Mini Composition Notebooks

Don't miss out on my Monthly Special! Details are below.

I found these cute, mini composition notebooks and knew they would make the perfect Thank You gifts for my customers. They are a great size to keep in your purse for jotting down notes. I used the Awesomely Artistic stamp set for these. I love the color combination: Pink Pirouette, Crumb Cake, Chocolate Chip and Very Vanilla. 

It's really hard to photograph, but I used the new Wink of Stella Clear pen to highlight the dragonfly and heart. It's so pretty, and the pen is super easy to use. Love the shimmer it gives the project. 

I covered the spine with some retired cotton ribbon so it would be flexible. I adhered it with Tear & Tape on the edges. You could use a piece of fabric as well if you don't have ribbon wide enough.

I'm sending these out as Thank You gifts for those who ordered from me recently. I hope they enjoy them.

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

I am starting a new Monthly Special as my way of saying "Thank you" for ordering through me. I will be adding a little extra goodie to the Thank You Gift Pack I send out to my customers who have placed an order that month. I already send out a Thank You card and little hand-made goodie of some sort, along with divvying up the hostess credit to those who use my monthly hostess code, but this will be an additional item from our catalog and it will change each month. For the month of January 2016, anyone who places an order of $65 or more will receive a pair of Paper Snips.

IMPORTANT: If you select NO CONTACT when you place your order, I cannot, by law send anything to you, so if you'd like your free gift, please make sure that is deselected. I only use the contact information to send out your free stuff. 

Please do NOT add this item to your order, unless you want a duplicate, as this will be sent directly from me, not the company. This is not a competition, there is no single winner, everyone who qualifies gets the free gift. I will send it to you along with your Thank You Gift Pack at the end of the month. 

 Hope you get a chance to do some crafting this week.

till next time...

God's love and blessings!

Note: please use the hostess code (you can find it in the upper right corner) when placing an order to get more free product! (hostess code is shown above). If your order is over $150 do not use the code as you are the hostess and get the rewards. 

Sale-A-Bration and a Monthly Special

Happy New Year!! I am so excited! So many fun, crafty things going on right now.

First off, of course:

Woo hoo! It's that time of year again. For every $50 you spend you get a free item. Free stuff! Who doesn't like free stuff? I definitely do, and there are some great products to choose from too. You can see them all here. 

Second, we have a new Occasions catalog and it is AMAZING!! 

There are so many new products and project ideas, but I have to say that the It's My Party and Have a Cuppa are my absolute favorites. I can't wait till my order comes in tomorrow so I can play. You can check out the catalog here, or, if you'd like a hard copy, leave me a comment and I'll get one to you as soon as possible. 

Third, I am starting a new Monthly Special as my way of saying "Thank you" for ordering through me. I will be adding a little extra goodie to the Thank You Gift Pack I send out to my customers who have placed an order that month. I already send out a Thank You card and little hand-made goodie of some sort, along with divvying up the hostess credit to those who use my monthly hostess code, but this will be an additional item from our catalog and it will change each month. For the month of January 2016, anyone who places an order of $65 or more will receive a pair of Paper Snips.

IMPORTANT: If you select NO CONTACT when you place your order, I cannot, by law send anything to you, so if you'd like your free gift, please make sure that is deselected. I only use the contact information to send out your free stuff. 

Please do NOT add this item to your order, unless you want a duplicate, as this will be sent directly from me, not the company. This is not a competition, there is no single winner, everyone who qualifies gets the free gift. I will send it to you along with your Thank You Gift Pack at the end of the month. 

Whew, that's a lot of opportunities to get some great stuff, and a lot of it for free. Hope you get a chance to do some crafting this week and I hope to be back later with a project or two to share. 

till next time...

God's love and blessings!

Note: please use the hostess code when placing an order to get more free product! (hostess code is shown above). If your order is over $150 do not use the code as you are the hostess and get the rewards. 

2015 Wrap-up

I had such an amazingly stress-free Christmas season this year and it was wonderful!! Although I didn't follow through on my 12 Months of Christmas challenge as much as I would have liked, what I did accomplish sure made life easier. My cards were made, my menu was planned, and I had several gifts already ready to go. I even had enough time to make projects to sell at a Craft Fair. I think I'm also getting better at not being a perfectionist and to simply let things go if it was too much. For instance, I didn't get any photos in our annual Christmas letter this year. I didn't plan ahead for that, and by the time I did get some nice shots, my printer was out of ink. Since we live 40 minutes from the nearest store to buy ink, and it was already the Sunday before Christmas, it just didn't happen. I could have stressed over it, (and in the past, I would have), but I didn't. Having most of my Christmas to-do list planned ahead was super nice when we found out at the that my mom was coming to stay with us--the next day! All that to say that I plan on doing my 12 months of Christmas challenge again this year. Hopefully, I'll do even better at posting here so you can play along with me.

