Happy New Year!

It's New Year's Eve and I'm at home doing what I love to do... stamping! Some of my friends have called today and think I'm crazy to be home stamping when I'm childless and could be out doing who knows what! We're all different! In my travels blog browsing I came across Joan's blog, Stamping, Cooking, Knitting...My Life, she has some cute calanders made with rectangular shaped coasters that I had to C.A.S.E. I added a post it note holder to make it a desk set for a friend who has a birthday soon.

I ordered some of the coasters on line from Pub Decor, they came today but they were all square. I can't seem to get it right ordering stuff lately. Instead of placing another order I made my own, is anyone missing any cereal boxes? My corner rounder punches couldn't handle the the weight of the cardboard so I settled for square corners.

See you next year!

Late Christmas Gifts & Looking Ahead

We received a Christmas gift from our next door neighbors the day after Christmas that I'm pretty sure will be life changing around here. He's 4 months old, his name is Fritz and the cat definately likes him! She's bigger than him too.

I've lived in this house since 1992, my neighbors and I have been through children (little ones to teen agers), pets, good times and bad. Our relationship as neighbors is still intact. At times I've wondered how and thanked God that we keep moving forward.

They go away in the summer time to South Dakota, this year when they came home they had a litter of Dashound puppies with them. I greeted them in their yard shortly after they pulled in this fall and helped unload the puppies and everything that goes with them.

Almost immediately he started talking to me about buying one of their puppies for my kids. I politely declined with the reasoning that I couldn't afford to "buy" a puppie let alone keep one and have the year round resources to support it along with my family.

My kids visited as often as they could and started Pet Sitting for our neighbor when they had to run to the store or just wanted a break. One by one the puppies were adopted out and the kids had to learn to say goodbye.

All that was left was one pup and his Mom for quite some time and my neighbor mentioned several times that he sure would like to see this last pup grow up close by so they could enjoy him too. He dropped his asking price and we talked again about my finances and how I didn't think I could afford to squeeze a dog into it even as small as he was.

It wasn't too long before the pup was offered for sale for five dollars and I declined because I know how much more there is to it than just the initial cost.

On returning home Christmas Eve I found packages at the front door outside and a flyer about the puppies with all the for sale parts crossed out and smiled but didn't respond. I was starting to cave on the puppy front but hadn't said much to anyone.

The day after Christmas my neighbor came over with the pup in his arms and offered him to us as a Christmas gift and a package deal to go along with him. Shots, neutering (if I'd like), bed, toys, and an occasional bag of dog food. As you can see I accepted his offer.

Fritz will be spending a large part of the day today with his "grandparents" my neighbors, they're going to get his last puppy shots. My kids are with their grandparents in Wickenburg and one of my girl friends invited me to go shopping in Lake Havasu with her. Fritz & Miss Kitty

My card today is a Valentine for a class I'm planning in January. I used a sketch challenge from Splitcoaststampers that I really like with my MFT digital paper.

Supply List: Stamps - Eureka, Paper - White, Red Light, MFT digital paper, Ink - Real Red, Accessories - Foam tape.

My post seems quite long today so I'll leave it at that.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas morning has arrived! There's wrapping paper all over the living room, the kids are playing happily with new toys and I have company due to arrive in 40 minutes, and I'm still in my pajammas. (insert silly grin here) They are my friends after all, I think I'll write a Christmas blog post... My first picture is of my kids opening packages this morning. ~Happy faces~
This is a gift set I made for a friend who's favorite color is pink using my MFT digital paper and Papertrey's Holiday Treat's stamp set. I copied Nichole's tea tin and nugget box, she has great ideas! This friend is out of town at the moment so I think it's safe to show it to you today. I made several just like this one using different designer papers for my friends who are coming over today. I'm excited to give them to them and hope they like them!
This is a picture of a candle in a tin from the Dollar Store that I covered with Stampin' Up!s Wintergreen designer paper and again used the Papertrey Holiday Treat's stamp set. The snowflake on top is a Sizzlets die and I added a rhinestone for a finishing touch.
My last picture is a gift for another friend who's told us he does not want food for gifts! Like most of us he struggles with his weight and most if not all of my gift items this year were food related.

