Last day of the Holiday Sale…and new 30% discounts for today only!
Visit the Online Store to have these – and the other Holiday Specials – packed in a box with your name on it!
There are a few spots left to make the 2014 Easel Calendar next Saturday – I need your RSVP pronto! $13 for the calendar with easel, $10 without.
Isn’t this the perfect message for December?
December is about Believing…believing the spring will come, believing in Santa and all the goodness he represents, believing in the Christ Child born in Bethlehem, born to redeem us all.
*Shimmer spray is made with a few drops of Stampin’ Up! ink refill mixed with 70% rubbing alcohol and Champagne Mist Shimmer Paint. To my deep dismay, Champagne Mist is now retired. However, as I’ve noted before, these calendar cards were made in a class last January when Champagne Mist was still part of our product line – as was the Snow Swirled stamp set. You’re welcome to improvise!!
And…it’s time to look ahead to 2014! We’ll be making the new Easel calendar this Saturday, December 7 at 9am. It’s $13 for the calendar plus easel or $10 if you have your own easel. Contact me ASAP if you’d like to join us.
Finally, stop by this morning and visit me at the St. Theresa Church Cookie Walk and Craft Fair. It’s in Stawasz Hall at 25 West Lipoa Street, Kihei from 8am until noon. Cookies PLUS Crafts? I don’t see how you could resist 🙂
I was delighted at how much everyone enjoyed this project at the Maui Stampers Craft Fair!
A project like this is such fun to do – I used some of my current favorites as well as a couple of retired gems. I try not to get too attached to retired sets but there are a few that I have tucked away. Culling old stamps makes room for new ones – at least that’s what I tell myself – so the ones that stay really have to earn their keep.
Just before we opened the door…ready for a busy day!
The kind gentlemen at the Maui Masonic Lodge give us a good deal, so we have plenty of room for our goodies. It’s amazing to me that 5 Stampin’ Up! demonstrators can bring such a wide variety of crafts! There’s a lot of versatility in our products.
Apparently there’s not quite as much versatility in our footwear – we were very entertained to realize that Birks – and not just any Birks – were the favored footwear of Maui Stampers. (Looks to me like we all need some sunshine…too much crafting this week!)
And just so you know how dedicated we are to bringing you the finest crafts…neither snow, nor sleet, nor temperatures below 70° will keep us from our appointed rounds.
I hope you enjoyed that 🙂
Stop by – we’ll have cards, holiday decor, gift items and more – plus our smiling faces!!
Crystal and I have been putting on a Christmas stamp camp for a few years. This year it’s October 12 – coming soon!
By now, you’ve figured out that I am fundamentally lazy – and I like to abbreviate. We began calling our stamp camp the Christmas Extravaganza, then added in our names, and now refer to it as ACCE – “ace” if you want to say it out loud.
One of our classes is a packages class – two boxes, a bag-in-a-box, and two gift card/money card presentations. This class is $20 and will run from 11:30am til 2pm. There’s also a cards class in the morning and a multi-media class in the afternoon. If you’ll be on Maui the 12th I hope you’ll join us!
Early Bird deadline is October 1st – every class goes up $5 if you register after that day. Don’t wait!
I forgot to share my last organized Convention Swap project!
This tag measures 3 1/2 x 6 inches. The two base layers were shaped using the Window Frame framelits – just cut your card stock to the width of the framelit, place the framelit at the top of the panel and run into your Big Shot just far enough to cut the top, then back it out.
Love that glimmer paper – I haven’t used it much lately, but Sparkle Season is coming!!
This swap produced absolutely gorgeous samples – thank you, ladies in Group 1- and a special thanks to my swap angel, Lynn Marshall, who stepped in to actually swap my tags when I developed a time conflict.
At convention, Pam Morgan showed us a trick for adapting our new Tag a Bag gift bags. I brought home my Make ‘n Take projects (they were Take ‘n Makes for me! Much easier to bring home on the plane) and used her technique to step up my Tag It project.
Didja see his EYEBALL?
I had a little giggle fit over this one, I guarantee ya! This is a Maui Stamper Original Idea 🙂
Pam showed us how to put the gusset in the bottom, and I’ll give you the instructions for that too, but I also want to show you one more Maui Stamper Original Idea (MSOI – you knew that was coming, didn’t you?)Â She suggested we put a little piece of grunge chipboard inside the bag (that kinda junk cardboard that keeps your Stampin’ Goodies from getting bent when they’re shipped.)Â My MSOI was to wrap that little bad boy so when you look into the package it’s pretty, not grungy.
The dimensions for converting the bag are at the end of the post – here’s the how to wrap the base:
Cut your grunge chipboard just a hair short of 2″ x 3″. Cut a piece of DSP to 3″ x 4″. (This is Quatrefancy Specialty DSP.)
