Online Extravaganza begins Monday!

Starting tomorrow, at 2:00 a.m., you will be able to order from my website, some very great deals!  But it is hush-hush for now; even I don't know what the deals will be.  All I know is that there will be some cool things at special prices!
Online Extravaganza, Stampin' Up!'s annual sale to kick off the holiday shopping season, will begin Monday, November 21, 2011, and run through Wednesday, November 30, 2011. While this promotion is perfect for online orders during an especially busy time of year, sale prices will be available on all order types. You can email me your Customer Order (beclambie@gmail.com), or call me; I'd love to chat!
Log in to my Online Store* on Monday, November 21, to take advantage of great savings, like FREE digital downloads valued at $40 when you buy My Digital Studio Express, 60 percent off select Designer Fabrics, and 30 percent off an exclusive ribbon bundle!  I'll be ordering!  Will you?

The Sounding Joy cards

So far I have featured an elegant card and a whimsical card, so now it is time for a religious card.  I love giving cards at Christmas that truly celebrate the reason for this joyous holiday.  God sent his son, his most precious, beloved son, to earth, knowing full-well the end result.  That Jesus would die a cruel death in order to save humanity from our self-destructive path.
With our recent move, I had been trying to buy less stamps, and sell off as many retired items as I could.  But when I saw this stamp set in the Holiday Mini catalog, I just could not resist.  I am not a big fan of line art for Christmas; the thought of coloring 100 cards is just too much!  This card, with the layering of the stamp images, is unique and beautiful.  I don't think I've had a stamp set layer quite like this one before...  So I made a little room for this set in my already large collection...

The colors are: Very Vanilla for the 3 1/2 X 2 3/4" panel you will be stamping on - Sahara Sand for the card base, punched doilies, punched scallop edge borders and ink for the star - Cherry Cobbler for the ink, and the fabric piece...the fabric strip is from the Deck the Halls Designer Fabric trio.  I just snipped a little at the edge, and then tore it down the length of the fabric. It tears straight and clean!  Just cut it into 4+" lengths, and tape the edges to the DSP.  For the Baja Breeze piece, I cut a 4 X 3 1/2" piece of DSP from the Pocket Full of Posies pack.  I love this pop of color!  But I quickly ran out of it....I looked for some other possibilities, and you could substitute a few different shades of blue for this look, or if you have the Subtles Collection of DSP Stack, you would have lots of Baja Breeze (or Marina Mist, Bashful Blue) to make a big stack of these!  Since I didn't have enough Baja Breeze, I went digging through my papers, and came across the Mocha Morning Specialty paper!!! So beautiful!
Lookie!...

The card on the left has Black felted paper.  So elegant!  I liked the black so well, that I went through and found another DSP called Timeless Portrait.  It is Very Vanilla and Black.  I love how the Cherry Cobbler jumps with this color scheme.  I think I will be making quite a few of this card this season.

I hope to soon learn how to show you some of the products, but I will at least list them here.  If you would like to order any of the items, you can go to my Stampin' Up! website and hit the Shop Now! button.

122366  Mocha Morning Specialty DSP  $12.95  or
122354  Pocket Full of Posies DSP  $10.95  or
122352  Timeless Portrait DSP  $10.95  or
117157  Neutrals Collection  $21.95 (best value 40 sheets)
121716  Deck the Halls Designer Fabric  $9.95
122465  Doily Triple Layer Punch  $23.95
119882  Scallop Edge Border  $16.95
121979  The Sounding Joy stamp set  $18.95 (clear)

Delightful Decorations

Last year I posted this card to Splitcoast Stampers...

Remember that tinsel?  I totally wish that it were in this year's mini....oh well.  But my comment was that I wish I had the Baroque Motifs stamp set for the swirl.  My wonderful mom gave it to me for Christmas last year, so I had to do this card again!  The above card is Real Red and Basic Gray, and another wonderful retired product - the Real Red Dotted Ribbon.  I have it flipped over, and I love that stitched detail to it.  But onto this year's version:

 I love Christmas cards with non-traditional colors, so I decided to have a Pool Party with this one!  The colors here are Pool Party and Basic Gray.  Stamp sets are Baroque Motifs and Delightful Decorations from Stampin' Up!. 
The swirls from Baroque Motifs is stamped in Basic Gray.  Then I stamped the snowflakes and 2 ornaments with Pool Party.  The joy ornament was stamped onto a separate piece of Whisper White and then punched out with the Ornament Punch.  I added some Silver Cord (retired) and a rhinestone and it was finished!

Sometimes I wonder when I make a CAS card (Clean And Simple) if I should add something.  So I tried again with the Pool Party card, finding some DSP (Designer Series Paper) with Basic Gray and Pool Party.  A little ribbon in Pool Party to top it off, and I have a replica of last year's card!  But I'm not sure if I like it as much as the simpler one.  Sometimes Less is More...

