Not much time to think about stamping with Hurricane Ike bearing down on the Houston area!  First it looked like it would go to Florida or Louisiana, then it looked like south Texas or into Mexico, but now it appears to be headed this way.  The eye perhaps will come ashore down around Freeport, west of Galveston which would mean in the Galveston/Houston area we will be on the "dirty" side, which gets the worst weather.  All of this could change at any moment if it takes a turn and goes somewhere else.  They think we will get lots of wind and rain and everything will be prone to flooding, due to the storm surge, which ultimately affects a lot of areas.  As long as the house stands, the worst part will be no power, probably….and no internet!  Oh my!!  This is seeming pretty serious, but it could still change.  But it is a big storm, so even if it heads somewhere a little off target we still will probably be affected.

So if you are out-of-town and need stamping supplies, the perfect answer is here!  Stampin' Up! just started online ordering the other day and it seems to be working pretty well!  If you need to order something, just go to MY website: www.karenfontinelle.stampinup.net.    Under my contact information in the upper right hand corner, you will see a "Shop Now" button.  Click on that and it will take you to the new online ordering!  If you just go to the Stampin' Up! website, you will have to select a demonstrator.  If you do not select a demo, you will pay a premium price and higher shipping…..so you really want to go to my website!!  You will still be able to receive Hostess Benefits (a slightly different name online I believe) for your $150+ order.  Of course, under normal conditions, if you prefer you can always email me or call me with your order and I will take care of it.  But online ordering will be great for those who just think of something they want and want to get it ordered themselves right that moment…..or perhaps in the case of a hurricane where your demo might not have power, phone, or internet for days and you want your stamps!  You can do it yourself!

Don't forget about the stamp sets that are 15% off now until the end of September!  Info on my website!  What a deal!

Gotta go see for sure if we have enough batteries, water, ice, whatever.  I think we are as prepared as we can be.  Stormy weather should begin tomorrow morning.  Hang on to your hats…..and keep your fingers crossed for those of us in Ike's path!!

These name frames have been quite popular ever since Stampin' Up! came out with these large alphabet sets.  They make wonderful gifts, are easy to design, and you can be as creative as you want!  Even though the Letterpress Alphabet is now retired I used it on this project.  You could easily substitute another alphabet stamp set of your choosing or even chipboard alphabet letters to spell out a name.  When the new Bella Rose Designer Series Paper came out, I knew it was perfect to use.  After purchasing a frame, I just cut the designer paper to size and added strips of another pattern of paper to the top and bottom just to add some other color.  The letters were all stamped and layered with cardstock, with a little sponging on the edges.  I also cut out a few flowers from other sheets of the Bella Rose paper to add additional embellishments on the letters.  In the end, I HAD to add a little Dazzling Diamonds glitter on a few of the flowers!  Click on the photos to make them larger if you want.

             Images © Stampin’ Up! 1990-2008

                Images © Stampin’ Up! 1990-2008

At the Stampin' Up! Convention Linda Hanson made one of these cute gift bags so when I needed a gift bag I wanted to try to make it.  It actually reminded me of making something similar with just a plain lunch sack a long time ago.  I had only seen photos from Convention of the bag so I had no directions, but somehow it came back to me and I was able to figure it out!

Pull out the side portions of the gift bag and just cut in a few inches down or however large you want your sleeve.  Just cut up to the line that makes the sack.

When you push the sides of the bag back in like they should be, but pull out the sleeve portion you just cut, it will look like the picture below.

To make the neckline, just freehand the shape or trace around a glass or something if you want a pattern.  Adhere portions of designer paper (yes, this one is retired!) on to the sleeves, both front and back.  You can probably see my measurements scribbled on my SU Grid paper but it will really depend on what size your bag and cuts are.

Adhere more paper for the shirt top, front and back.

Adhere cardstock for the "suit" down to the bottom of the bag, front and back.

Add some straps, however long you want them.  Now you may notice the score line across the top of the suit.  That actually came from a mistake as my paper was longer than I planned (I think each side of the bag is a different size so check your measurements as you work).  You can see the suit comes up a little bit up into the sleeves so I thought I'd try fixing that, like folding down or cutting off the excess.  But then I decided it was going to be fine the way it was and it could actually look like that was how it was supposed to be!

I added some SU Soft Subtles buttons with glue dots and added some faux stitching with my SU white gel pen.  The stamped image on the front, to look like a pocket or decoration, is from the stamp set "Nursery Necessities", now in the new catalog.

And the back looks like this:

And there you have an easy gift bag!

Have you ever made a Waterfall card?  While they look very complicated, they are not that hard to make.  That's what I love about stamping….nothing is too hard even for a beginner!  It is nothing more than a folded strip and your three panels adhered to the strip.  All the reader has to do is pull the tab, and you look like an advanced papercrafter for creating such a design.  Here is my latest waterfall card using the stamp set "Zoofari".