This one took some thinking... The funnest thing for me about making gifts for friends is incorporating what I know about them into the right gift. (do you think funnest is a word?)

This friend tries to go for a hike almost everyday and I also know he likes candles. Not a lot to go on so I slept on it. I woke up with this idea of going to the thrift shop and checking out their awesome collection of glass jars and canisters for just the right size and a top with a wide opening. I knew I had that Stampin' Around wheel with the camping theme that said Do Not Feed The Bears! I thought I'd like to change that to Do Not Feed The Man, I looked around town for candles and so wanted to find some that looked like food but didn't. Oh well!

When I'd gathered my stuff together the above is what I came up with, I'm quite pleased with it and he liked it too.

I hope you have a blessed day with your friends and families as we celebrate the birth of Christ!

See you soon~

A Little Help From My Friends~

This s a card I made with the new Time Well Spent set that Stampin' Up! sent out to all their active demonstrators as a gift recently. What stampin' girl doesn't want a little rubbah for Christmas?! I like this set and haven't gotten to play with it much yet, but I will!

I really like this sentiment that comes in the set. I must say that I did cut the little flowers on either side off and they went in the trash. Too much... I'll add my own when needed thanks...

I'm learning in my life that time spent with friends is time well spent, I thank God for the people He's put in my life. There are so many things to learn from our friends and I couldn't live without the love and support they provide. Sometimes I need to sit and talk about the same old stuff and they're always available to listen... and cheer me on. What an awesome gift.

With the holiday season upon us I'm again reminded of how blessed I am and my friends.

Yesterday comes to mind~

I'm part of the Thursday Morning Women's Ministry at Christ's Church On The River here in Parker and we met yesterday for the last time this year and finished up our study of Bad Girls of the Bible. Toward the end of our meeting they presented me with a big bag of Christmas gifts for my children and myself, gift cards and a beautiful ham for Christmas dinner. I was simply overwhelmed and blessed by their love for me and so grateful again to God for the people He has put in my life. I'm overcome with emotion again as I think about it.

And today~ Our youth Pastor was just at the door bringing Christmas gifts for my children.

Here's my perception of what's happening. A demonstration of God's love through His people. Sometimes it's difficult to accept all this with grace, but I'm learning how to do that too. It's not nice to steal other people's joy.
So... Time Spent With Friends Is Time Well Spent.

Hey! Did you notice that I used my digital paper again? I really like having an endless supply of paper I don't have to store!

I don't have ALL the right colors of Copic markers yet but I'm working on collecting as I go. I found a new web site for them that has good prices and FAST shipping too!

I colored my flower with Copic markers and the Copic Spica glitter markers, matted the image on Forest Dark by thepapermillstore.com, added a strip of MFT digital paper to a Red Light (thepapermillstore.com) card body and had a fairly quick card.

I had to show you the whole story behind the picture of the card today too. I had more help than I needed when it came to picture taking time. That's why I titled my blog post as I did too.
Her name is Miss Kitty (how original, I know!), she jumped up into the window about the time I started taking pictures. The card fell over, the blinds moved and blurred the picture and I felt like pulling her tail. I didn't give up and got some good pictures, life goes on.

Oh! my gosh, I almost forgot!! I'm the featured blogger over at QK Bloggers Club today! I just noticed the date of the post 12-16-07. All this emotional stuff going on with me and I must say Internet Explorer had a glitch and closed so I lost my first blog post. Excuses, excuses! I think you should click the link and goe check it out!

Christmas Cards My Friends Have Made~

I wanted to share some of the Christmas cards my friends have made with you today because they're so pretty! I wasn't able to go to our Stampin' Up! demonstrators meeting this month and I still received swaps from the ladies. This is Camille's card. I haven't tried this technique yet with my tag punch and need to put it on my must do list. I think her card is simply georgous! Thanks Camille!
This card is from Deb who lives in New York, isn't Fluffie snowboarding cute?! And I just love the colors she used! Deb and I are blogging friends and we recently swapped some stamped images with each other. Thanks Deb!
This is Judy's (my Stampin' Up! upline) swap card, isn't it georgous with all the sparkle?! Thanks Judy!
This card is from my friend Pat in California. She and I met on Splitcoaststampers and have gotten to know each other via e mail. We have fun swapping stamped images back and forth. I love the acetate cards and haven't tried this technique either but I'm gonna! Thank you Pat!

