Stamp Club

Today is my birthday!!  Maybe I should be sharing birthday cards but I will do that one day next week.  So far, I have had a nice day.  I just talked to my daughter and missed calls earlier from mom and Marianne while I was at church.  I've decided to join the church I have been visiting for the past several months so ended up staying late today for "Pizza with the Pastor" for people wishing to join.  I'm hoping to join in November when Ashley will be here.

I had Stamp Club last week.  After designing a few more difficult cards in the past couple of months, I tried to make the cards simpler this month plus I die cut a lot of the elements to avoid waiting in line for the Big Shot.  It paid off and the gals noticed!!  I also concentrated on fall cards with one special card in honor of October Breast Cancer awareness.

This card uses some non-Stampin' Up DSP.  The local stamp store in Mooresville closed recently and I got a lot of their Bo Bunny DSP at a great price.  Vintage Leaves stamp set was used for the background on this card.  The die cut leaf is from Seasonal Layers Thinlits in Copper.  (It makes it easy to adhere if you use the Multipurpose Adhesive Sheet on the back of the Copper.)  The cup and sentiment is from Merry Cafe stamp set which is in the Holiday Catalog.  I love this set because it is very versatile.  I am not a coffee drinker but this set has sayings about tea and apple cider plus sentiments for fall, Halloween, Christmas and New Year.

I love the layout of this card.  The Rich Razzleberry (4 1/4" x 5 1/2") and Night of Navy (4" x 5 1/2") cardstock are layered with a piece of white cardstock as the top layer (3 1/4" x 5 1/2")  The only part that opens is the DSP (3 1/2" x 6").  The DSP is scored at the top and sandwiched between the Night of Navy and Razzleberry pieces.

This is our November calendar.  I used the Paisleys and Petals stamp set and thinlits.  The colors I used are Tranquil Tide, Rich Razzleberry, Crushed Curry, and Night of Navy - so fallish!

My favorite Painted Harvest stamp set!!!  No matter what color you use, the cards all looked wonderful.  The gals picked their colors and stamped away!

I had to use Ribbon of Courage for breast awareness month.  The DSP is some retired I found in my stash (love using up the old stuff to make room for new!)  I stamped the ribbon on scrap paper but the gals opted to stamp directly on the white.  The detailed stamp is stamped in Blushing Bride full strength.  The plain ribbon is stamped on top of the detailed stamp with Blushing Bride but stamp off first.

HOPE - Ribbon of Courage

I made this card for one of the gals in my bowling group this week.  She has cancer and is just starting chemo.  She is such a sweet gal and is really suffering from this terrible disease.  I CASE'd this card from Pinterest and made a few changes.  Hope you get inspiration from the card.

Front of card

Close up of one of the panels.

I used Ribbon of Courage with Fresh Fig, Berry Burst and Sweet Sugarplum card stock.  The flowers are from a retired stamp thinlit (Botanical Blooms.)  The letters are also stamped from a retired letter set that I have but if you have the Letter Thinlits, they would work great!  (I don't!)  I stamped the letters with Sweet Sugarplum, then pressed my VersaMark pad on top and used Heat and Stick powder and glitter.

Ribbon of Courage

Hope you had a great 4th of July.  Ours was pretty quiet this year.  My mom stayed with us Friday and Saturday nights and I took her to Camp Dogwood on Sunday afternoon.  This is a great summer camp right on the lake (and about a 10 minute drive for me) for the blind and visually impaired.  This is mom's second year to attend and I hope she enjoys it this year as much as she did last year.   Although she got off to a rocky start.  She found out last week that her friend and roommate was not going to be able to come per doctor's orders.  She was not so sure about rooming with someone she didn't know!  When I got her registered, one of the counselors, Jeff, came up to her and welcomed "Miss Becky" back.  He told her he was not her counselor but he was going to take her to her room and get her settled.  Along the way, they met up with her new roommate who seemed very nice to me. Jeff told mom he was saving a place for her at dinner that night.  He told us that mom was the best camper he had ever had!  And mom told me Jeff was the very best counselor.  He took her tubing last year and she was quite impressed with him.  She was supposed to do archery today - that should be interesting!  A blind person trying for the bulls eye!

Saturday night we drove into Mooresville to have dinner at a restaurant on the lake where we hoped to watch the fireworks after eating.  Well, we waited for 2 hours - until 10 pm! for the fireworks show with nothing happening!  It had been raining earlier in the evening so we figured it was too wet for them.  So, we returned home.  I called on Sunday and was told they have rescheduled them for next Saturday, July 8!  Strange!!  Last night we planned on going to Mooresville again for the YMCA's fireworks.  Well, it started pouring down rain about 6 and when we went outside to get in the car around 8:30, it was still raining so we went back in the house.  I think they did have the fireworks around 9:30 but we weren't there.  So tonight, we just watched the fireworks on TV from New York!!  Better luck next year - or next Saturday!!

I had time today to play with a new stamp set - Ribbon of Courage - that I knew I had to buy as soon as I saw the new catalog.  This stamp set was inspired by Million Dollar Achiever Patty Bennett in memory of her mother.  

This card uses a technique with Glossy Cardstock again similar to the Oh So Eclectic card I did last week.  I sprayed the glossy cardstock with the spritzer filled with alcohol.  Next I dropped 2-3 drops of reinker (Peekaboo Peach and Bermuda Bay) and let it run.  To help it spread around, I sprayed more of the alcohol.  I used a tissue to pick up some of the ink that pooled along the edges.  I love these colors together!  Who would have thought?!  I stamped the hearts with Archival Black ink and used markers to color the flowers and Wink of Stella to make them sparkle! 

This next card made me think of my sister, Debra.  I miss her every day!  She was actually my step-sister (we shared a dad) and we didn't get to know each other until the mid 70s when I moved to Texas where she and my dad lived.  There was about a 10 year gap in our ages (I'm the oldest!) but that didn't matter. We both had a daughter and a son that were the same age (within a few months) and we used to take family camping trips together.  She was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer shortly after I moved to Washington state (2003).  The last trip we took together was when she and Jack (husband) came to visit us at our new home in Washington.  The 4 of us went to Victoria, Canada for a few days and had such a good time.  They were supposed to come visit us in NC for Thanksgiving but sadly, that was not to be.  She died at the age of 50 (too young!) November 16, 2007. Can't believe it has been 10 years.

We had this picture made shortly after her hair grew back in from the treatments.

OK - back to the details of the stamp set.  I used the new in-color, Powder Pink with Basic Black card stock and love how it pops!  I stamped the ribbon with Memento ink and used my blender pen and the ink pooled in the lid to color the image.  The ribbon is cut out and a pink ribbon is cut out with the thinlet in the set and raised with dimensionals.  I love the sentiment.  It is so true - Live every moment - you never know when it will be your last so Live, Laugh and Love!


I have an organization tip for you.  I have always kept all my framelits and thinlits on a magnetic sheet and in their plastic envelope.  I filed them all in a basket in alpha order.  I often would not remember if a set had a matching die or not.  So now I am putting the dies in the box with the stamp set.  I have adhered a green sticker on the sets that have matching dies and written how many dies are in the set on the sticker.  That way, I can quickly count them to make sure I haven't misplaced one of the dies before putting the stamp set away.  I still have framelits in my basket - the ones that don't match a stamp set like the Stitched Shapes, Ovals, Circles, etc.  Maybe this will work for you.