September Stamp of the Month

Gotta love a good Halloween set, and this one's it ... Halloween Haunts. It's my stamp set of the month (or SSTM), and if you order it during the month of September, I'll give you 15% off the price of the set!

We made this card in last night's embossing class. It's a real 'wow' card that the photo just doesn't do it justice. The main technique of the class was heat embossing (all 3 of the cards we made were embossed), but for this card, we also did masking & chalking.

Start with a Basic Black card base. Stamp the Sanded image with Elegant Eggplant onto Elegant Eggplant cardstock, wrap with black hemp, and attach to card base with dimensionals. The house image is embossed on Very Vanilla cardstock with black embossing powder. Tear around all the edges and then chalk the windows with Barely Banana and the tombstones with black. Punch a 1-3/8" circle to mask the moon perfectly (all of our punches work so well with alot of our images). Then, to chalk the background, use a side to side swiping motion, starting with a little Green Galore in a few places. Then, add a little Pink Passion, Elegant Eggplant & Brilliant Blue. When you have all 4 colors on, go back and deepen each color, and blend in. When finished, spray with a sealer and attach to the card.

I'm going to have alot more samples using House of Haunts this month so you'll have plenty of ideas for using your new set that you saved 15% on!

Life Happens & Organizing

I've been trying to get back on here and post some photos and details from convention, but of course, life happens, and I've just been very busy. I received 4 boxes from the Stampin' Up! new catalog on Friday, 3 of which were just for me! (tee hee) I've been like a kid in a candy shop! I got my new Sizzix Big Shot and dies, about 12 new stamp sets, 5 new punches, several Simply Scrappin' kits and about 4 pkgs. of Designer Series paper. Oooh! What do I play with first? Ahh, but with all fun comes a little work ... I've been a busy little worker organizing my new stamps and updating my files with current stamp sets, and today, I'm going to update my stamp log book.

For those of you who are fairly new, what I do is Xerox the sticker sheet of images that comes with each new stamp set BEFORE I mount them on the stamps. Then, I currently have a drawer system for storing my stamps, and each draw is labeled with a letter & number. I have a coordinating notebook, where I have page tabs for each drawer, and then I have the Xerox copies of each stamp set in that drawer.

Although I don't like the drawers (still waiting for my new stamp room, ugh!), I like this log book because it allows me to just flip through the book if I'm looking for a certain saying or small image and I can't think of which set it comes from.

I'm on Baby!

Yayyyyy! I have a blog! I'm sitting here with my Stampin' Up! sisters, and we're all creating blogs together. OK, so, I live in Washington Township, NJ in Bergen County, and I teach rubber stamping and scrapbooking here in my home. I'm married to a wonderful, generous guy named Rick, and we have two great kids, Brendan, 17, and Kelly, 16. I also work at Michaels Arts & Crafts in Paramus, so I'm right on top of all the latest trends!


So, let me tell you about our Stampin' Up! convention! It was the 20th anniversary, and I went with my SU sisters (Patti, Traci & Kelly), and 3 of us were celebrating our 5th anniversaries and we got to walk across the stage! I've been waiting to do that since my first convention in Las Vegas back in 2003! I could go on here all night, but I'm gonna stop here and continue this in the morning when I can include photos. Til then!