Different shades of love

Posted on February 27, 2013 by mauistamper

Not quite sure what it is lately, but I am rebelling against hearts in pink and red:

Best of Love 25th Anniversary Stamp set

Whisper White, Garden Green, Pool Party and Cameo Coral card stock
Cameo Coral FFIP
Sycamore Street DSP SAB
Sycamore Street Button and Ribbon bundle SAB
1 inch square punch
Full heart punch
Triple heart punch (retired)
Scallop trim border punch

Lately I’ve been CASEing sketches, trying to jump start my creativity and move a little bit out of my comfort zone. This sketch comes from the cutting edge files of Mary Fish. It’s fun to play with a sketch, to update it with new colors and a little bit of your own personality. The colors I chose and the addition of the ribbon makes this card a little more feminine, but it’s still appropriate to give to a guy.

If it were pink and red, maybe not.

and now…the Pants

Posted on February 25, 2013 by mauistamper

This card is almost entirely ~~stolen~~ CASEd from the very talented Mary Jo Price-Williams : I turned the sketch on its side and used ovals – cuz I have them! – instead of circles. Those two changes left something of a gap on the top, so I added a Summer Starfruit sun: Gotta love those pants. They’re cut by hand, but it’s just straight lines. A glue dot at the waist secures the pants to the Whisper White oval plus it holds the Linen Thread clothesline in place and allows you to curve the clothesline. I’m CRAZY about this new Cloudy Day TIEF – the definition is awesome!

I also changed the sentiment to use the phrase that’s on the Pants Stamp. I know a LOT of Smarty Pantses. (It’s a word, I made it up myself.)

That’s a Pool Party card base, Sycamore Street DSP, Island Indigo oval mat, and Tangerine Tango, Island Indigo and Pool Party FFIP. The sun is made of a 3/4 inch circle punch and heaps of points made from the Pennant Builder Punch – plus enough Tombo (the Wonder Adhesive) to stick together all your fingers and toes.

Just for fun, I made a landscape version using the ovals. There’s room for another sun, but I didn’t think it was necessary.

A dress for Hostess Club

Posted on February 23, 2013 by mauistamper

I was inspired by a beautiful card my daughter received – made by my dear friend and partner in crime/stampin’/eatin’ Cheryl. I tweaked it a little for my hostess club last week:

No Stamps!
Very Vanilla, Pear Pizazz (ret) and Blushing Bride (ret) card stock
Blushing Bride (ret) ink pad
Big Shot with All Dressed Up Framelits
Elegant Bouquet and Fancy Fan TIEF
Very Vanilla 1/8 inch taffeta ribbon
5/8 inch flower trim
Sponge daubers
Pearls
Stampin’ Dimensionals

I had some of the retired cardstock we used for Carol’s weddding and I haven’t quite let go of that color combination, so I chose to share it with the club. I told them there should have been the teeniest tiniest pearls to line that beautiful neckline, but they had all been used up on wedding favors 🙂 They’re my friends; they understood.

It just takes a few dabs of ink on those fabulous flower trim blossoms to get a little bit of color. This card has a lot of texture which gives it depth and complexity even though it is a very simple layout.

Everyone used something different to adhere that single flower – Tombo, SNAIL, Stampin’ Dimensionals, Glue dots…and each adhesive worked equally well.

Are you interested in Hostess Club? 6 stampers commit to spend $25 a month for 6 months, and each person has a month as hostess – and earns the hostess benefits. I’m forming a new group – contact me if you would like more information.

Time to move on to a new color scheme. Thanks for indulging me 🙂

A very special sign

Posted on February 19, 2013 by mauistamper

Carol was inspired by something she saw on Pinterest and asked her dad if he could make a sign for the wedding. The guests were coming from many, many places, and Carol wanted something that would acknowledge the distances traveled.

Mr Maui Stamper, aka Dad, is a craftsman in his own right. His medium is wood, and though it’s been a few years since he did a project of this scale he immediately started planning. His skill and attention to detail resulted in an extraordinary sign:

There were a few locations that weren’t represented by name but were within a hundred miles or so of another destination. And those distances are not approximations, but were carefully calculated using specific coordinates for the EXACT distance!

The sign required a pretty substantial footing, and that meant removing a couple of the distance arrows from the bottom in order to put it in place. Carol loves her power tools:

The sign began and ended the week installed in our back yard – in fact, it is going to be permanently installed in the garden. For our parties at home, we wanted it to be more accessible so it went in the middle of the lawn:

Did I mention that Carol is an engineer too? She and her dad worked together on the back yard installation as that is a big sign and takes at least two people to put in place. Guests at the various parties took photos with the sign and admired both its physical and technical beauty.

It was a pretty impressive installation at the reception, too:

The wedding invitation

Posted on February 18, 2013 by mauistamper

It all began – at least from a paper point of view – with the invitation:

I made about 8 different samples and sent them off to Australia for Carol and Clarence to see. Thank goodness for Skype, Viber and email!! We compared and adjusted and tweaked until we were all happy, and then I set to work creating the invitation.

