DTGD 2011- Letter Thank You

stamps: letter it, thank you kindly

ink: tturq, ddelight, rred, oolive, bblack

paper: tturq, rred, oolive, bblack textured, wwhite

accessories: silver medium brads, white acrylic paint, sponges, SAMJ, dimensional, black journaling marker, ½” corner rounder

NOTE: I placed all of the Letter It stamps onto the “h” acrylic block from SU! and then sponged white acrylic paint directly to the stamps. I then used the SAMJ to line them up in the middle of a 12 x 12 text. bblack cardstock sheet. Working from the inside towards the edges, I repeated the stamping until I had a full page of white letters.


When the letters were dry, I let my adorable 4 year old son sponge color using classic inks onto the white acrylic paint images. He had a ball and I took a Diet Pepsi break. : )

Hey all! Do you know what time of the year it is?! It's time to get Dir-tayyyy! Yup, it the Dare to Get Dirty Challenge time over at Splitcoast Stampers. If you want to stretch your stamping prowess to the limits, then this is the challenge series for you! The Dirty Dozen Design Team and Alumni are throwing challenges at us Fan Club members for the next week and I'm dadgum happy about it.

Come see what all the fuss is about. Ske-doosh.

Inkspirations Colour Challenge #80-

Here's the colour combo:

And here's my card:

I haven't used the Medallion background stamp anywhere near as much as I should. My friend Lyssa made a few cards using it for her Demo Booth presentation and I thought they were beautiful so I dusted it off and voila! I like the simplicity of this card and it's pretty easy to mass produce. Which is a good thing seeing as how I have a million things to thank people for lately!

By all means, head over to the design team's blogs to check out their awesome creations. Don't forget to leave them a bit of blog love, too!

Inkspirations Challenge Blog Cindy Kirsty Makeesha Renée Brandi Carrie Helen Ilina Lee-Anne Marisa

I feel good that I'm back to blogging again. I missed stamping for fun and blogging gives me a chance to do just that. Something is coming up on the July 30th that I participated in last year and I can't wait to get cracking at it again this year:

You've all heard of the Dirty Dozen Design Team over at Splitcoast Stampers, right? Yeah, that's what I thought. Well, every year for the past 7 years (I think it's 7...) SCS and the Dirty Girls have hosted a week of challenges for Fan Club Members. Don't know what the Fan Club is? Check it out here. *So* worth it, in my opinion. These challenges stretched me and pushed me to stamp out of my comfort zone last year. It was a lot of fun chatting with other participants and there's prizes, too! I'll be there...will you? Ske-doosh!

Some more Convention Delights!

Here's another card I made for my demo booth:

stamps: teeny tiny wishes, many mustaches

ink: bblack, tturq

paper: oolive cs, rred cs, wwhite cs, brights dsp stack

accessories: black journaling marker, mini brads, ticket corner punch, brights buttons, linen thread

I was so stoked to have met so many people this year at Convention. I got to hang out with all of my SA Sisters (photos of those crazy chicks coming in a day or two...) but I also met a bunch of new people this year, as well. It was a lot of fun to do a presentation because I was able to connect with demos that I don't think I would've met otherwise. Convention is such a blur of excitement, activity and schedules that by the end of the day, you feel contentedly exhausted.

The photo below was taken by Lyssa before our presentations started. We were all invited to have supper with the staff as we didn't have enough time between set-up and starting to eat elsewhere. Shelli stopped by our table for a minute but I'm not sure what I said to her because I was so nervous and when I'm nervous I feel quite barfy. The ladies at our table can attest to that as I'm pretty sure I grossed them out. Sorry girlies! LOL! Hey, BTW, if any of you have a group photo of us, I'd love to have it sent to me. I didn't get pictures with everyone, just the girls at our section and I really like to have pics of all the other ladies. Please, please, please? : )

I love this photo of Tandra and Melanie Hope! They're gorgeous and I have a cheesy grin with 6 chins. *sigh* Ah well, we're all hot because we're demos, right? Melanie made some serious gorgeous stuff that was featured in the product park. She's is incredibly talented and I was so happy to discover that she's hilarious, too. I couldn't get away with anything as she kept her eye on me. For some reason she thought I was a trouble maker...(shifty smirk on my face).

CARMEN!!! Sweet, sweet Carmen! Her and I were in the same blogging group a few years back when we both started out blogging. She has always been supportive and lovely and I'm *so* happy I finally got to meet her. She makes beautiful projects and I love her blog! Big hugs to you, Carmen!!

