In Style Christmas cards

I was busy last week creating cards for my Stamp a Stack Christmas class. I am happy with how the cards turned out. I used sketch ideas from online, but mostly pulled them out of my head as I sat down late into the week to get them done for the class!
...and I made two different sets of them! One using the Winter Frost Blues and the other showing off the Season of Style with Cherry Cobbler and Olive Green.

I used the Hostess set, Warmth & Wonder, from the Holiday catalogue and Evergreen from last years Holiday catalogue.
The girls chose 6 of the 8 choses to make 2 each of and went home with a dozen cards. One lady even recreated one of the Blue card styles in the red and green!

 

It was a good day! I have another class tomorrow afternoon we're all looking forward to!

 

smiles,

Laurie

World Card Making Day!

Stampin' Up! is sponsoring one hour of the World Card Making Day over at Scrapbook & Cards Today! This gorgeous card shows off the gold foil paper and a fun jazzy banner, along with the beautiful snowflake set in the Holiday Mini. As part of the fun head over to their site to leave a comment to win!  For your chance to WIN!

Here at home we had a fun event! our first Alzheimer's Card Maker fundraiser! What a great day with alot of wonderful Ladies making pretty cards like this

 

 

We raised over $200 for the Alzheimer's Turkey walk next week in Calgary! A big thank you to everyone.

 

smiles,

Laurie

Happy Fall Y'All!

First day of Autumn, beautiful moon in the sky after a gorgeous day
...perfect end to a fabulous weekend!
Stay tuned...if I was a really good blogger I'd have a sample of a beautiful card I'd made with leaves and Fall foilage to show off here...I have hopes of making, photographing and posting a couple over the next couple days!...

The Girls had their first Friday off from school. I'd had plans during the summer to get to a few different Farmer's Markets around, but it just never happened so I invited them out that morning to Lacombe and it did not disappoint!
We picked up quite a few fruits and veggies and some yummy baked goods, including a delicious Lime poundcake from a German baker lady! Enjoyed the atmosphere of the market and then headed into Lacombe itself. On the way downtown, we passed the Public Library. We love our Library and all the books we can order from around the province from all the libraries..so when we saw the name Mary C Moore, it just dinged that we needed to stop in and check it out. Bless my Littlest, as she noticed a coffee shop sign as we were driving into the parking lot for me! : D

After picking out some books, we headed over to the Cafe to have a bit of lunch. I was happily surprised by the offering of wonderful homemade food, and a big bowl like mug for my latte! They had a fun contest to spot and count the monkeys around the cafe/atrium and my Littlest found them all, earning her a Flying Monkey Chocolate Milkshake. (Thanks for making the afternoon so delightful for her!) Our visit to Anna Maria's finished up with the chef, Peggy Benoit, visitng our table for delightful exchange of favourite authors and books.
Running now to start planning some Fall classes to offer...

smiles,
Laurie

Autumn Banners

Autumn Banners are hanging in a few more homes after a wonderful class last night.

A great group of ladies made it out during this zany first week Back to School to create their own Thankful banners. Between sponging, scrunching and spritzing their leaves into pieces of art to add to the canvas and arranging  how to lay out their buttons, each gal put together a beautiful and unique banner for their home!

I had a couple things well thought out ahead of time, and a couple things that could have been laid out before they started coming...

thanks to Vicki who diligently worked the Big Shot to crank out the multitude of leaves needed by everyone to start their sponging! : D

I'll be doing that later this afternoon, for tomorrow's class. As well as running a few sheets through the Rosette die ready for turning into these little centrepieces.
I'm happy that I had the option of Crushed Curry for the class. When I was creating, I didn't have the refill yet (?!) but I'm glad, sort of, since I'm not sure if I'd have pulled in the Cajun Craze if I'd have had the yellow when I reached for it as my first choice...

Advice to those spraying for the first time, use a light hand.The canvas feathers the lines a bit. Let it dry, slightly, at least, before spritzing a bit more if you want a bit more colour (probably better to add more re-inker to the bottle than to over-spray).
I think you'll be surprised, and pleased when you 'unveil' the canvas by lifting the screen and see how beautiful they are. (for me, every time was a put-a-smile-on-my-face discovery when I took away the blue mask!)

I LOVE these banners and I'm hoping we keep them into the Spring ~ so many possibilities!!!

smiles,
Laurie

Thankful Banner for Autumn

I'm am in love with the new Banner kit that Stampin'Up! has in their Holiday catalogue!
There are so many possibilities...
I am in need of  new wall decor in our entryway, so I got busy with making this banner to put up for the first of September.

 

I'm excited to be able to offer a class during the first week of September as well. Two options for timing: on September 7, Thursday evening at 7pm and Saturday, September 7 at 10am. Let me know if you're interested in coming.




 



I made all the leaves from the Autumn die cut and loads of sponging, spritzing and scrunching. I added a couple rosettes for some dimension and different detail and a bunch of buttons from the Regal package.







There is so much to be thankful for, it's always good to have a bit of a reminder.

smiles,
Laurie

Masking Background

Happy Summer Days!

I have been busy these past couple weeks...not just the regular summer chores of summer around the farm but donning a Nurse's cap for my husband. Unfortunately, he had an accident...going up against our John Deere and not winning. Luckily, given a bad situation, he came out very well. One piece of machinery knocked him over into the frontend of the tractor and demolished his orbital and cheek bones. He has his sight and is well on his way to a full recovery, not even looking so bad, having several stitches but in 3 or 4 spots not one big jagged cut. Such a relief, from the initial shock of finding him in the Trauma room in ER after dropping my Oldest off for a week long Band camp!

I'm just getting turned around with some of my card making and class planning. I have a few fun ideas up my sleeve that I need to play with, so I should be getting some neat projects on here over the coming days.
I have been working on the Capture Summer class. It's been lots of fun writing up the prompts and reliving some good memories as I draw on them to share with the class. I have gotten some great feedback that makes me feel so good. I'm going to offer an extension into the Fall...and part of it will include a couple lessons on the structure of some actual pages for the book.
I also want to put together an album from Convention! Looking through some photos earlier tonight. At some point during one of the party nights, I found myself amongst many of the top International Demos...

This is Bekka Prideaux from the UK. So many wonderful women around the world sharing this love of Stampin'.
One of the cards I was swapping was this pretty one using my very favourite set, Flower Shop.
I used the lattice and our spritzers to mask the background, and built it from there.

 

smiles,
Laurie

Stampin'Up! 25th Celebration ~ Convention 2013

Summertime and lots of happenings throughout July!

Not the least of which was a visit to Salt Lake City and my first Convention of my Stampin'Up! career! As Stampin'Up! celebrated their 25th Year, I celebrated my 10th!
It was fabulous! About 3 times the size of the Leaderships Conventions I have attended the past several years, so just more great people to meet up with and have fun together! Several Demonstrators representing 8 different countries were there. I loved running into them and making new BFF's! Monica Gale presented in one of the Demo booths and was such a joy to watch and talk with afterwards. Here we are together with Dave Baugh, one of the great guys from the SU corporate Team.

 

 

Running into my friends I've been meeting up with for years!

 

                                                           Such a GREAT time!

 

 

Stampin'Up! planned a great service project for us to participate in. Putting together 2000 Birthday kits for kids celebrating their birthdays in the Children's Hospital in SLC.

 

...and we set a Guiness Book of World Records by mailing the most greeting cards from one location in a certain time frame...over 2000 in 3 hours I think it was.

I brought home loads of Swap cards. I'll be sharing some of my favourites over the next couple weeks.

smiles,
Laurie