The images are stamped with Stazon ink and then watercolored, some grass and sky added.  The designer paper is retired but any pattern can be substituted.

Contact me today if you'd like to learn how to make a waterfall card.

Ok, not your usual stamping post but I just have to brag!!  My daughter called this afternoon to tell me an article she wrote for Investopedia.com had turned up on the home page of Yahoo!  I don't know how long it will be there, but RIGHT NOW you can go to www.yahoo.comand it is one of the boxes under the Featured tab.  It says, "How to Maintain Your Budget & your Social Life".  When you click on that, it takes you to her article!  But if it is gone by the time you read this, this is a link to her article:  Amy's Article or just in case:  http://investopedia.com/articles/younginvestors/08/friends-budget.asp?partner=yahoobuzz&viewed=1

She writes personal finance articles on her blog, www.TwoPenniesEarned.com

and has also written articles, such as this one, for www.Investopedia.com.  They are usually practical, informative articles on how to save money on all kinds of topics, usually culled from personal experience.  She seems to suddenly be getting some notoriety so I just had to celebrate!  She also has a blog about old buildings in St. Louis, MO called Seeing St. Louis.

So for your reading pleasure, while we are awaiting the delivery of new Stampin' Up! catalogs SOON (I HOPE!!), go check out her articles and blogs and leave her a comment!  Thanks!!!!

Stampin’ Up! is just full of surprises lately!  Yesterday they announced to us demos that 24/7 online ordering for customers will be available sometime this fall.  If you choose, you will be able to place your order, through me, on your own computer, whenever you want!  This in no way replaces having your own demonstrator or hosting workshops or attending classes or stamp camps or anything of the sort.  It doesn’t even replace calling or emailing me and giving me your order as you always have!  It will just be an additional service for you.  If you are someone who likes to fool around on the computer or likes to do your own online shopping whenever it is convenient for you, even if you are in your pajamas, then you will like this new feature.  You will still receive Hostess Benefits if your order meets the Hostess criteria.  All the details will be forthcoming, but basically all you would do is go to my SU Demo website, www.karenfontinelle.stampinup.net and place your order.  But not yet!!

To read all about Online Shopping, CLICK HERE!

Feel free to comment or to email me with any questions.  However, don’t worry about all the details yet…..there’s still lots of time and we’ll all learn together!  I think it is an exciting development and will be a useful feature for a lot of customers!

A lot of stampers have been making this cute little box to hold stationery supplies….a few cards and envelopes, gift tags, small gift cards, address book, stamps, and pen!  The design of the fold-out box and lid is by Jackie Topa.  There are a few steps involved, but nothing too difficult and when you get done, you have a nice and useful gift.  I gave this one to a friend for her birthday.  It’s a great project for which to use your Designer Series paper and then make the cards to match, but you could also do lots of stamping for decoration….or both!  I did some stamping on the inside as you can see and used Berry Bliss DSP on page 169 for covering most areas. (Get it before it’s gone!)  So many ways to achieve different looks with this project!  You should be able to click on any of the photos and have them enlarge.

Yep, a little blurry! 

Stampin’ Up! has just previewed a new “Sock Monkey” stamp set which will be in the new Fall-Winter 2008 Idea Book & Catalog.  Only demonstrators have been allowed to order it, but the reaction has been fascinating!  Most seem to LOVE sock monkeys and are very excited that Stampin’ Up! is up with the current trend.  Some do not care for sock monkeys at all, placing them in the same category as scary clowns!  Those of us who are old enough to have antique sock monkeys probably didn’t even know they were the latest and greatest thing!  You will be able to order Sock Monkey beginning August 11.

As soon as I saw the Sock Monkey stamp set it took me right back to my childhood because I knew I had a sock monkey.  I’m pretty sure my brother did, too.  While I don’t have any particular memories of playing with it or it being a favorite thing, that sock monkey is indeed a strong childhood memory.  We called it a “Munga-Munga” and to this day that is what it “really” is!  Just one of those things that never got thrown out or given away or lost.  In fact, I was pretty sure it was in my closet somewhere.

I finally was compelled to actually go look for my old sock monkey the other day when other Stampin’ Up! demonstrators online on SUDSOL (if you are a SU demo you should subscribe!) were again discussing sock monkeys and the new stamp set.  Amazingly, there it was, sitting on top of a shelf way in the back of my closet!  If I can find my baby book, perhaps I can find out where I got it or who made it, if my mother wrote it down.  But it is quite old (unfortunately!!) and I knew I had to make a card and display it with my sock monkey!

