I’m pleased to have been invited by the South Whidbey School District Community Education program to offer a series of classes this month.  So I am designing a 3-part make & take series where we’ll be working with Holiday cards during our first class, Simple Gifts & Stocking Stuffers the following week, and we’ll finish up by separating the facts from fiction regarding the safety of rubber stamping in our scrapbooks.  (Registration for any one or all of those classes is being handled directly through the Community Education program, btw.) 

The information about this class series promises a hint at a make & take sample from each class as they come closer.  Today’s hint is one of the cards we’ll be stamping during our first session – "Holiday Cards", on Monday, Nov. 6th.  Simple, yet elegant, in shades of blue and white kissed with a whisper of silver, the texture of this card makes it extra charming – while still being sufficiently straight-forward in design to qualify as a candidate for a handful of "stamped with love" cards for special friends and family members.  Kudos and appreciation to one of my favorite stamp artists, Janine Tinklenberg – original designer of this lovely card. 

Be sure to check back in a week or so for your "Simple Gifts & Stocking Stuffers" hint!

I’m so happy today.  Not only did I get my full 3-mile walk in this morning, but then I actually completed an exercise routine, too!  And the sun is out!  Woo Hoo!

OK, I obviously never did get that paper bag album posted here last week, so figured I’d better sit still and do it now.  So without any further ado, here’s the book I put together last week:

Artwork Copyright 1990-2006 Stampin’ Up!(r)

(You can click on the image to see it bigger, btw.)

I find these albums so much fun to do – and I still have a whole bunch of color combos I’d like to try!  I love their size (they fit just perfectly in your hand!) and even the little crinkling sound of the paper sack is enticing.  Now if only I had a ton of fun little pictures and words of wisdom to add to their pages.  Maybe later.  Right now it’s just fun to get THIS far with ’em.

I had 4 ladies here for our first paper bag book class last weekend.  What fun THAT was to see all the pretty books – each one different – coming together in an evening!  I scanned those, too – and will get those posted eventually.  But right now, it’s off to pull together tonight’s Stamper’s 30 Club meeting.  More stampin’ fun tonight, too!  Sometimes it’s hard to call my job "work"!  🙂

One of the traditions I always enjoy with my downline is our monthly card swap.  We take turns hosting it, and we stamp to a different theme every month.  This month, instead of doing cards, our hostess, Susan, suggested a recipe swap – in a 6 x 6 format so they can be collected into one of our bragbooks.  What a GREAT idea for Christmas gifts!

Well I’m not exactly known for my kitchen talents, but I do have a small handful of favorite recipes, so I entered the swap in both categories Susan offered – and here’s what I came up with.  I can’t WAIT to receive a pile of other favorite recipes in exchange!

The colors used on this are Hunter Green and the new Cranberry Crisp – on Kraft cardstock.  The Jumbo wheel, "Woodcut Holly" provides the background, and "Circle of Friendship" is featured on the medallion.  I’m absolutely in LOVE with this ribbon – found in the Holiday Mini Catalog.  It’s so much prettier in real life than it shows in the catalog!  This holiday treat has been a Christmas favorite in my family for as far back as I can remember.

The blackberry cobbler recipe is from a friend.  Actually, she told me this makes a great cobbler with any type of berry, but around here blackberries are free, so that’s what I use.  It was a bit of a challenge to stamp a blackberry when we don’t have one in the catalog, but applying a marker to only the top section of a bunch of grapes ("Watercolor Garden") solved the problem!  (Credit goes to my clever downline, Becca, for THAT idea!)  And I decided that the leaves from "Serene Sunflower" provide a reasonable facsimile of blackberry leaves.  This one was particularly fun – blending Ruby Red and Elegant Eggplant markers to arrive at the different shades of berry colors.

So today it’s my "back to work" day – and yes, I’m looking forward to it!  I wonder sometimes what percentage of the population can honestly claim *that* the day after a 3-day weekend, but that’s one of the benefits of working for oneself doing what you love!

And I do have plenty of "stuff" to do…. all kinds of chores, both business and personal, that have become quite backlogged during the summer while my time and attentions were largely focused elsewhere.  So part of this week will be devoted to that backlog (especially in the business arena), and I’m fired up and ready to tackle the challenge. 

One of the demonstrator web lists to which I belong is focused on streamlining our work, and at least attempting to bring order to the creative chaos that often plagues "artists".  So every now and then we have what we call a "Wonder Week", and this week the challenge has gone out.  Perfect timing for me, actually!  And those who attend my "A Light Heart" Tote & Coordinating Cards class this Friday, should be able to tell whether or not my Wonder Week has been successful – by whether or not we can use the surface of the tables for stamping on, lol! 

One of the wedding projects on my plate last week was to make these fans for the guests.  They were dual-purpose, actually – not only providing information about the ceremony, but some relief from the intense midday Yakima sun as well.   If you’ve stopped by my booth at the Island County Fair in the past few years you have probably already seen the basic idea – except these were double-sided, and mostly computer-generated. 

We listed the names of the key players in the day’s events on the front of the fans, and on the back we included the words to a beautiful passage about love that was read during the ceremony. 

