A Year in Review - My Time Made Easy Group Post

Wow, it's Thursday already! Where has the week gone? Today is the last post for the May release over at My Time Made Easy! We had a Spring theme this month with bees, flowers, and wheel barrows! However, the last group post is traditionally called A Year in Review where we use our favorite products from MTME. How to choose when they are ALL your favorites?

I'm posting a project I made for our annual Spring Fest stamping event here in Buffalo, NY. Tracy Harp and her crew of elves made this event of 85 stampers even better than the previous events! There are all kinds of swaps going on and I always sign up for the 3-D swap. Hmmm....I wonder why? This year, I chose to use the Jam Packed template.

I made 10 of these little beauties...2 in each of 5 different designs/colors. But, in my haste, I never took pictures of all of them!
This was an extra one, so I had it on hand to photograph. I made the bases in orange, yellow, rose, red, and this blue. They were all so pretty! The flower is from the Flutters and Flowers cut file. I ran it through the swiss dots cuttlebug folder and then curled the petals on a pencil. The button was added for the center piece. I love the inside of this box. It holds an 8 oz. canning jar! It was designed with the perfect circle cut-out to hold the jar. I added a pretty ribbon around the lid. Now I didn't fill the jar with jelly or jam. Those small $1 ribbons that you can get at AC Moore or JoAnn's fit into the jar perfectly! So that was what I filled my jar with. The labels came with the jars, so I stamped the "Just for You" sentiment from Tending the Garden stamp set.

You don't want to miss what the other MTME design team has chosen for their year in review.

Lauren
Catherine
Debbie
Katie
Monique
Pam
Tangii
May Guest Designer, Teresa Kline

I just want to bid a fond farewell to our wonderful teammate Pam Imholz. She's got a lot going on in her personal life and has decided to step down from the team. She has become a friend to all of us and will be terribly missed on our team. But, you'll still see her on the JUGs team!

Thanks for stopping by today and have a great day!

Just Us Girls - Template Challenge

Hi! Happy Saturday! The challenge at Just Us Girls this week is a template challenge. We are using any My Time Made Easy template of our choosing. I made these a few weeks ago for the Western NY stamping event that occurred on May 1st here in the Buffalo area. I participated in a 3-D swap and made 10 of these, 2 each of 5 designs. It's the Welcome Home template and I made it into a "Stamp Store"...perfect for a stamping event, don't you think? These were cut with my Cricut and SCAL program. I added the MS latice punch, which looked like a fence, and the MS tulip punch. I colored them with copic markers. The sign was computer generated. I put an Inkadinkadoo single stamp and a roll of ribbon in each one, and tied it all up with a coordinating ribbon. Everyone loved them, and they looked so cute all together on the table! The girls once again have some fabulous templates to share with you. Stop by the JUGs blog and their personal blogs as well.

Alicia Weiman

Dana Gustafson

Maria Levine

Mona Pendleton
Pam Imholz
Teresa Kline - Special Guest Designer for May
LeAnne Pugliese - Featured Designer for May

Thanks for stopping by today! Enjoy your weekend!

WNY SCS Spring Fest

Hi everyone! Well, it's Monday and I've had a very busy weekend! Saturday was our 3rd annual Western NY SCS Spring Fest. Tracy Harp and her crew of "green shirt" helpers did a fabulous job of organizing this stamping event for 100 stampers! There were two sessions of shoebox stamping, all sorts of swaps, prizes galore, and a fabulous lunch! I've been to all three events, and they just keep getting better! I've made so many friends from this event from NY, PA, and Canada! Stampers are just the greatest people, I tell ya!

So for my card, I used a Paper Makeup stamp set called Friendly Flowers.I needed to use something that was fairly easy to do because we had a 15 minute time limit on completing our cards. This image was colored with SU markers and stamped onto PTI vintage cream cardstock. I pre-embossed the celery cardstock and precut the cream and pink cardstock with nesties. The buttons are PTI and after I took this picture, I strung them with crochet thread....they looked too naked! The ribbon is SU's pretty in pink. The sentiment was stamped in chocolate chip. The dp is from The Girls' Paperie which I got from my LSS.

I was in a 3-D swap and used a My Time Made Easy template, but I'm saving that for another post. You'll have to keep checking back to see what I did (sorry for the tease)!

On another note, I had to get up really early yesterday to stand in line at my LSS. Why, you ask? Because Tim Holtz is coming to our little LSS to do 4 classes in June! Sharon, the super nice owner of Buffalo Stamps & Stuff, opened the store at 9:00 am to start taking registrations! So I arrived at around 8:40 to find about 50 women waiting at the door, with Sharon's wonderful husband, Mark, handing out tickets, registration forms, and donut holes! I found this so funny because I don't think I've done something like that since I was 15 waiting for Rolling Stones tickets (minus the donut holes)! LOL!!! So I am now registered to take a class with the famous man! How fun is that?

So yesterday, I spent the day cat-napping and looking at my loot from the stamping event! So many great cards and 3-D swaps and free stuff from so many generous stamp companies! It was a great weekend with friends!

Thanks for stopping by today and I want to remind you that sneaks for Paper Makeup Stamps begins tomorrow so please stop by again!

SCS Spring Fest!

