Friday, June 28, 2019

Very Versailles Merci


I'm loving the Very Versailles stamp set from the Annual Catalogue . It's so versatile. It looks great as a vintage stamp set or it works well with a collage stamping technique, too! I needed some Thank You cards for customers, so I got out my Very Versailles stamp set along with some Whisper White Note Cards & Envelopes and some Garden Lane Designer Series Paper and the combination was like a dream come true! A very simple, but very classy looking card!

Take a closer look:


  • I think the combination of the fine script and the amazing vine image are what really makes this Very Versailles stamp set work! Here I stamped the script first in Early Espresso, stamped off once, and then stamped over that with the vine in full strength Mossy Meadow.
  • This set also has several sentiments in lovely fonts. I chose the Thank You for obvious reasons and added it at the bottom right, stamped in full strength Early Espresso.
  • The background panels use two different designs from the Garden Lane Designer Series Paper sets. These two designs really add to the vintage look.
  • I love using the Note Cards & Envelopes for my customer thank yous. They are just the right size, they are pre-cut and pre-scored and there are 20 in a package - just the right amount for an order or two.
There's a couple of new promotions coming up in July and August. First there is the Extra, Extra Recruiting Promotion. 



Did you miss the opportunity to earn extra product purchasing the Starter Kit during Sale-A-Bration? Well, you have a second chance during July and August. Stampin' Up!'s Starter Kit is already the best deal in the catalogue - you get $165 worth of any product you chose for only $135, with free shipping! But if you sign up and get the starter kit during July or August, you will get an EXTRA $40 worth of product for the same low price of $135. That's $205 worth of wonderful Stampin' Up! product for only $135, with free shipping! It doesn't get any better than that.

Oh, wait! Yes, it does! Because the month after you sign up, Stampin' Up! is going to send you a coupon worth $14 to encourage you to place an order! So that's a total of $219 of product for only $135! Whoa! 



Now, add to that the regular benefits of being a demonstrator - 20% discounts on all products, the chance to see and order from the new Holiday Catalogue a whole month earlier than the regular public, access to a wonderful network of like-minded people who love stamping just like you do, and the opportunity to attend the amazing OnStage presentations in November! 

Start saving up, because I can't see a reason for anyone to turn this offer down. There is absolutely no risk involved, unless you count the risk of creating a business for yourself that let's you work the way you want to work while you do what you love! If you don't want to sell, you don't have to! 

This promotion starts July 1 so anytime after that, go to my top menu and click on Join My Team to get the Starter Kit.

The other new promotion will be for Customers:


As last summer, you can earn Bonus Days coupons in July, and then redeem them in August. For every $60 you spend in July (before tax and shipping) you will earn a $6 coupon to redeem in August. Every little bit helps, right? And there are SO MANY beautiful things in the new catalogue that you can purchase to earn those coupons with and redeem them for! Starts July 1.


Click on the links below to take you to my On-Line Store, where you can read about, look at, and purchase if you wish, the products used to make this card today.


Product List

Monday, June 24, 2019

CASEing the Catalogue for My Catalogue Launch


I just had my new Annual Catalogue Launch this past Saturday and though it was successful to a point, and certainly enjoyable spending time with my lovely customers, and fun decorating and creating displays, I have to admit that the week before was filled with so much work that I spent many nights up until the wee hours working on the prep for the event. I suppose I could have been better organized, doing more prep ahead of time, but there always seems to be something urgent that needs doing, keeping me from getting ahead of the game.

Anyway, somewhere during the week, a straw broke! I decided, probably not for the first time, and maybe not for the last time, that I needed to be doing more than killing myself  with this overwork, and that I need to work smart, not hard. I also had a rebellious moment against Google and social media and SEO and algorithms and decided that they were going to stop running my life!

Yes, it would be great to have an on-line business, but if I have been posting consistently for 6 years and still haven't seen any substantial fruit, then why am I kidding myself into believing that it could still happen? Heck, I don't even know if anyone really even reads my blogs posts. I rarely get comments unless it's a forced situation like a blog hop or members of my own design team.

So blogging is going to stop running my life. I'm going to run my blog and blog when I want to and if I'm going on vacation, I'm going to really go on vacation and not try to create blog posts to carry through it, even though it exhausts me to the point that I spend vacation days recovering! There! Rebellion over! Heck, I'm 67 years old - I need to enjoy life and enjoy stamping again, not have it be a job that I have to do!

All that to say, I may not be as consistent a blogger anymore. When I have something to share with you I will. And maybe, when I enjoy stamping again, it will be more frequently!

I will share the displays I created for my Catalogue Launch last weekend though. I did a lot of Catalogue CASEing, as I always do when I need a lot of samples in a short amount of time and it was fun doing that! Here they are:































Thanks for reading! Happy Stampin'!