Apply a thin coat of Tombo (the Wonder Adhesive) to one side of the grunge chipboard. You want it to be spread smoothly and evenly to avoid any bubbles in the finished product. Center the chipboard over the wrong side of the DSP and use your fingernail or a bone folder to create the DSP at each edge (you crafters with the beautiful manicures will already have that bone folder in your hand). Trim the corners on the diagonal.
Spread a little more Tombo on the flaps and use your bone folder to press them over the edge and firmly across the bottom of the grungy cardboard.
When Pam put her bag together on stage at convention, she made it look really easy to get it squared but I had a little trouble until I had this MSOI. I put some SNAIL on one of the short flaps on the side of the bag and attached the bottom side of the covered grunge chipboard to the flap. This gives you something to wrap the bag around when you assemble the bottom. Once the first flap is secured, put SNAIL on the opposite flap, turn it under and stand the bag with the base squarely on top.
Doesn’t that little wrapped base look pretty?! And see how the wide flaps are pressed to the outside? Reach down into the bag with the bone folder and press the two narrow side flaps in place, then add a little more SNAIL to the two wide flaps and fold them in to finish the bottom of your bag. E-Z!!
To make the flat bag into a gusset bag, trim a narrow strip off the bottom – just to open it up. Score at 1 1/2″ from the bottom of the bag across the short end (I actually scored on both sides, flipping the bag over on my Stampin’ Score to be sure both score lines were solid.) Then score your bag at 1″ from each long edge. Snip along that 1″ score line on all 4 sides up to the 1 1/2″ score line – when you open up the bag it will resemble the open bag in the first couple of photos. Be sure to really press each of those score lines in well with your bone folder before attempting to assemble the bag. Don’t forget to invert and score the “gusset” fold on each side. Here’s a shot of the Big Screen at convention:
And there you have it! A package all ready for Iggy the Eyeball Iguana and some very special treats.
Be sure you stop by this weekend for another RemARKable Stamp of the Month tour featuring Tag It, the stamp set chosen this year to benefit the Ronald McDonald House Charities. Stampin’ Up! will donate $3 for every single Tag It stamp set sold. We’re proud of this support, and Stampin’ Up! as a company has donated over $1,000,000 to RMHC. In addition, Stampin’ Up! demonstrators world-wide lend their hands and hearts to RMHC, putting smiles on the faces of families in crisis. It’s just another way we’re Making a Difference.
Too Kind was one of my first “Must Have” stamp sets from the 2013-2014 Annual Catalog. It was an easy choice for a swap:
I was surprised to see how much depth of color I achieved by using clear embossing powder for the second part of the two-step stamping. That’s just Versamark with a dunk in the Crushed Curry ink and embossed with clear. (Do you know that technique? If you don’t have embossing powder in a color you want to use, take a clean stamp and ink it with Versamark. Before pressing onto the paper, press your stamp into your colored ink pad. When you stamp, the color transfers onto the paper first and the Versamark sits on top. Quickly cover your image with clear embossing power and heat emboss!)
This card is the other candidate for my Swap Cards class on August 24th. Your vote will help me to decide!
I only made 20 of these cards and I’m glad that’s all I signed up for. This Top Notch swap yielded another set of gorgeous swaps, and everyone really did put their best effort into creating for their fellow demonstrators. Thanks to all the Top Notch swappers!
I wanted to do another oval card for one of my swaps. It’s fun, it’s easy, it fits in a standard envelope, and you don’t see too much of it.
The technique is simple. You fold a 4 1/4 x 11 inch piece of cardstock in half at the 5 1/2 mark and place the folded side slightly inside of your oval framelit. This works best with our lighter weight cardstocks, Very Vanilla and Whisper White. The framelit will cut cleanly through two layers of these papers, giving you the card base. Once that’s ready, I like to cut another complete oval out of my featured color of cardstock and adhere that to the Very Vanilla card – I use Tombo, the Wonder Adhesive.
On August 24th, I’m holding a class to make two of my swaps. We are definitely going to make the Very Vintage card, but I haven’t decided if I should include this card or the Too Kind swap I’ll be posting in a few days. I’d love to hear what you think!
I really love swapping at Convention each year. I participate in organized swaps for the challenge and quality of swaps received, and I participate in general floor swapping because it’s such fun and it’s a great way to meet new people.
Today’s card is a swap I made for the Very Vintage Swap run by Barbara Welch. I received GORGEOUS swaps in return – everyone did an outstanding job. Hope they liked my card!
This card was a labor of love, and I enjoyed every minute of it. One thing I’ve learned over time is that swaps with small group sizes (this one was only 12) are more enjoyable to create and seem to produce better results. It’s just no fun to make 120 of the same card, at least in my opinion!
I’ll be featuring this card in class on Saturday, August 24th if you’d like to make one for yourself. All products are Stampin’ Up!, of course 🙂
The Maui Stamper 