My Happy Stamping Place

New stuff!

I snuck a little time in my craft room yesterday to play with some new stamps.  Here is a little sneak peek at a stamp set that will be in the new Stampin' Up! catalog that comes out January 19.  It's called Just Buzzin' By.

I stamped the hive and the bees with jet black stazon on confetti white cardstock and watercolored them with my ink pads and aquapainter.  The bees are cut out and popped up with stampin' dimensionals.  I want to try stamping these with some more pinks(flowers) and other fun colors.  We'll keep the hive and the bees yellow though.  ;)

I hope you are enjoying some time with your family.  I'm working on getting our house put back together and getting rid of all of the exra garbage.  With all of those people at our house opening presents, eating and drinking and being merry we are floating in extra garbage! 

What are your plans for New Years?  We will be going to some friends' house, eating appetizers,playing games and hanging out with the kids.

Recipe Challenge #29

This is my card for Tamara's Recipe design challenge #29.  The challenge was to use old designer paper we had on hand, naked chipboard and raffia or twine. 

The designer paper I used was Cosmo Cricket's Hey Sugar paper.  I dressed the naked chipboard heart up with some of the designer paper.I used red raffia to tie around the striped panel.  The smallest panel is card stock that I stamped with the Love Owl-ways stamp set in the holiday  mini and the little heart from the the Short and Sweet stamp set.  Then I sponged it with More Mustard ink to tie it in with the designer paper.  The Love Always is a rub-on from the cheery chat rub-ons.  Check out the rest of the design team's recipe challenge cards and scrapbook pages at Tamara's sketch blog here.

I hope your holidays were great.  I hosted my husband's side of the family on Christams eve.  There were 17 people here that afternoon/night.  But that was only a warm up for hosting my family on Christmas day.  There were 41 people here on Christmas day.  It went well but I was so tired by the end of Christmas day that I was slurring my words.  I hadn't had a drop of alcohol either.  I was in bed by 9:00.  It felt great to get some sleep!

Love is in the Air!

How are your holidays shaping up?  I know for a lot of us we have already started celebrating.  We celebrated Christmas with my father-in-law and his wife yesterday.  It was kind of bittersweet because they announced this was the last year they were able to host it.  They are getting up there in years and just can't do it anymore.  We'll still get together but at someone else's house.  We already host 3 Christmas parties in December so we wont be volunteering to host it every year but we will certainly take our turn!

In preparation for the next Christmas celebration I have been putting together some scrapbooking ensembles for the scrapbookers on my list.  I was playing with my Sizzix Bigshot, chipboard, fun foam and designer paper.  I made some flowers with dimension for one of the gifts.  I am giving my niece some scrapbooking supplies including the Sweet Always designer paper pack.  I made her some chipboard flowers from the Stampin' Up! exclusive die Baskets and Blooms.  They are attached to the paper with stampin' dimensionals so she will be able to just pull them off and place them on her page where she wants them and they will match her papers!
Here are the flowers and some sizzix buttons with fun foam underneath to give them dimension, and a chipboard scallop with a sneak peek at an image from a new level 3 hostess set that will be in the new catalog coming out January 18.

Next up are some bookmarks I made for three 3rd grade girls that I teach a book club with at my son's school.  I made these for them using a sneak peek flower set called Petal Pizazz that will be in the new catalog also.
The final project I want to show you is a Love card using a new Valentine bundle that will be on sale starting tomorrow. 
The bundle includes the Love You Much stamp set, the Candy Lane designer paper pack, and the Heart to Heart punch.  This bundle will be 20 percent off when purchased together from December 23 through January 31.  If you hurry you can get free shipping tomorrow(December 23) if your purchase is $70 or over. 

 

Here is a link to the flyer with all of the details: click here.  You can order this starting tomorrow, December 23.  Tomorrow is also the last day for 10 percent off stamp sets on the retirement list and FREE shipping on orders of $70 and more.  You can contact me at [email protected] to place your order or go online to my online ordering website here.  