Les filles de Québec!!! J'étais tellement contente qu'elles sont venues au congrés! Vous êtes toutes les femmes extraordinaires, les beautés du nord!! hihihi! J'éspère vraiment qu'on va se revoir dans d'autres activités de SU!

Mindy. Minders. My homeslice. This girl is hi-LARIOUS. Many of you may know her from Splitcoast which is where I "met" her. I'm so happy I did because her e-mails and pm's make me literally LOL. I feel like a bloody giant standing next to her because she's about a tall as my son. It was hilarious because on the Thursday we planned to meet up for lunch. She texted me and said she was next to one of the fruit stands in the Gathering Place. Ok, so for those of you that have never been to convention, the Gathering Place is ENORMOUS. I walk in and can't see her anywhere. I text her back and tell her I can't find her. She says, "Ok, I'll stand on a chair...SNORT! I finally spot her and as I'm walking up, I'm laughing and saying to her"Jeebus, girlie! You're only as tall as me when you stand on a chair!" *sniggle*

I'm so happy to have met you, Mindy. You're tha shiz. Deuces, yo.

I just had to post this pic of Minders, as well. Funny story about her Ma:

Mindy's mom was worried about her going to Convention to meet a bunch of interweb "friends" who she thought were probably really internet crazies. She was worried that Mindy's roomate (hi Anastasia!) was really a creepy old dude posing as a stamper and he'd kill her in their hotel room. Anyway, as she dropped Mindy of at the airport, she tearfully said, "Trust no one."

That turned out to be the unoffical theme from the Grow Convention. Stampin' Up! Trust No One Convention 2011. As we were in Momento Mall, there was a lone tree just standing in the middle of the room. Of course, that lone tree produced this photo:

Trust No One. Ske-doosh.

Three scrapbooking pages I love...

Here are three pages I made of my sweet boys for my Demo Booth Presentation. I worked very hard on them and am very proud of how they turned out. I'm also proud to be part of a company that, for the most part, has gracious demos that support one another and understand how important one another's works of art are. 99% of the time, I'm honored to be a demo.  

stamps: pennant parade

ink: tturq, rred, ppumpkin

paper: brights dsp stack, bigtop birthday dsp, ccake cs, bblack cs, wwhite cs

accessories: naturally serif strip die, petite pennants builder punch, black journaling marker, on board merry medley, versamark, white ep, dimensionals, linen thread

 

stamps: jayne's type alpha, sweets for the sweet

ink: oolive, tturq, ddelight, rred, bblack

paper: big top birthday dsp, ccake cs, bblack cs, wwhite

accessories: 1-1/4" striped grosgrain ddelight, quick accents big top birthday, timeless type junior alpha medium sizzlets die, staples

 

stamps- up, up & away

paper- wwhite 12x12 textured cs, big top birthday dsp, bblack cs, wwhite cs

ink- tturq, rred, oolive

accessories- tturq, bblack markers, big top birthday quick accents, 5/8" rred satin, 1-1/4" striped grosgrain daffodil delight, 5/8" bblack satin, 1/2" pparfait stitched-poly, 1/4" grosgrain tturq, 1/8" taffeta bblack ribbons, brights designer buttons, linen thread, clips assortment, filigree brads, jumbo neutrals brads, dimensionals, timeless type junior alpha medium sizzlets die, my sewing machine that rocks.

Thanks for stopping by today. Ske-doosh.

Some Stampin' Up! Grow Convention 2011 photos...

I received a phone call from Carrie Cudney a while back asking me if I would be interested in doing a Demo Booth presentation at Convention this year. I really had to bite my tongue to not respond with a hearty, "Does a bear poop in the woods?!"

I was incredibly honored and flattered to have been asked. I am part of an incredible company that celebrates creativity in a way that let's me grow as an artist every time I pick up a stamp. I can't imagine not having SU! in my life. Feel free to contact me if you've ever thought about signing up. There's a great deal on the Starter Kit this month. Only $119 plus a free project that's super cute. Contact me if you're interested.

This photo was taken right after I finished setting up my booth. I can't show the projects I made yet as I need to upload them to Stampin' Connection before I show them on my blog and i haven't finished editing them yet. I'll get on that today...

I spent much of my time at Convention running around accosting people with my brother-in-law's camera. I have more at-an-arm's-length photos than i know what to do with. This one is of Lyssa Zwolanek and I as we were setting up our booth's. I was so stoked to have met my friend, Lyssa, after all these years of chatting online. You should see the stuff she made!