Speaking of photos, as I was clearing out my phone and camera and organizing the photos, I thought it would be fun to share some of my favorite projects from this last year.

I started the year out with this desk calendar. It was one of the projects for my January TNT class. You can't tell from the photo, but the back side holds a notepad and pen. I did find that by the end of the year, the cardstock was starting to bend a little, so I think the next time I do this project I will reinforce the "tent" with some chipboard.

This little bunny was definitely one of my absolute favorite projects. Aack! So cute!

Who doesn't love a cute bunny butt?!

I am loving the Perpetual Calendar. I gave several of these away as gifts because they are just awesome, and for those of you interested, I am doing a class for this project on January 18. You will only need to have the kit and some adhesive, as I will provide the stamp set and ink. Check out my Events page for details and to RSVP. 

These butterflies were one of the gifts I gave to those attending my New Catalog Open House in the summer.

Paper crafting is not my only hobby. I also love to sew, and while I don't have a lot of time for it, I had to make time for these two projects. I desperately needed a camera strap that would not rub my neck, so I decided to make a pretty one while I was at it. I have since sold several of these to friends and family and am thinking about opening an Etsy shop.

I love to use my clothesline in the summer, but my cheapo clothespin bag fell apart on me this year. I wanted one that stayed open at the top to make it easier to grab the pins, and since I couldn't find a pattern I liked, I made one up. It works great!

And, last-but-not-least, this little cutie. This was one of the projects we did at my Christmas Open House. I'm going to have to use him on a card next year.

I actually have several other Christmas ideas to share from the Craft Fair that I did, but I think I will share them on another post. I hope you enjoy the last couple of days of 2015 and set some awesome goals for 2016.

Till next time...

God's love and blessings!

15% Off Stamp Sets!

Wow! Stampin' Up! is having a sale on stamp sets! I've never seen them do this before. Starting tomorrow, October 19, 2015 all stamp sets will be 15% off! This would be a great time to stock up on those sets on your wish list. Unfortunately, the sale only goes through Friday, October 23, 2015.

In addition to the sale, Stampin' Up! is offering an extra 3% in hostess credit to any orders over $300 until November 9th. That gives you 15% instead of 12%.

To make things even sweeter, I'm going to be sending out some special thank you gifts to anyone who places an order with me this month. (Note: when you order, you have to check the box that allows me to contact you. If you don't, legally, I cannot send you the gift or extra goodies.) If you do, please use the hostess code H6NYUAGR. Your order will be mailed to you immediately, but I will keep the order open till the end of the month. If it reaches $150, I will use the hostess credit to get some extra goodies and send them out to all who contributed to that order, along with the special thank you gift. If your own personal order is over $150, do NOT use the hostess code. You get your own hostess credit to use any way you'd like. :o)

I will be back later to share some projects I've been working on, but I just had to drop in here super quick to share this with you.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

12 Months of Christmas Catch-Up

I'm back! Did you miss me? I missed you. I missed having time to sit and write on the blog. There just aren't enough hours in a day are there?

I've been enjoying a busy summer with my handsome hubby. He is now a teacher, and this was his first summer vacation since he was in high school. We had a lot of fun! We were pretty busy getting several items checked off our "honey-do" list and we managed to sneak a couple of mini vacations in there as well. If you're interested in hearing more about it you can check out our family blog.

School has now started back up and I am trying to revamp our schedule here at home so that I can get some time at the computer. We'll see how well it goes.

Anyway, back to the 12 Months of Christmas Challenge, how are you doing with it? Me? Ok, I guess. My goals for April-September were to make 10 cards each month and start making gifts. While I didn't get the cards done, or make the gifts, I did come up with several ideas for gifts for loved ones and have gathered supplies for some of them. I will be back later next week with details of some of those gift ideas.

How's your Christmas folder coming along? Mine was at a stand still for several weeks while my computer was acting up, but I'm hoping this next week to finish getting the Menu section finished up by adding one recipe to it each day. I've also been adding links to gift ideas I've found on the web. My friend mentioned that it might be a good idea to go through the address book this month. I know we've had several of our friend's children get married this last year (am I really that old?!?) and I need to get their new addresses and check in with a few of my military friends who are, or have, moved.

So, it looks like I've got some catch-up work to do now so that I'm not super swamped come the end of November. Here's what I plan to do this month:

1. Make 16 cards.
2. Finish the Menu section in my Christmas folder.
3. Organize my Gift section and finish filling out what I'd like to make/buy for friends and family this year.
4. Make at least 4 gifts (that's 1/week) this month. 
5. Check address list.

