Remember Me?

Yeh, I've been MIA for awhile now. I've missed chatting with you all!

Life happened - family calendars had to be finished and mailed, taxes had to be pulled together, weeds had to be pulled!

First the family calendars. I mentioned I would be adding embellishments to the pages - and I did.

Here's a before and after for just one of the pages. The rest were embellished appropriately:












As you can see, I added the Stampin' Up! logo and Tess in her apron with a stamp and a card in her hand. I also journaled the events that are on the page, so that in the future, when I'm (more) senile, I'll have something to remind me about all these awesome SU demonstrators with whom I've shared events.

Re: the taxes. Well, all I can say, is it has to be done, and thank goodness I have an appointment every year that FORCES me to pull everything together. Without it, I'd NEVER get organized!

Seriously - every year, I SWEAR I'm not going to let it get so out of hand so I don't have to pull my hair out for three days ahead of my appointment, racing around, printing off monthly reports, going through receipts, trying to remember all the things that are deductible!

And every year, right after I get my taxes prepared, I begin that slide down hill... Maybe NOT this year, eh?

Held my team meeting this past Monday evening.

Here are the swap cards they brought:


Susan's

Love the combination of the dotted background paper and the dotted ribbon.








Natalie's

Natalie's cards are always simple - but very effective!

I envy her the ability to keep it so simple. Somehow I seem to want to add "just one more thing" - and find I've gone too far.





My card. CASEd directly from Shelli's blog! This was one of the Make & Takes she and Sara had done at a "Workshop Of A Lifetime" winner's party.

She had paper pieced the boxes, but I was running out of time, so I just used the "In" color markers and colored the boxes, then made a reverse mask for the middle box and stamped an image on to the box thru it. I know you can't see it, but those boxes are COVERED in glitter! I am NOT a glitter queen, and had I realized the card included glitter, I probably wouldn't have even considered CASEing it!

But it came out pretty well, and I'm glad I made it - another SIMPLE, yet effective, idea.

Del's contribution this month were stencils she'd cut out of those plastic boxes you get produce in at the grocery store. She used the Big Shot die and gave us both the positive and negative images for it. What a great "green" idea! They don't show up well in photos, though, so you'll have to use your imagination...

How about a cat photo for the day?













Hope you've been stampin' lately! Come back and visit again...

Last Time for Family Calendar pages

Tonight's post will finalize my family photos from my Days To Remember 6x6 calendar for this year.

My nephew Paul and his wife, Maggie's page.

Of course, their two kids have to have some presence here, as do two of their many cats! These two are about the same age as my Kidz, so they get the honor of being on the calendar this year. Plus they looked so danged cute, posing like this.

Maggie actually gets her own photo - I get tons of pix of the kids, but few of the adults - it gets tough to fill a page sometimes!

More pix of the great-nieces, as well as Maggie's two children from a previous marriage.

Zak's in the Marines now, and Kaitlyn will graduate from high school this year.

I like the photo of the four kids in the stair well.

The other two punks are growing up fast!

I always enjoy making these calendars. It gives me an opportunity to be somewhat involved in their lives.

Since they all live in Illinois, our biggest contacts are through emails and phone calls - and the photos help me get to know personalities that might not come through in either of these modes of communication.

The best part about these Days To Remember 6x6 calendars is that all the pages are perforated, so you can tear them out of the calendar at the end of the year and put the already finished pages into an album to keep forever!

Scrapbooking, one year at a time!

Hope you've enjoyed my sharing the calendar with you!

What do YOU want or need to scrapbook? Call me - I've got access to lots of items for that project!

Still More Calendar Pages

Third posting with the family calendar pages...

This is Laurel's page. Several pictures with she and her sister, Cathy, and one of the two sets of sisters - my great nieces, and Laurel and Cathy. This title for this one is going to be "Sisters!".

Laurel was fascinated by this dress made out of tea bags on one of their treks.

And finally, her enjoying a cocktail as they sailed out of New York on a cruise last year.