Hi everyone! It's a beautiful day here in Buffalo...finally the temps are WARM! I had a great day yesterday at our Western NY SCS Spring Fest stamping event! Unfortunately, I don't have any pics of the event (although I did have my camera), but I can tell you that everyone there had a blast! I was so excited to see my stamping friends IN PERSON! Friends like Cheryl Rowley, Tracy Harp, Diane Zechman, Michele Ghent, Lynn Englehart, and so many more. I also want to say hello to my new stamping friends Rose and Susan who live close by! Tracy did a fabulous job with the event and pretty much worried herself sick about it, but was super organized and everything went off without a hitch! We hope to do this again next year! Cheryl Rowley and I did a copic marker demonstration to quite a few interested ladies. I think we got some more stampers on the copic craze! They were able to color a cupcake using shading techniques we demonstrated. I really enjoyed doing the demo! There were also so many people and companies who donated generously to this event and I'd like to take the opportunity to thank them all here! We really appreciate your generosity!

There were several swaps to join at this event and I chose the 3-D swap as one of them. I made this using Lauren Meader's My Timeless Template called Take Along Tote, which are available for purchase at Papertrey Ink. Super easy to create! I also cased her tote here, making some changes.

I added four Thank You note cards using an SU alphabet stamp and circle, a PTI set for the sentiment and flourish, and a cuttlebug small folder for embossing. On the inside, I added a small notepad covered with cardstock and dp and tied off with a ribbon. The back had the same pocket (minus the button) that held the envelopes. I made eight of these invarious colors. I love the way they came together!

We also participated in a gift swap. This is always fun because everyone has such great ideas and really shows their creativity. For my gift, I chose another My Timeless Template called For Keepsake. I used certainly celery as my cardstock and Tea Party dp which was scalloped at the edge. For the window, I chose not to make it see-through. Instead, I used PTI's linen velum stamped with the spool of thread and Enjoy sentiment. Care to guess the contents based on the image? Well, it was a Ball canning jar filled with...buttons!
Buttons are so in right now, so I thought someone would love this! Diane Zechman chose this gift and I hope she can use all of those buttons! I think you'll have these forever, Diane!

Well, that's it for now! I hope you had as great a weekend as I did and have a great week!

WNY SCS Stamping Event Tomorrow!

Hi all! Well, I certainly have been busy. Tomorrow is the first SCS Stamping event being held in WNY (in Ransomville, just north of Buffalo). Tracy Harp (Lodichick) and Holly McMillen (Toy) are hosting this event. They are former Dirty Dozen members on SCS. There will be 52 of us there, and it looks like it will be quite the event. I have been busy stamping away all the projects I needed to complete for the event in addition to making wedding invitations for my nephew's upcoming June wedding. I had to cancel my club date in order to finish all of this stamping (thanks, girls, for changing your schedules!).


Here is the card front I did for the SU only card front swap. I'm really happy with it. I got my inspiration from the latest Take Ten magazine that I was browsing through in AC Moore. I thought this would be an easy card to reproduce 26 times, but I wasn't thinking about punching all those squares (104 white, 52 green, and 52 red)! Yes, what was I thinking? Well, I'm happy with it and also happy it's done! I used the Tart and Tangy SU set from the Occasions Mini catalog along with the Summer Picnic paper. The sentiment is from a retired SU set called Simply Summer. I also used the Swiss Dots cuttlebug folder, certainly celery grosgrain ribbon, black brads, certainly celery, black, real red, and whisper white paper. The smallest Marvy scallop punch was used on the white squares and SU's 1 3/8 square punch was used for the green and red squares.

This next card was done for a shoebox project. We had to prepare this project for 10 other stampers. I chose to do this card, which is similar to the one that I did here for a Ways to Use It challenge. We were to use fashion as our inspiration in that challenge. Well I LOVE shoes, so I chose this stamp from My Sentiments Exactly. and I love the pink and gray together! I used basic gray, pretty in pink, and vanilla cardstock. Charbon dp (retired) was a perfect match (I had just enough to do this project, whew!). I used SU's scallop and circle punches and A Beautiful Thing set. I stamped the image in pink first, then overstamped in basic gray. I added some bling in the middle. A cuttlebug folder was used on the middle pink panel. Oh, and I used the basic gray taffeta ribbon which was tied through the hole punched with the slot punch.

Next was the 3-D swap. I had something else in mind, but changed it to these coasters.

I got these 4" x 4" tumbled marble tiles at Lowe's. They came in a box of 9 for about $5.00. The stamp is from Stampa Rosa and is one complete stamp (not 3 different ones!). I've had it forever, and when I measured it to the tiles, it was perfect! I stamped it in black Stazon and colored it with my chalks. Very easy to do! They were NOT time intensive! I then baked them at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes. I don't know if you HAVE to do this, but they say it sets the ink, however, it did not set the chalk. I then sprayed it about 3 times with a matte finish sealer. I used a roll of cork cut into 3.5" squares on the back with some adhesive. (I ran out of Mono Adhesive, so I used E-6000 and it smells SO BAD! I have the coasters airing out in the garage right now! I hope it wears off before tomorrow! Needless to say, I threw that adhesive in the trash!) I tied four coasters together with some tulle netting and attached a "For You" tag with my name and info on the back.



This is the last one, I promise! There is going to be a door prize swap. We were to buy/make something related to stamping and had to wrap it. I won't tell you what's in the box until after the event, but I wrapped it in a paper mache box that I covered with pink patterned paper (don't know who makes it) and some black and white ribbon. I think it came out really cute! Well, I'll have more to report either on Sunday or Monday about this event. I'll also post the wedding invitations I'm making. They really are very pretty, if I do say so myself! Thanks for stopping by!