Look what I made!

I was getting ready to order more ribbon holders, even though I don't find the Stampin Up! ones ideal (have to partially disassemble to remove a spool if the holder is very full). But then I saw this cool homemade inkpad holder designed by Stacey King. And then I saw this neat adaptation of Stacey's design into a ribbon holder by tara1601, pictured here in her gallery on splitcoaststampers.com.

Hmm. Crazy math chick gets an idea! What if I take Stacey's idea and tara1601's adaptation a little further, and make a ribbon holder sized perfectly for the shelf on my bookcase that holds my ribbon? Here it is!


This holder combined Stacey's awesome instructions, a little bit of calculations, a little bit of trial and error, and used quite a bit more foamcore board than Stacey's design - about 3.5 sheets total. My holder is 28 inches wide and 13.5 inches high. It slides into my shelf with very little room to spare. I think it's going to work just fine. Thank you so much for the inspiration, ladies!

I've been tagged

I've been tagged by Maren, one of my Sisterhood of Blogging Stampers buddies. Please check out her blog. I love her style, and am blown away by her great projects on a daily basis.

1. Stamping Style: It's taken me awhile to figure out what my style is, but I think that "clean and simple" is probably the best description of where I am at the moment.
2. Inspiration: SCS, swaps, blogs
3. Color: I seem to be obsessed with reds (pomegranate, ruby, real red) and yellows (apricot, saffron, summer sun, banana) lately for some reason. Hadn't even noticed until I checked out my recent blog and gallery photos.
4. Work Space: I currently share the family room with my DH's computer building hobby, but we're getting ready to swap the living room stuff into that room (biggest room in the house) and move my stamping things to the living room. DH's computer building will be moving elsewhere. This is kinda scary, because the current craft room is almost 14x20 feet and the new one will be about 11x12.
5. Perfect day: Sleep late, yoga, lazy lunch, hobby time, good movie or reading, good dinner, chocolate, stay up late (I'm a night owl).
6. First Job: delivering newspapers
7. Wildest dream: finish remodeling my house
9. Family: Darrell (DH), Juliette (10), Katrina (7)
10. Beverage: Diet Coke, water
11. Biggest Challenge: Finding enough hours in the day for all of the things I find entertaining.

Let's see - who should I tag? How about Amy, Kathy, and Lynn. All three of these ladies have terrific blogs as well. Go see!

Share a happy dance with me!

Woo hoo! Check this out!



Not too exciting, you say? Those shelves above are the ones that hold my mounted Stampin' Up! stamps. And they're empty! These two shelves plus three others were completely full when I started. I'm finished with this part of the great unmounting project! Here's the unmounted stamp rack all filled up:


I still have the wheels to unmount, but I have to wait a bit as I'm completely out of EZ Mount. I went through about 40 sheets of it over the past few months. The obsessive part of me is so happy to see those empty shelves that I keep going to my room to stare at them. Now to figure out what to put there instead!

Christmas Card Challenge for February

There's a group of really smart stampers on Splitcoast who participate in a monthly Christmas card challenge. The idea is to make ten Christmas cards a month all year long, and by doing so, have all of your cards ready in plenty of time to avoid massive overwork and all-nighters in November and December. I've always had the best of intentions to participate in the challenge, and somehow still end up making a hundred or so cards between December 1 and December 15. Or even worse, last year I made them all starting on December 18 and mailed them on the way out of town on December 24!

So I'm going to try to do better this year. Here's my card for February's challenge. The oval stamp is actually from a valentine set, but I love it and decided it could just as well be a holiday stamp. I cut the stamped oval by hand because I don't have my oval Nestabilities (yet), and the Marvy oval punch was slightly the wrong shape. But the Marvy giga scalloped oval worked just fine as a mat.



Stamps: Sweet Love - Papertrey Ink, So Many Sayings - Stampin' Up! (retired); Paper: Stamper's Select White - Papertrey Ink, Kraft, Handsome Hunter - Stampin' Up!; Ink: Purely Pomegranate, Chocolate Chip - Stampin' Up!; Accessories: Pomegranate satin ribbon - Stampin' Up! (retired), Giga scalloped oval punch - Marvy Uchida

Gotta play with new toys

I just can't take peer pressure, you know. After seeing blog after blog with fabulous samples made with Nestabilities, I had to have some. So I got my first set - the rectangles - a few days ago. Add some new stamps from the Occasions and SAB mini catalogs, plus an old favorite background stamp, and here's what you get:

Stamps - Live Your Dream, Friendship Blooms, Floral; Paper - Whisper White, Barely Banana, Wild Wasabi, Regal Rose; Ink - Wild Wasabi, Barely Banana, Regal Rose; Accessories - Nestabilities rectangles, regal rose 5/8" grosgrain, horizontal slot punch, markers (Barely Banana, Regal Rose), dimensionals (all Stampin' Up! except Nestabilities)

Odds and ends

Did you ever have one of those days where the "half cards" on your stamping table were just driving you crazy? That was me today. I had a stack of card parts that I was just moving from side to side every time I sat down to stamp. I don't even remember what I was originally planning to make with them. And of course, new stuff has arrived since then anyway. So I just whipped up some cards to get the parts out of my way. Here are the results.

Stamps - Friendship Blooms; Paper - Cutie Pie designer paper, Bashful Blue, So Saffron; Ink - Basic Black; Accessories - slit punch, rub-ons - Love & Happiness (all Stampin' Up!)

Stamps - So Many Scallops, A Little Birthday Cheer; Paper - Cutie Pie designer paper, Certainly Celery, Purely Pomegranate; Ink - Purely Pomegranate, Basic Black, markers (Certainly Celery, Bashful Blue, So Saffron); Accessories - scallop circle punch, 1 1/4" circle punch, slit punch, rub-ons - A Perfect Day, dimensionals, bashful blue striped grosgrain (all Stampin' Up!)


Stamps - Starstruck (Stampin' Up!), Thanks (Green Grass Stamps); Paper - Cutie Pie designer paper, So Saffron, Bashful Blue, Purely Pomegranate; Ink - Purely Pomegranate, Night of Navy; Accessories - slit punch, large star punch (all Stampin' Up! except as noted)