Since I was trying to make the card match my real sock monkey I took a few liberties with coloring the eyes larger to match and putting the black line across the mouth.  I added the pink and green brads to look like the pink and green pom poms on my monkey.  I colored in the monkey with my aquapainter, just drawing cross-hatching lines with in on Very Vanilla cardstock to kind of get the multi-color look of the sock.  I used the new In Color, Pirouette Pink, for the card base and a piece of the new Bella Rose Designer Series Paper for the layer.  You can see the other beautiful patterns of the Bella Rose paper where the monkey is sitting!  And the saying on the card is from the stamp set “One of A Kind” in the current catalog, which was already sitting on the table and just jumped out at me as I tried to finish up this card.  I decided to use a piece of my Antique Brass Hodgepodge Hardware on the card as well (we’ve got to USE our stuff, not just hoard it!…as painful as it may be!  But see, it looks better on the card than sitting in the box not being used!)

Here is the card alone:

Leave a comment on my blog if you have a sock monkey or can’t wait to stamp some!

 We are fortunate to have a new little great-niece in our family so I wanted to make a special gift.  If the new grandmother or great-grandmother are looking at this, I guess you will have to hide your eyes!  I simply used the Special Delivery Girl Simply Scrappin’ Kit to make the 6×6 pages for this linen album.  It really only took a few hours, not counting the time I spent running back to the computer to look online for ideas for pages, although I mostly relied on myself.  The kit makes it really easy once you get the creativity going.  There are even ideas in the kit.

The album itself always seems to present a little bit of a decorative problem for most people, but I have found it is easiest to tie some ribbon around the front cover, maybe make a nice bow or tag.  You can also use rub ons and you can also stamp on the album….if you dare!  Apparently it really does work, I just haven’t “dared” to yet!  I’m not sure a lot of 3-D embellishments are good on the front cover once the album ends up on a shelf, but on this one I did use the Silver Hodgepodge with a piece of the designer paper in the kit and stamped the baby’s initial on the paper.

So here are some of the pages:

This was very easy and fun to do.  I only stamped on a tag to give it a little interest.  I used a couple retired SU items, like the wide organdy ribbon and the heart eyelets.  The die cuts are easy to adhere and can be removed repeatedly and adhered again.  Some of the embellishments on the pages I lifted up with SU Dimensionals so that photos can be easily inserted on the page….or the die cuts can be removed and then replaced.  This is an easy way to make a scrapbook and hopefully the new parents will enjoy it!

Recently I needed a wedding gift and remembered something that a customer of mine had asked me to make for a dear friend of hers as a first anniversary gift….a box of cards for all occasions!   I just made up an assortment of all different cards….birthday, thank you, baby, Christmas, holidays, etc….and then the challenge was to find the perfect box.  You might think a photo box would work but I think it barely has any room above the cards.  I found this Martha Stewart CD box in kind of a linen-like light blue covering.  To decorate the box I used Stampin’ Up! rub ons….probably got carried away with the rub ons actually, but that’s how they are!  Bet you can’t use just one!  The rub ons were very easy to apply to the box.  I used the wooden stick that comes with the package but I also tried my Stampin’ Up! Empressor (R) Stylus on page 187 of the catalog, which worked well and rubbed a little “quieter” on the fabric.  I also added a nice address book with the cards, which, if I had planned ahead a little better I could maybe have made myself!  I hope the new bride will find the cards convenient to send out because as much as we love email and text-messaging, we all know that a real card in the mailbox is a treat!

Although I purchased a large gift bag, I decided to put the actual wedding card I was giving the couple in a Stampin’ Up! clear envelope and attach it to the front of the bag as a decoration.  I just hope they realized it was the card and opened it!

No need to be totally creative on your own…..this card was copied from one sample in the Spring~Summer Collection 2008 on page 144 using the Pretties Kit (page 188) for an embellishment, the beautiful Fairy Tale ribbon, and the fabulous stamp set Priceless on page 108.

It’s time to get back to my blog!  We have been home now from vacation for over a week, but it takes awhile to get caught up with everything and back to normal.  Add to that another child getting ready to leave the nest and seek his fortune at his exciting new job in Santa Clara, California…..we have piles of stuff everywhere that he moved home from college plus, of course, he is sorting through his things to see what to take, what to ship to his new location….once he finds a place to live!  It’s a mixed bag of emotions for all of us, that is for sure!  For any of you young mommies who might be reading this, I know you can’t imagine this day will ever come for your little ones, and I know those “old ladies” say to you all the time “They grow up so fast.”  But I can tell you now that they were right!  I feel sure that my husband and I did our jobs as parents pretty well if our children are able to go off independently and confidently into the next stage of their lives.  But it does tug at a mother’s heartstrings!

