A Little Piece of Art Stampers

More of what I started yesterday

I mentioned I made a bunch of cards based on this one...here are some more...

Copy of a swap I saw at regionals....it started the color combo...uses Best of Everything Set (We were given this on the Cruise last year, I had not even used it yet!)

Then I made this one...Again, same concept as yesterday's post...simple and cute!  Love the words!

Loved the set, so I kept going with this one (based on a card I saw on Stampin Connection (the Demonstrator gallery of samples that we share with one another).

LOVE IT!!

Fun card today

Here is a quickie:

I recently had a Downline Diva Retreat at my Cabin, and we had some project that were planned, but then spent time just stamping...going back to what I had talked about in yesterday's post, I came up with this!

I loved the colors Crumb Cake (my fav!!),Whisper white,  Wisteria Wonder, Pool Party, and Lucky Limeade.  I wanted to use Raining Flowers, a set I had not done much with lately, and this prints pack that I had not been using yet (can you say another hoard?)

I also used the Tasteful Trim Die, Triple Treat Blossom Punch, Punch Pack, and a pearl, of course!

I ended up making quite a few more cards based on this one...I'll showcase them later...stop back!

Get Your Stamp On!

Get into my head....While many of you who know me best (especially my husband) would find this scary...I really want to share with you more of the strategies of how to get going stamping.  I hear from many of you that you all struggle with getting going when you do have precious time to stamp.  While the reasons can widly vary, here are some tips:

1.  Plan (just a little) and LIMIT

When you have a goal in mind that surly helps!  Do you need a specific type of card?  Do you just want to use a particular set?  Do you have some printed paper you've been hoarding?  (Don't even look at this post like you don't hoard...remember...I know what you've got!  I just don't know what you;ve used :)

2. Start by Copying

I think the question people ask me the most is how do I come up with all my ideas, and my favorite answer is that I simply don't!  I always hate when people tell me, "I'm just not that creative"  PHOEY!!  If you can copy, then you can create a masterpiece!

In my last post I showed a card I made...here is the card that inspired it:

It is almost a stamp for stamp copy of a card I saw at a Stampin Up Regional Seminar, and I think they told us it was based on a card in the current catalog (substituting sets/colors)

So, I just loved how it looked, and then I went from there:

Same color scheme, I liked the First Edition printed paper (thank you Stampin Up for sparing that from the discontinued list!!)  I love the Inspired by Nature set (unfortunately, this was not spared, and I believe it belongs in every stamper's collection)  Contact me if you need to order it before it is gone forever (May 31st).  I also LOVE LOVE LOVE the Boho Flower and Punch Pack punches, and added some bling.

3.  Add some embellishments (limit what you have to choose from or you'll go crazy...you all hoard this stuff, too!)  Pick some things that coordinate...

I wanted to use the Distressed Dots Bkgrd (Background stamps are kind of like embellishments, if you think about it).  I wanted to use some pearls, and I certainly wanted to add something cute, like those darn butterflies from the Wonderful Wings Embosslit (another staple of your collection).  A Dena Original...doens't happen too often!

4.  Bring out something you've never tried before (or not for a while)

We all have things we have not used (or forgot we have) or maybe even are not sure where they are (that is my problem, quite often)

That drove me to continue with another card with this color scheme  but with different stamps:

This awesome card uses 3 things I had not pulled out in a while:  Borderlines (A FABULOUS set that Stampin Up is discontinuing...boo hoo)  It was on my first order out of the current catalog, but was stashed in the back of a drawer of stamps and I just ran accross it again...LOVE IT!!  The Blossom Party Die is one I have always loved, but sometimes I forget about it (wrongly) in favor of my favorite die, Fun Flowers!  And, of course, The Word Play Stamp Set, was another one I had not pulled out lately...here is what you get:  Another completely original card!  Yippie!

We will be making this one in my Card Club...wanna join us?  We meet tonight at 5 or 7pm...contact me if you'd like to come!

That brings me to this card and another tip: 

4.  Use the random stuff left from the last card(s) on your desk

...Given what is on my desk I could go on for days and days...I find I am not really successful stamping unless my 8 foot table has only the size of a card's worth of space left to use! :)

The final in the series:  I had diecut 4  1/4 Sheets of cardstock in the flower die...so the left over pieces needed to be used...and the Word Play set was obviously still out.... :) Voila, another materpiece (well, another Dena Original, at least!)

Hope these tips have been helpful...please let me know what you think with acomment on this post!

Back in Business!

