and PARTY!!!!!

So…after you place your order come on back – I’m dying to know what you got!!!!

I have some good news to share!  Today was my 7 week weigh-in.  I’m only weighing in every 2 or 3 weeks and in the past 2 weeks I lost 5.4 pounds!  That’s a total of 13.4 pounds off (41.6 still to go)!  I am beyond excited.  And Curt (who started 2 weeks after me) has lost 11 pounds.  Can I hear a WooHoo???!!  Our initial plan was to stick with Nutrisystem for 2-3 months and then switch back to Weight Watchers.  For now we’re going to play it by ear and see how long we can tolerate the packaged food with Nustrisystem. The dinners are actually pretty good and it’s nice to be able to go in and customize our menus. It’s been great not to have a lot of decisions to make and not worry about proper portion control.  I know that WW is a better long term solution, but it also takes more focused effort the first couple of months.  We do allow ourselves two meals out per week and boy do we ever look forward to those!  Picking a restaurant for dinner never had so much meaning for us.  LOL!

Now on to something stamping related.  As soon as I got samples of the new SU In-Colors I sat down to determine the best Copic marker matches.  I’m sure lots of people have posted their opinions on this (although I haven’t read any), but I thought I’d share mine.  Hopefully some of you will find it helpful.

Pacific Point – B06 Peacock Blue

Baja Breeze – BG72 – Ice Ocean

Pink Pirouette – RV00 Water Lily

Kiwi Kiss – YG03 – Yellow Green

Tangerine Tango – YR09 Chinese Orange

Riding Hood Red – R37 Carmine

The only one that’s not a really great match is the Kiwi – Yellow Green.  The rest are super close.  Click on the chart below to view it full size.  You’ll see a scallop circle swatch of the cardstock next to a large swath of marker color and below that you’ll see SU white taffeta ribbon that has been dyed with the marker.

I absolutely LOVE this trick.  The taffeta takes the dye amazingly well, dries very quickly,  and you can have ribbon in any color.  Simply run the ribbon under the broad tip end of the marker held down on some scratch paper.  Couldn’t be easier.  All of the color matches are actually closer in real life than the scan shows.  It’s so hard to get true color on a scan like this.  Scroll down to my previous post and see a card with taffeta ribbon dyed orange – it’s a fabulous match to the Tangerine cardstock.

Of course if you’re *serious* about coloring, you’ll also want additional colors for shading, but hopefully this will give you a good starting point.  There are lots of sources for Copic markers – I get mine at eclectic Paperie.  I prefer the Originals with the fine tip, but not all colors are availabe in Original so I buy Sketch when neccessary – as with the Ice Ocean and Water Lily above.

Thanks for stopping by and happy coloring!