We're just a few days away from Christmas, I think I'm about ready too!

Have a great day!

Something a little different today~

So much going on with Christmas a week away and the Christmas card orders complete, on to the gifts I want and need to make... I know you can relate!

My card today is a special order from a lady, she bought one for her Granddaughter and wanted one for herself too.
Supply List: Paper - Real Red, Basic Black, White, Translucent Vellum, Accessories - sentiment is printed from my computer, Gingham Ribbon, Silver Brads, Circle Punch, SU Oval Punches, Round Paper Clip, Lady Bug by Quickutz.

I'm back and I seem to have a lot to say today!

Say... what's that?!

It's a weird picture of some of the digital paper I was telling you about the other day!

I purchased the digital Holiday Collection paper over at My Favorite Things last week and it took me several days to get it downloaded. The several days was operator error... I called a friend of mine yesterday morning and told him about my download and the problem I was having and he gave me a different perspective and I opened my new Winzip program and there it was! Boy was I excited!!
So as I sat and worked on Christmas cards I couldn't resist printing some of them out to see how they looked. I'm impressed, they're nice! What more could a girl need? An endless supply of patterned paper and she doesn't even have to store it, just print on demand. I may never have to leave the house again, what will they think of next?

I have one dozen more Christmas cards to make for an order and I'm done! I've just completed a little more than 600 Christmas cards for this season.... and I haven't used all my Christmas stamps yet.

These two pictures are gift card holders using some of my new digital paper and my Elzybell's stamps that have been sitting on my kitchen table patiently waiting for me to have time to play with them.

Oh, I found the velcro tonight for these to keep them closed. I used a cool little magnet on my last one. Someone left a comment about the magnet messing up the strip on the gift card inside. GOOD POINT! I'll use that one for cash if I need it!

Supply List for gift card holders - Stamps - Elzybells, Merry Christmas by Hero Arts (the crooked one) and Inkadinkado, Paper - Neenah Super Smooth Solar White, Thepapermillstore.com Sky Blue Light, Blue Deep and Red Light, MFT Digital Patterned Papers, Ink - Palette Noir, Real Red, Brilliant Blue, Accessories - Copic markers, Copic Spica Glitter markers, Snowflake punch, Blue Rhinestone, Spellbinders Oval & Scalloped Oval dies, Corner rounder punch.

My last picture today is of 3 of the cool Christmas cards I've received from friends who make their own cards so far. I love getting hand made Christmas cards too! Top left is from Diane, top right is from Judy and the one on the bottom is from Stacy.
One last thing today~ Sharon signed my guest book today, she's from Bouse which is about 30 minutes from Parker where I live. She asked if I used to work at the Safeway in Parker. Yes I did, I worked for Safeway for 18 years, I had 2 more children at 40 years old and had a hard time finding day care for them so I decided to be a stay at home Mom and now I'm a stamp at home Mom! Sharon also said she received one of my Christmas cards today at work from Shelly at the La Paz County Recorders office. I think that's pretty cool! Maybe she'll end up in one of my card making classes some day.

Class Marathon

I've had 3 classes in the last 24 hours, whew! Lots of fun. The first picture is of two of our projects for the afternoon class. We used Stella Ruby paper to create a little purse and our paper pieced Hannah card. We also made the folded Christmas tree in each class but I didn't get a picture of those. This mornings class was "Susan's Choice" since she was the only one who was supposed to attend. In the end there were three of us and the ladies chose what they wanted to make and it was fun. We just kind of made it up as we went along.

The second card is one of the cards we made this morning. I designed it yesterday morning for a Christmas card order. My customer had seen the stamp and told me she wanted a dozen, have fun with it. I did!