This is my brother's page in the calendar.

Walking Rusty in the fall and the snow, playing with a buffalo somewhere - I'd guess the saddle is probably in the same place.

And him enjoying a cocktail as they sail out of New York on their cruise last year.




And a page with the two of them together. The bottom right photo is from that cruise, the top two from their adventure out West last year, and a photo of them in front of a theater somewhere.

Evidently they'd gotten to see Singin' In The Rain.


Hope you'll come back tomorrow for photos of the rest of the calendar!

More Calendar Pages

Welcome back!

Here are several more calendar pages, designed for the Days To Remember 6x6 calendar.

Here's page for me 'n The Kidz.

If you've visited this blog before, more than likely you've seen at least one of these photos - at least once!

Love the photo of the three of them sitting at the back door. I seldom get them in a photo all at the same time.






This one's all about me!

Shelli Gardner, co-founder and CEO of Stampin' Up! and myself at Leadership in Orlando.
Our group at Leadership in Palm Springs.
Our group at Convention in Salt Lake last year.
Patti and I clowning around at Palm Springs Leadership.

And finally, Joanna and I settin' on the porch at Manager's meeting in Houston several years ago.




This is Jon, my nephew's, page. He ran the Boston Marathon last year - way to go, Jon!

He also recently bought a house , so there's a shot of Jon, my SIL Laurel, and her sister Aunt Cathy, when Cathy came to visit this year. I appreciated getting a photo of this event!

And Jon and Rusty in front of the Christmas tree.



As I mentioned before, I'm SURE embellishments will be added to these pages before they find themselves on the way to Illinois to their new homes.

Come back tomorrow - more pages to follow...

Happy stampin' and scrappin'!

Family Calendars for 2010

Hi Everyone:

Had a busy weekend and didn't seem to find time to post. Well, I hope this post (and the next several) will somewhat make up for it.

Every year I make a calendar for my family members that contains as many photos as I can cram into them of everyone from the year before. I like having the ability to look back and see how much the kids (grand nieces) have grown and how the rest of us have aged. LOL

I thought I'd shown you some of my preliminary calendar pages, but evidently I had not. BUT, I've been toiling away and finally gotten the proto-type done!

I'm using the 6x6 "Days to Remember" calendars sold in the Idea Book and Catalog on page 159 (Item 104144 $9.95). So, I can start my calendars in any month I choose!

And it's a good thing - yes, I KNOW it's already March! And, YES, I KNOW I'm a little behind here!

I start "nagging" to get photos along about early October - I seldom get them til after Thanksgiving, when I'm in the midst of making Christmas cards and any other gifts I've chosen to make. So, the calendar goes on the back burner.

After all, I KNOW the current one is good until the end of February of the next year (this has become a pattern, you see...).

So, I generally start getting serious with them right after New Year's and Leadership. And I did. But this year, my printer decided to die (remember the electronics nightmare of earlier?).

Anyhoo...

The month/date info is all filled in on all four calendars; each month has been stamped and, in some instances, images have been hand colored. All that remains is to get the photos on the pages for the remaining three calendars !

Oh- and then decide which photo page will represent which month. This year, that's the last thing that will be done. Most of the time, I decide that first and color coordinate the 6x6 DSP with the months I intend to use them on. Not so, this year. Panic set in, and I just flew thru the photos matching DSP colors to the photos...

Here are some of the pages I've finally come up with.

The grand nieces generally get two pages in each year's calendars.

This is one of them for this year.









This is the other. School pics, and photos of their birthday ( their birthdays are 1 day apart - oh, and several years, of course!)

Grandma made the Hello Kitty cake, so it HAD to be in the calendar!

Grandma's quite handy in the Home Arts department and makes Halloween costumes, too...




This page is tied for the December.

I just couldn't resist including the wreath encased in ice, Rusty looking at us from behind a snow bank, and the beautiful shot of the trees covered in snow. Oh, and everyone around the table for Christmas dinner. Of course, this was 2008 Christmas dinner...





