May 31 ~ Last chance

Remember: Sunday, May 31 is the last day for the May Specials!

1) Buy 3, get 1 FREE on any of our Designer Series Paper or Textured Card Stock.

2) Become a demonstrator for just $75.

3) Get the new Jumble Alphabet for 20% off.

Click here to order online, or contact me at my email address on the left sidebar.

Stampin' Up! on You Tube

Stampin' Up! has recently created a You Tube channel. I've posted some of the videos on the sidebar of my blog, or you can visit them here.

Echoes of Kindness & Oval All

For this pretty card, I stamped the flowers on watercolor paper in VersaMark ink. I applied Stampin' Pastels with a Q-tip. I think this technique is called Poppin' Pastels, but I get the many pastel techniques (and there are many) very confused! It is so neat to watch the pastels attach to the clear ink. The flowers come from the Echoes of Kindness hostess set and the greeting comes from Oval All in the Occasions Mini Catalog. This is my favorite set from that catalog. I also love the new scallop oval punch you see here.

Echoes of Kindness

I made this card with the Echoes of Kindness set. It is a Level 2 Hostess set. I stamped on the watercolor paper and colored with an Aqua Painter. The Designer Series Paper (remember the great sale this month!) I used is Walk in the Park from the Occasions Mini Catalog. This particular pattern is a little wild, but I think I calmed it down a little with the layering......I hope!

Teacher Appreciation Night

We held our Teacher Appreciation Night at church a couple of weeks ago. I thought I'd update those of you who had asked about it previously.

As a reminder, each of the kids, ages 3-18 that wanted to participate invited one of their favorite school teachers to be honored. It turned out better than any of us could have possibly imagined! All that worry for months and it was fine. I'm sure the worry helped to make it fine, but anyway... If we do it again, we'll know a little more about what to do and what not to do. I've kept track! I may need some kind of sedative to go through this again, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it! ;)

Judging by the amount of chairs filled, people standing, and plates and cups used ;) we had around 100 people in attendance.

We were sitting behind Brandon's teacher (he is the only one of my kids that participated) and just as it was beginning, she turned to me and said "I can't believe anyone would do this for us!" She didn't know I had anything to do with planning it. Here I'd been thinking that it was just another thing the teachers had to work into their schedules, and by the end of the evening, I realized how grateful they were that we had put the whole thing together. Most of them stayed around an hour after it was finished and thanked us over and over.

A school board member from our ward and our bishop gave short talks. Afterwards we showed the video that we made of all the kids telling why they picked the teacher they did. It was GREAT! Everyone giggled through the whole thing. The kids were so cute. Definitely a highlight of the evening!

One challenge was getting all of the kids that participated and the teachers that came together for a picture at the end.

Brandon invited a past teacher. He had this particular teacher in Kindergarten and again in 2nd grade. She is just awesome!

When I got home from running errands the day after, there was a message on the phone from a local floral shop saying to look on the front porch. I found this cute arrangement from a sweetie in our ward thanking me for putting things together for the program. SO nice!

May Stampin' Up! Specials

Three great specials going on this month!

Click here and here to find out more about them.

Oval All

I've been saving this card to show for quite a while! We'll be making it at the next class on June 19th (however everyone may not make the exact same color). I made this for a recent swap. It uses the new Oval All stamp set and new Oval Punch, along with the Walk in the Park Designer Series Paper. All of these items are from the new Occasions Mini Catalog.

I also used the Manhattan Flower Textured Impressions Die with the Big Shot.