Swappin' with the Girls!

Would you believe I've been sitting on this card for a week now and haven't gotten around to blogging it? Ugh, I am the worst blogger ever! Is anyone even reading anymore, or have you all given up on me? :-) Anyway - I made this card because last weekend I got to escape and spend the entire day Saturday hanging out with the girls, making cards at the Austin Splitcoastampers Shoebox Swap!! YAY!


This card idea was borrowed from my incredibly talented friend Heather (heather maria on Flickr) - she is the master of beautiful vellum flowers with this Hero Arts Large Flower stamp. Check out this card or this card or this card - see what I mean? *swoon* Heather you should know, I got tons of compliments at the swap - thanks for the inspiration!!

I had to keep my card fairly quick and easy to make, as there would be about 10 minutes or so to make it. To simplify things (and to avoid a major embossing powder mess!) I pre-stamped & embossed all the vellum flowers. For 40 stampers. So yes, 80 flowers. Remind me to think of something less time consuming for the next swap! LOL!

And speaking of ~40 stampers (there were a few short of 40, actually) - here's the whole lovely group of us!



And here's a little collage of photos I took throughout the day with my phone...

Clockwise from top left, that's Lydia, some cards, some inky fingers, Brenda, Suzy, Lisa & Michelle, Bev, Karen, Rae Anne, Rachel, Christy and of course me and Lisa in the center.

Yay! Good times!

Austin Area 2009 SCS Shoebox Swap!

Wow it's been ages since I've posted on here!! For the most part I have been on a MAJOR stamping break - totally lacking in the mojo department. I was close to giving up hope that I'd ever stamp again, but luckily some sweet stamping friends hosted a big SCS Shoebox Swap and I was able to kick it back into high gear!! Ok, that's a lie - I still have very little mojo, but at least I was able to make cards OTHERS designed, and hang out with some wonderful stampy chicks! I'll share some photos in a bit, but first I wanted to say a GREAT BIG THANK YOU to some WONDERFUL companies - they donated doorprizes and discount codes for our swap, providing enough STUFF that everyone got to go home with a goodie bag as well as a doorprize!! They ROCK and they are now officially my favorite companies on the planet. (Ok, most of them already were anyway!!) But here's who I officially LOVE!
American Art Stamp * Deadbeat Designs * DeNami Design * FireCracker Designs by Pamela * Flourishes * Gina K Designs * Hambo Stamps * MFT * Our Craft Lounge * Rubbernecker Stamp Company * smARTworks * Stampendous * Stamping Bella * Taylored Expressions * Texana Designs * The Greeting Farm * Unity Stamp Company
My next posts will feature each of these fine companies, starting tomorrow morning with an FCD blog hop!! So tune in for that! :-) And now onto the photos. First, here's me with two of our wonderful hostesses for the event, Karen (gamblemom) and Brenda (sassybee)!This is the entire gang - 40 stampers. The event was at the Lone Star Retreat Center in Georgetown, and owner Karmen could not be any sweeter! She joined us for the stamping!Stamping our little hearts out...Here I am with Christy (cpine) - one of the sweetest stampers I know!You know I love Deborah's (deborahmegan) blog! And of course she is such a fun chica too!And last but not least - here I am with two AMAZING stampers, who I was hoping like mad would rub a little of their talent off on me as we posed for this photo! Bev (texasgrammy) and Joan (joanervin). EEEK!Thanks for stopping by today! I'll be back soon with the blog hop!!

Swappin' in North Texas!!

Ok consider yourself warned - this post is going to make you sooooo jealous!! I just got home a little while ago from a weekend trip to Dallas, where I spent alllllll day yesterday making 45 cards with some of the most fantastic stampers on the planet!! I got to attend the Splitcoast North Texas Shoebox Swap!!! Woohoooo!! It was so much fun!! The cards were fabulous - I learned a couple fun new tricks that you'll be seeing on some upcoming cards I'm sure. And I got to meet some amazing stampers!! This is going to be a long post with lots of photos, so sit back, relax and enjoy... and keep in mind I was a big dope and didn't really break out the camera until the end of the day, when we were all looking oh so lovely after stamping our little hearts out for ten hours or so...! (it sorta pains me to show these awful photos of me, but at the same time, I just can't help it!!) :-)

First up, me and our wonderful hostess, Suzy Tyler (s00zy66). She did such an amazing job putting this event together!!Here I am with my sweet table buddies - we spent the entire day together making our cards, traveling from table to table. Becky (tggrfriend), me, Christy (cpine) and Susan (susanrosser).It was soooo much fun getting to meet Megan (deborahmegan)! I've been following her blog ever since she made one of my all-time favorite Courtney's Closet cards - she was so much fun and so nice and friendly!Here's my NEIGHBOR Rae Anne (huera90), and her good buddy Yoorah who flew in all the way from California for the swap! I'm hoping I'll get to see Rae Anne sooner than at the next SCS swap we both go to... :-)I had met Sharon (stampscout) when she worked a Rubbernecker booth at a stamp show in San Antonio last fall - it was so nice chatting with her yesterday and getting to know her a little better!And now... I have to totally brag and show you the SUPERSTARS I got to meet!! Holy cow! And let me tell you, they are all just as nice as they are mega-talented! First there's Dirty Dozen Alumnus and super nice Joan Ervin (who I had also met briefly at that Rubbernecker booth last fall).Here I am with Karen (kikikaren, who is my hero - I went to an all-day cardmaking event without any adhesive, can you believe that?? She hooked me up with a big box of Mono Adhesive, woohoo!) and the famous stamping diva Susan Liles (susiestampalot). She even offered to give me her autograph! ;-)And here I am with the amazing Jen del Muro (genie1314) - you've seen me try many of her awesome sketches on here!!And finally, Shannan Teubner (steubner), whose blog I absolutely adore. She was so funny and so sweet!And speaking of sweet - look at this awesome cake Suzy's friend made for us! I thought it was just beautiful. And it was yummy too!I told you you'd be jealous! I can't wait to spend another day like this, I hear there may be a swap coming up in Austin in October! Yay! I'll be back tomorrow to post the card I made for the swap. Hope you all enjoyed your weekend as much as I did!