Rockstar Anya

My BFF's daughter celebrates her birthday tomorrow. I think she turns 13 or 14 but I honestly can't remember for sure. Anyway, when I got my Rockstar Anya stamp in the mail yesterday, I had to hurry up and make a card for Taylor so I could get it in the mail right away. I know the card will arrive late but hopefully it's cuteness will make up for it! Here's another view:

I can't wait to get more Anya's and turn it into a collection! Don't worry though, as cute as Anya is I'm still in love with A Muse!

I'm going to take a blogging break over the Thanksgiving holiday. My A Muse Gift Tag class got moved to this Saturday due to product not coming in on time. I think there might still be a spot or two open if you want to come by. This will be a really fun class! I'm now running it back to back with my Vintage Christmas class and I know there are a few spots open there, too. If you're up for a day of some really fun creating, be sure to call Stampin-In-The-Rain to reserve your space. 425 408-9050

Have a really great Thanksgiving! I can't wait to have some turkey, stuffing, and candied yams! The following morning, I'm off to shop in the wee hours of the a.m.!

Notice anything new????

Yup! I treated myself to a new blog banner. I've been eyeing the Anya images over at Pink Poison so I emailed Marie to see if she'd create me a new blog banner. Her Anya images are so me!!!! I spent a lot of my early childhood years in Japan so the art I love is that kitschy Asian cuteness that Marie does so well. Thanks so much, Marie!!! I love it!!!!

Okay, so here's another Spiritual/Inspirational Saltbox card that I wanted to share with you.

For this one I used the Church Mice clear set from Saltbox Studio along with a chiffon blue notecard and some Vintage Brown (notecard chopped up). I just love the little church mice set! Why is it that mice stamps are so cute but real mice...hmmm...not so much? LOL

Anyway, I'm super rushed for time today but just had to get my new banner up for you all to see. When I ordered up my blog banner, I also ordered myself the Rockstar Anya so now I have to go make a birthday card for a 13 (or is she 14 now?) that I know this would be perfect for. Plus my kids have a short school week due to the Thanksgiving holiday and they have lots of homework/projects to get done. See ya!

Grand Re-Opening

Here's another inspirational card for the holidays that I wanted to share with you. I used a blue chiffon 4-bar notecard and added a strip of Kraft scrap to make the sand. I added a bit of glitter along the horizon using Art Institute Glitter in Sand. You probably can't tell but the camel in the front (closest to the middle) is popped up with dimensionals. The Bethlehem image is from the A Muse Elzybells line as is the sentiment (item#s E0060 and C0031). There's a micro Twinkle dot on the star, too.

I have a busy weekend ahead of me. I wish I could pop in at the A Muse Grand Re-Opening sale at the shop but just can't squeeze that in. Here's the details on that in case you can make it.

Sorry for the short post but I have to get Ginger to the groomer! My favorite part is picking her up at the end of the day, all clean and fluffy and smelling oh, so good.

Joyce has a blog!

Some of you know my friend Joyce from the A Muse shop. She works there sometimes. She started a new blog so head on over and give her some love!

More Saltbox

I had a really hard time getting a good picture of this card. It looks like the white 'snow' at the top doesn't blend in but it looks okay in real life. You know, Christmas really is my favorite holiday. I love all the beautiful decorations, pretty trees, Christmas music, but most of all I love that it celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. I thought this card really captured that for me. A pretty little church in the snow with the lights on.... I can picture people inside singing Christmas carols or with their heads bowed in prayer. I've got a couple more cards to show you over the next few days that also celebrate a spiritual Christmas. I hope you'll like them.

I think I have 1 or 2 spots left in my next class. We'll be making an altered 3x3 book filled with 10 gift tags. The class is this Sunday from 2-4. Be sure to call Stampin-In-The-Rain if you're interested in signing up. Please bring your own scissors and adhesive; a liquid adhesive or sticky red tape would be good to make sure your book cover stays down. You'll want a regular adhesive to make the tags.

Vintage Saltbox

My husband is sick with the flu so I took advantage of his extra sleeping to find my creative mojo. When I get really busy, my mojo tends to leave me because my brain can't focus on stamping but last night I just fought with myself and focused. I blog hopped and gallery hopped to get inspired to do some creating. I also sat and stared at my stamps for a while, willing them to pop into my head. I think it worked because I was able to create several cards.

One of the things I love about The Saltbox Studio images is how well they lend themselves to a vintage style. Using Kraft paper can also help to accomplish this so I cut some old SU Confetti Tan into a 4-bar notecard. I also took some A Muse black kitchen paper and cut it to layer on the 4-bar, sanding the edges for a shabby look. I knew I wanted to stamp the snowman onto the Kraft paper so I could use my colored pencils. White colored pencil on Kraft just instantly brings that shabby shic look, too. After I was done coloring my image, I layered it onto a piece of A Muse Hawthorne notecard and sanded the edges of that. Once I had everything together, I added the snow by making white dots with a Signo white gel pen all around the image. I put the sentiment 'You warm my heart' on the inside of the card.

Supplies: SU Retired Confetti Tan cardstock, A Muse black kitchen paper, A Muse Hawthorne; Images: Saltbox Studio Winter Wonder set; Ribbon: A Muse olive stitched; Accessories: Signo white gel pen, A Muse heart Twinkle Stickers

Yummy!

I have had an incredibly busy week since returning from the A Muse Instructor Training Event. I haven't really had any time to create for fun. Friday, my co-workers and I headed to the Northlake Tavern & Pizza House for lunch to celebrate a birthday. I always bake something for the birthday boy or girl and this birthday boy wanted Lemon Meringue pie. Because I was so busy all week, though, he got Lemon Bars instead.

This isn't a fancy recipe. I just took it out of the Better Homes & Garden New Baking Book that's in my cookbook collection. The trick is to use real lemons for the zest and the juice from those lemons. Tastes so much fresher than using bottled lemon juice and dried up zest.

I spent Saturday at the Creating Keepsakes Scrapbooking convention. My friend Lisa and I signed up for a few classes...most of which turned out to be kinda duds but we had lots of fun shopping. I found some Piggy Tales papers I was looking for and picked up the Crafty Secrets Snow bunnies set. My unplanned purchase was the Cookie Cutter Alpha 'Diesel' from Quickutz for my Revolution. I've been wanting that set for a long time and it is retired. I found it for about half price and couldn't pass it up.

I did manage to make 1 card this week that wasn't related to an assignment. I obviously didn't have much mojo to create this one.

The much anticipated A Muse Cupcake Social and Instructor Training event took place this past weekend. Many of us started the day with a Copic Certification Class with Marianne from Copic. It was a lot of fun but lunch was a bit of a disaster. Poor Geeta and Heather's lunch orders were missed so they had to take theirs to go. Afterward, we had some time to sit and eat some pizza, get to know each other a bit, then the doors opened for the Cupcake Social!


Cindy, from the A Muse shop, made the most delicious cupcakes for everyone. I don't know how she made the frosting but it was fluffy, glossy, and super yummy! There were chocolate and vanilla cupcakes with their tops a little different....just like what you can do with the new A Muse Cupcake Builder set!

The social was a great way to meet some local A Muse fans, and some not so local, too. Lovely Ingrid flew in from GA to meet us! I don't know what happened but I failed to get a picture with her. I felt like I was in lots of pictures, but I guess they weren't taken with my camera. If you have some pics, send them to me! Anyway, this is a picture of Michelle Clark, Linda, Nicole, and me. Nicole used to come to the shop once a week and would come take my classes sometimes but she moved and it's not so convenient. Her hubby was nice enough to let her get away, despite having the kids for most of the weekend on his own anyway, so she could come hang with her peeps. I met lots of new folks, too. There was a fun make-n-take, and customers went home with some fun goodies.