Top Note Snowman

I love the Top Note die, exclusive to Stampin' Up!  It was one of the first dies I bought when I got my Big Shot a few years ago.  I have probably made a few THOUSAND top notes with that die, and it still cuts beautifully, every time!
I often look on SplitcoastStampers.com for inspiration for my projects.  Sometimes, I just need something to get me started, and other times, I end up copying someone else's project, almost exactly.  This one is probably somewhere in the middle.  This is not a new idea, and I don't know who was the first to cut the end off of the top note to make the top hat, but this is my end result:

I used Bashful Blue for my base, Marina Mist for the bird and sentiment, Wild Wasabi for the branches, and Tango Tangerine for the nose to match the Tango Tangerine scallop dots ribbon.  The face is Whisper White, and the hat is Basic Black.
To cut the faces, I tried to save as much paper as possible, so I cut my WW down to 3 3/4" X 2 3/4".  If you cut your paper into a long strip 3 3/4" wide, you then can get 4 faces out of it (11 divided by 4 = 2 3/4).  This also left a 1" strip so that I could make the banner.  The banner is 1/2" by 4 1/4, with the ends cut...  So one sheet of white paper yielded 8 faces and 4 banners, with no waste, except for what gets cut off around the die.
The hats were also 3 3/4 wide, but you only need 2" to make that hat.  Again, the extra inches of leftovers went to the hat brim.  They are 4" long, so I cut them before making the hats...One sheet of black yielded 10 hats and 8 brims.
The eyes and mouth are made with our (retired...sniff) Black Waffle Paper.  We still carry it in Silver and Gold.  If you don't have Waffle Paper, Basic Black scraps would work fine too, but I would crumple them up a bit to give them a rough look, like coal...  I used my 1/2" Circle Punch to cut the eyes and mouth.  I folded the waffle paper into 7 layers, and punched all 7 at once.  This gave me several perfect circles, and a few with torn edges, because the Waffle paper is so thin, it doesn't always punch cleanly.  The perfect circles were used for the eyes, and the others were crumpled up to make the mouth.  A dab of Tombow Multipurpose glue (the green and white bottle), and they were set!
The cheeks are just a Sponge Dauber and Pink Pirouette ink, a little White Gel Pen for the eyes, and a few touches of Craft White ink here and there....Super fun and Super Cute!  I've cut out about 75 of these little guys for kits so far and have sold them all!  If you would like a set of 8 for $10, let me know!

In fact, I had used up all of my Bashful Blue, so I tried a few alternatives.  Here they are in Baja Breeze and Not Quite Navy, and the reversed colors (Marina Mist base and Bashful Blue bird).

Christmas Cards!

I have more fall and halloween things to post, and I'll try to do that soon, because I know that next year there will be new papers and goodies to fawn over!
I have offered Christmas card kits to my customers the past few years, and with the move and an irritating email problem, I have not been able to send out the cards I have to offer this year.  So I've decided to do it here.  I know I have a small audience so far, but I've got to start somewhere, right?
Here's a photo of all the cards....

I had a Stamp-a-Stack with some dear friends at the Beka House in Boswell, PA, 2 weekends ago, and these are what we made!  My theory was to have 2 religious cards, 2 whimsical cards, and 2 elegant cards, to suit everyone's tastes.  The stocking is meant to be a gift card holder, or you can put candy canes in it, silverware for the table, etc....I had about 20 of each card prepared, and the ladies made almost all of them!  So, when I went to the Fall Crop at Camp Harmony this past weekend, I made sets of 8, and again sold most of them.  If you are interested in having much of the drama of your Christmas cards removed by not cutting your cards, let me know!  I'll cut and prep them for you!  All you have to do is stamp and assemble them.  I will have a close up of each card soon.  Price will be $10 for a set of 8 cards (all the same).  That includes envelopes.  I'm not yet sure if I can offer shipping at that price, so I'll let you know soon.  I have 50 cards going out in the mail tomorrow, so I'll see the cost for that....
Have a wonderful day!  I'm off to get the kids off the bus!  I've been trying to jog (1/3 of a mile) there, and when I started, couldn't even make it to the first stop sign!  I'll let you know when I make it the whole way there and back without stopping!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

As you may know, we recently moved.  The house that we bought has TONS of wallpaper!  Every room, hallway, nook and cranny is covered!  The only room that has been spared was the girls' room.  Even the laundry room is papered!  So a large part of my time these days has been spent washing glue off walls.  I cleaned the Master bathroom walls, and Jason painted this weekend, so I'm motivated to finish the Master bedroom walls so they can be painted.  Then I'll probably quit with the paper for a bit.

I did take a little time to make some Halloween cards, in my new stamping nook, which I will have to post pictures of once the rest of the boxes are put away. :)  But on to the cards....

A few years ago, I participated in a fall image swap.  The images had to be line art images, suitable for coloring.  The 3 colored ones are from the swap, and I don't know if they are Stampin' Up!, or what company makes them.  But they were fun to color!  I don't do a whole lot of line art, simply because I take too long to color them...

This house was fun to color, but boy, was it detailed!  I added the moon with a post-it circle, and sponged the upper half with elegant eggplant, and the bottom with soft suede.  The ghosts and a few areas are

highlighted with Smooch Moonbeam.

Check out that frog on the witch's hat!  So funny...  I tried to think of something to write on the book cover,  but as you can see I couldn't come up with anything clever.  The DSP (Designer Series Paper) is from this year's IBC (Idea Book and Catalog).  I love those mini brads...

This little guy was fun to color too.  Maybe I just need to practice more to get a little faster...  The layout is one I saw on Splitcoast Stampers, I think.  Again, the DSP is the same as above, on a Basic Gray card base.

I hope you enjoyed today's Halloween projects!  I have a few more to share (I know it's late...I'll get on track soon).  I have made a cool wall hanging, but haven't photographed it yet...