World Card Making Day

Yesterday was World Card Making Day. How did you celebrate?

I had a party with some of my friends!! My friend, Angela, and I threw a party for our customers and we had loads of fun seeing everyone! We had four make and takes, a card contest, and lots of fun things for people to play with.

Here are two of the gals working on their card contest cards. We gave each person a white card front. They had pieces of Lap of Luxury paper (on sale right now for only $3.50 for 36 8x8 sheets!), the Gerbera Daisy stamp, a black ink pad, some black and white ribbon, brads, buttons, and coloring tools available to create their own card design. The cards that they made were all unique and amazing! So good that we ended up awarding THREE prizes! A crowd favorite and two of our favorites.

Here is one of the make and takes. This card was inspired by one that my friend Trudy had made for a Christmas card challenge. I love the simplicity of it! And it uses up the scraps of one of my favorite papers -- Merry Wishes. This card is so easy that I may do it for one of my Christmas card designs -- last year I made 150 cards for Christmas and my list has grown this year. So it has to be simple!! And I'd better start now!

Besides the Merry Wishes paper, this card used our fun May Your Merry stamp set.

Here is another make and take. This fall card is also super simple! We used the pumpkin from Autumn Smiles. It was stamped with Versamark and then colored over with chalk. The green paper was put through a crimper and then a brown ribbon was tied around it. The Happy Harvest saying is from one of my favorite saying sets -- Trendy Greetings. Here are some of the ladies working on their harvest card!

After the ladies finished up their stamping, some of them took advantage of our Hostess Split promotion! I wish that I had taken a picture of this sign when it was hanging up so you could see it better. Angela did an awesome job making it! She even added wire as the stem on the cherry! If you haven't heard about the Hostess Split, you can get yours only during October. Grab a friend and when you each order $50, you get to enjoy all of our yummy hostess rewards.

Celebrate October!

Wow! The Angel Company is offering so many promotions in October! The biggest and best one is Celebration -- DOUBLE hostess rewards and double gift with purchase stamps. I still have a few dates left on my calendar. Contact me today to pick yours. If you can't host a FUNShop in October, try one of my hostess splits. You and a friend both order $50 and you each get 3 Gift With Purchase stamps, a Level A hostess set, and a 1/2 price item. Interested in getting your wings? Start flying in October and you will receive an additional $65 of free stamps with your starter kit. Click on the link to my stamping website for more details.

The second biggest promotion is Crazy for Color. I love the Kaleidascope papers and if you like bright fun colors you will too! This is your chance to get all three of the Kaleidascope collections along with an awesome scrapper's saying set for only $34.95. The paper alone is $33.85 so you are getting this $10.95 stamp set for only $1.10!! If you can't see the stamp set below, please click here to see it.

Card Box

Wow, I've missed a whole week of blogging! That short week last week really threw me. Today I am posting the directions for a project that we made at my Christmas in July class. The sample is pretty basic because this project was one of 14 that we completed in the 3 hour class! But you could dress this box up alot and in fact, as soon as I dig out my stamp room, I have plans to make a dressier one as a gift for a friend and I will share that with you.

Here's the basic box:

Start with a piece of 11 1/2 x 12 cardstock (bottom) and a piece that is 7 x 5 (lid). Here I used green for the bottom and Merry Wishes for the lid.

Score the 11 1/2 x 12 piece at 2 1/2" from each edge on the 12" side and 4 1/2" from the edges on the 11 1/2" side.

With the 7x5 piece portrait style, score the paper at 1" from one edge and 1 1/2" from the other side.

Looking at your box bottom, you will see two small squares formed by the score lines. Cut on the score lines that form the sides of the squares to make tabs.

Fold the box bottom on all score lines and adhere the side flaps together with strong adhesive.

Fold the box lid on the two score lines. Place wonder tape on the 1" flap and press that onto the back of the box. Use a corner rounder on the corners of the lid. Set an eyelet in the center of the lid's front flap. Run two pieces of ribbon through the eyelet and tie in a knot behind the eyelet to secure. Wrap the ribbon around the box and tie in a bow to secure.

This box will hold at least 12 A2 sized cards and envelopes.

Ten Things I Love About You Mini Album

This adorable mini album is made using one of our Candy Tins. The tin comes blank with a blank white accordian fold out. The accordian fold out is just the right number pages to do a Ten Things I Love About You album.

Here's how to make this album:

1. Start with one of our candy tins. Use 3/8" wonder tape to wrap a 3/8"x 12" strip of patterned paper around the bottom of the tin.

2. Use Yes Glue or another strong adhesive to adhere a 2 3/8" x 3 3/4" piece of patterned paper to the outside of the lid. Let dry and use a sanding block or emery board to sand off the corners and edges of the paper flush with the edges of the tin's lid.

3. Use a corner rounder to round the corners of a piece of 2 1/4" x 3 1/2" patterned paper and glue to the inside of the lid.

