More is More

Oh my heavens!  A whole week without a blog post?  What’s the world coming to?  OK seriously, it’s been a crazy busy week.  Of course the 4th of July fell right in the middle of the week plus I’ve been a planning/organizing maniac!  That’s where my real talent lies, so I love it when I have planning projects but somehow I ended up with several all at once.

One of the big projects I was involved in this week involved some behind the scenes stuff for a very exciting event coming up at Splitcoast.  There’s a huge Fan Club anniversary celebration planned for July 25th-31st called Dare to Get Dirty.  It’s going to be an awesome week of stamping and chatting among Fan Club members and current Dirty Girls as well as us Dirty Dozen Alumni.  If you’re not already a Fan Club member over at SCS now would be a great time to join to support the running of the site and get in on all the FUN!

Another event that took a lot of my time this week was the New Catty Party I hosted last night for my customers.  What a fun evening.  Here’s the Make’n’Take we did using Baroque Motifs, Aida and Hugs & Wishes and the key tag punch.  Color combo is Celery, Regal Rose and Pomegranate.)

Thanks so much to my friend Debra for the inspiration for this card.   In changing the colors I had to re-make it a couple of times before I was happy with it, but the final outcome was just what I was looking for.  We also decorated an envelope to match.  That is something I used to always do when I made a card, but have gotten away from.  I need to start doing it again because I love having a matching envie ready to go!

My New Catty Party is also my kick off for a new round of Hostess Club, so anyone who signed up for my club last night received a little gift from me – a packet of Inspiration Sheets (lots of them) and a little tag sampler of the new In-Colors.  The tag sampler was placed in a small cello with a topper that said “Welcome to the Club”.

My printer has decided that it will no longer accept SU cardstock – well actually it is completely broken and wouldn’t print my wishlists, door prize tickets, games, etc., but the SU cardstock problem happened about 2 weeks prior.  So when I had my catty spiral bound at Office Max I also had the text for these tags copies onto cardstock.  Then I just punched with the SU tag punch and also punched a hole in the top with the Crop-a-dile.  They are tied together with copper cording, but I expect my girls to just slide them onto their technique rings.

Thanks for stopping by.  I’ll try to get back to my regular posting now that some things have been completed or are under control.  And for those of you in SoCal, I’ll have an announcement later in the week about an opportunity for some bargains.  *wink*

Hope you are having a fantastic weekend!

I had so much FUN hanging out with my stampin’ buds yesterday!  We laugh so much!  I managed to get quite a bit of work done on a batch of Christmas cards, so that was cool too.  They aren’t finished yet though – I’ll share when they are (who knows when that will be?  LOL!). 

Taylor was working on a couple of different swaps and she was using some Prisma Markers and Copic Markers.  (Is Copic pronounced like “cope-ick” or “cop-ick”?  That was topic of discussion all day!)  She only had about 4 or 5 colors with her (of her vast collection) and I asked if I could try them out.  She was working with some Bella images so she gave me one to stamp and color.  Next thing you know the whole table was obsessed with using her markers – oops – sorry Taylor.  It’s a good thing she didn’t bring her whole new set!

It’s funny because I have been reading about these markers quite a bit on blogs and SCS – most recently on Debbie Olson’s blog.  Also I had heard about them at CHA at the Whippersnapper booth where all the amazing samples were colored with them.  Although they sounded intriguing I really had no interest in them because I have heard time and again that they have a steep learning curve to be able to blend them.  Unless I could be taught hands on in a class/workshop setting I felt that it would be too frustrating for me.  And then along comes Taylor and her danged few markers.  *eye roll*  I still have absolutley no idea how to blend them, but just coloring with them was super fun – even though I just did the one image.

I wouldn’t normally choose green and orange as my color combo, but like I said the selection was limited and in the end I was thrilled with my little Bella image.  So today I decided to turn the image into a card.  I started rifling through my designer paper for something in the right color range and very quickly came upon this SEI Winnie’s Walls paper I purchased from eP a few weeks ago.  I then went through my Prismatics cardstock sampler to find some good coordinating colors and ended up with Desert Coral Medium for the base of this 5.5″ square card.  I also pulled out some other coordinating colors to keep with this line of dp for future use.  The green layer is the solid side of one of the SEI patterns.

Once I had the colors pulled together I remembered a card that Anna Wight did for my SFFE challenge using this line of dp.  I loved the use of the big flower background.  I didn’t realize until I was completely finished with this card and then went back and looked at Anna’s card, how much hers really influenced me.  I would almost say that my card is a CASE of hers.  You can see Anna’s card here.

I used Queen & Co. brads in the four corners of the image and the newest thing I am absolutely giddy over – an Adorn It Jewel Droplet on the flower on her purse.  I just got a pack of clear and a pack of multi-colored from Joy and Daisy yesterday.  Of all the incredible things we saw at CHA this is the one item I wanted more than anything and have been hounding Joy and Daisy about for months.  They are self-adhesive and such a FUN new type of bling – a great alternative to crystals or rhinestones (not that I could ever get enough of those either!) – you MUST get some!!

The large flower petals are outlined with a Sakura Gelly Roll Stardust pen – very nice sparkly touch in person.  I kept thinking I wanted something in that big flower center and it came to me – a sentiment.  I reached for my Paper Trey Faux Ribbon set and evaluated my choices.  I loved “Season’s greetings” since this really is such a “seasonal” card.  *grin*

I want to say thanks to Joy for having us all over yesterday (and thanks to her husband for letting us have run of the place until late into the evening).  And to my stampin’ buds – I am so blessed to have such a fun group of gals to hang with!

I won’t be placing my new catty order until next weekend after my New Catty Party Friday night.  So to stave off the nail-biting wait I’m going to try to keep busy – plenty to do as I have several *projects* I am in charge of organizing over the next week or two.  I’ll share when I can – some fun stuff upcoming.  *wink*  Thanks for stopping by.