Well, you could have guessed what would be here today, now, couldn’t you have?
April features the Young Vermillion single stamp:
May uses the one of the beautiful images from the hostess set Simply Soft:
And June is ready to start the day with Morning Cup:
Remember, the template for these calendar pages is the work of Tracy Harp at Inky Doodles!
I made these little calendars last year using a template from Tracy Harp at Inky Doodles and they were so popular that I brought them back for an encore this year:
January uses the Awash with Flowers stamp set
February uses the Ain’t Love Grand Hostess set
March uses Fabulous Florets, one of my personal favorites
These little calendars are just the right size to sit on a cute little easel in my kitchen.
You can hardly see the forest for the trees:
These little pennants make such cheerful little trees. I may or may not have indulged myself in a rant about triangles and my inability to make them look right. It always seems like one side is a little off – so I trim it – and then the other side is off! It’s geometry. Some have it, some don’t. I know a triangle when I see one, I’m just not very good at cutting one.
But honey, I can punch ’em out like nobody’s business! (The more I blog, the more I realize that I posess a ridiculous number of inane and somewhat meaningless expressions. I make no excuses.) I love punching these pennants and finding fun things to do with them.
And check out that little spotty dotty tag:
As a matter of fact, I need a few more tags and I am going to go punch out a bunch of these. Right after I finish my pie. Because I must admit, I make a fabulous pumpkin pie.
Merry Christmas.
One of the many things that I really enjoy about attending someone else’s class is that other people use colors I would never dream of putting together:
This is a color combination I would never have used for Christmas, but look how pretty it is! Not one, but two shades of pink…well worth the trip out to Haiku.
If you live on the mainland and have a 75 mile commute every day – one way, uphill both ways – then you might as well go on to the next blog post, because you are not going to get this. You see, Cheryl used to live 5 minutes from me. She was just up the hill. The year she became an empty nester, she and her husband decided to do the Green Acres thing (if you are younger than dirt, ask an old person about Green Acres) and they moved out to Haiku. They have two gorgeous acres and a horse (maybe two, we aren’t sure) in the pasture – more about that another time – but the word you need to pay attention to is “OUT”. Haiku is a 45 minute drive. There is no more “Hey Cheryl, come down here and look at this and tell me what it needs.” I don’t call her to see if I can run up and borrow a few sheets of Riding Hood Red. We have to make DATES for coffee, for Pete’s sake. (Don’t ask me who Pete is. He’s older than dirt too.)
Anyway, if I want to see Cheryl I have to pack my overnight bag and load up some provisions and feed and water the horses (I mean put gas in the car) and then DRIVE. And I don’t really like to drive. Matter of fact, as each of my children have gotten their respective driver’s licenses I have made they my chauffeur. Turn-around is fair play. But I love Cheryl, and spending time with her is like being in the sunshine – you just have to do it, and you feel so wonderful when you do. So I drive out to the hinterlands in Haiku where everyone wears sweaters and shoes and we stamp. And it is totally worth the drive.
Thanksgiving weekend I went to stamp camp at Cheryl’s:
Just look at this bag – the colors, the snowflake, and as Cheryl would say, that dang penguin! Just LOOK at him!
There. Now you can really see him. I had my contact in when I was coloring his scarf – looking at it this closely, I realize I should have put my glasses on. I wear a single contact in one eye for reading – my left eye is my “reader” eye and my right eye is my “distance” eye. It took a week or so, but amazingly enough my brain sorted it out and it works well – except for fine detail like coloring a little penguin scarf. Then my brain says “whoa whoa whoa” and starts making the lines jump around like little drops of water in a hot frying pan. Just in case you were wondering…
But what I really wanted to tell you was that it was absolutely luscious going someplace else and doing someone else’s projects. I didn’t have to come up with ideas, order the supplies, and prep all the paper – I just showed up and stamped. What a wonderful treat that was!