Supply List: Paper - SU Soft Sky, Always Artichoke, White, SU Wintergreen designer paper, Stamps - Snowman family by Cornish Heritage Farms, SU Circle Of Friendship, Ink - Palette Noir, Aways Artichoke, Accessories - SU Punches - 1 1/8", 1 1/4" circles, Scalloped Circle, Photo Corners, Copic markers, Copic Spica glitter markers, Stickles Ice, Clear Rhinestone, Crystal Effects, SU Mat Stack, Paper piercing tool.

Before my two ladies left today they had me online at Ellen Hutson's store ordering all the Copic Spica markers for them. Maybe I could become a Ellen Hutson Consultant.

It's been a fun day and I'm tired. It's time to go relax - happy stampin'

The Rush Is Over - I Think...

I have a couple more dozen Christmas cards to make and I think the rush might be over. If I just lay low and don't go anywhere maybe...

Anyway, I think maybe now I can get back to regular blogging and I'm looking forward to it.

The first thing I need to share with you is I signed up to become a member of The Sisterhood 4 of Blogging Stampers. What is that you might ask? It's a group of stamping bloggers who visit each other's sites regularly and leave comments and encourage each other. I'm meeting other stampers from all over the world, how cool is that?! I have most of their blogs posted in my side bar, you might want to check them out.

The next thing I'm supposed to do is tell a little about myself, so here goes~

I'm a single stamp at home Mom of 3 kids. Rubber stamping is my passion and not a day goes by that I don't stamp. I've always loved crafting, my Mom taught me how to sew when I was a little girl. We spent countless hours together making clothes and just about anything you could imagine. I learned to make quilts in my 20's and now everyone (almost) has one. I live in a very small town in western Arizona along the Colorado River, it gets really hot here in the summer and I'd love to be anywhere else at that time of year. I'm a Christian woman who loves the Lord and I'm very involved with our church, not complete yet but enjoying the journey.

On to the card! I made this Saturday when I was supposed to be doing something else. Ever have those moments when you don't want to be doing what you're supposed to? I felt the need to use up that half sheet of 12x12 Stampin' Up! designer paper, so I went with it!

This is a sketch challenge from SCS but I don't remember what number and I'm too lazy to look it up right now. The snowman stamp is from Cornish Heritage Farms, the Merry Christmas stamp is from Elzybells (oh, I can't wait to play with those!!), the designer paper is Stampin' Up! retired of course... Brilliant Blue and White cardstock, Stickles Ice for the snow and Copic markers to color "him" in.

I need to go to bed now, I just found a really funny mistake I made. I fixed it! Good night~

Fluffie's Gift Card Holder

I was blog browsing yesterday morning as I was drinking my first cup of coffee and discovered these cool gift card holder cards on Jami's blog More Is More. She has a link on her blog to Sharon's blog No Time To Stamp for the directions to make them so that's where I went next!

You really should check out both these ladies blogs, they're awesome!

I've been working on Christmas card orders and have scraps from my Stampin' Up! Dashing designer paper so I thought I'd make my first one from those. I really like how it turned out and plan to make some more.
The picture below is the card open for you to see. I used Basic Grey magnetic snaps to hold the card closed. Very neat little item but they're rather expensive so I've been dreaming up other ideas of how to keep these closed in my head. I haven't tried any of them yet so all I have are theories so far.
Supply List: Stamps - Fluffie's Snowboarding by Stampendous, Holiday Happiness by Stampin' Up!, Paper - Very Vanilla, Dashing Desinger paper SU, Ink - Noir Black, Real Red, Accessories - Copic markers, Magnetic snap, Real Red eyelet, Marvy Giga Scalloped Square punch.

One other thing I have to add today is I'm downloading digital paper to try out. I was reading Kristine's blog Inkastamp and she was telling about it and gave a link to My Favorite Things where she purchased it. I'll let you know how it goes! I love the idea of printing my own paper and having as much as my little heart desires and not having to store it. A stamper's dream come true?

I have other stuff to share but I think I'll save it for another post. I'm off to deliver Christmas card orders this afternoon.

Have a great day!