MONDAY GOODIES!

Good morning, everyone!

No cards this week. Bob got home Friday afternoon and as usual, we've been on the go. Today we are working on the filming corner.

I spent most of Thursday, Friday, Saturday watching all the amazing creators taking part in the Card Makers Success Summit at Stamp Me Some Love. The event is FREE unless you want to purchase the lifetime access. Trust me... if you think you're not going to be able to watch everything or want to go back at a later time and watch a video again, it is well worth the minimal price for the VIP.   Videos are only available for 24 hours without the pass! But here's the thing...   If you don't buy the pass the first time you click on the purchase link, the price goes up... so make your decision the first go round. You'll be glad you did. I think Brandi said there would be another the end of March as she has other stuff going on in July when she normally runs the next round.

Okay..  So no cards, but lots of video watching, downloading free tutorials and signing up for lots of emails I'll probably wind up dropping.

BUT... I did fall in love with a product that apparently has been around awhile.  I'm always late to the party LOL

Have you heard of STENCIL 360*?

I'm going to link you to Ardyth's video because I think it's one of the best. Justine Hovey also has a really good one, but here's Ardyth's:

You'll find the product on the Penguin Palace website. They are out of Canada. My starter kit, storage bag and one other stencil set should arrive Thursday or Friday. LOL

I'll be doing tutorials and plays in the near future. Keep in mind... whether you are a card maker, a scrapbooker or play with junk journaling.. THIS product has sooo many possibilities.

I also networked in the livestream chats quite a bit and had requests for tutorials using other products so I'll be busy this summer.

Okay... I'm recording a haul video this morning before we get started. I did a short Hobby Lobby trip on Saturday. When I went last week, not a lot of stuff had been marked down. Saturday was much more successful...

I was thrilled to find the teal wax melts for the glue gun. I want to make Thank You seals for my etsy gift packages. I also picked up charms for the mermaid journals, four wink of stella pens, a package of misters and four packages of different types coils for the cinch - 2 coil and 2 D style. The little blue crystal cup was from the Easter Spring Shop line. I'm going to use it to put my fine tip glue bottle in upside down when I'm working on a project. Then there's one other item up in the top right you can't see very well....

It is called a Glitter Vac from We R Memory Keepers. I saw one on the shelf for $15, but then looked behind and there was one for $10!!!  You recharge with a USB and use it to vacuum up all the little bits on your work desk. You can also run it across your keyboard.  I've been wanting one so grabbed this. I figure what I saved on the clearance more than paid for this new addition to my office... and it's teal!

okay... I'll be posting pics to my IG account for the #100dayproject. I have day 3, 4, 5 to post yet but thought I'd share them with you here. All about the studio progress...

The adhesives from off of one cart are all sorted and ready to go here:

I took all the punches off of this cart, sprayed it Teal and now I'll have all different styles of adhesives on hand next to my table. I've already put a liner in the middle tray and Bob trimmed down my stickles tray to fit in there. But since I'm not using the black carts anymore, the tray had been stored in, the tray had to be reconfigured to fit.

The punch cart is finished!

All of the punches I use most are on this cart. Most of the seasonal punches are in a rack on the end of my big work island.  I was even able to add the crocodiles and standard hole punches thanks to the clip on containers on the side. 

That's it for me. 

I'll be back Wednesday with our March Challenge chat and our stick samples on Thursday. Other than that, pretty quiet here this week as I have Bob home to help whip the studio into shape. 

Are you doing the #100dayproject?  Some have told me they were inspired to use the challenge to organize as I am doing. I'd love to hear what you're up to!

Creative Blessings!

~ Kelly

What's On My Mind Wednesday

Okay... it's not Recycle Wednesday, but it sounded good. hehe

I took yesterday off to go into the city for the day. A long day which began with getting on the road by 8 a.m. and pulling back into my driveway a bit before 10 p.m. It was a relaxing day. I did some snooping, some shopping, enjoyed lunch with my sister and browsed mixed-media books at Barnes & Noble.

I started off heading for Ava, MO. Remember the blog hop I went on last fall? Dogwood Quilting is where I won the $50 gift certificate. I knew I wanted the solid cotton fabric for the sashing and backing for the butterfly quilt made from reproduction fabrics. We couldn't find a thing that worked! She had very limited supply of the solid cottons. Connie said she seldom has a request for them. Okay... plan B. I see a book for projects using the paint sticks. I've been wanting these but not enough to spend $35+ plus for a 5-pack. Guess what? They were sold out. So much for Plan B.