Kellie sent a bunch of these to swap at our last demonstrator team meeting:
Red and silver glimmer paper turn this simple idea into a holiday sparkler! That’s the tag from the Sizzix Two Tags die, and cardstock has been folded and placed into the die inside of the cutting line to create a book-style tag that opens instead of a flat tag:
We all loved this tag! It was just enough thinking outside the box for all of us to do a face-palm and say “well, duh!” I’m doing a lot of that right now. The “well-duh” part of it, anyway.
Thanks for sending this to us Kellie – we miss you!
My new Occasions Mini catalog demonstrator pre-order arrived almost a week ago and I have been so busy that most of my goodies have had to patiently wait in the studio. One of the things I’m most excited about is a new product called Framelits. I can’t show you the product itself, but I can show you what it can do!!
Don’t you love that shape? I can see so many uses for this! I put these together very quickly (remember, it’s been kinda busy around here) but even a quickie project gets a big boost from framelits!
This is just a little bit of Designer Series Paper (Frostwood Lodge #124002) wrapped around a package of gum. Because was making a bunch of these, I used the Tasteful Trim die to mass produce strips of scallops. A quick stamp, some shimmer paint bling and a couple of dimensionals and I was done! A simple little gift for the holidays that doesn’t have any calories – and heaven knows, I could use a few more gifts like that!
Robin Merriman shared this beautiful Red Glimmer paper poinsettia and I thought it would make the perfect embellishment on the top of a gift box:
The petals are made with the Blossom Petals Builder punch. I layered cardstock on the top and sides and used the Petals-a-Plenty Textured Impressions Embossing folder to give the top layer a little dimension. Dazzling Details added just a smidgen of sparkle to the flowers – it really didn’t take that long!
Underneath the button and tab is a self-stick Velcro closure. The box stays closed very nicely on its own, but I wanted to put the tab on and I didn’t want it flappin’ around. Here’s a look from the top:
A few gold brads and a dusting of gold glitter (shhhh, don’t tell!!) finish off this pretty Christmas flower.
This isn’t my original idea – it came from a fellow Stampin’ Up! demonstrator. Â Natalia Danko is one of the sweetest people you could ever hope to meet, and her little fat Santa jars are a perfect Christmas door prize:
Just a little bit of cardstock – Real Red, Basic Black and Whisper White – but the thing that makes these Santas rock is that blingin’ belt buckle! Let’s hear it for Silver Glimmer Paper!
These are easy as can be – just wrap the Real Red cardstock around the bottle and attach (I used Sticky Strip). Next attach a narrow strip of Whisper White down the front (to cover the seam) and then wrap another thin strip of Basic Black around the middle. Cut a square out of the Silver Glimmer paper and punch a smaller square of Basic Black cardstock to fit in the middle. Stick ’em together with Glue Dots and then fill your jars with Kisses! A little 1/4 inch grosgrain around the lid and a scallop circle on the top and you are finito!
And now a gift bag in the traditional colors of the season:
(This bag is perfectly straight – the photographer has “issues”!)
Cherry Cobbler and Old Olive make a bright and cheery Christmas combination. Stampin’ Up! really knocked our socks off (get it?? c’mon, you’ve gotta at least giggle) with the Stitched Stockings stamp set and coordinating punch. Seems like every other project I’ve done this year has had a stocking theme – but they’re all so different!
The big scallops on the Tasteful Trim Bigz XL die are echoed in the small scallops from the Scallop Trim border punch, and I am crazy about those tiny little jingle bells . You can stick them on with a Glue Dot if you’re in a rush, but for things that I want to last I use a little piece of beading wire. (I know, I get kind of goofy with stuff like that).
The best part about using gift bags is that they are re-usable! No more mountains of gift paper piled up and thrown away. It’s not such a small thing, you know – but even if it were, small gestures add up and become significant. Use a gift bag this year – and next year too!
The Maui Stamper 