Simply Stampin' Lunch Bunch and Aerubbecisor Dinner

Tuesday was my monthly busy day with some very fun stampers for lunch bunch.  They brought several wonderful salads and I provided the taco soup and carrot cake.  We had lots of fun and laughter.  Those stampers blended into my next group of downline demonstrators who started arriving as lunch bunch left.  It was such a fun day.  I enjoy all of my stampers so much and look forward to seeing my downline each month.  I added Caesar salad and my husband's great herb bread to the soup and cake for dinner.  It was a great gathering with stampers I hadn' t seen for several months, but then it is summer.

I provided five cards that I had cased from other demonstrators for everyone to make and several of my downline brought fun projects to share, too.  Here is the first of the projects that everyone did. This one was cased from Julie Davison, my favorite demonstrator to case. She is one of the nicest people you could ever meet. I love her tutorials and her projects.

My stamp club ladies will get to make another version of this card in August.  Love the Butterfly Basics set that came out in the spring mini. It is definitely one of the current favorites. 

I'll add more as I have time.  Saturday is the big Terry Taylor neighborhood garage sale so I will be working with a bunch of my ladies to do our big annual craft sale. We have people from all over western Washington and Oregon come to this sale.  Come and visit us on Saturday.  Hugs, Sherron

First Hostess Appreciation Luncheon

My first hostess appreciation luncheon was so fun.  Everyone loved the projects this year and seemed to enjoy the food too.  I did something a little different this year. Instead of four separate projects, I gave everyone the choice from three different Designer Series Paper.  Each person chose two pieces of either Bohemian, Farmers Market or English Garden and used one to decorate a plastic wood mount stamp case and the other to do a one sheet wonder set of cards.  I had samples from each choice that I had already done along with matching inks and cardstock. It was fun to see the results and listen to the conversation as everyone got creative.  Thanks to my upline, Denise Jorgenson for the case idea.  She gave me this wonderful case filled with cards as a gift at the recent Hawaii incentive trip. 

Every case was so different depending on the papers each chose.  The case that Denise made used the Bohemian DSP so while everyone worked on theirs, I decided to do another one sheet wonder set focusing on thank you cards to give as a gift.  Here are the cards that I created in just a couple of hours with another different sheet of the Bohemian paper. 

I am just loving this whole concept. It has made me see creativity in a whole different way. Here are the other two cases with the Farmers Market and English Garden papers.

There is still one more hostess appreciation luncheon on August 8th. If you want a chance to make your own case of cards, join me for a fun day. Or if you haven't been one of my hostesses this past year, but still would like to make this fun project, I might be talked into doing a class.  Hugs, Sherron

Stampaholics and more.

Sunday was my monthly Stampaholics Anonymous.  I put out the leftover designer paper sheets from the Sweet Dreams DSP that was on the recent Spring Occasions mini.  Since Stampaholics is my monthly open house and participants can bring their own supplies or use what I put out, I had decided to highlight one retired paper each month and encourage stampers to do a one sheet wonder project making a variety of cards from that one piece.  Even though this paper was featured as a baby theme, I wanted to show that it works for all kinds of normal occasions.   I  randomly added a few current and retired stamp sets and the cardstock and ink to match the colors in the papers.  Since I am a very challenged card designer,  this is such a good exercise for me.   The sets I chose were Peaceful Petals, retired from the most recent catalog, Birthday Blossoms, one of my favorite new sets and You've Got This.  I was pretty proud of my creations.   What do you think?

I promised to finish my stamp club projects so here is the last card using another of my favorite sets, Wild About Flowers.

And this month I featured the new Gift Bag Punch Board for my extra credit project. It has been so popular that it is backordered but still available to order.  It is a little trickier to master than the other two boards but definitely worth it and very fun to create all different sizes and styles. 

Tomorrow we head for Portland for our annual Brewer's Festival.  Portland is the beer capital of the world with almost 100 craft breweries in the area. Every year they come together to showcase their wares.  My husband loves the festival and we enjoy it as one of our summer highlights.  This year two of my daughters and their husbands will join us so we are excited.  Then on Saturday I hold the first of my two Hostess Appreciation events. I can' t wait to share the fun project they will be doing.  Hugs, Sherron

Paper Crafting and more projects.

Yesterday was papercrafting day and I had a lot of fun making one of our new kits to use as a decoration for my upcoming hostess appreciation luncheons.   The Sweet Stack Project Kit is a fun cake with pieces you can fill with treats.  There is also a new Cutie Pie thin lit that you can use to make more cake pieces.  Here is my creation. There were enough pieces to make another banner which I will use to create a "Celebrate" one.  Here is a pic of the finished "cake".

project

I finished the last of the little thank yous that I made for my customers this month. I showed you the project that I did at my workshops with the Pretty Petals Designer Paper Stack. The thank you notes were made with the scraps from that project.

I used the " Cottage Greetings" set for these notes. It is such a pretty set.   Here is another of the fun projects from my workshops this month. I love the "Watercolor Wings" set and the matching framelits.  This bundle is a great buy and goes so well with the Butterfly Basics bundle. 

I'll share the last card and the extra credit projects tomorrow.  It is Stampaholics Anonymous so come and play.  Hugs, Sherron

Back to normal.