I did manage to find two quilting books I couldn't live without. One was the Pioneer Sampler by Eleanor Burns. I've recorded the series off of RFD-TV but wanted the book for a more detailed cutting instruction. I also picked up Burgoyne Surrounded - A Classic Quilt Plus Six Variations by Elizabeth Hamby Carlson.

Once I got to Springfield, I went to Hobby Lobby, Michaels and JoAnns. I found the perfect fabric for the sashing/ backing. I thought it was on sale. Turned out it wasn't, but it was a better price than I'd have found in another quilt store and exactly the color I wanted... a pale mint green. I also took advantage of paper being on sale. Slabs and individual sheets were 40% off and I had a coupon for an additional 20% off. I was disappointed they only had a couple of the new DCWV slabs in... and not the ones I wanted. I did buy a solid slab to use with one of my others for a DCWV scrapbook layout competition I'm hoping to enter this month. It dawned on me I probably didn't want to use SU cardstock for the layout hehe.

At Hobby Lobby, I picked up a package of the CB border folders with a coupon and they had the Paper Studio ribbon spools 50% off. Yeah, had to pick up 10 of those :-) You know, like I needed more ribbon! I've wavered back and forth about the CB border folders until I saw a card recently where the border folder was used to create a separate mat - not for embossing the edge of the card. It was one of those DUH! moments for me.

I didn't find a single thing at Michaels. That store was a disaster! They didn't have hardly any Easter crafting supplies and I really wanted paper mache eggs to do a project with Adrian while she's here. What 4-year - old doesn't like to tear paper and glue! The $1 tower baskets along the front of the store were empty and they didn't have a single new slab of the DCWV. I was so frustrated, I didn't even bother going back to the art department. I do know that for all the 'bad scores' the Peoria Michaels store ever got, our store NEVER looked like this one. I'm not even sure it's worth going back. I can always use an overnight in Paducah where the store is clean, well stocked and friendly staff.

After early dinner at Red Lobster for Lobsterfest with my sissy, I spent an enjoyable hour at Barnes and Noble browsing mixed media books. There were several new ones but I came home with only a Texas magazine and a wood tick! Yep, a tick. Thank you B & N!

I have a bunch of writing stuff due over the next couple weeks so I'm going to force myself out of the studio to get those projects out of the way. So for the next couple of weeks, probably the only posts will be the Magazine Monday. But I'll pop in to keep you updated on progress.

Creative Blessings!

Magazine Monday!

I had a really good weekend. I hope you did too. I spent the entire day on Saturday working on some of the challenges from the SplitcoastStampers VSN that was held on Friday night and all day Saturday.

When I participated in the VSN back in December, I focused on Christmas cards, using the challenges as my guide to get all of my 2012 Christmas cards done. It worked out very well. Each time I opened up a challenge, I figured out what I wanted to do, used a Christmas theme (unless the challenge called for a specific theme) then cut enough of everything to do 10-12 cards of that one challenge.

This time my focus was on Birthday cards. One of the threads I co-mod on SCS is a monthly reminder thread to get our birthday/ anniversary cards out on time. Because I’ve been busy playing catch-up on the business, I haven’t been getting my cards out like I wanted. So I decided I needed to get some of these cards done up ahead of time.

I found this birthday card inspiration in the 4th quarter 2011 issue of STAMPING-STATIONARY-AND-SCRAPBOOKING, an idea magazine from Hobby Lobby. For $1.99 you get a ton of great ideas for card and scrapbook page layouts.

This particular card was under Thanksgiving – not a birthday card. It was a Happy Thanksgiving design by Regina Farrell of TX. I tried doing a search for her without success. I kept her sketch pretty much the same. Where I have 2 sunflowers, she used 2 pumpkins, accented with a couple of green oak leaves. Where I used the Vintage Labels, Regina used an actual tag with Happy Thanksgiving stamped on it, a bit of chocolate ribbon tied in a bow on the tag and a brown oak leaf. Across the bottom of the printed band, she added a row of the brown oak leaves.

I tried just using the sun ‘flowers’ but decided they really needed the stems/ leaves. I used the Marvy Daisy punch for the flowers and the SU Build A Blossom stamp set for the leaves. The green stripe is from a 2-sided paper by Heidi Grace Designs called Baby Girl. In trying to use up stash, I’m using my ValuCS on cards I know will probably be tossed after receiving so I used ValuCS Yellow and Green from their Primary collection as well as SU Garden Green. I used my favorite SU Vintage Labels for the sentiment. The MS Daisy border punch gave a nice country look to this card in keeping with the sunflowers.