I think that does is for me. My schedule is busy enough, I don't want to add too much to the list. How about you? What are your plans to help make the holidays a little less stressful? 

Since I think blog posts are pretty boring without a little eye candy, here's a card I made back in June. It's the only card I've made lately that I have a photo of. Looks like I need to spend some time with my camera and get some pictures taken. 

I used the Awesomely Artistic stamp set to make this card, and I will say that I had a really hard time with it. I just couldn't figure out what to do with the fern and flower stamps at first. I ended up masking off most of the vanilla cardstock and stamping several of the images. The card on the right I did a bit of a watercolor wash first and then stamped. The one of the left was just stamped. To get the lighter blue color on the flowers, I stamped off once on a scrap piece of paper, then onto the cardstock. I stamped the linen and "friend" images after I removed the mask. The dragonfly was just stamped and then fussy-cut and popped up on dimensionals. Which one do you like better, the watercolored one or the plain? 

I think that does it for me. Time to get ready for bed here. I hope to be back in a day or so with my updated Stampin' Up! class schedule for you and a couple of projects. 

Till next time...

God's love and blessings!

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Hello Again and Open House Take-n-Make Projects

Wow, I guess it's been a while hasn't it? Sorry about that. Lots of fun stuff going on here, and some not-so-fun stuff. A couple of weeks ago we had a last-minute visit from my awesome sis, her hubby and their 4 foster littles. We had a ton of fun the week they were here. We started off their visit with my New Catalog Open House which my sis helped me prep for--she really needs to move closer to me. At the Open House, I told the ladies I would post pics of their Make-n-Take so they would be able to put them together later if they couldn't remember what they looked like. Oops, that was 2 weeks ago, and here I am just now getting them posted. In my defense, I was uber busy with the family that week (MOA, zoo, river boat cruise, hiking, etc.) and finishing up cakes I had already promised to do, and then, about half way through the visit, I started feeling not-so-great. Turns out I had another visitor that week, only this one was tiny and had lots of legs. While I never got to meet the little guy, he left behind some Lyme disease for me to deal with. Not fun. I was out of commission the last day of my sis's visit and most of last week. Thankfully, the antibiotics seem to be doing a good job, and I am feeling back to "normal", whatever that is. :o)

So, without further ado (or excuses), here are the 2 Make-n-Take projects from my Open House:

The first one highlights the new Ronald McDonald House set. I LOVE this set. It is so cute, and so versatile, and the matching punch made this card super easy to do.

The second one is a bookmark highlighting the new In Colors for this year. Love the Petite Petals punch, and, of course, love me some bling! Both of these projects also use our new Triple Banner Punch.

I am in the middle of figuring out a new schedule for my upcoming classes, so I will be back later with that along with a 12 months of Christmas update for you.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Saying Good By is So Hard To Do.

Aack! I can't believe it's already the end of May. I must have blinked or something, cause last time I checked, it was still April!! I am super excited though. Next week is June which means Stampin' Up!'s new catalog goes live. I got a sneak peek guys, and it's AWESOME!! So many beautiful things in there. I will be working the next couple of days to plan my Open House and some upcoming classes featuring the new goodies. Also planning some tutorial videos for here. I taped several videos, but weren't able to get them uploaded, and now the products I used are retiring. Boo. So, that just means I will re-tape, using new stuff. :o)

Speaking of retiring stuff, you better get them while the gettin's good. Only a couple of days before they are GONE! There's always a couple of retiring sets that I am so sad to see go, but then I know they need to make room for new goodies. One of those sets is the Indescribable Gift set from the Occasions Catalog.

Love this set. The flowers are so pretty. Here I pretty much CASE'd the sample on page 34 of the catalog. Why mess with a good thing, right?

Another set, that I'm really going to miss is Painted Petals. This set is SO versatile! It has quite a few different flowers that can be used in lots of different ways.

Here you can see how I used them to make thank you cards for everyone who placed an order with me a couple of months ago. 

And here I just used the sentiments with some pattern paper and punches to make a set of note cards for a fund raiser. Like I said, super versatile set, and I'm very sad to see it going. If you'd like to get your hands on one of these, or any of the other beautiful sets that are retiring, be sure to place your order quick. Also, please use the hostess code above to help support Crafted In His Image, unless your order is over $150--then YOU get the hostess goodies. 

So, on another note, how are you doing on our 12 Months of Christmas Challenge? Me, not so good. I've only got 2 months of my cards made, and I still need to better organize the menu section of my notebook. We were pretty busy in March with the kitchen remodel. April and, especially May, were busy with cakes in that newly remodeled kitchen.  I guess it's a good thing graduations are over and there's still a few months till Christmas. :o) I will be back later with a little update and challenge for you (and me!). 

Till next time...

God's love and blessings!

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog