RobinsCraftRoom.com

Robin Messenheimer, Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator

Punches

It’s a Busy Time in the Stampin’ Up! Year!

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Aloha, all!

     If you're wondering where I've been, I've been in my Craft Room getting ready for the new Stampin' Up! Catalog – which is just a week away from being published! Yay!!!

     So two things have been going on, with many steps involved in each:

  • First, I have been clearing retiring Stampin' Up! products out of my shelves, drawers, closets and other places where I store my supplies. Here's evidence of one part of that process:

     This is all that's left of my stash of 12" x 12" Designer Series Papers from the Stampin' Up! 2017 Occasions Catalog. Yes, they're all cut up into pieces that will fit on the front of an A2 sized greeting card. Those cards are 5-1/2" x 4-1/4" when folded, and these pieces of paper are 5-1/4" x 4", which leaves a nice margin of the card base around the paper. That size is also fairly easy to cut and I end up getting 6 card front pieces from each full sheet. Of course, much of what I had left weren't whole sheets of paper, but they were still easy to cut.

     Today I finished cutting all the left over papers from the Stampin' Up! 2016-2017 Annual Catalog, and organizing all my 6" square "stack" papers into piles. I have a total of 4-1/2 pounds of paper cut up and bagged for my sale of retiring products (which will be in late summer/early fall).

     Everything else, including my retiring stamp sets (I'm keeping three, two of which I'll be using in a scrapbooking project next month), ribbons and other embellishments, are already packed away in boxes to be stored until I get them ready to be sold.

  • The other part of this project is studying the NEW Stampin' Up! catalog to determine what I should be buying to demonstrate here and in person over the next year. I think my list is pretty well complete.

     These two projects go hand in hand, of course. My Craft Room is cleaned up and ready for the new product shipment! It may not look like this by Wednesday as I do plan to do a bit of crafting with products I've been able to pre-order as Stampin' Up! demonstrators can do. I'm really itching to get those other new products, though!

     In case you're wondering about all those punches in the storage units – those are products that I hardly ever get rid of. I've had to really retire some as I've run out of room. But these babies are really hard to find and, even if I only need one once or twice a year, it's worth it for me to keep them, and they don't take up much space. And, yes, I'm rationalizing!

 

Love Birds for the Divas!

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Aloha, all!

     It's Wednesday again, and time for yet another color challenge for the members of the Diva Coffee Break Design Team – and I would be one of those!  You know how much I "love" the color challenges.  But this week, well, I really did like the color scheme!  The challenge colors are Melon Mambo (luscious new pink in the Stampin' Up! collection); Old Olive (a really old favorite of mine); and Peach Parfait (talk about luscious – I can just taste that smooth dessert!). 

     My first thought was of a bold bright card.  But once I got started, I found that my card really has muted colors.  Go figure!

Love Birds Card

     The reason that the colors seem muted is because that's the way they showed up in the Patterns Papers for all three colors.  The Old Olive and Melon Mambo Patterns Papers are part of the basic products offered in the Stampin' Up! 2010-2011 Idea Book and Catalog.  The patterns paper for Peach Parfait is a bit different and is offered as one of the colors in a Level 1 Hostess Set in the catalog.  But all of the papers seem to go so well with the idea for this card!

     Two of the products that I used to make this card are new in the 2011 Occasions Mini Catalog:  The "Love" stamp is from the new stamp set, Valentine Defined.  And the Framed Tulip Border is a new Sizzix Embossing Folder that is exclusive to Stampin' Up!  That means that you can only buy this beautiful embossing folder from Stampin' Up!

     And boy does this card use the punches!  The main punch, of course, is the Two-Step Extra Large Bird Punch.  I punched all three colors of the patterns papers and then mixed and matched the Melon and Peach colors on the birds, and punched two branches with the Olive.  For the heart, I used the Heart to Heart Punch, and punched both the Melon and Peach again.  I laid one on top of the other and cut through the middle.  This way if the cut was a bit crooked, the two sides would still fit together perfectly.  For the background for the "Love" greeting, I used the Curly Label Extra Large Punch, and then punched "love" with the 1-3/8" x 5/8" Oval Punch.  To get the variations in the colors on the stamp, I used my Stampin' Write Markers to color the individual letters on the stamp and then stamped the whole design onto Whisper White card stock.  Finally, the card front was tied together (literally!) with some Old Olive 1/8" Taffeta Ribbon, and layered on some Melon Mambo and Old Olive Patterns Paper before adhering all the layers to a card of Whisper White. 

     Fun card to make!  I hope you'll stop on over at the Diva Coffee Break Designs website this week to see what the other Divas have done with this color combination.  And you're more than welcome to join in the fun!

     Whether you join the Divas or just do some of your own crafting at home, have a great time with it!

