Nearing 1,000 Hits!

I cannot believe it. This blog is nearing the 1,000 hit mark! This blog has only been "live" for 3 weeks.

I am hoping all who are visiting the blog are enjoying the posts. There is a lot of excitement brewing with the new catalog.

Thanks to all of you who have left comments or have emailed me. Your kind words have humbled me!

The Retirement List is Coming!

The retirement list is coming out tomorrow. Oh my gosh...I love this time of year! Demos have been itching to see the list. Will our favorite tried and true sets be on the list this year? Will SU finally get rid of those sets we just are tired of? Which mini-catalog sets will make it and which ones won't??? Which new sets from this year's catalog just didn't sell well enough to stay?

And this is just the beginning...the retired accessories list is coming out in June!

I love the cleaning out process. My customers love to purchase my used sets, and I truly enjoy clearing out my bins for the new stamp sets coming our way in July!

Looking through my card samples and separating out the retiring samples is also exciting to me. Usually my mom and my younger sister receive a bunch of them. My customers also love to get samples of the retired sets they buy. I sometimes find samples to re-use by just taking off the main retired focal point. I keep a box of these to play with when the new catalog stamp sets come in.

New Chipboard Products

Want to see the new chipboard products?

Stamping with Chipboard

You may have already heard that Stampin' Up! will be bringing out some new chipboard designs. If you haven't used chipboard in your stamping, WHY NOT?

No, really...chipboard is so fabulous to work with. The dimension you can add to your stamped art creations is spectacular!

I recently did a Chipboard Stamp Camp. There are so many ways to decorate chipboard - craft ink, Pearl Ex, Lumiere, and patterned paper to name a few. My favorite way to decorate chipboard is with patterned paper. Here is an example of one of the items created at my Chipboard Stamp Camp:

Distressing the edges of the covered chipboard is easy with Stampin' Up!'s sanding blocks. Check out my stamp camp gallery (www.geocities.com/stampwithjane) for more examples from my Chipboard Stamp Camp.

New In Colors

Stampin' Up! introduced the new In Color line in 2006. Each year, they plan on retiring these colors (there are 6 In Colors) and introducing new colors. This is a great way to appease the trendy-types of colors that come in and out of product lines. For 2006-2007, Stampin' Up! brought us Buckaroo Blue, Cool Caribbean, Cranberry Crisp, Marigold Morning, True Thyme, and Vintage Violet. These were fabulous colors to work with...I will miss Cranberry Crisp the most!

Through the web "grapevine", names of the new colors were shared....they are really going with food shades this year! The new In Colors for 2007-2008 are as follows:

Blue Bayou, Groovy Guava, Purely Pomegranate, River Rock, Soft Sky, and Wild Wasabe.

Plus, they have announced there will also be another neutral Basic Grey. This will be waterproof like the Basic Black and Basic Brown.

Just the names themselves have demos excited...this time of year is always fun watching for new products and stamp sets being revealed through demo and industry publications!!!

But what is in a name? I have uploaded a picture from a demo who shared this on one of my email groups. It may be difficult for everyone to see - hopefully, you'll enjoy the glimpse of what is coming!

Using Stamp Camp Leftovers

It's been a while since I posted...but I have been stamping like crazy! I have been designing items (mostly cards) using sets from the mini-catalog, Doodle This/Doodle That and Office Accoutrement. Spring flowers are growing in my samples as well as in my garden!

When I host stamping events in my home, I tend to cut too much cardstock. So my stamping area sometimes gets dumped on after an event. As I am anxious to start something new, I see the piles of extra cardstock, ribbons, or accessories. Leftovers again??? I think to myself. Hmm, this sounds like when I make too much chicken for dinner, and I am the only one eating it after the second meal.

What I usually do with my leftovers is make the cards for my own personal card stash - and I'll send some of these cards to customers for their birthdays (well, at least those who didn't attend the Stamp A Stack!).

However, after this Spring Stamp A Stack, I had lots of the Petals designer paper (with the pretty So Saffron and White flowers) cut. I was getting bored with the same card, so I wanted to strike out a new stamping path. So I put to the side some of the pieces, and then I brought in pieces from other leftover projects...like that Cool Caribbean cardstock and the Chocolate Chip (which I seem to use very often this year). Well, just playing around with those pieces made a new color combo jump out at me. I just couldn't get enough! Here is one example using this new color combo (for me) and a new card format (again, for me):


I hope you like the color combo too!

Stamping with a New Stamp Set

After stamping with Polka Dots & Paisley all last month, I finally rewarded myself to stamping with another new set from the Spring Mini-Catalog - Doodle This. I spent most of yesterday creating new cards and projects. This is one of my favorites.It is a departure from my usual designs...my card designs tend to go the rectangular route.

I used the Spring Showers Paper (which is so pretty), some cream ribbon, and a small ribbon charm from the Hodgepodge Hardware kit. I know many of you are saying to yourself "I never knew it had a name!" Well, guess what, I didn't know the specific name until I read my demonstrator-only Stampin' Success magazine this week. If you come to my Just Punchy Stamp Camp next month, I'll be sharing the list of Hodgepodge Hardware names from Stampin' Up! headquarters.

I'll be sharing lots more designs as the week goes on...this has become a new favorite set!

Watch for Stamping Posts

Procrastination...is it just me? My taxes were due to our accountant, and although I had done lots of the prep work, I just didn't want to start finalizing my computer entries. So what did I do instead of my taxes?

Research blog sites and blog hosts, mock up a blog, finalize a blog, write two posts for a blog (including a lengthy online search for a decent Jane Austen picture), add some cool items to the blog, check the blog about 20 times for traffic numbers...and that is just time in front of the computer!

I am now finished with my taxes so I can devote more time to this blog and get it uploaded with great stamping ideas and samples.

What are you procrastinating?

Would Jane Austen Blog?

Ok, so I started my blog...and I really love the ease of Blogger. But it got me thinking...given the same set of circumstances...would Jane Austen blog?

I belong to a fabulous book club. We are going on 17 years together. Many of the women I have known for over 35 years. We started this book club a few years after college as we didn't want our brains to turn to mush. This was before Oprah started her book club-we didn't realize we were trend setters. Together, we have shared loves and losses, marriages and divorces, babies and miscarriages, in-laws, parenting issues, deaths of family members, new career choices, and now we are all dealing with caring for our aging parents. These women have helped me through some of the roughest parts of my adulthood thus far.

Many authors have become favorites in our book club (or BBC to its members). My favorite author is Jane Austen. Her writing style and her story lines transcend time. I still remember reading Pride and Prejudice in college and writing a very lengthy report on the novel. This novel is responsible for my changing majors in my junior year from Social Work to English. To this day, I still relish reading the novel (and watching the BBC/Colin Firth version whenever I have 8 hours of free time).

So to get back to my question...would Jane Austen blog?

You know what...I think so. In the few novels she did write and publish, she had so much to say about society as a whole and the society she lived in. She may even have had some great party pictures uploaded to her own blog, sent video clips to YouTube showcasing the new dances at Pemberley, or added a link to Emma's own match.com site.

Anniversary Challenge

While updating my stamped art gallery earlier this month, I realized I reached my fifth year of hosting a web gallery. I could hardly believe it! Where has the time gone?

I have seen many changes in the world wide web since I started...Even my very own site has been through a couple of major overhauls - I altered the focus over the years from being a gallery of hundreds of stamping artists to now being truly my gallery for my stamped art (with a few exceptions of course). I also did a major design overhaul about 18 months ago. Still a few blips, but overall, I really like the design of this site.

So on this momentous five-year anniversary of my stamped art gallery site, I wanted to challenge myself. And really, the one challenge I have been agonizing over is TO BLOG OR NOT TO BLOG...

So I have decided to become a blogger. I love to write, and I also LOVE to talk about stamping so this just seems like the logical next step.

Welcome on my journey to nowhere in particular...enjoy the ride!