Up Coming August Class Cards

This is what i took to the store yesterday for the August Class. The owner is back and one of the people working the store had set up the cards i had dropped off previously to go near the Hero Arts display had set those cards into the card class shelf ... so, the owner really really wants to make the card that i have posted previously (with the two white embossed lace medallions ) so, she is switching the brown support thank you card for that one. ( she doesn't carry k&co papers) Chatterbox Papers with Hero arts stamps and stickles glitter glue. the ink is Broken China Distress. This is the one she wants me to offer later in the fall to see if she can get this paper in. The outsides a little plain, but the inside is where it makes up for it. Used the crop-i-dile tool for the eyelets on this one and my Best friend has the back of the packaging that says what settings to use for each size eyelet or what not and i think i used the wrong one as this is the first time i had the backs of the eyelets split. This last one is heat embossed with clear detail over the Worn Lipstick Distress ink on plain vellum. The Hero Arts stitching stamp has holes poked in the V's of the stitching to fool the eye into thinking it has really gone through a sewing machine. This class will hold on August 15th. On the home front, The whole street side of the fence is now up. :) and Tim's foot is looking like a foot again, he stepped on a wire Thursday night and had to go in for a tetanus shot and antibiotics on Friday. ( had a really swollen foot for a couple of days but, he's lucky and walking normal now) We've even had a break in the heat for a bit, Its only supposed to be 80 something here today. :) The photos from the garden i posted the other day were shot on July 21st, so when i went out last night to pick and weed and such I could not even see the cabbages, they had been over grown by the acorn squash. so we ended up dumping an entire over filled wheelbarrow of cuttings off all the squashes to keep some of them under control. (haha) The cats doing good too and totally recovered. still bites though. He went in at the end of last week to be declawed and neutered. but, his personal greeting is to run up to you and bite your feet. Tim says we should have had him de-toothed. More later, ~Stac

Last Monday Nights Card Class

Each of the packets contained 6 Daisy D's Baby tags and Mrs. Grossman's Baby word stickers. So the plan was for them to make 3 cards there and have left overs to do one more card after they got home. But, the week before this on Wednesday night i was told the store owner had a death in her family and was out of state. So, one of the ladies who works in the store (and has door keys) told me she would meet me at the store Monday night (the store is not normally open on Monday) to unlock the doors for the class. My friend Alice had called people she knew who wanted to learn about card making and convinced them to come with her to take this class ( total newbies who have never stamped before) and so, after waiting on the sidewalk in front of the store for 30 minutes with Alice and these ladies, A decided she was not going to stand there a minute more and she wanted to do this class with her friends at her house so they all got in their cars and drove off. so Me, since i had two ladies from the first class tell me they were going to come to this one i decided to write a note and leave it on the store door telling anyone who may have came even later where we had moved the class to. (right when i was doing that another lady who works the store and has a key pulled up) ( her car had died and she had no way to get ahold me) so we went into the store and tried to call Alice and other people and then the phone started ringing off the hook so about 20 minutes after that we left together and went to A to do this class. Each of them left with one card done (after 2 1/2 hours) So, I have not been back to the store all week as of yet, I do have 2 cards mostly figured out for the third class but, need to make up one more and I also have a pile for the displays around the store of new products. This was a little embarrassing and that was not too much fun, the gals had a good time and said they learned alot and want to take more classes... The Products used on the cards (besides the premade tags and stickers ) were stamps and inks and such and not a single one of them arrived at the store before the class. I really don't see how the store plans to make money off of the classes if they don't order the tools ahead of time and for this particular class there was 6 weeks ordering time to get them in. the next class is on August 15th so i am feeling really crushed to get the cards done and in the store. The owner had told me she ordered lots of new products and not to start the next batch till the new stuff arrived but, since she is not there the people running her store while she is away are not its not their store so they are not promoting things like she does. and one more small gripe. The store had received its first order of Hero Arts stamps ( not what the owner told me she was getting in) so i brought in cards samples using those stamps she had told me a few weeks ago that she ordered to put on display with the stamps and the lady working the store (same one that did not show up Monday night) has not put them out and i have no idea where they may be, but they are not any where on display in the store as of Monday night and the other lady who did show up spent some time trying to find the cards and did not succeed. {isn't that just a kick in the face?!? } haha OK so i am done whining now. :) A top view This card the baby word sticker (Mrs. Grossman's) is heat embossed with red ranger powder. It took about 5 times to get the whole sticker to be embossed I started out with that Pallet Glue pad ( the store owner was raving about this stuff but, so far i cannot make it work & I ended up switching over to versamark ink to get the powder to stick to the front of the sticker) the letters in the word Girl are computer generated and covered with diamond glaze and glitter. It ended up being a real pain to emboss it and i figured it would be too time consuming to actually make during a class so they had the items to make the sticker used in the card below but, this was like an "extra idea" that they could view as another option for altering the items. This card the idea was it could either be a card for the husband or a we are expecting type of a card. It is 5 x7 in size. The baby sticker has been color dusted with fired brick distress with opal liquid pearls dripped on it.