Happy Holidays to you all! 

Last minute gift ideas

At this time of year many of us are scrambling to finish up our holiday shopping.  I don't know about you but I always save the hardest people for last.  The last few people on my list are my father-in-law and his wife and my mother-in-law.  I really consider them on my husband's list since they're his parents and I did all of the the rest of the shopping.  My husband is one of those Christmas Eve shoppers.  He hasn't started shopping yet.  Everyone has something under the tree except for me.  That's ok.  I know it will work out alright.  I guess his system works for him. 

I'm not big on giving gift cards and money.  I'd rather give a gift from the heart.  I love to find that just right present.  But when parents get to be a certain age they don't need more stuff.  So for the last several years we have been giving them restaurant gift cards to various local restaurants.  They love this!  We have had them try restaurants they haven't been to before.  Well, if I'm going to give a gift certificate I at least have to dress it up in some way.  Now you finally get to the good part.  Pictures!

This gift card holder  idea came from Michelle Wooderson.  You can see hers here.  It's a fun and easy way to dress up gift card giving! 

I made all my gift tags this year.  I was feeling caught up with the shopping and wrapping so I kind of made them as I went along.  This first gift tag is one we did at my holiday open house.  You can make it as a hanging tag to hang off the handles of a gift bag or a foldover tag that you just tape down on top of your presents.
I stamped to and from on the inside.  I like these so well that I went into production and made these for gifts. 

My kids all have Religious Education on Wednesday nights so these were part of the gifts to their teachers.  I packaged them in some plastic pencil holders and wrapped some designer paper and diecuts around them to dress them up.  The best time to buy the pencil holders is back to school time.  This is when they are the cheapest.  I got these at Staples for 5 cents a piece in August.  I could only get 2 of them for this price but the price after this were only about $1.50 or so.
I put 12 tags in the pencil box.  They fit nicely in two stacks side-by-side.   I probably could have fit more.

I hope your holiday prep is going well and you have some time to enjoy the season.

Card Recipe Challenge#28

This is my card this week for Tamara's Recipe card challenge #28.  The challenge this week was these three things:

-Use red and white
-use a heart
-use a household item

The first two items are pretty apparent.  The household item is the paperclip.  It's more of an office supply but it went so well with the color scheme!

You can check out the other design team's creations on Tamara's blog

I finished my Christmas shopping yesterday.  Yippee!  Most of it is wrapped too.  Now if I would just get my Christmas cards addressed and out in the mail.  How is your holiday prep coming together?

Gingerbread Christmas

This Gingerbread Christmas card was based on a card by Jill Hilliard.  Here is her card that I case'd:
jill's card.  I tweaked mine a little bit.
I just loved her card and knew I had to make one myself.  We made this at a Stampin' Up! party last week and all of the ladies loved it!

This a tent topper card.  The base of the card is 4 x 4 1/4.  The part that sticks out over the top is the Top Note Sizzix die.  The trick with these kinds of cards is to make sure they don't measure over the standard card size so it still fits in the envelope.
I ran the top note die through the machine with the chocolate chip monochromatic designer paper and the kraft cardstock at the same time.  Then I cut around the perforation on the chocolate chip paper and backed it with the kraft cardstock top note die. 

Recipe:
Stamps:  Deer Friends, Holidays and Wishes
Ink:  Chocolate Chip
Paper:  Kraft, Whisper White, Chocolate Chip, Bella Rose Designer Paper, Chocolate Chip designer paper
Other:  Wide Oval Punch, Top Note Sizzix Die, horizontal slot punch, riding hood red taffeta ribbon, circle scallop punch, 1 3/8" circle punch, 1 1/4" circle punch

It was cooooold here in Minnesota today!  How does -3 sound?  I didn't venture out today until after dinner.  Then my daughter and I darted out to Target for a little Christmas shopping and a few groceries.  We were going to go other places to shop but we decided it was too cold!

