November Stamp Camp Buffett

This month I repeated three projects for my stampers and added two new ones.  I think everyone liked being able to pick and choose what they wanted to make and to make as many as they wanted.  From last month, I had the Big Shot Owl Treat bag, the cute Sweet Treats Turkey from Connie Collins, and the three-drawer Matchbox Die Dresser.  New this month was the Christmas Card I redesigned based on Dawn Olchefske's original card, and an oldie but goody - Snowman Soup.

Isn't this turkey just the cutest?  I saw him on Connie's stop on a blog hop about two months ago.  I ended up participating in her Big Fat Ribbon Share, and much to my surprise, she included that cute turkey in my ribbon envelope!  I knew my stampers would get a kick out of him, and I finally got to make a few myself this time around.  I couldn't find the Jelly Belly Autumn Mix that Connie used in hers, so we ended up with another Jelly Belly mix that had some browns and reds in it (Soda Shop, I think it's called).  Darla made 8, Laura 5, and 6 for me.

Maddie and Holly each made the Christmas Card and both made several packets of Snowman Soup.  I forgot to take a picture of the back, but I used My Digital Studio to type out my poem and used some of the graphics from Christmas Jingle on MDS to decorate it.  I found these cute tree and star marshmallows at Walgreens early this month and thought they'd be cuter than normal marshmallows (although I did give the gals the option of using regular mini marshmallows - they both chose to use the special ones).

I always love it when I can get together with the ladies at work to spend some stamping time together, and it was great to have four of them join me yesterday, even though it was the Friday afternoon before our week off for Thanksgiving!!

Thanksgiving Card - MDS Style

Wanted to play with My Digital Studio tonight since I can stay up a little later than usual due to the Veteran's Day holiday tomorrow.  I'd found this wallpaper that I've been using on my computer for a few weeks now, and decided to feature the image on a card.  I toned down the image by setting the opacity to 80, added some ribbon and a sentiment (strangely, I couldn't find a Thanksgiving sentiment in MDS).  The sentiment I chose is in Pumpkin Pie, with an opacity setting of 70 to better match my image.  I'm so glad I made the plunge and bought MDS - love it, love it, LOVE IT!

Christmas Card for 2009

Today I had my first workshop at someone else's house in a LONG time!  We made the brag book I posted last month.  While the gals were making their brag books, I decided to work on my Christmas cards.  I was so impressed by this one that Dawn made (scroll to the bottom of the post to see it), I wanted a variation of it.  This is what I came up with, and it'll be our Christmas card this year.  Simple enough to mass produce, as we only send out 25 or so cards a year.  I managed to get most of the pieces cut out during the workshop (Chocolate Chip, Old Olive, and Very Vanilla cardstocks).  I love this pinecone stamp (from Autumn Days) and the glitter just adds that little extra touch.  I used Chocolate Chip and Old Olive markers to color the image, punching it out with a 1 1/4 inch circle punch and framing it with the 1 3/8 inch circle punch.  The pinecones are popped up with Stampin' Dimensionals, as is the square behind them.  The sentiment is stamped in Chocolate Chip and is from the level 1 hostess set, Holiday Best.  The embossed image is from the Petals-A-Plenty embossing folder.  Love it!

Matchbox Die Chests

I had fun making these cute matchbox die chests for my next team swap.  We were supposed to meet today, but two of us weren't feeling well today, so we had to postpone.  I hadn't used my matchbox die yet, and it's SO EASY!

This was also one of my stamp camp projects this past Thursday.  I used a clear rhinestone brad and the small filigree brad piece for the drawer pull (although it's more decorative than functional).  I used retired Parisian Breeze specialty paper, and I'm so sad it's gone!  I bought three packs of it, and it's quickly dwindling.

Thanks for stopping by today and I hope you have a GREAT week!

Some My Digital Studio Cards

Feeling a bit under the weather this weekend, but thought I'd share with you a few cards I've made recently using Stampin' Up!s new software, My Digital Studio.  The first is a card I created for Halloween:

It was fun to make!  The Upsy Daisy card I've shared before, but I made it before watching all of the training webinars that SU! provided it's demonstrators, and I've fixed a few things that I'd done wrong.  I also added some drop shadows to give more of a dimensional feel to my card.  I really like this one and will likely change the color scheme a few times and have several of them printed up to have on hand.