Saturday started our training event. We had almost all the A Muse Instructors and Designers in town for this (we missed you!!!!). What a fabulous opportunity to meet the women we've come to know online. For me, it just served to strengthen my bond with them. Every single one of these women were nice, friendly, and eager to be there with each other. I was so excited to meet all of them. We learned lots of new things. The weekend ended with a sappy Julie, who pretty much made all of us tear up. It truly is a priviledge and an honor to be associated with this fabulous company called A Muse. A big shout out to all the customers who showed up for the Social and most especially to the A Muse Crew for putting on the most spectacular weekend.

Bag-In-A-Box

I recently got myself a Slice diecut machine and was playing around with it the other day. It's a pretty cool tool. I signed up to take the Intro to the Slice class at my LSS but wanted to be familiar with the machine before going. I also had just purchased some new Holiday papers so I thought I'd try making a Bag-In-A-Box. I headed on over to Cambria's blog for her tutorial on this project.

The Slice is a really easy machine to use. I think the hardest part of the learning curve is to recognize that when your machine starts doing weird stuff (like cutting the shapes all funky), it's tired and needs to recharge. Personally, I think it's best to let your machine first charge overnight and while the instructions say it only takes an hour to charge, let it sit longer than that when it needs to recharge. Don't use it with SU paper, either, because you will hardly get any life out of the little blade.

So anyway...back to the project. I used the Fa La La cartridge to make the tag on the bag. I cut two different snowflakes, then layered them together. Then I decided they were too white so I distressed them with some Ranger Distress Inks and added a MM rhinestone brad in the middle. Then I decided it still needed something so I added some Platinum Stickles and that did the trick. I used the Slice to cut out the snowflakes, the circle tag, and the tag piece at the top. Fun, pretty, and oh, so easy!

I'm getting very excited for the A Muse Cupcake Social coming up on Friday. I'll be taking the Copic Certification class during the day, too. I have a very full, busy weekend ahead but there will be lots of pics to share afterward. I can't believe I get to meet so many of my A Muse peeps!

Sneak Peek

My day yesterday consisted of back to back football games with my kids. My youngest son plays flag football and my oldest son plays tackle. My oldest son's team was in their championship game of the survivor tournament and I think we are all still recovering from the most fabulous game....EVER!!! I have never seen these boys fight so hard, play so hard, and so many of them (including my son) had their best game of the season. It got down to the last 30 seconds of the game when the opposing team won what we thought was their winning touchdown and extra point. Well, we had 10 seconds on the clock and had to return a punt and knew it had to be a punt return for a touchdown, with the extra point to win. Our returner ran his little heart out and MADE A TOUCHDOWN!!! But, we didn't make the extra point so we tied. I had been jumping up and down on wet bleachers (did I tell you it was pouring down rain?) and went right down on my butt but popped right back up to cheer some more. Went into double overtime (which is just each team getting a chance to make a touchdown) when the refs called it a tie. Wow, what a fabulous effort! I can't stop smiling when I think about it.

So enough about that, you want to see more sneak peeks. Only one more sleep before you can get your inky little hands on your very own Cupcake Builder and Baking clear sets from A Muse. Here's one more bit of eye candy for you while you wait:

Now I don't want to mislead you by letting you think there's a left and right oven mitt. There's only one mitt. To make the other, I simply inked the mitt and stamped it onto my Big Bl rectangle stamp by A Muse (a mirror image stamp or any other flat, solid stamp will do) and then immediately stamped that onto some cardstock. I then traced the lines with my Copic multiliner to make it look nice and sharp. The cookie sheet was made with a small piece of metallic silver cardstock that I scored at one end.

I'm off to a stamp camp today and I'm gonna charge up my new Making Memories Slice while I'm gone. I wasn't going to buy that little machine but the LSS owner talked me into it. It wasn't too hard....LOL. I'm still the Master of Procurement after all!