I was pleased to overhear some favorable comments about these fans, as I’d received precious little feedback about the save-the-date cards or invitations that had consumed so much of my life earlier this year.  (On the other hand, the fans only included one little token stamped image, while the other pieces were intensely hand-stamped and took gazillion times longer to create.  Hhmmmm…… I wonder if I should read anything into that circumstance, lol?!?)

Last week’s stamping also included a starter set of thank you cards, a guest book, and some more progress on their wedding announcements.  The announcements are still not quite done, but I’m hoping to finish those up and get them mailed within the next few days.  And the thank you cards are fairly simple, so I should be able to finish those up in a couple of evenings.  So the end of the wedding stamping is finally in sight!  Hip Hip Hurray!  I am SO ready to move on to something else!

I am soooo appreciative to all my friends and family who have helped in the huge project over these months:  Amy, Dennise, Diane, Jane, Jennifer, Judy, my parents, and my daughter and her husband.  I would NEVER have finished all this on time without their willing assistance!  A big thank you to all!

Don’t really have time for details, but I thought I’d utter a big, blogged "WHEW!"  My son David and his lovely bride Jenn were married in a beautiful outdoor ceremony on Saturday. The entire previous week had been a full-speed-ahead, all-out stress-fest, but I think that what the guests actually witnessed was an organized, sweet wedding ceremony.  Again, I say "WHEW!"

It’s coming. 

*What’s* coming? 

EVERYTHING, it seems! 

The County Fair (our booth setup began today & will continue tomorrow), son David’s wedding (only 10 more days, and I’m still stamping for it), and daughter Kim and her husband are arriving, too (via train from So. California). 

So everything’s coming – and everything’s got a deadline.  But I *shall* keep my cool…… 

Ribbons.  I love ’em.  And have a lot of ’em.  But for years, there’s always been this dilemma about how to store them?  Oh, I’ve read and heard about all kinds of ideas, but none ever seemed the perfect solution…

Suspend a dowel from under a shelf and string your ribbon spools on the dowel.  Are you KIDDING me?!?  And remove every single spool from the dowel when you need to take out the one in the middle?!?  Or how ’bout the "PVC pipe cut in half the long way" solution.  Well, perhaps – if only I had any more room on my walls to mount such a cumbersome thing. 

A couple years ago I bought a white wire 3-shelf gizmo that worked for a while – until I eventually acquired more ribbons than it could hold and went searching for another rack just like it (or even *close* to it).  But of course no such thing could be found *anywhere* at that point – not even on the ‘net. 

But today I think I’ve found what I’ve been searching for all these years – and wouldn’t you know it would be Stampin’ Up!(r) that finally came to the rescue!  The new Ribbon Keeper system will be available beginning in September, in the upcoming Holiday Mini Catalog.  But one of the perks of being a demonstrator is the privilege of preordering Mini Catalog merchandise, so I got my hands on a couple-a sets early, and just put them together today.  And by George, I think the system’s gonna work!  Obviously I’ll still be needing a few more pieces in order to corral all my stuff, but that’s ok.  The point is, it’s gonna work!  And that makes me happy. 

This is what I have so far – one set of medium (the top 2 racks), and one set of large (the bottom 2 racks).  (Each set consists of 2 racks of the same size.)  I don’t have the small ones yet, but they will eventually fit on top to create a 3rd level.  (I believe they will accomodate my metallic cord spools – of which I have many more than show in this picture, lol.)  I chose to assemble my units this way (graduated sizes from bottom to top), but I see no reason why units of the same size couldn’t be stacked together, too.  They’re designed to sit on a shelf or table, but I’m sure it won’t be long before someone figures out a way to mount ’em to a wall. (If there’s anything I’ve learned while being associated with all these creative people, it’s that "sooner or later someone will figure out a way…..!"

So if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go admire my pretty ribbon for a while….

Many of you know my son is getting married.  Real soon, too.  And when the mother of one of the "to be married’s" is a stamper, somehow she ends up with a significant "job" in all this preparation stuff.

So it was in our case.  Now, I KNOW I was never exactly asked, and I KNOW I never volunteered, but somehow it came to pass that I was put in charge of the save-the-date cards…

and the wedding invitations…

…and just when I thought I was all done except for a handful of announcements (many thanks to the help of family and friends and the hours they contributed, too!!!), well, my assignments grew.  So now there were programs (well, sort of) to mount onto fan handles for the ceremony, and favors to create for reception guests. 

So this week I’ve been working on preparing the favors to a point where I could send them on to the bride and her friends for final assembly (and the addition of the proper candies).  And thanks once again to my wonderful family (particularly my Mom & Dad who I’m sure became far more familiar with a paper crimper than they ever imagined they would!), that portion of the project is now complete.

(On to the fans for the ceremony next…)

But that brings me to a project idea I thought I’d share:  Did you know you can make your own packaging shreddie – in colors that coordinate with your projects and cost oodles less than the store-bought variety?  Just cut off roughly 1/8" slivers of cardstock from the long end of your paper (I found that Stampin’ Up!(r)’s brand-new table-top cutter was perfect for that), and then send the strips through the paper crimper!  Now you’ve got custom shreddie stuff in the exact colors that match the rest of your project. 

Two years of curiousity, and I finally took the plunge tonight.  I started a blog.  Not sure where this adventure will lead me, but blogs are all the rage, and by golly I’m not gonna be left behind!