After a whirlwind week of wedding festivities including altering bridesmaids dresses, two BBQs, the wedding rehearsal and dinner, the absolutely awesome wedding and a present opening farewell to the Aussies, life is kind of boring.  Having my granddaughter, Kira and her now husband here from Australia with a bunch of her Australian friends and new family was so much fun. They were a delightful group that we had a wonderful opportunity to interact with for several days.  The wedding itself was amazing.  My daughter and granddaughter outdid themselves, considering much of it had to be accomplished very long distance. Here are some of the pics from the event.

The wedding was held at a small winery and farm out in the country north of Vancouver, Washington.  It was a wonderful location and a gorgeous setting.   It went by way too quickly and the bride and groom are already back in Wagga hard at work.  No honeymoon until school is out. 

So now it is time to get back into stamping.  I had my last stamp club for the month on Monday so now I can share the projects that everyone did.  This one is one that I got from Dawn Olchefske.  I did several versions of it using the Pretty Petals designer paper pack and the new Bohemian Chic embossing folder.  Everyone chose different papers and colors to match so it was really fun to see the various combinations.  It's amazing what you can do with the note tag punch. 

I will post the others later this week. Now I'm getting ready for my big hostess appreciation luncheons and the huge Terry Taylor garage sale that a bunch of us do together.  There is never time to get too bored.  Hugs, Sherron

Fun times with my stamp clubs

It has been a busy week already.  After celebrating Independence Day with my daughter, her husband and the soon to be bride and groom, I had my Earlibird stamp club on Monday and the Fuzzy Pebbles in Mossyrock on Tuesday.  I love my stamp club ladies.  They are such a hoot and bring on continuous laughter with their antics.  I'll share the projects we did after the last one this coming Monday.

Here is the last of the lunch bunch projects.  They were all cased from other demonstrators on Pinterest or from my favorite swaps.

This is one of my favorite sets from the new catalog.  It is called Wild about Flowers.  It is so easy to use as each leaf spray of leaves and set of flowers are numbered so you know what goes together.  The sayings are great too with "Congratulations on your", that you can add " retirement" or " new adventure".  Then there are several sayings that go with those to complete the thoughts.  This will definitely be a keeper.  Love it!

Tomorrow starts the four days of wedding festivities so I will be posting sneak peeks of all the fun.  Stay cool and keep stamping.  Hugs, Sherron

Another papercrafting day

Today was one of my weekly papercrafting days.  I use these to force myself to sit still and finish up some of my scrapbooks, paper Pumpkins and other UFOs ( unfinished objects).  It is also a day for my stampers to join me and get some of their stuff done.  If I'm home on a Friday, it is a papercrafting day.  No one joined me today, but with the holiday, I didn't expect them.  I did get a bunch of stuff accomplished.  I finished up another Paper Pumpkin.  This one was from April, I think, when I was home for most of the month.  It was so easy and cute that I changed very little.  Since I don't have a mom or dad, I didn't use those stamps.  Most of the cards that I did were thank yous as that is what I use most.  They turned out pretty cute. What do you think?

I also made a bunch more invitations for my hostess and frequent buyer luncheons.  I'm almost finished with them and will start handing or mailing them out on Monday. Look for yours to arrive soon.  This time I didn't seal them all so here is a sneak peek at what you will be eating for dessert.

I made a couple of other really cute cards with one of my Bella Uptown Girls stamps.  I'll show that one to you next week after I'm sure the recipient has received it and tell you the story behind it.  In the meantime, here are a couple more cards from lunch bunch. Both of these were cased from some of my favorite cards in the Hawaii incentive trip swaps. 

 This card was created by Laura Barto.  I loved the Corner Garden stamp the way she did it.  I usually feel like you have to color the whole thing in so I love the way she just sponged the middles of the flowers.  I did change the colors up a little as I am not comfortable with too many wild mixtures. I really loved her composition.

This card was created by Rose Marie Coleman. It was the favorite of everyone who made the cards.  It features several different stamp sets but primarily Everything Eleanor and Gorgeous Grunge.  The saying is from Crazy About You and the butterfly from Papillion Potpourri.  She did a beautiful job with this one.  

Tomorrow is July 4th so we will be heading to daughter Vicki's for a BBQ and some wedding preparation.  With granddaughter Kira's wedding just a week away, we are headed into excitement overtime.  Have a wonderful and safe fourth.  Hugs, Sherron

Too hot for the craft room.

My craft room is on the second floor of our house and though we have air conditioning that has been running nonstop, it was just too hot to stamp upstairs today.   I brought all of my hostess appreciation luncheon invitation supplies down to the dining room table and worked for several hours there.  They are pretty simple as usual but kind of cute.  The front gives a hint as to what my guests will be eating that day.  I would share a picture, but I managed to seal all of them in their envelopes.  As soon as I get the next batch made, I'll get a picture taken. In the meantime, here are a couple more cards from Tuesday's class.

 This card was a shoebox swap card shared by my downline, Lacey.  She used the World of Dreams stamp set on page 95 in the catalog. I loved the collagy effect she achieved.

This card was one of my favorites from all of the swaps that I received on the Hawaii incentive trip. It was designed by Michelle Halleen.  Done in Calypso Coral and black, the contrast between the Sahara Sand lace and the Calypso Coral seam binding made a superb statement.

I still have a few more cards to share in the next several days and then I am on to this month's workshops and my granddaughter's wedding. Stay tuned!  Hugs, Sherron