So far this week...

Well, my limit is evidently this many photos and not a single one more in one post... I have been saving this thread as a draft all week trying to get the last photo to upload and It's not working so i will start another one in just a few minutes. this is (not) photo wont upload here... the north half of the front yard near the street. from the outside. I will stain it Cedar colored after its done. So it will pretty much always look like this. I had intended to plan flowers between the fence and the sidewalk on both halves of the outside of the fence, but Tim is so against that, tells me if i keep them all in the yard it makes it more of a "secret garden" type thing, although i can picture my self driving up the street and seeing all the blooms at once... Its funny sometimes how different we think for two people who are so similar. This is the inside view of the north half of the front of the property (near the street) the fence boards are 6 feet tall. Which since we are county now we can get away with and it blocks A LOT of the traffic. the fence will come into the driveway a bit, then this winter some time Tim will make us Wrought Iron Gates for the front of the fence in the drive way, they make solar powered gate openers with remote controls too! G-ma & G-pa Motz have them-{that will be totally super in the winter time to not have to get out of the trucks to open the gates!} This one gives you the idea just how fast His garden is growing in such a short time this year, It's been wicked hot here for some time now and the only things really enjoying it is the Veggies. Not sure why but, i always like to see the Cabbages growing... they always look like huge green flowers to me. :) you can't hardly see him but, my husband is standing in front of the corn in this photo...

just a few more cards

these are cards on display in the scrapbook studio store { where they just started selling Hero Arts stamps} the flower is the dahlia bloom and the one on the left was the first one (its not on display) i think it looks a little like it had a glitter attack and the pink is too pink with the distress inks... so, then I did the one on the right which i like best. and MIL likes best but, Tim and June ( the lady who answers our phones at work) like the first one better. (go figure ehh?) the hard part about making cards for the store is trying to use products the store has... something in the store is also some of these double sided chatter box papers. the lace medallion that looks more white in the scan is up on pop-dots so it was closer to the scanner screen ( all the embossed lace is actually the same color of white in real life) this card and the next were totally inspired by ladies who are rocking the gallery at 2 Peas with their Hero Arts stamps.... Yep, i caved and bought the drooping flower & some fluid chalk inks because of you guys too! this one the flower is done with the distress embossing. its probably a little on the plain side, but since this is primarily a scrapbook store they seem to flinch if i bring them a card that looks too "hard" so, you'll probably be seeing quite a few simple ones for that part, but, I'm hoping to get her to carry more fun stuff if people admire the cards that use some things she does not have yet... (other stamp lines and fun stuff like embossing powder, glitters, pearl-ex etc...) I did warn her that if she wanted me to really use whatever i wanted i would probably influence her to become a rubber stamp art store when ever possible lol... :) I ended up shooting 25 yard photos last night... and i will post a few here in a little while (need more coffee) The rest will go into the kodak gallery.

long time no posts...

This year i think in am going to make up several cards instead of doing the same exact card for 75 people (which gets kind of you know boring) so, I am going to do cards in small batches and change the design every dozen or two cards... this is the first round i have 16 of these done but, its an A-2 sized card so the people getting this one will be people who get wallet sized or no photos in the cards... the poinsettia stamp (from Penny Black) is heat embossed with Antique Linen distress powder. very cool effect. Now this was something for fun... just seeing what new techniques look like... the butterflies were done as one called "Melted Pearls" (which is pearl-ex powder patted into the top of cooling clear embossing powder then heated to melt into the powder. more melted pearls, the card on the bottom was the first one i tried and then the others came a few days later. still have a small stack of these on my desk so you may be seeing more of them later. On the home front it's just been beyond busy and miserably hot here... finally got a break in the weather today and have thunder bumpers going on with a few sprinkles... We've had a huge huge amount of pie cherries on our tree that came with our house ripen this week and one of the very large branches collapsed under the weight of them all. so we've picked and picked and Tim's friend has tons, the neighbors have picked and the tree's still loaded... (so the birds can have whats left) We started in with the new fence across the front of the yard too, but the photos are still on the roll of film I'm shooting and Tim has the digital... I do have a few things scanned to upload (mostly cards of course...) :) I'm teaching the second card making class at the same local scrapbook store on this coming Monday night and the owner of the store had ordered in a bunch of Hero Arts Stamps so, i have been playing with them left and right making display cards for the store. Still need to come up with an idea for the August class, and I'm leaning towards doing survey cards at the class on Monday to find out what they want to learn... Its been so long since i posted to my blog I cant remember if any of the cards i did that are on display now in the store for the new stamps or the next class are in here yet, gotta re-read it all and see where i left off... More later, hope your all not melting in your corner of the internet... :)