Decorating Jack

Posted on October 28, 2010 by mauistamper

I have fond memories of carving Jack-O-Lanterns with my three kids. We always selected “interesting” pumpkins and carefully drew faces with markers on them before we began the cutting to be sure we liked our choices. The children were never terribly enthusiastic about sticking their hands inside and scooping out the gooey stuff, but my oldest daughter would always ask to set the seeds aside for roasting.

Now that there’s only a very busy 16 year old man-child in the house, carving pumpkins doesn’t generate the interest it did in the past. It helps to understand that the carving had to be done on Halloween afternoon, because here on Maui a pumpkin that’s been cut more than 24 hours gets fuzzy very quickly. My favorite Halloweens have been the ones that fell the night before trash pick-up, because I could dump all that soggy mess into the trash late on the 31st and it would be gone before the local insect population came to visit.

This year, when I saw the Decor Elements demonstrated on pumpkins at convention, I knew my problems had been solved:

I wish I had a snazzy camera and lens that would show you Jack’s whole face in one shot, but for now you get to see his Trick side and his Treat side in two parts:

This Jack is already sitting on my front porch – that in and of itself is an amazing thing. Decor Elements, you rock.

The final touch

Posted on September 14, 2010 by mauistamper

Last week I packed my overnight bag to go visit my friend Cheryl. OK, not really…I mean the overnight bag part. I know I whine about this regularly, but she used to live 5 minutes up the hill and she moved to HAIKU. Now it’s a 50 minute drive, except last Wednesday I think I made it in 45. It has to be that I’m getting used to the route because I certainly wouldn’t be driving any faster.

WARNING: You can’t get this Decor Elements design any more. It’s gone, done, finito. This post is to help you visualize how easy it is to put a multi-piece Decor Elements on the wall, but don’t get attached to the image!!!

Cheryl hostessed a workshop last spring with the goal of earning the Level III Decor Elements Hostess gift. She rustled up orders from I-don’t-know-where and made her goal so that she could have this delightful birdcage image to put in her new entry way. She bought bird houses and hooks with birds on them and books about birds…you get the idea. With nearly all the moving boxes emptied and her second daughter securely settled in college, it was time to bring out the Decor Elements Applicators:

We measured carefully and even made our own “plumb bob” to get the stand straight. When we pulled away the paper and saw the base of the stand on the wall we were thrilled and got right to work with the rest of the stand.

We were about to put the birdcage on the top of the stand when we realized that the bird needed to go on the wall first so that it would look like it was really inside the cage. She looked a little funny sitting on the wall floating above the stand, but we weren’t finished with her:

The cage had the most elaborate lines and we were very careful to burnish them all thoroughly before we placed it on the wall. Our diligence made the birdcage go up very easily.

As Cheryl peeled back the application sheet we were thrilled to see our careful measurements paid off. The bird was lined up perfectly in the cage, and the cage was centered on top of the stand. We thought it looked so cool!!

The final result – I wish you could see the rest of the room. There will be a vase to the left of the bird cage in the corner of the entry, and there’s a gorgeous bench with storage baskets underneath it to the right, and there are birds and birdcages everywhere. If you look very closely in the bottom of the photo you can see our very sophisticated plumb bob – we tied some ribbon to a punch and let it hang to determine a straight line for placing the stand on the wall. I’d say we did a good job!

Spooky things

Posted on September 1, 2010 by mauistamper

If you’re like me, a new Stampin’ Up! catalog makes your heart beat faster. One of the (many!) perks of being a demonstrator is seeing the new catalogs before they are released – and getting to order many of those products a month ahead of time.

The Holiday Mini catalog this year practically had me reaching for the oxygen. Not only are there forays into fabulous new product lines – you’ve certainly heard that we have FABRIC – but there are awesome products for cards, scrapbooking, decorating, and just about any kind of crafting you can imagine for ALL the winter holidays (ok, time to cool it on the caps, I know.) We saw a lot of great projects at convention using Holiday Mini products, but this was one of my favorites:

Don’t you love it?? This is a perfect solution to my Halloween dilemma. I know that most of you mainland folks buy your pumpkins and carve them days, maybe even a week before Halloween, and that they last beautifully out on your frosty front porches. It doesn’t quite work that way here…we usually carve our pumpkins Halloween afternoon. By the time they’ve spent a couple of hours Halloween evening on the front lanai with a tea light candle burning in them, they are already looking sort of sad. The morning after is always depressing – there have been years when my pumpkins were already growing things at 8am on November 1. If the trash man isn’t coming soon those pumpkins need to be well-wrapped before they get the heave-ho! Ugh. It grosses me out just to think about it.

Back to the fun stuff – the Home Office Genius Department had to paint orange pumpkins white – just couldn’t find white pumpkins in July – but I think these are just smashing! (sorry, I couldn’t resist!) Take some pumpkins and add a few pieces from the Spooky Things Decor Elements (120909 black, 122296 dark grey, $14.95), some Black Flourish Designer Jewels (123987, $4.95) and black ribbon (lots of choices there!) and you have instant Halloween. They may not last months and months in the tropics, but they’ll at least make it through the week.

