NC Demo Swaps

Enjoy the swap cards from NC Demos Quarterly:

Quarterly Projects

We arrived in Orlando safely although it did rain on us the whole way!  Hope that rain is going away this week!  We had a little trouble finding a hotel room for the night.  Not knowing how far we would get, we didn't make reservations for tonight.  My cell phone quit working on the way down.  I only have a month left on my contract so I am hoping I can revive it tomorrow.  Sonny and I are joining Ashley in Orlando this week for our first time at Disney!  Ashley has been before but not Sonny and I.  I am looking forward to seeing what all the hype is about Disney World and I hope I have comfortable enough shoes because I understand a LOT of walking is involved!

I will be posting some of the Quarterly projects this week while I am gone.  Hope you enjoy them.

These are the projects we made at Quarterly.  This little birds nest is made using the Envelope Punch Board.  Luckily I took this picture when I first came home with it but I noticed Sunday night that there is only one chocolate egg left in the nest!  Hmmmm - wonder who????

And isn't this mushroom adorable??  It was made using the Curvy Box Template.  I haven't gotten that template and this cute project almost is putting me over the edge!  I have seen so many cute boxes made with the template.

3 D Swaps from Quarterly

Thought I'd share the 3D swaps from Quarterly with you.  Enjoy!

Amy's Post It Note Holder

Chaille's Easel Calendar Card

Denise's Note Pad Holder

Lynne's Candy Bar Holder

Marcia's chick (chocolate inside)

Marianne's scrapbook - opened

Marianne's mini scrapbook

My purse!

3x3 Quarterly Swaps

Marianne and I traveled to Raleigh this weekend for the NC Demos Quarterly Get-together.  It is so much fun to see old friends there and meet new ones.  I can't wait till our next one in September in Wilmington!  We did several swaps and although I told myself in advance I would only do one swap, I ended up doing all three - 3D swap, 3x3 card swap and full card swap.

Here are the 3x3 cards I received in the swap:  (Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of my own swap!)

I think these make cute little gift enclosure cards.

Happy Birthday to my little sister, Marianne.  Today (Monday) is her birthday!  She is catching up with me!!

Marianne getting started with her stampin'!

This was the "voting" table.  We voted on the best "WOW" card and the card that was the most demonstratable.  Can you guess which ones won?

If you guessed the purple flower card for a WOW!, you are correct.  Isn't it gorgeous?!  It was made by Denise James.

My card was voted as the most demonstratable (is that a word?).  It was also my swap card.  Here it is close up:

I love the colors in this card.  I used the Flower Patch stamp set along with the Feels Good sentiment.  I masked the center of the card while I stamped the flowers and when I finished with that stamping, I removed the mask and stamped the sentiment.

Fall Quarterly

I had a great ... and busy weekend.  Marianne came over Friday after work and we loaded our things into her car and headed to Newton for Quarterly.  We worked on 25 Shoebox Cards and actually got them all finished before midnight!!  Since Newton is only about a 30 minute drive for me, we went home and slept in our own beds (well, technically Marianne slept in my guest bed!) and got up the next morning to head back to Quarterly for more fun.  We did a Card Swap and a Gift Card Swap and got some great cards.

This is the Gift Card that I made using the MDS version of the coffee cup from Perfect Blend (I shared the card swap in a previous post HERE).

We also had a contest that was optional.  I decided to participate in all four challenges.  We were to make a 3D Ornament, a Christmas card, an "Any Occasion" card and an "oldie but goodie" using a favorite retired stamp.  I was happy when my Ornament below won 1st Prize!!  I used the stamp set and framelits from Bright and Beautiful.  There are two pieces of chipboard in between the front and back of the ornament.

Back of Ornament

Front of Ornament 

Christmas Card using Bright and Beautiful bundle

For the Christmas card above, I embossed the tags and the stars with Gold, Cherry Cobbler and White Embossing Powder.  I used a piece of DSP from the Newsprint and layered a piece of Vellum over the top to soften it.  All the stars are popped up with dimensionals.

Marianne's Christmas Card won 1st place!!

Marianne's card - Get Your Santa On from Holiday Catalog

My All Occasion card

 The card above was fun to make and a new technique that I stumbled across on Friday morning.  I adhered the Dots Decorative Mask (page 205 in catalog - a deal for $2.95!) with Repositional Tape on top of a piece of Crumb Cake card stock.  Next using a dauber, I sponged White Craft Ink over all the dots.  I removed the Dots Mask and cleaned it.  Next I replaced the Dots Mask on top again - just moving it to the side and up a little bit and (with a dauber) sponged Wisteria Wonder, Coastal Cabana, and Melon Mambo ink on top of the White Ink.  It makes a cool background!  The cupcake is from Cupcake Party stamp set and I used the Cupcake Punch.  I stamped the sentiment from Remembering Your Birthday on Vellum with White Ink and embossed it in white before adhering it to the card.

Blast from the Past - Oldie but Goodie

This set is one of my first Stampin' Up sets almost 10 years ago - Garden Collage.  I still love it!

Sunday night Sonny and I went to the Panther - Steeler game and had a great time!  I will share a few pictures of that tomorrow.

Packed and Ready to Go!

I have been busy packing my supplies for Quarterly.  Marianne is coming over when she gets off work and we will be heading to Newton for the NC Demos Quarterly.  We always have so much fun!!  We will be super busy tonight doing our Shoebox Cards.  We have about 30 to do!  Wonder how long we will be working on those!  Since Newton is close, we will come back to my house tonight and travel back to Newton in the morning (bright and early).

Sammie thinks if she gets in my bag, she can go too (and get some peace and quiet away from Bogart!)