The holiday card will likely be our Christmas card this year.  This one is a 6 x 6 card.  I just sent it to SU!s printing service to see how it looks, and if it comes back as great as my calendar did, I'll be ordering more.  The way things are going, I don't think I'll get any cards made the old fashioned way this year (although I do have the ones I made last year and never sent out!).

Last up is a card I made using a new image download for MDS, the Medallion stamp, my favorite from the new SU! catalog:

I really love My Digital Studio and wish I could play with it all day, everyday!  There's just so much you can do with this program.  I'm anxious to work on a multimedia project, but that will have to wait until Thanksgiving break when I have some time to sit down and be creative.

My how time flies...

I can't believe it's been over two weeks since my last post!  Things have been a bit hectic, so that helps explain it, I suppose.  My oldest needs to complete service hours for both her 8th grade history class and for confirmation class (thankfully they overlap and hours can be credited to both).  Our church does an annual fundraiser for the high school youth - a pumpkin patch, so I've been spending time with both of my girls manning the patch.  The little one doesn't need the service hours, but she's a people person and loves to come along anyway.  With her pumpkin patch hours, she' all set for this trimester at school, and has caught up on some missing hours for confirmation class (yay!).

Our first grading period progress reports are due by noon tomorrow, and my kids buried me with make-up work and quiz retakes over the past week or so, and it always takes so much longer to get those assignments into the computer than if I was just entering one assignment for the entire class.  It'll be nice to put that behind me for a bit.

I'm getting ready for my monthly stamp camp with the gals at work.  My theme is "No Tricks... All Treats" so this month we're making things that you can put a treat into.  The gals will have their choice of four projects - however many they can make in the three hours that we're stampin'.  Two are borrowed from other stampers - the cute owl treat bag from Dawn and the ever so cute turkey Connie made using the new Sweet Centers cups.  The other two I need to post, and will eventually get them photographed to share.  One uses the matchbox die which I finally got a chance to use, and although the three drawer chest has been out there a while, I really like how mine turned out and I'll share it soon.

Looks like I'm narrowing in on 30,000 hits, so in my next post I'll offer up some blog candy to celebrate - details next time!  Until then, have a great rest of your week!

Bamboo Spine Photo Album

I'm going to be doing a workshop for a friend in early November and we decided on a making a mini-scrapbook/photo brag book.  A long while back I had run across Chiaki Haverstick's Bamboo Spine Album and it fit the bill perfectly.  I wanted to use my favorite Simply Scrappin' kit - Petal Party, and this weekend I made our class sample.  I hope the gals enjoy making this album.  Here are a couple of shots:

This is the front of the album.  The bamboo stick is covered with the ribbons.

This is the back of the album.

Here's the inside front cover and page 1 of the album.

Here are two of the pages from the inside of the album.

I enjoyed doing some mini scrapbooking and think I'll use mine to keep my girls' school pictures from over the years.  Thanks for stopping by today, and have a great week!

It's a My Digital Studio Party!

Welcome to our My Digital Studio Party - you might call it a Blog Carnival, hosted by Stampin' Addicts. It's is all about My Digital Studio, also known as MDS - the digital papercrafting solution released on October 1 by Stampin' Up!  Each stop on the carnival will feature at least two projects created using My Digital Studio.  Be sure to visit all 16 sites to see what you can do with MDS between now and November 1.

For my projects, I chose to make a 2010 calendar, an 8x8 scrapbook page, and a 6x6 card.  First up is the calendar.  I used a calendar template available in MDS first, and then added my images.  These are shots of our family vacation to the Big Island and Moloka'i last summer.  I added the image on the top page of the calendar, and decided to add the same image as a background to the calendar part of the page, but with some transparency to the image.  I used the color picker tool in MDS for the background color of the top page, choosing a color from the picture itself.  MDS uses your computer's fonts, so I chose a favorite to type out captions for each month.  The calendar template was in gray, so I went in and made everything black so it would stand out a little better against the background image.  I added my own family events for each month, along with moon phases (I'm an amateur astronomer, so a calendar isn't complete without moon phases).  My photograph of the calendar doesn't do it justice (wrong camera setting), so I'll try photographing it again during the day to see if I can get a better shot of it.  The paper it's printed on is thick, kind of like the slick feel of Whisper White paper (but heavier than WW).  It comes spiral bound, and you also create your own cover for it.  Shipping was amazingly fast - I ordered it on a Saturday night, and it arrived on the following Wednesday!

My second project is an 8x8 scrapbook page from an album I'm making for my youngest.  She just got back from her class trip to Catalina Island, and while she was gone, I got started on the scrapbook using the images I had taken the day I helped drive them down to Long Beach.

She had a wonderful time and took about 120 pictures with her own digital camera while at Outdoor Education Week on Catalina, so I'm going to have fun this weekend sitting down with her to work on her scrapbook using MDS.

My last project is a 6x6 card that I created using the Christmas Jingle designer kit that is available in MDS.  I just love this cute deer - which is also available as an individual stamp in the current Stampin' Up! catalog.

MDS features embellishments like the brads, ribbon and focal image in my card above, as well as many designer series papers to use for backgrounds, and stamp images like the sentiment I used here.

My Digital Studio is such a versatile program - there's even more you can do with it, which will be shared by other bloggers on our blog carnival, so make sure to visit everyone's site.  You have until November 1 to view all of the projects created by the sixteen of us participating in the blog carnival.  Thanks so much for stopping by, and if you have any questions about MDS, I'm here to help!

My Digital Studio Blog Carnival Participants:

DMDezigns/Dawnmarie: My Digital Studio - The Birdseye Overview
HowManyCats?!/Comeka: Digitize Your Sketch Library with MDS
Yapha: Turning Templates into Treasures
Willysgirl/Sarah: MDS Xmas and Extras
Hollylogic/Holly: MDS as a Design Tool (or How Not to Slice Up All Your Brushed Gold)
Lyssa: Playing with Stamps You Don't Own
Lilysinkpad/Sara: Simply Scrappin' Kits Go Digi
JulieA/Julie: Wanna Little Music with Your Slideshow?
lovetostampandscrap/Cheryl: Creating a Calendar to Beat All Calendars
Melina Stamps!/Melina: Man-Scrapping with MDS
BroncoMom/Joyce: Build Your Own DSP
Britiney: Clever Album Covers - A Piece of (Cup)Cake
S1itcher46/Kim: Hybridizing and Cataloging Collections
Kelli: Side-by-Side Test: Is it Actual or Is It MDS?
Scrapbookmama/Ellie: Keeping the Spotlight on Your (Adorable!) Subjects

Upcoming My Digital Studio Blog Carnival

Did you know that Stampin' Up! is rolling out My Digital Studio, a digital papercrafting software package, on October 1?  To help celebrate its release, I'm participating in a carnival style blog hop hosted by Stampin Addicts. Starting at noon EST on Saturday, October 3, and running through November 1, there will be sixteen sites that feature at least two projects created using My Digital Studio (aka MDS).  You can access the MDS Blog Carnival by clicking on the button on my sidebar any time after noontime, EST on October 3.

MDS is a great way to get those photos into scrap pages that you can design in a snap. You can also make cards, calendars, and all sorts of other projects.  Even if you aren't a digital scrapbooker, MDS is great for designing your layouts before cutting card stock.  You can also do hybrid scrapping - use some printed out designs from MDS and add your own layers and embellishments.  Think of all of the possibilities!  I've been using it for a month and love it.  Be sure to check back on October 3 or thereafter to see all the great creations we have to share with you!

Father-in-Law's Birthday Card

Today my FIL is celebrating his 80th birthday, so I wanted something a bit special to give to him.  I had an extra card front of my New Year's card that I made for the Stampin' Addicts' Holiday Blog Hop back in August, so I decided to rework it and added part of the Medallion stamp, stamped in VersaMark and embossed in gold.  When I showed my husband, he said "hey, now that's CLASSY!"  Inside, I used a sentiment from the set It's Your Birthday - 'Life is not a matter of counting years, it's a matter of making years count' and then 'Happy Birthday', both stamped in VersaMark and embossed in gold.  I stamped the envelope to match.  I hope he likes it!