Back to our trip…..since no post-graduation roadtrip with friends got off the ground, we were pleased that we were able to take a family vacation instead.  Yellowstone National Park is an amazing place, as all the national parks are.  We normally don’t travel this early in the summer so were quite surprised to see so much snow still in the mountains.  Luckily the roads were all perfectly clear, but in plenty of places there was a lot of snow.  It all just added to the scenery and made the trip even more interesting for us. 

I had heard of Old Faithful Geyser, of course, but I had no idea about the extent of the geysers and other “thermal features” in the park. As many as we saw, we continued to find them fascinating.  This is Castle Geyser which we saw erupting.

Emerald Pool

The scenery was gorgeous…in some spots snow-capped mountains, beautiful blue lake, pine trees.  But people go to Yellowstone as much to see wildlife as anything and we saw our share….lots of bison, moose, even a couple bears.  Everyone just stops on the road and hops out of their cars to get photos. 

The waterfalls were beautiful with the spring melting of the snow. Usually by the time we are on vacation the waterfalls are reduced to a trickle.  Some hikes and sites were still closed because of snow….which was amazing since we had left behind 95 degree temperatures in Houston!

  We were lucky enough to get four nights of lodging (at three different lodges) inside the park (normally you have to book a year in advance) but on my second phone call I guess I got lucky and caught some cancellations so never give up if you are trying to find accomodations!  We really enjoyed that benefit, less driving in and out of the park, and felt a part of history getting to stay at Old Faithful Inn the last night with a room overlooking Old Faithful Geyer.  The next day we took an interesting tour of the Inn and saw one of the historic original rooms, with bathroom down the hall!  

We also visited Jackson Hole, WY at the beginning and end of our trip, which was a lovely place…nice hotels, shopping, and restaurants.  From that area you must drive through Grand Teton National Park to get to Yellowstone.  The Tetons have extraordinary scenery and beauty.  We took a boat ride across beautiful Jenny Lake and then a hike to a fantastic waterfall.

All this is to say, don’t these photos just make you want to scrapbook?!  I think I might start out easy with some 6×6 pages which I can expand to 12×12 if I want to.  And with all the photos I took on our trip, I’ll probably need to do 12×12.

If you need some scrapbooking ideas for your vacation photos, please contact me!  As a Stampin’ Up! demonstrator,  I’m sure I can help you get your scrapbook pages started faster than I will do my own!  But we’ll see!  Here are just a couple stamp sets on pages 100-101 of the Stampin’ Up! catalog that could really help you get started with your national park vacation pages.

Click on any of the above photos and hopefully they will open larger.

It’s really hot here in Houston, TX but this popsicle card might help you cool off!

I saw this card on Rebecca Grohall’s site and thought it was so cute I had to immediately make it!  I punched out the designer paper with the Large Tag Punch, the bite out with the Scallop Circle Punch and the sticks with the Word Window Punch.  I added the little white shading with my SU gel pen.  The Silver Hodpodge Hardware is in the Occasions Mini, which is still good through June.  “Giggle” is from Warm Words.  Have fun making this card!!

Here are the cards we made at my stamp camp on Sunday.  I’ve been so busy with college graduation, moving boys home, and planning a family vacation.  It was fun and nice to take a break and stamp!  Maybe you can join us next time!

The folded shirt card is from the design of Cambria Turnbow and the water bottle drink tag is from Nancy Riley.  Can’t remember right now where I first saw the red purse card but it is made with the Round Tab Punch and the Oval punches.  Lots of people have been making the popsicles recently with our Tart & Tangy stamp set.  You could also do “scratch and sniff” with the fruit using a flavor and embossing powder.  I might have designed the Carousel Note card myself, but I don’t really remember!  All supplies are from Stampin’ Up! of course!  Email me or add a comment if you need more information.

It may not really be a masterpiece but I worked on it all day…and started it the night before!  Now I shouldn’t admit to my customers that it took me so long to make one card, but since this is for my son’s college graduation it had to be special.  I was thinking of making a hanging tag with “UT” on it from the ribbon, but just as I got it punched out I got the brilliant idea (I thought!) to put the UT in the center of the “graduate medallion”, rather than the G.  That seemed to do it for me as far as design, so then I got the idea to emboss the UT to make it stand out.  First I tried clear on Really Rust letters.  OK, but not great.  Then I tried the Copper Embossing Powder and felt like it was a pretty close match to the color I wanted.  The striped paper on the bottom of the card is from a scrapbooking pack I bought at the UT bookstore on a previous trip.  The stamp set is “Great Grads”.  If you don’t already own this set you might want to get it so you can make a bunch of graduation cards before school is out!

And here is the inside of the card.  The quote is from the stamp set “Live Your Dream” from the Occasions Mini, page 9.  I bought that stamp set just to get this quote for this card.  The star is a stamp from “In the Stars” also from the Occasions Mini, page 5.