Doing Wheel-ies!

On Saturday Stampers Alley had their annual Used Stamp Sale.  This year they did it a little differently.  It was set up like a garage sale with us setting up our tables in the parking lot instead of Stampers Alley having to sell our stamps for us and taking a percentage.  Marianne and I shared a booth and spread our stamps and craft things out on 3 tables and set up shop.  We did pretty good.  I made a little over $200 and got rid of a lot of my retired stamp sets so I was quite happy!  And most importantly, I didn't spend all my profits.  I only bought a couple of things ... maybe spending about $10.  I still have a box of stamps left and I will be offering them to my Stamp Club gals in a few weeks.  Our only complaint was the weather!  We almost froze to death!!  It is May but you would think it is March.  The temps have been in the 50s during the day.  It's more like Seattle weather - although my friends there tell me it is in the 80s!  I keep hearing folks say that they are tired of this cold rainy weather we are having.  Well, I am as well but it came to me that I am using little to no heat and no air conditioning right now and haven't for weeks, so our energy bill should be a lot less this month.  That's a good thing.   Marianne and I were both bundled up and to make matters worse, it started sprinkling  Marianne called Greg and he came to our rescue and brought us a canopy so our things wouldn't get too wet. And the icing on the cake - at the end of the sale, we gave what we didn't want to take back with us to one of the gals there who is going to send it all to the Sandy Hook community.

A lot of people have trouble when It comes to using a wheel on a card.  I don't use them very often (mainly, because I forget about them! ) but they are great for backgrounds on your cards.  Here are a few hints when using a wheel:

■stand up as you get straighter lines and more even pressure that way

■start rolling the wheel while off the card stock to prevent lines showing

■start at the corner of the page closest to you and roll away from yourself

■if you do not have an ink cartridge in the wheel handle, when rolling it on the ink pad do not roll it back and forth, roll it in the same direction ~6 times to ensure it is entirely inked

■always test the wheel on scrap paper first to ensure that your design/words are oriented the right way

■If the roller wheel does have a sentiment on it, line up the seam of the roller just off the page to ensure that you get the sentiment over the page in its entirety and not half a word that doesn’t make sense

■store the ink cartridges in zip lock bags to help keep them moist

■practice on scrap paper a lot!

Here is a bookmark that I made using the Very Vintage Wheel:

I wheeled it using Versamark Ink and embossed it with white embossing powder.  Easy to do.