A crafty kind of stocking!

My son, Nicholas, had an assignment to decorate a paper Christmas stocking for his locker.  Whenever he has a poster, presentation or other kind of creative project he knows to come to mom!  He was after me as soon as he came home from school to work on this.  I had to keep putting him off because I had appointments , dinner to make,etc.  Finally, we got some time to work on this together.  He had some ideas in his head of what he wanted and I gave him some ideas too.  This is what we came up with.

We used my Gogo boots Sizzix alphabet for the Merry Christmas letters and his name at the top.  We used my Sizzix pennant die for the Christmas tree at the toe on the sock.  We used my scallop edge punch for the trim at the top, the 3/4" circle punch for the polka dots, the 1/4" circle punch for the ornaments on the tree and my small star punch for the star at the top of the tree.  He was thrilled with it!  He thinks mom has some pretty cool tools in her craft room.  I think so too!

Put some jolly in your holly!

I can't believe how fast this holiday season is going!  I'm afraid this season will pass me right by before I know it.  I have most of my Christmas shopping done, the tree is up and most of the decorating is done.  We are hosting our annual  friends' holiday party on Saturday.  I feel pretty prepared for that.  I don't know what my problem is.  It's like I'm in denial that Christmas is only two weeks away.  That's right!  Only two weeks away people!  Have I got you panicked yet? 

One area I feel pretty prepared in is the gift bag area.  Here is a gift bag I made with a holiday theme.  I wheeled bashful blue cardstock with chocolate chip ink with the Snow jumbo wheel for the bottom.  I adhered the Frosty Days designer paper to the top part of the bag and adhered the double stitched chocolate chip ribbon between the two.  I think this is my favorite ribbon in the catalog!  I love how it goes with just about everything!  I made the snowman tag using the top note die folded in half. Is there anything you can't make with this die?  I wheeled it with white craft ink in the same snow wheel.  I stamped the snowman from deer friends in the circle and adhered this to the Sizzix snowflakes.  It really jazzes up the gift bag don't you think?

I hope your holiday preparation is going well and you can take some time to soak in this holiday season.

Holiday Projects

Isn't this snowman tin cute?  I was inspired by something I saw on Splitcoast .  They made a build a snowman inside.  I'm going to put my candy coated popcorn in it.  I used various punches to make the face.  The eyebrows are made out of the word window punch.  The nose is free hand cut out of pumpkin pie cardstock and then run through the paper crimper. 



This next item is called a money pad.  I stumbled upon these a couple of years ago.  You take a stack of ones and paint some padding cement on the edge.  You have now made a money note pad!  Then you make the cover to wrap around it.  I find it boring to just give money for presents.  This is a way to spice it up! 
 

Stampin' Up! Retiring Stamps and Specials!!!

It's here!  The Stampin' Up! retiring stamps list!  You can view it alphabetically here:

alphabetical retiring list

By page number here:

retiring list by page number

And guess what?  For the first time in my 6 years of being a demonstrator, Stampin' Up! is offering 10 percent off retiring stamp sets from December 9 through December 23!!!  What a deal!  Here's the list with the 10 percent off pricing:

retiring list with 10 percent off

But wait....that's not all! 

You can get FREE SHIPPPING when you place an order of $70 or more from now until December 23!  But wait.... there's more!

I am offering my own special on the Sizzix Big shot!!! When you purchase the Sizzix Big shot machine($99.95 regular price), the Starter kit($199.95 regular price) or the Starter kit plus Doctors bag($259.95 regular price) you will get 10 percent off from now until December 31!!!  This special is only available through me, Kathleen Hopperstad.

You can combine all or any of these specials.  You can order the first 2 specials online through my online ordering site here: online ordering with Kathleen

If you want to take advantage of my Big Shot special you will need to e-mail me at [email protected] to get that special.