Simply Sent Kits - 20% off plus free shipping

To commemorate World Card-Making Day (Oct. 6), Stampin' Up is offering 20% off their Simply Sent kits from today until October 8. To sweeten the deal, I'm offering free shipping as well. Here are some samples using one of the kits. Contact me at alison@shilohstamps.com to place an order
Super-stamper Erica made these cards using supplies from the Friendship Shapes Simply Sent card kit. Aren't they cute? In the first card, Erica used only supplies that are included the kit:

• Cameo Coral, Bashful Blue, Certainly Celery, and Whisper White cardstock
• stamps
• Cameo Coral stampin' spot
• Certainly Celery grosgrain ribbon

This kit also includes:

• 4 piece die-cut stamp set (that means no trimming for you)
• Bashful Blue Stampin' Spot
• Certainly Celery Stampin' Spot
• light blue gingham ribbon
• stampin' dimensionals
• glue dots
• 12 whisper white envelopes

That means you get all the ingredients for making a minimum of 10 cards for $34.36 (regular price is $42.95).
Erica made this Certainly Celery card as one of her swaps at the Stampin' Up Regional Convention in Philadelphia. The background is Certainly Celery, from the Simply Sent kit, and Erica used Whisper White craft ink on Basic Black cardstock in the middle of this card. Then she stamped another image from the kit in Basic Black on the Certainly Celery background. I love the whimsical style of this card.

Here are some samples using the other Simply Sent kits, which include:

• Happy Day - great for birthdays, includes a cute snowflake, includes supplies to make 20 cards!

• Sending Happy Thoughts - a lovely flower and hip colors
• Simple Delights - an ornate motif in Anna Griffin style
• Three Thoughts - Happy Birthday, thanks, and thinking of you

Hostess Gift for Susanne

This weekend, we visited our friends Jason and Susanne in Lancaster. They were having a House Concert/CD Release party for Jay's band Living Fables. You can download their CD through Musicblaster here.

Since we were staying overnight (and we flaked on Susanne's birthday earlier in the summer), I made her a set homemade notecards and a matching folder.

I used some double-sided Designer Series paper to make the folder and the coordinating cards.

The Much Appreciated card features Paper Piercing in the corners, and the Birthday hugs and wishes card features dry embossing. These are 2 techniques I'll be teaching at my upcoming class on October 19 + 20. Click those dates on my Google calendar to the right for more info.

Jason and Susanne have 2 precious little girls who are very creative, so I brought along the Stampin' Kids Tattoo Kit for them to play with. It was a big hit! They were covered head to toe in tattoos by the end of the evening.

Thankful Thoughts

I just received the Thoroughly Thankful stamp set in the mail. This set is part of Stampin' Up's Fall Frenzy promotion. Here's a draft of a card I plan to send to our family members who will be joining us for Thanksgiving this year. It uses Really Rust, Old Olive, and Summer Sun cardstock. I watercolored the images using the AquaPainter on confetti cardstock. I tied it all off using some Hemp Twine. I think it might look even better with some background stamping on the Really Rust cardfront. on What do you think?

Fall Frenzy - stamps at 30% off!

Stampin' Up has just announced Fall Frenzy, one of the specials I've seen yet as demonstrator. They're offering 30% off selected Fall stamp sets with a $30 purchase until Sept. 30.

Here's the deal:

Spend $30 in regular priced merchandise and qualify to purchase one of each of the six promotional stamp sets at 30 percent off!

• Bitty Boos Too (Item 105355, page 26) discounted price $12.57
  
• Haunting Halloween (Item 109284, page 29) discounted price $13.27
  
• Thoroughly Thankful (Item 107383, page 30) discounted price $16.07 - I just ordered this one, so I'll post some samples when I get to play with it a bit. I'm planning on using these for Thanksgiving invitations, placecards, and favors. (here's a link to a sample)
  
• Autumn Fest (Item 109373, page 108) discounted price $16.77 - This is the set used in the card above.
  
• Elementary Essentials (Item 109421, page 91) discounted price $19.57
  
• Stem Silhouettes (Item 110366, page 17 from the Holiday Mini Collection) discounted price $22.37

Contact me at alison@shilohstamps.com if you would like to place an order.

More In the Spotlight with the scallop punch

I love experimenting with different color combinations and layouts. Which of these is your favorite?This one is for my cousin Alisa's birthday. It's all part of my goal of staying on top of my birthdays! I now have my Birthday Calendar posted on the wall of my stamping room, so there's no excuse for missing birthdays. This was a thank-you for a birthday gift. I have so many generous friends!