Lisa Freeman and I. I was delighted to meet Lisa for the first time. She is an amazing woman with much strength. Her smile is infectious and she's funny as all hell, not to mention an incredible artist.

LeeAnn Greff. I just adore this lady. I was in the Control Freaks swappers group with her for a while so I'm really glad I got to meet her in real life. She is amazing and her projects were truly inspiring.

Amy, Tandra and I. What can I say about my roomies. They made Convention infinitely more fun than it would've been had they not been there. These are two of the most considerate, loving woman I have ever met. Do you know what Amy did for us while we were there? Well, because Amy drove to SLC from Idaho, she had more room for baggage than us plane bound ladies.

She. Packed. A. Foot. Spa.

On Wednesday after my presentation, my feet were killing me. We get back to the room and Amy starts bustling about setting up a foot soak with Epsom salts and lavender in it. She orders me to sit and tells me soak my feet for 15 minutes. Then she rubbed some sort of Body Shop foot scrub on them and put hemp butter on them. She slaps a pair of socks on my feet and sits me down at a Homedics foot massager. She then did the same thing for Tandra and then I did the same for Amy.  

Heaven.

She saved my tootsies at Convention this year because normally my feet swell up like canned hams when I'm on the walking around for long periods. Especially after having been on a plane. All this to say that I was very touched by her thoughtfulness. The same goes for Tandra. Her and I shared a bed and I snore quite a bit. She never complained once even though I suspect I may have kept her awake more than once during our trip. I adore you, my friends. I can't wait to hang out again together at Convention 2013.

To thank them for being so wicked smaht and wicked ah-some, I made them some gifties for which I can take no credit in their design.

I made these two monogrammed felt owls using a tutorial I bought from Anj at Snowy Bliss. Here's the link to her Etsy shop to buy the über easy tutorial. Once again, Anj's felt owl made for a beautiful gift. Thanks, Anj! Oh, and isn't Logan cah-YOOT?!

I made these fabric journal covers using a free tutorial over at Bloom. I used leftover scraps of the Sew Suite SU! material and some linen fabric I had on hand.

I made each on them a sweet little business card holder from another free tutorial I found on Pinterest. Here's the link to the Crafty Cupboard blog.

I'll be back in a day or two with some of my convention projects. thanks for stopping by! Ske-doosh. 

Inkspirations Sketch Challenge #79- Blushing BFF

Here's the sketch:

And here's my card:

Hey-OH! What's up, blog readers?! Nice to see that you guys haven't ditched me after such a long stretch of neglect. I don't deserve any of you, I swear. I had myself a nice break from the blogging world and now I'm back at it. I'm feeling über inspired after having attended the Stampin' Up! Convention last week so I've decided to pull my socks up and get back on the blogging horse.

I can't even put into words how much fun it is to go and hang out with thousands of other demonstrators that are just as gaga over rubber as I am. The feeling of knowing that other people find such creativity and passion through paper crafting is really uplifting. You just can't walk away from Convention going, "Meh."

I got to meet so many people that I've wanted to meet for a long time now. I have pictures to share so come back on Saturday and I'll have those up. I've also got a few shots to share of my demo booth presentation which was a butt load of fun!!! I felt like a rock star and my head has swelled somewhat from all the kind words I received from people. It has since deflated as does happen when your kids look at you like, "Where are my clean underwear, lady?" No glory here at home, that's for sure. It's all good though as I really missed all of the handsome men at my house. : )

So, have you all seen what the Inkspirations Design Team has been cranking out in my absence? Are these ladies not *the* most awesome rubber goddesses *ever*?! I'm sure you have but in the off chance that you haven't, go check them out:

Inkspirations Challenge Blog Cindy Kirsty Makeesha Renée Brandi Carrie Helen Ilina Lee-Anne Marisa

What an unreal group of artists they are. I was lucky enough to meet two of them at Convention. Ilina probably thinks I'm a crazy lady having been accosted by me in the Gathering Place one day. LOL! And having met Carrie...well, I *knew* her and I would click. She's freakin' hilarious and only slightly dorky. ; ) Love ya, girlie.

Now that I have actually posted a challenge card for this extremely forgiving design team, I'm headed to bed. So much stamping to do and so little...wait a minute...what am I talking about? So *much* time, more like it! I'm on VACATION!!! Ske-doosh.