Marvelous Possibilities

I have to g ive with a big shout-out to Unscripted Sketches Challenge  #206 Blog, because it's their 4th Blog-iversary, and they had a very unusual challenge this week.  They wanted birthday cards, and to use the number 4 on the card.  I knew first of all that I had the cute little birthday salutation from Bring on the Cake stamp set with all these numbers in a cluster, and I love coloring in the number for the age of the birthday boy or girl.  I decided that I wanted to use the idea from a card I cased with the stack of four elephants, bringing in a group of four also.  This cute little elephant is from a stamp set called Patterned Occasions from this spring's SaleA bration sets.  All the little elephants remind me of an old song called Baby Elephant Walk  (click to see it here), which was an instrumental by Henry Mancini, and it was from the score for a movie called Hatari, starring John Wayne. (We had the soundtrack album with the music,...

I know, another post today?? I have more to share.  I had a great time last evening with my friend and partner in all things fun, Debby.  We went to Archivers for an evening of stamping and scrapbooking, like we used to do all the time.  Since we have become Stampin' Up! demonstrators we hold our own workshops all the time, gather with fun friends to stamp and make cards, and find lots of inspiration form our community of fellow demos and bloggers, etc.  But, the atmosphere at Archivers on a Crop Night is always fun and enjoyable.  We used to go do this all the time, and really had fun, so we thought we'd give it a try.  It was just nice to sit in the room full of women laughing and chatting and getting creative.  We did a bunch of creating ourselves, and were inspired by things all around us.  We chatted with the ladies around us, and even snapped a couple photos of the work they were doing.  I came away with a wonderful shower invitat...

Thanks a ton to all the friends who came to our Open House yesterday.  We really enjoyed seeing all of you, and love visiting with everyone.  Everyone seemed to enjoy the Make-N-Take projects we made, and they loved the little Smartee cards that I had made for all of our guests.  We had a lot of laughs.  Debby and I keep saying that we have to get better organized, and do things differently every time we have an event.  I think our friends are getting used to our crazy behavior, and we would blow them away if they walked in the door and we weren't running around looking for something or moaning over something we forgot.  That is part of the problem with doing an event in the party room, instead of our homes, is you don't have all your supplies in another room, or close by.  Sometimes I wish I were an elephant, because an elephant never forgets, and they have a big trunk (so they can carry heavy things, and probably don't have to make as many trips ...

Today is our STAMPIN' UP! OPEN HOUSE January 26, 10:00 to 2:00 and Scrapbook Crop-a-thon 1:00 to 6:00 at 101 Willow Pond Trail, Lino Lakes, MN   Come and join us to see new products, samples, and make a couple of free Make-n-Take projects for free.  We have these cute little door prizes for our guests today.  Hope to see you there.  For further information, check out here for details.     I made some of these cute little Smartees cards earlier in the week, and everybody thought they were so darn cute, that I made up a bunch or our guest today.  With the Patterned Occasions stamp set from the SaleABration brochure makes such darling cards with all it's cute little sayings, there is one to fit almost any occasion.  I found a new blog this week, Still addINKtive challenges , and they were all about using the SAB stamps sets, and the Patterned Occasions was one of the sets they called for, so I took the challenge....

I made up another one of my Smartees card, and just wanted to show you how cute it turned out.  I have been having so much fun playing with the Patterned Occasions stamp set.  The images are so playful, and they are perfect for these little tiny cards.  I make these with a 3 1/2" square card, with an inch added to the side to hold the Smartees candy rolls.  It's the same design I use when I make post-it note holders with a pen on the side.  I found my inspiration for the colors in the card at the Pink Elephant Monday Challenge which had a color/photo inspiration this week.  Don't the strawberries look yummy.  I am tempted to make some like this for our Open House on Saturday.  I'll have to see if I have time.  LOL!  I used the layout from Clean & Simple Stamping challenge this week.  (I am so glad I was able to find the right blog for the sketch.  I dislike it when there is nothing to identify the picture...

 I got a lot of teasing from my family recently when they saw this giant size bag of Smartees candy in my craft room.  They mused about who would buy a big bag of candy that was not chocolate.  They thought I was eating them!  I explained that I bought the giant bag on clearance after Halloween, and I used it for craft sale crafts, and I still had all of these left over.  Little did they know that I already had another project planned for those little rolls of Smartees, but I was just waiting for my new SaleABration stamp sets to arrive.  This set, Patterned Occasions, had these cute little jeans that say "Congratulations, smarty pants", and I was primed for the project.  I took the design from the post-it holders that I made in the past, and made it wide enough to hold 2 rolls of Smartees.  You could alter it to fit a little candy bar if you wanted to.  In the green card I decided to wrap the Smartees with matching paper, but...