It doesn’t look like much here, but it was beautiful to hold and very elegant. I scored an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of card stock as a tri-fold, then created a panel to complete the front. That Elegant Lines embossed panel was spritzed with Champagne Mist shimmer paint, and I made a few extras that came in very handy later on. There’s a little Very Vanilla Seam Binding across the bottom, with that Decorative Label embellishment popped up on Stampin’ Dimensionals.

And no, there isn’t a larger Decorative label punch – that’s two Garden Green labels cut in half and attached to the back to create a mat – you can see it clearly in the first photo. We were careful to keep the front smooth since we didn’t want to pay for any additional postage due to extra thickness – these invitations travelled far and wide and the necessary postage was already enough!

The interior was simple – just their invitation to the guests and a few stamped images. The extra layers of paper gave it substantial weight that felt good to hold. We used Blushing Bride ink with Garden Green and Brushed Gold cardstock – I didn’t have enough Pear Pizazz cardstock when I made the invitations.

I sent out the U.S. invitations and shipped the rest to Carol and Clarence to mail in Australia and Mauritius. I confess I was relieved when Carol texted me a photo of the box of invitations safe and sound at her desk in Perth!

25 Years with Stampin’ Up: Best of Birthdays

Posted on February 16, 2013 by mauistamper

What a fabulous start to the 25 Years of Stampin’ Up! celebration! This Best of Birthdays set ($14.95!!) is a great selection of birthday images and I immediately saw the potential for favors:

Of course, this is a Stampin’ Up! birthday, so the favors have to be Stampin’ Up! favors! And the Sycamore Street Designer Series Paper (DSP) is such a great bundle of designs and colors that I knew it would be a perfect choice for birthday fun.

How about a rosette for your birthday cake – or your cupcakes – or your centerpieces – or your flowers? This rosette was a snap with the Designer Rosette Bigz XL die. I cut the DSP about 1 1/2 inches wide and used two 12 inch strips. A little Tombo (the Wonder Adhesive) attached the ends into a circle, and some hot glue on our Silicon Craft sheet secured the rosette quickly and easily.

The images are embossed in White and Tangerine Tango for an extra pop, and those curly ribbons are from the Sale-a-bration Sycamore Street ribbon and button bundle. I’ve tried curling our ribbon before with limited luck, but I had an idea this time: I wrapped the ribbon around a skewer and taped it down (and by the way, I consider a fistful of skewers an essential tool on my craft desk). Then I spritzed it with a little hair spray – yep! – and gave it a shot with my heat tool. I let it cool down and success!! I had curls 🙂

I love the Petite Pocket die for favors. It’s a fun size and shape for anything from pencils and crayons to Pixie Stix or even Stampin’ Spritzers! This image is also embossed to make it easier to color with markers – I’m a messy, outside-the-lines artist. A few quick accents and these little pockets are done – with our beautiful, two-sided DSP this is an easy project to mass produce.

And here’s my current favorite favor – the Petal Cone die! It just takes one die cut folded over on itself to make this cute ice cream cone shape, and then a pair of fun DSP scalloped half-circles (also on the die) to dress up that cone. Our super-soft seam binding is supple enough to thread through the buttonholes, so that button is tied right onto the favor.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this stop on the tour! There’s much much more to come – skedalddle on over to see what Robin Merriman at http://www.TrinityDesignStudio.com has created or click on the link below to send you over. And check back next month for the Best of Love 25th Anniversary Blog tour!

Rows and rows and rows….

Posted on February 15, 2013 by mauistamper

If it hadn’t been for my girlfriends this would have never happened:

Have you ever made one of those little paper rosettes? You stack 6 or so scallop circles, push a brad through the middle to hold them together, dampen the paper and then scrunch, scrunch, scrunch.

It took a LOT of loving hands to make all of those rosettes!

Robbie, Peggy, Cheryl and Crystal literally saved my life – and my fingers – and we had a wonderful time doing it (ok, mostly – it was a little bit insane). Once the rosettes were made it was pretty simple: a doily from the Petite Pennants Bigz die, a flower trimmed from the 5/8 inch Flower Trim, some Pear Pizazz Seam Binding (a Clearance Rack SCORE!), Hemp Twine (also from the Rack) and Linen Thread.

I made the tags a couple of days later, although Crystal was the one who designed them so that I could print them on my printer and then punch them out.

These favor jars were filled with an amazing seasoning salt made here on Maui by a dear, wonderful woman named Iris Nitta. Carol knew her from her Baldwin High School days, and when Carol graduated from college she worked on Maui with Iris’s son-in-law for a while. He brought the season salt to his co-workers as a Christmas gift that year, and when it was time to find something for the favors Carol knew exactly what she wanted. Iris made up a special batch for us and for a few days my car – and my house – smelled divinely as nearly 40 pounds of salt waited to be put into jars! All the loving hands that participated in this wedding made every aspect so special.

I’m really glad Carol and Clarence decided to keep the guest list under 100 guests.

