I Made Lots Of Swaps For The London Regional Seminar

Soooo, what have I been up to this week? Making swaps for London, lots and lots of swaps.

When you swap with other demonstrators, you normally swap just card fronts. I’ve known for a while what I wanted to do.

The moment I saw the new Stampin’ Up! Full Heart Punch, I didn’t see just a heart, I saw a butterfly and I wanted to share this with my fellow demonstrators. Not every demonstrator has samples of our fabulous designer series paper and so I decided to create my butterflies from two of my favorite designer series papers and I also wanted to showcase the fabulous Big Shot dry embossing technique, which I used for the white background.

Many of my cards aren’t the big kind that I normally make, they are 3x3 love note size, just because the butterfly fits perfectly on the love note, which again showcases another one of our fabulous products that has coordinating envelopes too. I popped up the wings with dimensional to give the butterfly an illusion of flight and used a Stampin’ Write Marker for the antenna.

I liked the idea of a 3x3 card because if a demonstrator doesn’t want to showcase our love notes, she can attach it to a larger size card base and use it as the focal point – you know I love flexibility and simplicity.

Images © 1990-2009 Stampin' Up!

I've added glitter to the wings of these now, to make the two sets different. The white backgrounds have been dry embossed too.

I’m always nervous when creating swaps for anyone because I know how much thought and work other folks put into their own swaps too.

I’ve taken my swap supplies all over the place this week – whenever there was a moment, I made a few more. (yep, our dimensional stick, even in a freezing cold ice arena).

You know how when you go to your first dance and you wonder if anyone will actually ask you to dance? This is how I feel when I go to these gatherings, I just hope and pray someone likes my swap enough to ask me to swap with them. I’ll let you know when I get back if anyone asked me to dance.

Have a wonderful few days everyone and I promise to post again early next week!

My 3d London Regional Swap

Big Shot Texturz #1

This weekend I’ll be attending the Stampin’ Up! London Regional Conference. One of my favorite things about attending events like this, is that I get to swap with fellow demonstrators – that means you make a pile of card fronts and or 3d items – they can all be the same and then you exchange them with fellow stampers who have done the same.

In my last post I talked about the card stock sample ring I made for myself and it was that idea that gave me the inspiration for my 3d swap.

Not every demonstrator is lucky enough to own a Big Shot and so I created little sample booklets so that demonstrators can showcase the current in colors and the exclusive Stampin’ Up #1 Texturz dry embossed images. I also ran one image through on white card stock, so that they could showcase that too.

I hope my fellow demonstrators like them. They were quite time intensive to make, but I think it was worth it.

On my personal sample, I chose to hold it together with a special brad to showcase that Stampin’ Up! now offers some fabulous new brads.

No Posts For A Few Days

Hi Everyone,

I try to post as often as I can here, however I know that there are a busy few days coming up and I'm not sure what access I'll have to the Internet and so above are some extra posts to keep you going.

Be sure to check back early next week, as I'm sure I'll have a lot to share.

By the way, if you are enjoying my blog, please drop me an email some times, I'd love to hear from you.

When I first discovered Stampin’ Up! one of the first things that impressed me were the color families. I loved that I could mix and match any color in a color family and I couldn’t go wrong.

One of my first goals was to see each beautiful color of card stock with my own eyes, because while the catalog is fabulous, there is nothing quite like seeing the real thing.

It took about six months before I achieved my goal and when I became a demonstrator I decided that everyone deserved to see these beautiful colors and so I created a binder with a sheet of each color card stock – It was big and heavy, and I loved it …..

….Then after four years of carting the binder round, I got smart and created a color ring with a smaller sample of each color and I’ve been using it ever since. You wouldn’t believe how often I pull it out to help my ladies with their color inspiration. I loved it so much, I made one each for my stamp club members.

Here it is, yum, delicious all those beautiful colors in one place.

Now when the new In Colors come out each summer, I punch a piece of each and just because the ink is new too, I stamp a sample of each color on a small circle and put it in the center of the sample, open up the ring, and add it to make my collection current. It's such an easy tool to use and keep up to date.

Ooops I almost forgot to give a big shout out to "Mr Crop-A-Dile" without whom I couldn't have punched through so many layers of card at once to create the hole for the ring -

- If you'd like to know more about "Mr Crop-A-Dile", you'll find him on page 189 of the Spring Summer 2009 Catalog and if you'd like to meet him, his number is 108362 - he's very creative, he'll punch extra holes in your leather belt, punch holes in the top of tin buckets so you can add eyelets and ribbon, he cuts through thick and hard items like a hot knife through butter - just ask my ladies, they are a huge fan of his.

