Scoring with UStamp with Dawn and Friends!

Hi all!  Just wanted to pop in real quick with the project I created for UStamp with Dawn and Friend's "Let's Score." 

If you haven't checked out a UStamp with Dawn event, it's definitely worth it!  This month's "Let's Score" edition focuses on projects that use the Simply Scored tool.  You can check out my project along with 40+ others, complete with pictures and PDF instructions by subscribing to the "Let's Score" edition here.  Hope you liked this quick look!

Have a fantastic day and thanks so much for dropping by!

Sale-a-bration is {HERE!!}

Yay!  This is one of my favorite times of the year as far as crafting is concerned!  It's Sale-a-bration, and that means you can earn some FREE crafty products with each $50 purchase of Stampin'Up goodies from January 24-March 31, 2012!  Isn't that a deal?  Not to mention, there are additional benefits when you:

• Host a party!:  Get a free tote when your workshop total is $150 or more, or you can qualify for a product bundle with a workshop total of $400 or more {Product bundle includes: Fresh Vintage Stamp set, