And finally - The End!

Here are the last three months' photos from the family calendar.  Next post will be something else, I promise!

For some reason, I can't access the bottom of this post so will say (right here) Thanks for stopping by - come back soon!

My brother found these on Ancestry.com!  Guess one of my aunt's relatives posted them, but I didn't recognize the name he supplied.  Anyway, that's my Grandfather top left; my Uncle Bob middle left, Uncle Bill top right; my mom in the center, and my Aunt Jeannie bottom left.  I TRIED to draw a family tree for my nephews, who never met any of these people - it was pretty lame!  LOL  So I did one in Word and sent it along with the calendars.

Jim & Laurel like to do cruises, so these are photos from at least one of their cruises last year.

Photos of my nephew Jon - first one in Brazil, the other two in Philadelphia when he ran a marathon this past year. In the top one he's posing with the Rocky Balboa statue.  He's big into marathons, so I generally have at least one photo of him finishing one.  Wish I liked to run! But I do NOT!

7, 8, and 9

Here are three more calendar pages....   Then 3 more after that - and then we can move on to something else.  I've been playing with the dress framelits and have made some REALLY cute dresses - I'll show them to you soon, I promise!

Brother Jim and all his silliness at Walt Disney World during their family vacation last June.  It was great to have enough pics of him for a whole page.

The Princesses "doing tea" with Prince William and Princess Kate; in front of Sleeping Beauty's castle; posing with a fairy at WDW; the whole fam-damily posing in WDW; Maurgen (in orange leg warmers) during her middle school's production of "Fame".

 

 

Maurgen & Zoe in their hats at Disney World; the whole fam-damily sporting their rain gear at some point while there (it's Florida!  It rains!); riding a roller coaster; Zoe, on several occasions, espressing herself!

Most of my pages were made by printing the photos in 2 x 3 sizes.  In some instances I was able to punch out 1-3/8 squares that were the focus of the picture.  After I placed all the photos, I started embelling with 3-D effects of some sort.

As I mentioned earlier, last year I did the whole calendar using My Digital Studio (MDS). It came out beautifully, but I wasn't happy with how flat everything looked, doing it that way.  I LIKE having the 3-D effect - so I elected to put a little more work into it this year and add things like the ticket punches, mouse ears (a punch I'd bought YEARS ago!), scrunched up tags and logos of the places we'd been.

I went on-line and looked up the various places we'd all been and copied the logos into a Word document . Then I printed those out and then trimmed them to fit the pages.  Helped give the pictures more of a feel of the places we'd been.

Thanks for stopping by - come back again soon!

More Calendar Pages and the Mob Museum

Sorry I've been MIA - went to my upline Jill's stamping event in St. George, UT this past weekend, and of course, it wasn't just for one day!

Several of my downline live in Pahrump, NV, so that's always the first place we go - it's a little more than half way to St. George and room and board are very reasonable!  Besides, they were going with us, so we had to stop...  Ha ha

After Jill's event, we drove back to Pahrump, and the next day Susan and I went in to Las Vegas to go to the Mob Museum (downtown).  It's FASCINATING!  It took us 6 hours to get through it, and by the end, I'm sure we weren't really retaining anything we were reading.  Great museum - interactive displays, lots of photos, some film clips...  If you're at all familiar with the Mob's past, it was basically Prohibition that created their syndicates.  They were running booze (while it was illegal to do so, thanks to Prohibition) and developed their syndicate initially to accommodate that.  They have just branched out in to other avenues since then.

During the Kefauver hearings (mid 1950's) one of the hearings was held in Las Vegas, and the actual courtroom the hearing was held in is part of the museum.  We got to see and hear photos and dialog from the hearing.  They also had the actual wall where the Valentine's Massacre occurred many years before that in Chicago.

Just a fascinating place - you NEED to visit it one of these days!

Oh yeh - there are supposed to be photos of stamped items here, aren't there?

OK - here ya go...  more calendar pages...

Jim, Laurel, & I in Old Town San Diego; Jim & Laurel at the Fish House at the Embarcadero to help me celebrate my birthday; the last two photos were taken in Balboa Park near the water lily pond.

Jim had requested we go to Croce's - he's a big fan of Jim Croce.  We had brunch there - nice quiet little restaurant in the Gaslamp Quarter in San Diego.  The other two photos are from Safari Park, which is a branch of the San Diego Zoo.

Laurel and her sister, Cathy, at dinner somewhere up around San Jose; Cathy, Laurel & Jim in San Jose;  Jim with a huge cannon in San Juan, P.R. during one of their cruises last year; Laurel and the grand daughters (Maurgen & Zoe) out and about enjoying nature.

We made a lot of cards and other things at Jill's - I'll take pictures and post them soon.  Next time will be more calendar pages - still have 6 to show you!

Hope you enjoyed seeing how I do my family calendar.  Would love to see yours!  Just add a link to your photos or blog, if you're willing to share with us!

Thanks for stopping by - come back soon...

Calendar Girls

There are Katie & I at Convention last July; Meaghan, Robin & Caitee at my birthday party in October; another picture of some of my friends at my birthday party in October.  I also had a pinata (never had one before, decided it was a MUST for this birthday) but I'm not sure I got any good photos of that little event...

Here is one of the 12 photo pages I made for this year's Family Calendar.  I'll show you a couple more in today's post, with others to follow soon.

This year I had WAAAYYY too many photos to choose from!  Not complaining, but it makes it harder to choose which to feature!

I generally divide the pages up amongst the whole family.  And I usually have a lot of pictures of my great-nieces, so they get the majority of the pages!

Not this year!  I was a piggy and put myself into a LOT of the pages. 

Photos from 2012 convention!  Top picture:  5 generations of Stampin' Up! demonstrators at convention!  I'm sure it's not a first overall, but it WAS a first for me and my downline.  Middle picture:  Standing on the red carpet - all in the photo are either in my downline or live in San Diego.  Bottom photo:  Our traditional dinner at Olive Garden!  It's a MUST while we're at convention!

And, of COURSE, I have to feature my babies on the calendar somewhere!

That's Smudge in the upper left corner, Velvet in the upper right corner.  Smedley (Melie) is in the lower left and, ta da!  A picture of all three of them!   That's such a rare occasion, I always take a picture!

My brother and sister-in-law came to California to visit this year, so I was able to get more pix with more of the family in them.  And they'd taken THEIR family to Walt Disney World for a vacation, so, again, I got lots of pictures with multiple arms of the family all together!

Stay tuned for more calendar pages!

Do you do a family calendar of some sort?  If so, would you be willing to share with myself and my blog readers?  Send me a link to your calendars in the Comments section - would love to see what you do and get some new ideas!

Thanks for stopping by...  come back soon!

A Valentine's Card

Here's a valentine card I made a couple of weeks ago for my club ladies to reproduce if they wanted to.  Several of them did, but I didn't take pix!  My bad...  cuz they always make improvements on my ideas!

I used Primrose Petals CS for the base and then the heart was punched out by bottoming the punch out on the CS.   I stamped one of the hearts from the Hearts A Flutter set using Primrose Petals ink on the card front. I really like a tone-on-tone effect and it's easily accomplished with Stampin' Up! ink and card stocks, since they're color coordinated!

The LOVE ticket is from the Artisan Embellishment Kit.  There are 5 tickets in it, so you can make five Valentines with each kit!  There are a couple of small pieces of the doily from the Artisan kit buried in there, as well.

I inked the Pennant stamps from the Hearts A Flutter Framelits set with Primrose Petals ink on Very Vanilla CS.

The gals who made this card at club hung the pennants from the top of the card using baker's twine and it was very cute!  When I make another (and I will) I think I'll steal their idea!  Gotta love the ability to copy someone else's great idea!

Here's the inside of the card.

 
I cut the lace heart using the Hearts Aflutter Framelits, as well, and then positioned it thru the heart punched in the front of the card.  The doily is from the Delicate Doilies set, and the verse is from the You Are Loved set.

