Thanks for your patience!

Thanks for the patience in waiting for my stamp sets! I work on them when time allows, and they will shortly be done. All the packaging is in and it's awesome!!! I'm so excited to get going with everything! I've got tons of ideas, on multiple sketchpads that I'll be sharing with you soon! I have been slowing down the last few weeks because I'll be taking my interior design licensing exam next week. This exam is an extensive 16 hours over the course of two days. It's expensive, so I'm really spending my time studying for that right now because I only want to pay for it once, but in a week it's over and I'm going to hit the stamp images hard. I already have most of the images in the proper program, and I'm just making final adjustments and tweaks. Again, thanks for your patience and understanding!
Erin

Transparency Card

This is a humorous birthday card I made for a card swap! We're looking for more people to sign up so let me know if you're interested! We meet once a month and it's tons of fun!

I cut a transparency into a standard card size, then cut a piece of patterned paper to fit inside it, with 1/4" borders. You can kind of see the border of the clear acrylic around the paisley paper. Then I printed the sentiment on cardstock in a coordinating color. Mat the inside sentiment and tape inside the card. You're done!

Paper Globes

These are way fun and simple to make! However, I can't take credit for the idea. A talanted lady by the name of Heather Bailey created these. She's got the tutorial on her blog if you click on the link. (It's an awesome website!) Mine are much smaller than hers and I've added some fun brads to it also. Her pattern uses fairly large sized circles, and I felt a little lazy and didn't want to cut the 20 circles needed by hand. I used the largest circle punch I had and made a miniature version. It's about 3" in diameter.







I could see a bunch of these hanging from a chandelier for a party, or off of the mantle to make a garland at Christmas time. I also made a variation where the center was made of green vellum. It also turned out really nicely. I created these for the contest at my local scrapbook store. I decided not to turn in the one with the vellum, and accidentally got disqualified because I didn't use any of the vellum. Oh well!)

Flower Brooch

Here's something else you can do with the ribbon trim shown below. Make a flower brooch. This one is fairly easy. Just cut a piece of trim 5" long. I used the same looped ribbon fringe, but any fringe should work for this project. Tape where you are going to cut and cut down the middle of the tape to keep it from unraveling.
Take your 5" piece, wrap it around in a circle to make a flower shape and hot glue gun the ends together. To hide the seam and top of the fringe, I cut a circle from some wool felt that I had a scrap piece of. I adhered that to the top of the flower and attached a pin on the underside. I pinned it on the front of the card as shown below:

This way the card can be sent and they can remove the flower and have a little brooch to go on a bag. (This one is a little to big to wear, but on a bag it would be really cute!) The finished card size is 6" square, so you can see how big the flower is. If you use a smaller, shorter fringe, you'll get a smaller flower.

Easy Coordinated Ribbon Tutorial

Ok, so I love mixing different colors of ribbon for a project but sometimes it can get to be expensive to buy multiple widths, colors, and textures, just to get a few that coordinate. So here's another option:

Looped Decorator Fringe

You can get this fringe anywhere that sells home decor fabric. They have some at all the major craft chains and if you live in the suburbs north of Dallas try Childress Fabrics. (They have two locations, try their Frisco location.)

It will look like this:

When you buy it, make sure that it has loops at the bottom, and is not cut. If it's not looped it will not work. I bought about one yard for $4.00. This particular fringe has four different ribbons in it. If you are cutting fringe, wrap the area that you want to cut with some tape. Then cut in the center of the tape. (See picture below.) This will keep both sides from unraveling before you're ready to unravel it.

After you've cut off a piece to use, start unpicking the top that holds the fringe together. A unpicker (don't know if that's the right term) or a pair of scissors with sharp points should work well. As you unpick it it, you'll get pieces of ribbon. I usually wrap these around a small piece of foam core to keep it from getting tangled. Now you have 2 yards of 4 different types of ribbon. (Yep, you doubled what you had because it was looped back on itself.) You can use just one, or all on a project.

Here is a card I made with all of the ribbon. There were two pieces that were about 1/4" wide and two that were 1/8" wide. It is also shimmery. (You can see this a little better in the close up at the bottom.) I printed out a sentiment on a piece of cardstock in a color to match the ribbon and matted it on a piece of dark red paper. I wanted a little more dimension on the card, so I folded up the matted cardstock to give it a little frame around the sentiment. (You can see that a little better on the closeup below too.) The sentiment says: "Hope is the ability to hear the music of the future. Faith is having the courage to dance to it today." I really like this quote!