We also saw luminarias done with the same Decor Elements:

And one last spectacular project – the Haunted House:

It was worth the entire cost of convention to see this project put together on stage. Suffice it to say that the folks that work in the Stampin’ Up! Home Office have an enormous dose of creativity and the gift of entertainment. This house is a Decor Accents Design-a-House (120911, $5.95) – it comes in white all ready for your own creative blast.

Time to put in a Holiday Mini catalog order! Click on the image and the whole glorious catalog will open in a pdf.

Dasher on the Wall

Posted on December 16, 2009 by mauistamper

Doesn’t he look marvelous? As though he could just Dash Away!?

I love the Clement Clark Moore story…we own multiple versions of the book, and it was a favorite read for our family at Christmas time when the children were small. It’s been a long time since bedtime stories were read in my house, but I still get out the children’s Christmas books and put them in a basket near the tree every year just in case someone wants to read one.

This handsome fellow is the Level II Decor Elements Hostess award. I’ve had him for quite a while and originally thought I’d put him directly on the wall. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to find a way to enjoy his elegant profile for a few years. My brilliant friend Crystal came up with the idea to apply the Decor Elements to canvas.

This is a 16 x 20 inch thin canvas board, not stretched canvas on a frame. Cost is under $7, and that’s a Hawaii price, so you mainland crafters will probably find a better deal. I painted it very lightly with a bristle brush using a linen color of craft paint – you know the stuff, a 2 ounce bottle for about $2. I kept the strokes horizontal and the coverage light to allow the texture of the canvas to show a bit.

Once the canvas was thoroughly dry, I applied Dasher. You gotta put on your patient hat when you apply a Decor Element with this much detail! I carefully burnished all the dots and swirls before peeling off the backing, but still had to go very slowly and give a little extra attention to a couple of stubborn areas. This image was easy to fit to the 16 x 20 canvas, and the application was much easier than the burnishing. There’s a very small amount of texture from the canvas visible under the larger areas of the vinyl, but you have to be looking for it to notice it.

Crystal added a bow and some bling to her Dasher, but I decided mine was going to be a Manly Sort of Reindeer. I used the Crop-A-Dile (seriously!! it worked great!) to add a pair of Jumbo Eyelets to the top corners, and broke out my precious stash of retired Riding Hood Red striped grosgrain ribbon to thread through the eyelets and tie in a bow.

Here’s a closer look at the canvas…

I really love the effect of the texture.

On a personal note, I’m really happy to be back to blogging. Life throws a curve ball once in a while, and it was just my turn up to bat. I didn’t hit it out of the park, but I took a good swing at it and I’m working my way towards home plate.

See you tomorrow!

Shopping for the holidays, Stampin’ Up! style

Posted on November 3, 2009 by mauistamper

It wouldn’t be Novembe Holiday Gift Guide 2009 r without a Stampin’ Up! special, now, would it??

Yes, I know I wrote yesterday about celebrating too early, but shopping is another thing. I mean this sincerely. If you leave your Christmas shopping for too late, it makes you grumpy (trust me, I know this.) We would all like to give the perfect gift, and we have to invest thought and effort into finding those gifts – and that doesn’t happen on December 23rd (at least on Maui it doesn’t – everyone is sold out!)

Stampin’ Up! has ever so kindly created a Holiday Gift-Giving Guide to inspire you, and in keeping with the spirit of the holidays, there’s a gift for the giver, too! From November 1 to January 4, every time you purchase $50 worth of products from the Holiday Gift-Giving Guide, you may select a free Decor Elements item with a value up to $16.95. There are so many images for a variety of occasions that you’ll be tempted to spend in multiples – because there’s no limit to the number of free Decor Elements you can earn.

There’s also the Sweet Rewards promotion (choose any item from the Holiday Mini Catalog for $10 with a $250 workshop and purchase My Digital Studio for $40 with a $400 workshop) and the Digital Starter kit, your opportunity to be a Stampin’ Up! demonstrator and jump in feet first with My Digital Studio. Check the Promotions page on my website for more details.

Don’t forget to look around your crafting space for inspiration for other gifts…a stationery set, a mini-scrapbook, or a personalized package of goodies is a cost effective and thoughtful gift too. Of course, a hand-made card is the finishing touch!

Spooky Expressions

Posted on October 4, 2009 by mauistamper

I’ve always decorated for holidays. It started when the kids were small and would bring home seasonal projects from school. I’d put their projects up, then little by little add to them as the month wore on. I’ve actually saved some of my favorite projects through the years. Now that they’re nearly all grown, I have to make my own projects!

I almost missed these goofy pumpkin faces in the Decor Elements catalog. Three great faces for $4.95 – you can hardly beat that, can you? It was a 5 minute project to put a face on my candle jar – and that included washing and drying the glass first!

Spooky_Expressions_candle_crop