Isn't it wonderful how you can pick and choose stamps from different sets and mix and match them?  I think that's a real strong suit of Stampin' Up's! 

I had found these heart shaped Dove candies and thought this was a great idea for giving one to a friend!

Of course, this would be very difficult to mail, so maybe this one should be saved for those hand delivered cards this year...

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Have I mentioned our SINGLE IMAGE stamps that we are carrying now?  These were introduced last fall and were a hit, so SU had come up with two additional offers.

I THINK this link (and the following one) will take you to the flyer showing the images - first time to try it!  Guess we'll find out!

Single Images #3

Single Images # 4

Most of these images are brand new and all are available until March 31, 2013 ONLY!  Contact me to order, or order on-line thru my website HERE - be sure to select me as your demonstrator, OK?

Thanks for stopping by - be sure and come back!

LOVE You More...

Here's another version of the LOVE banner I made.

When I saw Janet's post, I wasn't sure which size scallop square she'd used, so I cut one from the 4x4" die (retired) and another from the Two Scallops Bigz die.

After making the one I showed here, I decided to finish the 4x4 one.

I could use the larger letters (I'd cut some for something else, which I'll share another time, so had a couple lying around to try) and cut the DSP to a larger size! 

I also used the Tea for Two DSP this time around - after all, LOVE isn't just for Valentine's Day!

You can also see last year's banner hanging below the LOVE banner - I cut a lot of hearts out of First Edition DSP for that one and decorated...






But back to the 2013 version!

Here are the individual pieces:

I used the doily Sizzlet for the silver glimmer scallop. But punching out all those little pieces wasa  lot of work!  I probably wouldn't do it again unless I had a LOT of patience! 

I used the Silver Glimmer paper and the heart punch for this one.  Also used a pink marker to color the 5/8" flower trim piece - LOVE those flowers!

That doily again - only about 1/2 is punched out - I gave up!

Same scallop made from Silver glimmer paper - notice NONE of the holes are punched out?

This version was too large to hang down, so I punched holes in all the pieces at once, using my Crop-a-dile and then threaded it on to Cherry Cobbler seam binding.

I think I like this one better - what do you think?
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I wanted to remind you about The Paper Pumpkin - a monthly subscription to receiving all kinds of wonderful surprises in the mail - all oriented around Papercrafting!

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I have the Try It kit - it's really cute!   I'll put it together and feature it on my blog one of these days.

Thanks for stopping by - come back soon!

LOVE You!

Isn't this CUTE?

I CASEd it from Janet Baker's blog (Thanks, sweetie!)

As soon as I saw it, I knew I needed to share it!  So, I had my stamp club ladies make it on Saturday, and then my Team Members made it last night.

Of course, everyone changed it up a bit to make it "theirs"!  Which is fine with me - that means that, over the years, somehow either Stampin' Up! or me has generated creative juices these ladies are now USING!

Want to see it a little closer?

Here ya go...

I used the larger of the two squares on the Scallops Square Duo Bigz die to cut the Basic Gray CS, then embellished with 2-3/4 x 2-3/4 pieces of More Amore DSP.  Then the 1-3/4 scallop punch was used on the Silver Glimmer paper.  Those were topped with circles cut from More Amore DSP.  I added one of those wonderful flowers from the 5/8" Flower Trim, which I colored with a marker.

 Finally, the LV & E were cut using the Timeless Type Alphabet Junior Sizzlets, which I just discovered has been discontinued (sigh...).   Well, size-wise, these worked fantastically, so we used them!  No sense letting them lollygag in the Stampin' Garage and not see the light of day!


And, speaking of love, here's something else I love!

Yep, that's my Velvet.  She was sitting on the end of one of the tables in my Stampin' Garage the other day and I actually got a great photo of her!

OH - DON'T FORGET!   SALE-A-BRATION (SAB) is ON, starting TODAY!  Call or email with a $50 product order and YOU can select an item from the SAB brochure for FREE!  Doesn't get better than that!