Hope you enjoy it!

Page in a Bag Contest

So my local scrapbooking store has a contest once a month where they give you a bag of supplies and you have one week to make a project. It's been challenging because sometimes they are not the supplies that I would normally use. These were the supplies for the month:


And here's what I made with it:

Votive Holder Tutorial

Click here to download a PDF tutorial of how to make the project:

Votive Holder Tutorial

The finished project is about 5" Tall, but depending on the size of your lid, it can get larger or smaller.

I promise it's really easy! Let me know if you make it! I'd love to see what everyone else does with this idea. Thanks!

What can you make with this?

Ok so I've got a LED candlelight (which I love! You get the flickering of a candle without the heat or flame), the top to a can of alfredo sauce (yum), and a piece of spring green vellum. I'll post in 24 hours what the final product is, I'm just making sure the tutorial is easy to follow.

While we're on the matter of tutorials, I'm sure you've noticed the new tabs at the top of the page. Bear with me as I'm still working on getting everything together. But here's a question for you. When I do the tutorials, would you rather have them as just another blog post, or as a downloadable PDF that you can print out and follow? Let me know as I'm trying to decide what format to offer them in.

Thanks!

Big Changes are happening

As I prepare my business website for my stamp line I'm transferring all posts of a more personal nature to a new blog:
Edited to remove link to personal blog
This blog will continue to have lots of crafting projects, tutorials, and other features while the new one will have more personal family related stuff. Please make sure you add the new blog to your RSS Feed. Also, please excuse the dust as I renovate this blog. If you click on a link that doesn't work, please let me know as this is my first real attempt to make major changes to the html code! Thanks everyone!
Erin

One more thing...

I also finally figured out why in the world you couldn't click on any of my pictures to make them bigger. So now I've got that fixed. From now on you should be able to click on the pictures to get a larger picture. :)

Card Background with a Magazine

Ok, so this card was one I made a little while ago. The background for this card was made using a magazine page. This one was pulled out of a Pottery Barn Kids Catalog. I just found a page that had lots of red on it and cut it into little strips. (Don't worry about cutting the length of the strips to match the size just yet. Just cut them out and after you arrange them you can trim the edges.) Then I covered a piece of cardstock around the edges with some double sided tape and arranged the strips onto it. (Now trim the edges.) Once I did that, I printed the sentiment out. I used two different browns for the ribbon. To add a little more texture I actually just crumpled up the middle, more narrow, ribbon in my hand and gave it a crinkley texture. (Is crinkley a word?) I attached the ribbon and then the sentiment and voila!

Any catalog will work well, just find one with some colors that you like. The image doesn't really matter because it is cut up so small that it distorts it. Also, try to find one with little or no humans in it. Because we are human, we are drawn to human faces before anything else on the page. If you look close, there are a few eyes on mine, (bottom right, a few strips up) but I really tried to break it up so that you're not drawn directly to that. Enjoy!

Valentines Day

This project that I did for Christian was inspired through the Sprite Stitch Blog which I found through Celia's website. Apparently he's a friend of her husband. Cool blog for those who like gaming and crafting!!!!

I saw this pattern from his blog and decided to make Christian a little dice bag for Valentines day. I actually have never finished a cross stitch until this one! All the other ones I've started have been pretty big and I've lost interest before finishing so this one was just the right size! It took just about 1 hour to do the cross stitch and another hour to sew up the bag, complete with drawstring and lining. Anyway, here it is:

Also here's a simple recipe card for a swap this past week:

And the winner is......

3sweetboys1princess
Congrats! I'll contact you to make arrangements to get the magazine to you! (This was picked by my personal random generator, Christian! We assigned everyone a number based on the order in which you commented, and then he rolled a dice)

Thank you everyone so much for all the supportive comments that you've left me! I'm so excited to get the ball rolling on the stamps! I'm working on the final images now for the stamp sets. And trying to decide how many to release for the first round of releases... And working on the website. And putting together some way fun things to go along with the release! Thank you so much for everything so far!!! I'll keep you posted on the status as things move along. Thanks!!!!!!

Calling all lurkers and regular readers of my blog...

I need your help! After months of research (about 9 months to be exact) I am really close to opening up a new business venture. I have been working with manufacturers and will soon have my own line of clear
Acrylic Stamps
to sell. I have designed all of the art (previews soon) and am now deciding what other things to offer in addition to my stamp line and trying to set my prices.

I am so excited because I've always thought that everyone should have access to great design, regardless of your crafting budget. I will be selling everything at great prices. If I wouldn't buy it at that price, than I'm not going to sell it at that price. There's lots more things that I'll share later, some are still in the works!


So here's where I need your help. Instead of doing a focus group at my house I'm going to host one online. If you don't mind, please post a link from your blogs to here so that I can reach as many people as possible! And, for all those who comment I will enter you in a drawing for a brand new copy of the March 2008 Paper Crafts Card Magazine.
Here's what feedback I need (and please be honest, brutally honest if necessary!! It will help me tremendously!)

Have you used clear stamps before?
What types of projects do you use stamps for? Cards, scrapbooking, paper crafts, home decor, clothing, etc.
Would you like to learn how to use them for things other than cards and scrapbooking?
Would you pay $12 for a stamp set with anywhere from 10-20 images? (So far, all my stamp sets are manufactured on sheets that are 4" x 6" and contain as many images as I can fit on them. If you wouldn't pay $12 per set, how much would you pay?
Are there stamp sets with particular themes that you'd like, but can't seem to find anywhere? (examples include inspiring quotes, multiple baby, borders, backgrounds etc.)
Do you buy crafting supplies online? If so, what?
Any other comments are welcome.

For now I'll be selling stamps and a few supplies that I can't seem to find anywhere locally but that are really great! I've got other awesome items that will be phased in around the holiday timeframe for some great custom crafted gifts for friends and family.

I'll keep everyone posted on the status because I'll be looking for hostesses for crafting parties soon! (Probably in the April/May time frame)

Thank you so much for your help and I look forward to hearing everyone's comments! I'll have the drawing for the card magazine on Saturday, Feb. 23 so leave a comment before then to be considered for the drawing!
Erin

Saw this on wfaa.com this morning:

Fasting seen as tool for health, spirituality

By JANET ST. JAMES / WFAA-TV


The history of fasting goes back thousands of years to Hippocrates, Socrates, Plato.
Jesus did it for 40 days for spiritual renewal. Debbie Ragsdale of McKinney does it once a month, for about the same reason. "When we fast, we're supposed to be prayerful about it," explains Ragsdale. "Otherwise we say we're just starving ourselves." Far from starving, a growing number of studies show a periodic fast can do as much for the body as it does for religious beliefs. After years of being told to eat many small meals a day to rev up the metabolism, research shows giving it a one day rest, once a week or once a month -- may also be beneficial. Research shows depriving the body of food -- for 24 hours, drinking only water -- can give the heart arteries and pancreas a rest. "If you're able to fast all day long, except for water, and reduce your insulin secretion," says Baylor University Medical Center Dr. Brian Welch. "There may be some metabolic advantage to that as long as it's not followed by binge eating."
Dr. Welch, a practicing endocrinologist, says there's even evidence partial fasting can extend the lifespan, because eating less sends a message to the brain and cells to use energy more efficiently. Scientists have seen the proof in rat studies and in real life. A study recently presented to the American Heart Association looked at Mormons. The study showed Mormon's hearts are much healthier than the average American's -- and not just because their religion forbids smoking and drinking.
Gordon Wright, a Dallas attorney who also happens to be Mormon, has fasted regularly his whole life.
"The appetites that we typically have and just set them aside and focus on more spiritual things. It allows us to focus on things other than the body and the things that drive us day to day," he said.
And Wright says when the fast is over, he's suprisingly not ravenous or obsessing about food. That's because research also suggests that supressing insulin may also reduce the taste for sugar. Reducing sugar cravings can lead to weight loss over time.
Ragsdale also tries to eat healthy. Once a month, she and friends gather to cook and share a light, healthy lunch, as part of that endeavor. And, she never misses her monthly fast, for body and soul.
"I think it's a matter of you learn some self-control too," Ragsdale says.
Doctors say fasting more than a day at time breaks down muscles, instead of helping the body. And diabetics should talk with their physician before attempting even a one day fast.
E-mail: jstjames@wfaa.com

See the original post and video here.