This was a thank-you for a super-stamper friend who loaned me her Powder Pal for Christmas in August Stamp Camp. It made the Dazzling Diamonds glitter a lot less messy!

This was a thank-you for my latest workshop hostess. I'll be sending her a $5 gift certificate, too!

I'm off to Cape Cod today for a few days of vacation, so I won't be posting until after Labor Day. I'll be bringing some stamping supplies with me so that I can make swaps for the Philadelphia Regional convention. I will post some samples when I return.

Hope you enjoy the long weekend, too!

Much Appreciated - scallop punch!

I have been making lots of thank-you cards lately for all the housewarming gifts, birthday gifts, and just generous friends. Here's a thank-you card featuring my new favorite punch, the scallop punch. It fits just perfectly with this image from the In The Spotlight hostess set. I love how Wild Wasabi and Purely Pomegranate look with Night of Navy here. It's hard to tell in this pciture, but my Wild Wasabi layer is actually a scrap leftover from another scallop punch. It gives this card some extra dimension. For more thank-you note ideas, click the "thank you" label list at the right.

much appreciated MIL

So my dear Mother-in-Law/Love was in town for my at the end of June. She's from TX, so we don't get to see one another very often. We had lots of fun together. We attended a conference in DC, hung curtains in our new (old) house, did some stamping, although the 4th of July fireworks got rained out (so we thought).

Her visit just happened to overlap with my Stampin' Up Open House, so she got to help me launch my new business. One of our projects that day included some fun with punches. I think that got her thinking about all sorts of punch possibilities. She ordered 6 punches! In addition to giving me a great sales boost, she said I could hang on to the punches for a while after they arrived, so that I could make some samples. Woohoo! So I've been having fun playing with all these new punches, and here are some things I've made.

I LOVE this card with the black-eyed susan. This flowers looks perkier than the flowers in my front yard, that's for sure! I think I probably got the idea from some of the galleries on splitcoaststampers.com. I punched all the petals and the leaf using the large oval punch, and then I made the center of the flower (forget the science term) using the 1 3/8" punch.

I made a fake bow for this Elegant Inspirations card using my MIL's 1/8" circle punch and some chocolate chip 5/8" grosgrain ribbon. It's a trick I learned from Claire. I love the way this sentiment looks with Baroque Motifs. The swirly lettering coordinates with the swirls in the design.


I punched a whole bunch of flowers with the Spring Flower Bouquet punch. This is a great way to use up scrap paper and it makes 3 flowers at once. I learned that this punch works much better with thinner paper like the designer series paper, vellum, or dare-I-say copy paper. It takes some muscles to punch SU cardstock with this punch, since the cardstock is so thick. I'll post some more samples once I make some cards with the little flowers.


For a listing of all the SU! punches, see pages 182-183 of the Fall-Winter Collection 2007.

(My dear husband figured out our scanner and gave me a little tutorial, so Shiloh Stamps should have better quality images now.)

Thank you - 2 versions

So I've been very thankful lately and I've been making lots of thank-you cards. I can't decide which design I like best here. What do you think?

I'm thankful for my dear friends and family who are so good to me. I am so thankful to my husband, who gives me a comfortable stretch when needed. I am thankful for Claire, who introduced me to Stampin' Up, and offered me the opportunity to start a new business. I am thankful to my hostesses and customers, who are enjoying learning new stamping techniques and supporting me as I start my business. So if you fit one of those categories, you might be getting a thank you note in the mail soon! Who are you thankful for?

This is a really simple card to make. The two cards shown here use the same color background cardstock, regal rose. (Sorry they look so different in the pictures). I stamped the flowers in basic black with the stems coming off the edges, so it looks like you're looking down into a bouquet. I stamped the sentiment, and punched a perfect square using the 1 3/8" square punch, and then mounted it on black cardstock and wrapped some gingham ribbon around. Then on one of the cards, I colored in the flowers using stampin' write markers. I don't normally like doing so much coloring on my cards, since it takes so much time. However, since this set is kind of sketch-like, you don't need to be so careful about staying in the lines. This makes the coloring go much faster!

Some of the supplies used:

• year after year stamp set
• figures of speech stamp set
• black gingham ribbon
• stampin' write markers - regal rose, so saffron, mellow moss

You may have noticed the Google calendar in the toolbar on the right. My software developer hubby has convinced me of the virtues of Google calendar. I think it will be a good way to inform my blog readers about upcoming stamping events. You'll notice that I have a Birthday Calendar class coming up next week. I have one space left in the class, so click the date you'd like to attend for more information. I'm also having a Christmas in August stamp camp. We'll be making a variety of Christmas cards to help people get started on making their Christmas cards before the holiday season. Let me know what you think of the new addition!