Memories and messages from the guests

Posted on February 13, 2013 by mauistamper

My daughter’s wedding was a very personal event. She and Clarence had many choices to make, but each of them had a very personal touch. They were looking for a different sort of guest book – not the traditional “sign your name” variety. Since everything had to go back to Australia (boo!) after the wedding, we didn’t think one of those big photo mats would work. I came up with the idea to encourage each guest to write a little “love note” to the bride and groom, and of course they couldn’t write those notes on scratch paper:

Once again the fabulous Needlepoint Border TIEF added just the right touch!

I used stamps from the Summer Silhouette, Loving Thoughts, and Everything Eleanor stamp sets to embellish the cards. One was at each place setting along with a sign designed by Crystal:

These signs were printed 3×5 inches on Very Vanilla card stock and were put on small table tents, two per table. The guests drew, told stories, gave advice, and created a wonderful reminder for the bride and groom. I didn’t get a photo before they left, but when all the cards were gathered together I created a front and back cover and made a book to hold all these wonderful messages.

A special wedding welcome

Posted on February 11, 2013 by mauistamper

My daughter Carol and her husband Clarence wanted to be sure every guest at their wedding felt welcomed, and they wanted that welcome to be very personal. They decided to give each guest a lei greeting and take a photo with them. We set up a table for the lei:

One thing I have to make clear before I go any further is that when I say “we” I mean Crystal. Honestly, if you are planning a wedding you need a lot of friends to help! Crystal has a great designer’s eye, and she offered to set up decorations at the reception site while I was being MOTB. We did lots of pennants – sorry to say I don’t have photos of all of them. The bird cage (courtesy of Cheryl) was to hold cards and our idea of a guest book. Wish I had another photo of those goofy birds at the foot of the birdcage – they were hilarious – and 75% off after-Christmas clearance!

The pennants were cut from the Perfect Pennants Bigz die and embellished wtih the new Needlepoint Border TIEF from the Spring catalog. I also used the fabulous new 5/8 inch flower trim from that Spring catalog – THANK YOU STAMPIN’ UP!, your timing was impeccable!! And if you are wondering about the color scheme, we used Blushing Bride and Pear Pizazz – both retired In Colors from 2010-2012. Again, Stampin’ Up! had incredible timing as these two colors of cardstock (and a number of related accessories) hit the Clearance Rack just when I needed them! I had been hoarding bits and pieces, but with all the paper I bought I was able to do anything I wanted!

Check in later this week – I have more photos for you to enjoy! It was such fun to create these small touches for my daughter’s wedding day.

A RemARKably Curious Day

Posted on February 9, 2013 by mauistamper

Welcome to the Collage Curios RemARKable Stamp of the Month tour! Whether you’re just beginning the tour here with the Maui Stamper or have been halfway across the USA with our many talented paper artists, I hope you’ll enjoy yourself today. Those of you in New England deserve a blog tour after strugging through all the weather that has come your way this weekend!

The Collage Curios set is made up of primarily small images, and my first inclination would be to go small – 3×3 cards, milk carton favor boxes, or even jewelry crossed my mind. The more I thought about it, the more I felt challenged to make a card that would still spotlight those small images but somehow find a balance. Tell me what you think:

DO YOU GET IT? There’s a little joke here…

Collage Curios and Delightful Dozen stamp sets
Whisper White, Crumb Cake, Soft Suede and Primrose Petals card stock
Crumb Cake and Primrose Petals FFIP (Firm Foam Ink Pads)
Dazzling Details
1 inch circle and 7/8 inch scallop circle punches
Big Shot, Delicate Designs TIEF and Delicate Doilies Sizzlet
Primrose Petals 3/8 inch stitched satin ribbon
Stampin’ Dimensionals and Sponge

I love that little bee…my Valentine…

I couldn’t stop at just one card!

Collage Curios and Petite Pairs stamp sets
Calypso Coral and Chocolate Chip FFIP
Whisper White, Calypso Coral, Chocolate Chip and Crumb Cake card stock
Chocolate Chip and Calypso Coral Stampin’ Write Markers
Linen Thread
1 inch circle punch
New distressing tool!
Color Spritzer
Stampin’ Dimensionals
Stampin’ Sponge
Dazzling Details
Rhinestone Jewels

You know, I kept going with that “More is More” kinda thing here. The little hot air balloons just naturally floated across the page, but then the Color Spritzer wanted in, and the Crumb Cake card base wanted a little bit of spongin’ texture, and before I knew it there were jewels and Dazzling Details and we were off to the races! Kinda fun, though…

Now float on over to Robin Merriman’s Trinity Design Studios and see what she has come up with….she’s a talented stamper and I’m sure you’ll love wht she has done! Don’t forget to leave a little blog love (comments) as you do – all of these hard-working bloggers will thank you!

The Maui Stamper

papercrafts, my stories, and the occasional insight

Different shades of love

and now…the Pants

A dress for Hostess Club

A very special sign

The wedding invitation

25 Years with Stampin’ Up: Best of Birthdays

Rows and rows and rows….

Memories and messages from the guests

A special wedding welcome

A RemARKably Curious Day

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