Hi everyone,
Well, I am back from a fabulous trip with my family to Disney World (and we added a 3-day Disney cruise to the start of the trip so that there would be something relaxing about this trip!) :)

My sister and her 2 kids joined us for the Disney World portion of the trip and we had a fantastic time!

Obviously! :)

Here is what I was doing before that:

I had made all these cards in the last month (before leaving for Disney)!!!  WOW!!  I impressed myself with all this stampin (and a few other people, too)!!  I had been in a bit of a funk for some time, and my dear hubby gave me the time I needed to really get on a roll!  What a treat!

I am excited to share the fruits of my labor with you!  I believe that I have enough of a working knowledge of my mac to get them posted (mostly I took pictures differently).  I do apologize--I really have had quite a bit to share with you, I just have not been able to get along with my computer long enough to get them up...frustrating is a word that doesn't even cover it!  Everyone keeps telling me once I get the hang of things it will be fabulous!  I have a dot of hope that that is still true!  Let me tell you that I am truly feeling old that this transition has not been easier!  Sheesh!

One of the things I noticed on my little creative explosion is that we have too much stuff!!  YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!!  I have not had such a successful Stampin Up Career without you all knowing that! :)  So, I found that when I limited what I allowed myself to use, I had a lot more success stamping!  Also:  SIMPLIFY!!  or "KISS" Keep It Simple Sister!  Here is the perfect example of that:

I pulled out a few sets that I wanted to use and I had a color pallet that I wanted to use (I copied the colors off a different card I saw somewhere)

This card uses several of my FAVORITES (and those of you who know me know I have lots of favorites):

-Flower Fest:  This is the easiest set to use, it coordinates with a bunch of punches (most of my regular customers have all of them) and it is one sheet of cardstock with a couple of punches.

-"The Donna"  This is the technique I learned many years ago from a FABULOUS Stampin Up Employee, Donna Griffin (she rocks!)  Basically you ink your stamp, stamp it once, pick it up a little, then repeatedly stamp the reamainder of the ink (like you repeatedly tap it on the cardstock).  It leaves a little halo of lighter stamped images around the initial full-strength one, looks great and makes it look like the image is colored in nicely!  AWESOME!!

-Bling!!  I found with all those cards I made, the vast majority of them have bling on them (pearls and/or rhinestones)  LOVE them

-it uses the Boho Blooms punch...I believe that this is one of the best punches (besides the punch pack) in the catalog.  It can add so much!!

-Punch Pack (yep, I used that one, too!!)  The pack of 3 little punches...the best punches ever....

-One sheet of cardstock (that makes cutting simple)

Colors:

Very vanilla cardstock, Lucky Limeade, Tangerine Tango, and Pool Party (surprise!)  Not! :)

Greeting is from Blessings From Heaven (p. 161) I really like that saying, and it is so true!

Come back tomorrow for more!

More From Founders...

This is from the entry of the Kanab facility--they had everything decorated so nicely for our visit!

After we tourned the Kanab facility, we headed to the "Rubber Park" a playground that is made possible from Stampin Up and it uses ground up rubber under all the playground equipment...we of course took lots of pictures!

Walking on all that rubber was really squishy! :)

And, like any good event with friends, my room was TP'd by a friend! :)

One really special treat was that Stampin UP took us to see the Little Mermaid at a really amazing place called, Tuacahn, a naturally formed ampitheater where they flooded the stage for the performance...it was amazing!

Here are my friends, Catherine, Jen and Jo at the show...

So on the last afternoon, we had our "final event" which we had no idea what it would be....so we pull up to this beautiful golf course and we were on the bus going, oh my goodness....I CAN'T GOLF!!!!  So there was this huge line of golf carts and we were on teams of 7 and given 4 golf carts per team to zoom around the 9 hole course to complete a little challenge on each hole.  Many were golf related (drive a marshmallow as far as you can, putt the ball and if you hit a Stampin Up product, you'll get that one for free) and some were stamping related...there was a TRIVIA stop--and those of you who thought my trivia challenge was tough from my hostess appreciation dinners--that was nothing!  There were 17 questions and we got 2 right (the best score out of 17 teams!!)  Aren't you proud of me! :)

This is me and Marlayne, a Canadian demonstrator on my team.  I had never drove a golf cart, before so that was interesting! :)

Shelli was running one of the challenges, so that was fun!  Her's involved a marshmallow, too! :)

I think the funniest part of the whole event (besides how rediculous we looked!) was that there were all these Jack Rabbits EVERYWHERE...we saw hundreds of them!!  This is my favorite pic of the biggest ears! :)