Saturday ramblings…

Well—I just woke up from a two hour nap, and feel quite refreshed! :-)   The card class you’ve been hearing about went pretty well this afternoon. I think everyone enjoyed the projects. We had some experienced folks as well as some first timers—we may have recruited some new stampers and cardmakers! They loved the gift card holder, and came up with some beautiful designs. I wish I had remembered my camera so I could have shared all of them with you!

A big thank you to Angie and Rena for inviting me to help with their class—I had so much fun, and everyone is so nice!! I can’t wait to do it again sometime!

Now I need to move on to the next project—Operation Write Home. We have an organization of women engineers at the place where I work, and they approached me a couple of weeks ago about making cards for the military. I told them about OWH and we decided to start making cards on a recurring basis for this worthwhile group. Monday after work is our inaugural card making session, so I need to finish kitting up all the parts and make sample cards this weekend. We have the very ambitious goal of assembly line producing about 250 cards in an hour or so—wish us luck! I’m going to work on that this evening and tomorrow, and hope to post pics of the sample cards sometime tomorrow.

Also tomorrow—be sure to tune in for the blog candy giveaway! I plan on posting the winner around 8:00 am EST. Good luck!

Quick and easy gift card holder

Tomorrow is the Christmas Card class at Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church with Angie and Rena, and in addition to the Christmas cards I showed you previously we’re going to make a surprise project. It will be a surprise to the ladies, but I decided to give you a sneak preview. Before I get started, please be kind—this is my first tutorial! Actually, it’s a bit of a stretch to call it a tutorial—this is so simple. There are no special techniques involved, and you can easily alter the size to be smaller, larger, or whatever. So—here goes. 
You will need:

• Cardstock
• Patterned paper (scraps work great for this!)
• Embellishments, stamps, and punches of your choice (any or all!)
• Scor-Pal or other scoring tool
• Adhesive 

1. Cut your cardstock to 6” x 10”. Score along the long side at 2” and 6” and fold along the score lines.
2. Apply adhesive to the edges of the 2” section similar to this:
   








3. Fold up the 2” section and adhere. Your gift card holder will look something like this:
   
   






4. Now it’s pretty much done—just decorate and embellish as much or as little as you want. Here’s my finished gift card holder: 

OK—see why I hesitate to even call that a tutorial?? It’s embarrassingly easy! Anyway, I hope you enjoy it and will make some fun gift card holders for those boring gift cards we all give as gifts to someone on our list!

Oh—here’s what I used for my holder:

• Cardstock—Stampin’ Up!
• Patterned Paper—Papertrey Ink
• Flower—Hero Arts
• Stamp—Wordsworth/Rubber Soul
• Lace—clearance bin at JoAnn’s
• Snowflake brad—haven’t a clue…

Please be sure to stop by throughout the weekend. Tomorrow I’ll let you know how the Christmas card class goes, and Sunday I’ll announce the winner of the blog candy! I will post the winning name around 8:00 AM EST (assuming I roll out of bed in time). I’ll also be talking a little bit about Operation Write Home on Sunday, so be sure to come back!
Have a lovely Friday, everyone!

Trash to Treasure Art

My wonderful first follower, Lynn, is celebrating her one year blog anniversary and is giving away some of her beautiful art. Here is just a sample:

If you would like to win this or one of another stunning works of art, be sure to visit her blog!

Halloween “Candy”

For those of you who read my post yesterday, you might remember that I was toying with the idea of going to Marco’s when I left Rosa Parks Elementary. Well—it was such a beautiful day that I couldn’t resist the drive up there. I’ve had an idea rolling around in my head for a couple of days and the trip to Marco’s sealed the deal. What am I talking about you may ask? The answer is….

BLOG CANDY!!!!!

And why am I giving away blog candy? I was very excited the other day to discover that I have my first blog follower!!!! Thank you, Lynn! Be sure to check out Lynn’s blog, Trash to Treasure Art. Lynn does fabulous work. And be sure to check out her items published in the latest edition of Somerset Studio magazine—on sale now. I picked up a copy at Marco’s yesterday and Lynn’s pieces are beautiful!

I know—you want me to answer the most important question—what might that blog candy be? Here it is:

Those are the Create A Flake 1 Shapeabilities from Spellbinders and some tags (a la Tim Holtz) thrown in for good measure, since he will hopefully be doing another 12 Tags of Christmas this holiday season and I want you to play along. As for the Shapeabilities—if you’re wondering why I chose these as my very first blog candy, be sure to check out the wonderful tutorial from Sherry Cheever (aka Bad Sherry) over on SCS or on her blog. After you do, you are gonna want these dies!!!!

I’m sure by now you’re wondering how you can win this splendiforous prize. Well, this is where the challenge comes in—between now (October 31) and Saturday, November 14, I want to get comments from a minimum of 15 different people. On November 15, I will put all the names in a box and draw one—that lucky person will get the blog candy. However… if my blog doesn’t get comments from 15 different people, then the blog candy goes to my very first follower, Lynn.

So if you want to be in the running for the dandy candy, leave a comment and get all your friends to leave comments, too.

Let the fun begin!!!