Friday, June 21, 2019

Very Versailles for As You See It Challenge #203


I was thrilled when I saw some beautiful vintage images in several stamp sets in the new 2019-20 Annual Catalogue and I could not keep myself from purchasing them. One that really caught my eye was Very Versailles, especially for the script in it and the vintage flourishy thingy! What DO you call it? I've been dying to ink it up, and when I had to make a Design Team sample card for our As You  See It Challenge #203, I knew it was time to get it out. The challenge is a fill in the blank challenge and it's about your favourite colour to wear. Here's the banner:


When I fill in the blank, my answer is peach/coral and aqua. I'm always drawn to these colours and I always get compliments when I wear clothing in those colours! As I type this I have on an aqua t shirt and I have coral nail polish! I wore my favourite top to see my daughter perform in Mamma Mia. Check out the colour it was:

Not sure why I feel the need to prove to you that these are, in fact, my favourite colours, but there you have your proof anyway. Now that we have that out of the way, here's how my card came together:

  • On the Crumb Cake card base I used a panel of Petal Pink, embossed with the new Scripty 3D embossing folder and sponged around the edges with some Crumb Cake ink to help the script show up more and to add to the vintage look.
  • The main panel of Very Vanilla was stamped in a collage manner with several images from the Very Versailles stamp set, including the script in Crumb Cake, stamped off once. The little border stamp was inked up in Petal Pink and stamped full strength in the middle of the panel, at the bottom without reinking it and twice at the top, once without reinking and once after inking and stamping off.
  • The lovely leaves image was stamped twice in Mint Macaron. Some of the Petal Pink 5/8" Organdy Striped Ribbon was added around the image panel, securing it on the back with adhesive.
  • Then that panel was backed with Mint Macaron card stock and layered onto the card base.
  • Finally, the vintage flourishy thingy (what IS that called?) was stamped onto a separate piece of Very Vanilla in Crumb Cake ink and fussy cut and mounted on the front with Stampin' Dimensionals. The sentiment, from Very Versailles, was also stamped on Very Vanilla, in Mint Macaron ink and die cut using the smallest Stitched Shapes Oval.
  • The sentiment was mounted as shown using Stampin' Dimensionals and a couple of Pearl Basic Jewels, coloured with Dark Petal Pink Stampin' Blends Marker, added to the label.
This was quite easy to do and it has quite a delicate, vintage look to it. Head on over to As You See It Challenges yourself and play along with us this week.


Click on the links below to take you to my On-Line Store, where you can read about, look at, and purchase if you wish, the products used to make this card today.


Product List
Glue Dots
[103683]
$7.25

Wednesday, June 19, 2019

More Birthday Cards for Grandsons







It's going to be a quick post today with a couple of custom cards to share that I made for two of my grandsons who have birthdays in June. As I may have mentioned, June is a busy month for birthdays in my family, but these are the last two, Kesten and Wyatt!



Kesten will be seven years old and has always been into Lego. He also enjoys the Lego Movies, especially the Jurassic Park versions. I thought that might be an easy thing to recreate in punch art. I thought wrong. It turns out that Lego people are deceptively hard to make with punch art. This was the photo I was trying to replicate:


And here's how it turned out (simplified version):


I'm not listing punches and instructions, because it took me hours and I can't remember them all, and, furthermore, I don't recommend that you even try, because I would never attempt it again, I don't think, unless someone paid me a lot of money or I had a lot of wine to drink!!! The basics were the 1/2 circle, the word window, the fox builder for hair and dino tail, and the story label for the dino 
legs. Oh, and the owl builder!

The second card was for Wyatt.


Wyatt is turning six and right now is obsessed with Back to the Future! He wants a Back to the Future Lego set for his birthday! I was a little easier on myself with his card, but not much.


I used my sponge brayer to create the flaming look of the letters, but I started out by doing it wrong. (Always look at the picture first, folks, instead of trusting your memory.) I had it all sponged and all the letters die cut and was arranging them on the card front before I realized that the gradation should go from top to bottom or vice versa on all the letters, not from left to right one letter at a time. So I had to start over! I used the car from the Geared Up Garage stamp set, stamped in StazOn Ink on the retired Galvanized Paper (from the 2018 Holiday Catalogue) to make the DeLorean time traveling car from the movie and the sea weed die from the new Smooth Sailing die set makes great flames if you trim it down a bit.

The background Designer Series Paper is from the See a Silhouette series.

Anyway, hope the boys both enjoy their cards and their birthdays! They are both getting older so quickly! I feel like I'm missing so much of it! Wish they both lived closer! Happy Stampin'!