Happy Birthday, Jadon!

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Aloha, Jadon!  And a very happy birthday–the first I’ve been able to celebrate with you!

For the rest of you, my son was married this summer to a wonderful woman who has a 6-year old (well, now 7-yeasr old) son, Jadon.  I’m off visiting them in the Pacific Northwest as I write this, and Saturday is Jadon’s Birthday Party.  When I heard that dinosaurs were his current main interest, I was so sorry that I never bought the stamp set, Prehistoric Pals.  Yes, I loved those palm trees, but never dreamed I’d need dinosaurs again!

So I started looking around for ideas and found a punch art Dino on the blog of fellow Stampin’ Up! Demonstrator, Ros Davidson from Australia.  Don’t you just love how small the Internet has made this world?!  And what a creative gal she is!  This card is based on the punches that it looked like she used in her own creation.  So now I have a real original card for Jadon!

The body oval is punched with the Sizzix Ovals die, and the rest of the body parts are punched with Stampin’ Up! punches. The balloons and party hat are from the stamp sets Sock Monkey and Sock Monkey Accessories.  The papers for the balloons are scrap pieces of Designer Series Papers–Jackpot, Cottage Wall, and The Write Stuff Specialty papers.

In all due respect to Ros’ creation, my dinosaur has a bit more of an overbit than hers did.  But too late for me to correct it now

Back in town next week!  Keep watching for Stampin’ Up!’s weekly specials–a new one will be posted on Monday.

The Final Piece of the 90th Birthday Card

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Aloha, all!

When I made the card for Marian’s 90th Birthday, I wanted it to be richly colorful.  So I definitely did NOT want to have the inside of the card be plain white or to add another layer of card stock.  After all, with the pop up, the card was plenty thick as it was.  But writing a note on a color such as Rich Razzleberry would have been a challenge (lots of them in the card, huh?!).  I’ve never been really successful with a lot of writing with a gel pen.

So I decided to use my computer to write a greeting for Marian, and to make two medallions on either side of the cake.  The circle shapes are a nice complement to the circular shape of the cake, too. 

Both medallions are constructed the same.  The one on the left is featured here, and has the words, "Happy 90th Birthday, Marian" in a circle (Microsoft Office has a WordArt feature that makes this nice, circular text).  I cut the text (printed on Whisper White card stock), the Rich Razzleberry card stock mat, and the Razzleberry Lemonade DSP mat using the Circle Scissors Plus.  The Circle Scissors Plus does such a nice job of making a mat just every so slightly larger than the layer above.  I love it!  I cut some more Rich Razzleberry card stock using the Scallop Circle Punch, and topped it off with a piece of the Razzleberry Lemonade DSP punched with the Boho Blossoms Punch.  I was careful in the placement of the Boho Blossoms Punch so that I could have a nice, medallion-type design in the center of the cut piece.

The medallion on the right side of the card says, "From Robin & Harry." 

Now back to work getting ready for my trip to Salt Lake City!  Stampin’ Up! convention here I come!  I leave Monday night and arrive on Tuesday morning.  This is the same flight I took last year, and it turned out not to be too bad.  I slept well on the plane and was ready for convention check in.  I did somewhat collapse that evening, though.  So this year I’m going a day early, so should have a lot more energy on check in day Wednesday!

 

A “No Layer” Challenge

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Most cards that are made using Stampin’ Up! products include multiple layers of papers and/or card stock, artfully arranged with stamped images and embellishments to create a true work of art!  (Hey, I need to start doing more of that!!)

For one swap to take place at this year’s Stampin’ Up! convention, we were challenged to make a card with NO LAYERS!  But it was still supposed to be a work of art!  Well, we could use one embellishment, so that helped. 

No Layer CardThis is the card I made for the swap. I used Very Vanilla card stock for the basic card, and stamped using Pumpkin Pie and Tempting Turquoise inks.  The stamp set that includes the fish, the boat and "Life’s A Breeze" is called, appropriately, "Life’s A Breeze"!  The turquoise fishies were stamped using the wheel, "Something Fishy." 

The tricky part was using a punch to make "portholes" in the front of the card through which you can see the 3 goldfish swimming happily among the turquoise fishies.  I’ve detailed how I made the portholes in one of my technique pages, "Yes, I Do Windows." 

I added some Pumpkin Pie and Tempting Turquoise 1/4" Grosgrain Ribbon, and, Voila!  I met the challenge. 

You can make this card–and lots of other fun items–using the Life’s A Breeze Stamp Set.  It will be on the dormant list for the coming catalog, which means it will still be available, at least until January 2009.  Call or e-mail me if you’d like to order any of these materials–or, better still, if you’d like me to host a class or workshop for you and your friends!  My phone number and e-mail address are in the banner at the top of the page.