This is the one I'd originally decided was going to be December. After all, what says December more than a visit to Santa? And the shot of the kids opening gifts in front of Grandma and Granddad's Christmas tree? Again, this is Christmas 2008. Always a year behind, it seems...







Truth be told, there will probably be more embellishments added before these calendars are on their way to Illinois. You know us artisans! It's never REALLY finished... You just have to STOP!

I'll show you more of the calendar pages in the next few days. Stay tuned...

Thanks for stopping by.

Mr. Big and Vinyl

Hi everyone!

On Saturday, my stamp club ladies got to play with Mr. Big (i.e. Big Shot) and the vinyl we now sell as a separate product.

At this time, it's available in 21 of our 48 colors!

The vinyl we sell is what is used to make our Decor Elements, or as it's now called, Definitely Decorative line of products.

These include the items you can place on your walls.

But, personally, I'm not that ready to commit my walls to something like that - first of all, I should wash them first (not gonna happen, trust me!), and secondly, most of them are fairly large - although most of them are available in three different sizes.

You can browse thru the Definately Decorative catalog by clicking on its image on the left side bar of my blog. Or, alternatively, contact me, giving me your snail mail address, and I'd be happy to pop one into the mail for you.

There are some REALLY cute things in this catalog - and I DO use some of them for projects. I just haven't put them on my walls, as yet.

What I DO use them for are things like mirrors, tiles, serving trays, glass blocks, picture frames, and anything else that's a fairly smooth surface.

The discount stores are a great place to find these items at an awesome price. I showed some of these decorated items here. You'll notice I used a mirror, a tray, and charger plate for some Christmas ideas.

And here, I actually used the Gable Green vinyl to decorate a glass block. I was quite pleased with how this one turned out, since I used the negative image of the Tulipe die on the block. Notice I also ran some of the Pixie Pink vinyl through the Wonderful Wings embosslit to decorate it a little more.

While browsing at a local 99 cent store, I found these cute little containers that were just screaming out to be decorated.

And I thought, what a great thing to use for the vinyl!

I didn't think to photograph everyone's projects before they left on Saturday, and for that, I'm sad. I know how cute they were, but you won't!

So, let me show you the two I did as samples to get the club ladies' creative juices flowing.

I used the Swirls Scribbles Sizzlet die for these.

Used Pumpkin Pie, Gable Green and Taken with Teal to decorate this container.

I'm envisioning this as a trash can (with lid) that you can use when you're stamping or scrapping.






And here's the other one I made. As you can tell, THIS one's MINE, all MINE! LOL

I think I used every flower die I have on hand to make the pieces for this container.

I cut everything ahead of the club meeting, then attached them to the container while everyone watched.

It was SO EASY!










I even cut some extra leaves out of the leftover vinyl from the Little Leaves sizzlet die - that die seems to waste a lot of material, which drives me crazy, so I generally try to cut more out of what's left.

For these, though, I just took my scissors and cut leaf shapes - they look pretty good, don't they?










You've seen just about all of the container.

And it's now sitting on my stamping table, open and waiting for all my scraps!

If I want, I can put the lid on it to take it on a stamping trip with me...








One of the ladies used the Swirly Sizzlit Decorative strip on their containers. It fit perfectly around the bottom of it! Another used the FLowers Sizzlit Decorative strip. It's the same size, and she attached it around the middle - it didn't quite meet, so she covered it with another flower.

Things are ORANGE these days around here. Here are some of the flowers that are blooming in my backyard right now...

The California poppies are in their glory out there, and there is also a Watsonia (also orange) that's just starting to bloom.

It was raining today, so I didn't venture out into the tall weeds to take additional photos. But the sun's supposed to shine tomorrow, so I'll try to show you more then.

I saw on Patty Bennett's blog that she'd photo'd her new rose leaves with rain drops pearling on them. They were absolutely beautiful!

We Californians do value our rain, since we don't get much. Patty lives up around San Francisco and gets lots more than we do in San Diego, but apparently it's valuable there as well!

Do you want to start playing around with Mr. Big and our vinyl? Email or comment to this post and I'd be happy to help you obtain either product!

Thanks for stopping by.

Tutorial - Making Fabric Flowers

I'll bet you thought I forgot I told you I'd show you how to make these, didn't you?

Well, I didn't - but had stamp club on Saturday, and have been working on the family calendars, so the fabric flowers had to take a bit of a back seat.

While trying to decide what I'd blog about tonight, I just bit the bullet and made a new one, so that I could photograph the various steps involved.

DISCLAIMER: This is how *I* make the flowers. I've spoken with others who are making them very differently than I do. So, check around, see which method will work best for you. Or, alternatively, try them all and see which you prefer!

So, here goes:

Select a number of fabrics that coordinate with each other. Remember how at first I didn't "have it together" for this step? Well, I think I've got it now!

Check these out!

They're a pretty good set of coordinating fabrics, don't you think?




Next, select 4 folded pieces of fabric (this will give you 8 flower pieces) and decide which flower die you'd like to use.

I used Flowers Layers #3 die (Item 114527 $15.95).

I chose this one because all three flowers are quite different from one another, and I'm curious how they'll all turn out...



Top the fabric pieces with the CREASE PAD (Item # 113476 $8.95).

You'll notice I've written "crease pad" on this. That's because there are a lot of different pieces for the Big Shot that are black, and over time, I've gotten confused about what is what.

Sometimes you have to do these things, in order to keep your sanity! ha ha

The function of the crease pad is to help build up something a little more solid for the fabric to push against, in hopes you won't get tiny little threads that don't cut cleanly. I'm still working on the build up to achieve a clean cuts, but will get there eventually. It's one of those "play with it til you're happy with it" situations. And it changes, according to the fabrics you're using.



Next I placed a shim on top of the crease pad.

The crease pad comes with two of these opaque shims.

DO NOT DO WHAT I DID - the first time I used one of these I placed it directly above the die, and I now have tiny little opaque flowers floating around that I really don't want to throw away, but which I have no idea how, nor where, to store!



Now I've added yet more shims. This time I'm using CS. There are two pieces for this stack. I contemplated using three, but when I started to crank it through Mr. Big, he seemed to think it was too much.

So, I backed off to two - and really should have used all three. I did end up with the fabrics not cutting cleanly, and had to spend about 5 minutes freeing the flowers from the rest of the fabric.


Here are the "piles" of flower pieces that I got from 4 folded pieces of fabric.

I'll use four of the flowers on the right to make my flower. (the one with the red in the fabric).







Next, I folded four of the 8 pieces in half.












Then, into quarters.

And then I tacked these together from the center.

Be sure all your folds are on the same side!

I used the Linen thread for tacking purposes.




Now comes the tricky part. You want to overlap each of the fabrics to form a circle.

I have one half of each fabric on top, the other half behind the next piece of fabric.

It's a little difficult to hold and unfurl at the same time!




Next, cut a circle out of card stock. You will use this as a base, and hot glue the fabric to it.

This is the 1-1/4" circle.









Add a dollop of hot glue.

Watch for strings! Those pesky devils always seem to be hanging around!









And, working quickly, before the glue sets, push the folded, splayed fabric into place on the CS circle.

Once you're satisfied with how it looks, add another smaller dollop of hot glue to the center of the flower and plop a pretty button in place!




And, voila! You're done.

Well, except for adding a pin back. If you want to glue it to something else, of course you don't NEED a pin back. But I like wearing mine, so I generally put one the back.



Finally, here's a photo of a die cut piece of CS (from the same die) beside the finished flower so you can see how it changes, once you've put it through this process.





I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! Are you going to run to your craft closet and dig out that fabric that's been sitting there for years and make yourself some of these?

They do add a bit of dash to your outfit!

Enjoy!