Stamp By the Light of the Moon

Cards of Christmas Past

Well have you missed me? It's been quite some time since I've done a blog post, although I always have the best of intentions. November is notoriously a crazy-busy month for me with Stampin' Up! parties, classes and clubs, and this year was no different. I also celebrated one year with my newspaper job the first week in November, and after working there for two Novembers, I have determined that November is notoriously crazy busy for the newspaper as well and I was just swamped all month. My Thanksgiving was wonderful though, stress-free, and I hope that all of you enjoyed yours as well.

I thought that since we're in the thick of things in mid-December now, I'd focus on Christmas cards, but with a twist. Everyone always asks me what my Christmas cards have looked like over the past nine years that I've been with Stampin' Up!, and I have tried to save one of each of them each year, so I thought I'd start sharing them, one at a time. I'm going to do them in no particular order.

This is a card I did a few years ago. I liked this card because it was very easy to do. That year, we'd learned something called Double Time Stamping. It's basically a very efficient way to stamp a large amount of cards.

Here's how it worked for this card: I took about 12 sheets of Whisper White card stock and spread them all over my dining room table until the table was covered. I then took my desired stamps, one at a time, and stamped the images all over every sheet of card stock. So for example, I most likely did the red circles first. I inked up my circle in Real Red Classic Ink and just stamped a ton of circles so that every sheet had red circles on it, randomly, and leaving enough space for the green ones and the silver ones. Then I switched to the smaller green circle, inked up my Glorious Green ink pad and stamped all of my green circles until every sheet of card stock had green circles randomly mixed with the red ones. Finally, using the silver Encore metallic ink pad, I inked up my open circles and added them into the design. I had no planned pattern, just random stamping. 

After I was done, I collected all of the sheets and cut them to 3 3/4" x 5" (Real Red card stock was cut to 4 1/4" x 11, and Glorious Green to 4 x 5 1/4".)

After that, most of the work was just assembling. I did have to punch out all of the red and green circles for the little tags, but that I did in the car one day on the way somewhere, when I was *not* the driver. I do that often, I can work in the car without getting sick. I can remember also, taking all of the cards with me in a photo storage box, and sitting in the waiting rooms of various places my kids go, tying all of the ribbons. 

Because it was so easy to make a ton of these cards, I have a bunch left over, and I like to send them out if I need an extra Christmas card. 

Next time I'll post another card from a Christmas past. In the meantime, if you'd like to see last year's cards, click on this link and you'll see our card-making extravaganza. My girls are awaiting this year's extravaganza, and it's coming soon!
 

The More the Merrier: Christmas Card class sample

Tomorrow I am re-teaching my August Christmas Card Class. After I taught the class this summer, I had several people who'd missed it express interest taking the class. I decided to offer it again this November, and tomorrow's the day.

I know that when I taught the class this summer I started out posting the samples one by one, but I believe I had one or two left to post so I thought I'd post one today.

This card uses the stamp set The More the Merrier, which is a set that I love because it has stamps for several holidays in it, and because it was free as a hostess set. When it's free, I love it that much more! I also used the snowflake from Holiday Blitz, another well-used stamp set on my shelf.

The card stock colors are Brocade Blue and Not Quite Navy, with Whisper White. I also used Brocade Blue Classic Ink.

As you can see, I used Dazzling Diamonds glitter, found on page 180 of the catalog. I applied it with a Two Way Glue Pen (page 192.) I love the sparkle and shine that it gives the card. I colored the little snowmen with my Many Marvelous Markers. It was a very simple card to make. I added a white grosgrain ribbon knot and it was done.

Here was my inspiration for the layout of this card:

  It came out small here, but it's a card I found on Stamper's Showcase on the Stampin' Up! Demonstrator website. You can see that I kept the same layout but changed the set and colors, but it's virtually the same card. It just takes an ounce of inspiration and you can be off and running!

Looking forward to tomorrow's class!
 

October brings lots of great specials, promotions and new products!

Happy October everyone!  Welcome to a new month of specials and new products!  Thanks to my friend Jen Foley, my blog has been updated with everything new in the right hand side bar.  Click on any of the specials to see the complete details.  There's a new product: My Digital Studio, a hostess special and a deal of the week every week this month!

Keep in mind also, sign ups for my November 15 Christmas Card Class are happening right now.  The deadline to register and pay is October 15.  Looking forward to seeing everyone then!

If you would like to watch a video about the My Digital Studio scrapbooking software, check out my Demonstrator Business Website under "products."  There are so many capabilities this software has, it's amazing! 

There's also a new Digital Scrapbooking Starter Kit for just $185 that includes the new software PLUS traditional rubber stamping & scrapbooking supplies!  Be sure to check it out and sign up today!

Christmas Punch Hostess Set - one of my faves!

Ever since my new budget plan has come into effect, I have to be extra careful when choosing my free stamp sets from various promotions whether it be hostess sets, Sale-A-Bration sets or what have you.  This summer, when I had my New Catalog Open House, it was July but I was already planning ahead for Christmas, knowing that I'd be running at least one holiday card class, if not more.  So when choosing my hostess benefits I chose them with that in mind.  One of the free hostess sets that I chose was called Christmas Punch.  It's a Level 2 Hostess Set, and it's quickly become one of my favorites.  It has seven stamps in it and each one fits one of our fabulous punches.  For those of you who have seen my collection of punches, you can imagine why it'd be one of my favorites!  One of the coolest things is that the triple snowflake stamp fits the triple flower punch! (#21 p. 187)

Tonight I'm going to show you the first of two samples made with this set.  Even better,  it's the one of them I thought of almost completely on my own with just a little inspiration from a friend. 

    

This card was inspired by a card I'd received in the mail a few years back from my friend Amy.  She'd stamped her snowflakes in reds and oranges. When I was thinking of card designs I thought of Amy's card. 

I mentioned in a past post that I try to showcase a variety of colors in my holiday card classes.  This card is a perfect example of that.  The colors I used are: Rose Red (one of my absolute favorite reds) and Bashful Blue.  I threw in a touch of orange on the snowman's nose.  The accessory I chose to add to this card is a Bashful Blue brad from the Soft Subtles brad pack on page 179.  I was able to use two punches on this card (how exciting!) by using the Small Tag Punch on the snowman and the Large Tag Punch on the Bashful Blue behind it.  

I shared a trick with my class with regards to this card.  If you need more than one of this card, you can use the technique of Double Time Stamping.  That's where you put out a whole sheet of the Whisper White card stock and stamp all of the snowflakes at once and then cut them to size.  If you are making many cards, you could lay out many sheets of Whisper White at once, stamp them all and then cut them all.  It makes your card-making very efficient.

My next post will show you the other card sample that uses this Christmas Punch stamp set, and you'll be surprised at what a different look the next card has from this one, despite coming from the same set of stamps!

Kids' Stamp Camp Project Specifics

As promised, here is some specific information about each project we created at the kids' stamp camp last week. I'll start with the project that was everyone's favorite, the notebook project.

 

This was the sample that I showed the girls.  I made sure to tell them though, that mine was only a very simple sample and that they could add color to theirs and add other stamps from the Sock Monkey stamp set to make it their own design. This project had an outside and an inside.  Here's the inside:

 

I gave each child a pencil and a notepad for the inside of their folders.  I told them that besides keeping them for themselves, these would also make nice gifts for the first day of school for their teachers.  My girls decided to do both.  They're keeping the ones from stamp camp and they each made an additional one for their teachers.

 

This is Caroline's finished project. This shows how the image looks when it's colored.  The kids used basic colored pencils to color their images in.  The morning group of older girls did some sponging around the edges.  Alexandra, my four year old, over-sponged hers a little, but she loves it and that's what matters.
 

Our next project, my personal favorite, was the paper bag scrapbook.  I used all retired ribbons for this project as well as the above notebook project.  This is the sample I showed the kids. I also used retired Designer Series Paper for my sample so that I could save the Build-A-Bear Designer Series Paper for the kids' projects.

All of the Build-A-Bear products go on sale September 1, which is Tuesday!  If you are interested in purchasing them, please let me know!  You can order through me on my Demonstrator Business Website 24 hours a day!  Just click on the Order Now button at the top of my blog!

 

 

This is what the inside of the book looked like. It has two big pages for pictures and two tabbed, hidden, smaller pages for either additional photos or journaling.  The girls liked the idea that the pages were hidden.

Here's Elizabeth's scrapbook:

 

She ended up using retired paper for hers also.  She didn't want to use the colors we had.  Her book also ended up backwards, but when you're seven, those things don't matter much!

 

This is Caroline's scrapbook and she used all the Build-A-Bear Designer Series Papers for her clothing and accessories.  It was funny how specific a lot of the girls were with their clothes matching their pocketbooks and other accessories.  The bears came out so cute!

The final project was the easiest project but was time consuming enough that it allowed me to pull each child aside to run their card stock for the bears through the Big Shot, and do the accessories too.

We made a set of four note cards using the new Build-A-Bear stamp sets, retired ribbons and colored pencils.  I let the kids do any greetings they wanted for their four cards.  Here are my two simple samples:

That's the outside, here's the inside:

and the back side: 

 

Here are the kids' samples:

 

These were Caroline's cards.  You can see how the girls really took the projects and ran with them.  Each girl worked very hard to make their cards unique and pretty.  They put a lot of effort into their cards.

Alexandra took a very unique approach, making all of her images into one single card:

 

Every project was loved by all of the kids, but their favorite was the note pad, hands down. 

I have the measurements and dimensions for all of the projects.  If anyone is interested in receiving them, just send me an email to jen@stampbythelightofthemoon.com and I will send them to you in my reply. 

My next six posts will be Christmas Card Class posts!  The class was today and it was fabulous! All of the participants already have 30 hand made Christmas cards done and ready to go and it's not even fall yet!!  What a way to get a jump on the holiday season!

I already have five people signed up for an additional session of the class in November.  If you're interested in the class, here are the details:

Sunday, November 15, 2009
1-5 pm
30 cards
$50

There are just a few spots left.  If I have enough interest, I'll start a third session on another Sunday in November.  Please let me know right away if you'd like to sign up.

Be on the lookout for the card samples from today's class to be posted in the next couple of weeks!

As promised: the original version of Renee's Delicate Dots card

Last week I posted all about my cousin Valerie's party.  I mentioned that each person had chosen to do a different card than the one that I had prepped, which I totally love when that happens.  When I was typing the post though, I realized that I didn't have the photo of the original card sample, made by my friend and fellow demonstrator, Renee Santoro.  So as I promised, I did take a photo of the card, and I am posting it here tonight.

 

This is the card Renee made.  It uses the SAB Delicate Dots free designer series papers, as well as the SAB free 5/8" grosgrain ribbon.  I loved that it used the oval punch and the scallop edge punch. 

The story behind this card is that back in February, when I was recovering from being so sick with the stomach bug, I had just three nights in which to prep my All Occasion Card Class.  I was stressing out over not having enough time, and Renee offered to help me.  She sent me the photo of this card:

 

She told me that she had made this card to accompany a shower gift and if I wanted her to, she could recreate it with current SU paper and ribbons.  I asked if she could recreate it with the SAB free paper and ribbons, and she did.  She came over one night, picked up all of the supplies, even loaned me her oval punch, since I don't have my own.  The next day, before I could even go to her house to pick up the finished supplies, her husband arrived on my doorstep with everything completed.

The one thing I've always said about my job with Stampin' Up! is that the thing I treasure the most is the friendships I've made through the job.  I never would've known any of these people, had they not been customers, hostesses, and fellow demonstrators.  I have had customers come and help me prep for big events in the past, and Renee has helped me out many times as well.  I recently joked with Renee that I should just move into her basement in order to cut out the back and forth time between our houses.  Thankfully she lives close by! 

In my next several posts, you will see how other demonstrators saved me that week, the week of my All Occasion Class, even though they may not have known it at the time! 

I will be posting all of the cards from that class and will also be posting the Explosion Card project that I just did with my March Stampers Clubs.  Be on the lookout!

As a side note, thanks to everyone for frequenting my blog!  I just looked at my Typepad Stats Page, and it shows that I have reached over 10,000 visitors!! My blog has only been live since Memorial Day weekend, 2008, so I am thrilled to have reached this many hits in such a short time!!  Thank you all for reading and for posting your comments!  I look forward to sharing many more posts with you in the future!

-Jen

Fall Schedule of Classes is Up!

SAVE THE DATE(S)!!!

While you're creating your Red/White/Yellow/Black card or scrapbook page for my contest, check out the schedule of Fall Classes! It's listed in the right sidebar under "Pages."  If you're Long Distance, there's information on how you, too can participate in these awesome classes and events!  To register, email me at jen@stampbythelightofthemoon.com.  Looking forward to seeing you this fall!!