Instead of doing a card for my Shoebox, I decided to do one of the Tag A Bags.  I was going to buy a notepad to go in each one but with doing 30, even if they were $1 each, that would be $30 so they can furnish their own notepad!!

I used the Bigzz Flower Die, the clothespins on page 208, doilies, ribbon and two stamp sets - For All Things and Four Feathers.

Tomorrow we will be doing several projects, swaps and have a few card contests.  Here is my swap card:

I used the For All Things stamp again and stamped the leaves in Coastal Cabana, Pistachio and Cantalope.  I used the Wooden Leaves that are in the Holiday Catalog.

More Shoebox Swaps

Sometimes if you don't have bad luck, you don't have luck at all!  Ashley made a quick recruiting trip Sunday to Little Rock, Arkansas.  I believe she could have driven there quicker!  She flew from San Antonio to DFW for a connecting flight and ended up spending about 6 hours in the DFW airport!  Her noon time flight was canceled and she couldn't get on another flight until around 6 pm.  When she arrived at her hotel in Little Rock, her wallet was missing!  Yep, all her ID, credit cards, etc.!  She knew she had it right before she boarded the flight.  She was finally able to get checked in to her hotel with a little help, but the next day, she did not have any ID to fly back home.  And to make matters worse, she had flown to Little Rock on American Airlines but was traveling back to Texas on Southwest so there was not even a round trip on one airline to follow.  Plus getting through Security with no ID can be tricky!  She was in her uniform which helped a bit.  But the only thing she had with her name and address on it was a mailing label on her Real Simple magazine that she had brought along to read on the flight.  That worked!  Now the hard part - trying to replace all that you lost!  I have always been scared when I am on a trip as to what would happen if I lost my ID.  Guess I'll save my magazines from now on!!   Although sometimes a bus pass will work.  When we lived in Washington, our friends, Margaret and Graham came to visit and brought Margaret's parents from England.  They wanted to see the Army base where Ashley was stationed.  So, they all piled into Ashley's car and then realized that Marg (the mom) did not have her ID - all she had was a bus pass (or maybe it was a library card - can't remember).  Anyway, Ashley bundled everyone's ID up and gave them to the guard at the gate.  I guess he didn't look at them close because he saluted Ashley and sent them onto the base!  Same thing happened last year to Marianne.  She arrived at the airport for their family trip to Las Vegas without her ID.  She was able to get through Security with her BJ's Club card because it had her picture on it!!  Maybe we're not so secure????

You should be able to get a lot of ideas from these great shoebox cards from Quarterly!

Quarterly Shoebox Cards

We are almost at the end of our catalog year.  It's always exciting to guess what will and won't make it into the new catalog.  I have a few guesses on what will be retired and I'm sure I'll miss a few stamps plus a few of the outgoing In Colors (like Summer Starfruit). I will be going to Stampin' Up's Catalog Premier event at a theater in Raleigh in a couple of weeks.  This is the first time Stampin' Up has revealed the new catalog in such a flashy way.  It should be a fun event.

 Here's the schedule of some of the upcoming events:

• Monday, April 21 - Retired List to be published (products available while supplies last)
• Monday, June 2 - New 2014/2015 Annual Catalog goes live!  (ordering begins at 12 pm MT)
• Wednesday, June 4 - Last day to order from the "old" 2013/2014 Annual Catalog
• Thursday, August 28th - New 2014 Holiday Catalog goes live! (ordering begins at 12 pm MT)

These colors will be retiring so make sure you stock up and get your ink refills before they are all gone.

We have a lot of talent in our NC SU demonstrator group.  We did 31 shoebox cards last weekend.  That sounds like a lot - wait a minute!  It is a lot!  But everyone designed their cards so that they were pretty quick to put together and followed the instructions to package each card separately and do all the embossing and die cutting in advance.  So we started putting the cards together around 5 and Marianne and I were finished about midnight.  Here are some of the cards:

Show and Tell from Quarterly

Today has been a nightmare for me!  I got a text message from a friend in Texas this a.m. telling me my email had been hacked.  As I was reading that message, Marianne called me to tell me the same thing.  They got an email supposedly from me asking for a "favour".  The spelling of favor gave them the clue.  Others who answered that email got another one from me (supposedly) saying we were in the Ukraine, were robbed and needed money or something like that.  So, I logged into my Yahoo mail account and was going to send an email to every one of my contacts telling them to disregard previous emails from me.  Well, imagine my surprise when ALL my contacts were gone!!   I was able to go on Facebook and post a message there.  But my phone was ringing off the hook from friends and family calling to let me know I had been hacked.  I worked on trying to fix the matter and change my passwords all day!!  Finally about 3:30, I started getting a few emails but not many like I would guess I should be getting.  So I don't know what is going on.  Luckily, I have a Charter email account and was able to use it to alert contacts in it.  I am still trying to get to the bottom of this mess.  I may end up having to delete my current Yahoo account and set up another one.

Here are a few photos from Quarterly.

This is the nametags that Marianne made.  Aren't they darling?  She used the small tag punch.  We stapled different colors of ribbon on the bottom for our Prize Patrol!

I downloaded (for free) this spring subway art and bought some colorful frames at M's; framed them and we gave them away to our three demonstrators who did projects for us.  They were really cute.  I was going to make them in My Digital Studio and actually started one but decided why reinvent the wheel??!!  Here is the link to the download - SPRING

I made a couple of banners and we tacked them up in the room.  The top one is from Sale-a-Bration and say's WELCOME.  The bottom one uses the canvas banners and says CREATE.

Here are a few of my favorite "SHOW and TELL" items that the gals brought.