Thank you very much + an experiment with brads

This is one of the cards that we made at my Open House last weekend. I love its simple design and crisp palette. I made a bunch of these cards, and I just changed the sentiment at the bottom to "Birthday Hugs and Wishes" on a few.


This card was inspired by a few stampin' things I've learned on the web. First, I was hoping to use up my Vintage Violet cardstock, since it's no longer available. I discovered the Color Combinations Tool, a website that helps you coordinate Stampin' Up colors. I selected Vintage Violet, and then clicked "search". It gave me all sorts of color combinations that use vintage violet. I don't think I would've put these colors together on my own. There's a link to the Color Combinations tool in the Stampin' Links list on the sidebar of my blog.


Also, I have new favorite tool, thanks to this card. I'm really enjoying the paper piercing tool and the paper piercing template. Using the guide, I can punch evenly spaced holes in my cardstock. It makes a really cool effect, and I like how it looks with this stamp set that already has dots around the edges. I can punch holes wherever I like, which means that I can punch holes to put brads in the center of these flowers.


I got this stamp set for free when I signed up to be Stampin' Up Demonstrator. It's called "In the Spotlight" and it's a hostess set from the new Fall-Winter Collection 2007 which debuted July 1st. You can get it for free when you host a Stampin' Up workshop in your home. I got it in May, though, so I got a head start on making projects with it. (My stamping friends were jealous!) I'll be posting some other samples soon.



So I learned a lesson with brads while working on this card. I haven't worked with brads very much before. I was trying to use up my stash of non-Stampin' Up brads, while I was waiting for my SU brads to arrive. (It doesn't make sense to demonstrate products that I don't sell.) I discovered that these pewter mini circle brads (pictured on the left) are really hard to open. You know how the legs on brads are usually two different lengths, so you can open them up? Not so with these brads... so you have to try and pry them open with your fingernail, and they don't come open easily, let me tell you. I chipped my nail and risked sending a brad under the fingernail trying to get these open. When the Stampin' Up brads finally arrived, I discovered that not only do the brad-legs have different lengths, but that they're already slightly open, thus saving the fingernails. Only SU brads from now-on for me!

By the way, the other thing I learned online before making this card is that the dotted line in this stamp set can actually be used as a flower stem! It wasn't until looking through the In the Spotlight gallery on Splitcoaststampers.com that I connected the dots, so to speak.

thank you

Would you like to learn how to make any of these cards? Use the contact me button on the right to set up a workshop in your home. You can earn free stamping supplies and exclusive stamp sets by hosting a workshop. This card features a new hostess set from the new catalog.




Supplies:

• In The Spotlight stamp set - a new hostess set from the Fall/Winter collection
• chocolate chip cardstock
• sage shadow cardstock
• chocolate chip classic ink pad
• brown grosgrain ribbon

This card uses a really simple technique called masking. Just use scrap paper to cover up part of the page, and then stamp wherever you would like on the paper. Then when you remove the scrap paper you can have a different image in that blank space!

I made this card for a swap at Claire's recent "downline" meeting. Claire's the gal who got me hooked on stamping. She's recruited a bunch of new demonstrators lately, and once a month we get together to share ideas. You can find links to some of their blogs in the Stamping Links list on the right. Claire's "downline" includes bloggers Kristin and Melissa, as well as super-stampers Jan, Latrell, and Melanie.

Thanks

This is one of the Make and Take's I did for my first workshop (at Amy's). It has an artistic, forgiving style so you don't have to be perfectly precise.

The color scheme just shouts, "Spring!" to me.




Supplies:

• Heartfelt Thanks stamp set
• barely banana cardstock
• ruby red cardstock
• whisper white cardstock
• ruby red classic stamp pad
• mellow moss classic stamp pad
• so saffron classic stamp pad
• mellow moss 1/4" grosgrain ribbon
• Crystal Effects
  

This card uses a technique called Two-Step Stampin'. You have to use a set that has an outline stamp and a base stamp, like Heartfelt Thanks. Stamp the base image in a lighter color (or you can stamp on scrap paper once to get a lighter color). Then stamp the outline image in a darker color. In this card, I used Ruby Red for both the base stamp and the outline stamp. This is an easier effect for frugal stampers like me!

Crystal Effects is fun to work with. It's kind of like puffy paint in that it adds a shiny texture to everything. I used Crystal Effects on the center of each of these flowers.