4. Use 1/4" wonder tape to adhere ribbon around the edge of the tin's lid.

5. Embellish the accordian fold out and the lid of the tin. For my sample, I first sponged Chartreuse and Toile Pink palette inks on alternating pages of the fold out. Then I used alot of the tabs and tags from the Mimi collection along with Mimi ribbon and hardware to embellish the pages. The pictures are cropped to 1 7/8" x 2". I used the stamp set, About A Girl, with Burnt Umber Ink to stamp my sayings. The flower on the first page is a Bitty Blossom with a snap from the Mimi collection set in the center.

6. When you are done embellishing the pages of the album, use more wonder tape to adhere the last page to the bottom of the tin so that it will be easy to fold the album in and out of the tin.

As a part of our Remember September promotion you can get the Mimi collection, including the hardware, ribbons, and coordinating cardstock and a special limited edition stamp set for only $24.95. If you email me with your order, you can also get any saying or alphabet sets, including the About A Girl stamp set, for 10% off.

What if you have a boy instead of a girl? We also have a stamp set called About A Boy and you could use our other paper collection, Lilly Anna, that is a part of the Remember September promotion! With the name Lilly Anna, you may not think to use this paper for a boy, but the bright blue and chartreuse green in the collection work wonderfully for boy themed pages.

Taking It Another Step

As promised yesterday, here is how you can take the little card that we used for the Creating Keepsakes make and take one step further and turn it into a scrapbook page element. For this sample, I used the Hemingway paper. Before making all of these samples, I had thought that Amelia was my favorite of our new paper collections. But now after having worked so much with Mimi and Hemingway, I'm not so sure.

Anyway, back to the sample. I picked this picture because the shirt that I'm wearing in the picture is almost an exact match to the turquoise blue of this cardstock that comes in the Hemingway cardstock collection and because I am beyond grateful for this moment and these kids.

This page is 8x8 and I only had to crop my picture slightly to take out the messy background. I took this picture myself which is why it's such a close up on our faces. I sanded the edge of the picture to distress it a little. Then I mounted it on some of the lightest brown patterned cardstock in the Hemingway pack and then on some of TAC's awesome brown solid cardstock.

I got alot of questions at the convention about how I made the arrow. I actually used the paper that the photo is matted with. If you lifted up the photo, you would see the cut out of the arrow underneath. You've got to save that paper somehow! To make the arrow, I used the Coluzzle circle cutter and cut two tracks apart to make the arc. Then I drew the arrow point on freehand and cut it all out with my favorite retractable knife. I inked the edge with some Jumbo Java ink and stamped the saying with the same. I used mini-bet to spell out the same since I didn't have that exact saying.

Then I used the mini card from yesterday's post as a hidden journaling box. I rounded the corners of the card just so it would stand out a little from all of the other angular elements. Then I added the little tab on the side, which was actually made with this punch, to make it easy to open.

Other elements on the page include inking on the edges, stamp stitching, and a flourish from our Curls & Swirls set. Remember, how I told you that I could just put the pieces of the stitching stamp back together on the block -- that's what I did for this and then I was able to stamp all of the stitching along each side of the page at once.

CK Make and Take

Here's a picture of the make and take that we offered at the booth at the Creating Keepsakes convention last weekend. This is a very simple 3x3 card. It would make a great card to go with a small gift or as a thank you to a friend who did something special for you.

To make this card:

1. Cut a 3" x 6" piece of cardstock and fold in half -- in this sample, I used the brown from the Mimi collection.

2. Cut a 2" x 3" piece of patterned paper (again Mimi here -- I love the pink, green and brown combination in this paper pack!).

3. Cut a 1 3/8" x 3" piece of ivory cardstock.

4. Stamp the stitches and saying from Running Stitches and More Abundance with Burnt Umber Ink. For the convention, I cut the running stitches stamp into two 3" pieces and put those pieces with the two sayings from the More Abundance sets on one 3x3 acrylic making it easy for everyone to stamp their card just once. When I want to use the running stitches stamp again, all I have to do is line up the cut edges of the rubber on a long block -- the stamp is really 8" long. You may also want to ink the edge of your patterned cardstock. Glue all of the layers together.

5. Tie a plain knot in the center of a 6" piece of ribbon.

6. Pinch the two tails of the ribbon together and thread through the center of a Bitty Blossom. Use a glue dot to attach the flower to the upper right part of the card.

Tomorrow I will show you how you can take this idea one step further and turn it into an embellishment for your scrapbook page.

CK Convention!

I've been absent from my blog for the last week because it was the first week of school here -- including kindergarten for my youngest (yes, a few tears were shed and no, they weren't from him). But the bigger reason that I've been MIA is that I was preparing for the Creating Keepsakes scrapbook convention in Tulsa this past week. I found out a month ago that I was getting a space at the convention after all. It has been a whirlwind of prep since then. But it was well worth it!

The response to our booth was absolutely AMAZING! We ran out of make and take supplies both days by 3 pm -- sorry if you were in the hotel room next to us and had to listen to the thwack of a paper cutter cutting more at 11 pm on Friday night. We talked to so many great people about The Angel Company -- and so many people who had never heard of TAC before! I can't wait to see some of the ladies that I met this weekend again soon. I know that a few of you will be joining my team soon -- don't forget your contract has to be to TAC by Friday in order to receive the Two to Treasure bonus!