I know this is just the beginning, so watch out for similar items in the future.

Kristin's Card Inspired Me

As you know, I make cards all the time and come up with ideas, but yesterday I had a lovely surprise.

Kristin (a fellow demonstrator from Seattle) sent me a check in this cute card. What inspired me was of course her beautiful art, but mostly the cool way she'd folded the card so that her check (cheque in UK & Canada) slotted beautifully into the special fold she'd made.

I just had to share Kristin's art. Thank you Kristin - You Rock!

Tips For The Seeing Spots Scrapbook Pages

Because the ladies were left to their own devices to create these pages any time over the retreat weekend as their FREE make 'n take, here are a few tips to help. There were full instructions on the make 'n take table, along with picture tutorials for each project.

• Don't forget to clean your stamp before changing colors
• When stamping the background on the whisper white, stamp off the edges of the paper to give a more finished look to the edges and vary how far in the stamps go.
• Rotate your stamp or the paper to give a more random pattern.
• This one is huge - Stamp your letters for the words and then punch them out. It's really hard to stamp an image on a small circle once it is punched.
• I used the rule of three - in other words, I used three colors of ink and three colors of card. Because I used white card as my third color, I made my third ink color chocolate chip to make the page pop. The rule of three works for most things, even flower arranging (my Mom taught me that - Thanks Mom - Miss you)
• To punch the boarder with the scallop edge punch is easy once you know how. There were step by step instructions and photos for the ladies to use. I will post a mini tutorial here later or tomorrow.

Now I'm off to make 100 swaps for the fabulous Stampin' Up! London regional I'm attending. I'm soooo excited I can't wait, especially since Christy and Terri are joining me.

Eastern Michigan Retreat Make 'n Take

Seeing Sponts and Lovely Letters Stamp Sets with Chocolate Chip, Certainly Celery and Pixie Pink on Whisper White and Scallop and Circle punches.

Fifty ladies made these pages last Friday and Saturday as one of three make 'n takes I provided for the 1st annual Eastern Michigan Retreat.

It took almost a week to cut and prepare the projects and because they were independent FREE make 'n takes and not a class, I created step by step instructions with images, but it was well worth it to see so many ladies enjoying the projects.

Pam used her own supplies to make a second one and switched out the pink with blue and that looked awesome.

I can't wait for the retreat next year - Hope to see you there.

Best Ever Huge Hit - My Promise To You

Wow, I can't believe the response that this class had received from both my customers and other demonstrators.

I just wanted to say a huge Thank You to everyone who has sent wonderful messages about this class.

It was amazing to get such a response, but what has been even more surprising are the wonderful emails I've received from folks out there who've received the PDF and are busy creating - thank you for taking the time to let me know how it is going.


The only thing I can think of to show you how much I appreciate your support is to promise to create another class for your enjoyment.

Today I ordered a few new toys, there's a plan hatching in my head and I just can't wait for the UPS truck to arrive so that I can get creating again.

For more information on how you can turn the "Best Ever" Simply Scrappin' kit into the projects above, please feel free to email me reeveelizabeth@hotmail.com

A Little Something From Sandra

I know I promised to post past scrapbook pages this week, but then something lovely happened....

A fellow demonstrator sent me this beautiful card from Canada and I just had to share it with you.

I hope you enjoy seeing it as much as I enjoyed receiving it. Thank You Sandra!!! Your lovely card, just made my day!

Scrapbook Request

Here is another one of the scrapbook pages that I had on display at the weekend.

Special Request

On Friday and Yesterday I attended the first annual Easter Michigan Scrapbooker's Retreat.

It was an awesome event!

Some of the ladies asked me to post my scrapbook pages that I had on display. Although most of them are older pages and made with now retired items, I'm sure you'll be able to use your creativity and re-create some of them in your own special way.

The pages below were created with a Simply Scrappin' Kit that was available a few years ago. I do have a few kits still available - Please email me if you would like to purchase one $19.95 + Tax and Shipping - reeveelizabeth@hotmail.com.

The only stamping I used on these pages was for the words. I used Letter Press Alphabet which has also retired and I have one gently used set still available.

I will do my best to post the other pages in my scrapbook in the coming days and then next week we'll be back to new fresh items.


I hope everyone had a wonderful time at the retreat.

If you have any questions about the three FREE make 'n takes, please don't hesitate in contacting me and I'll be happy to help in any way I can.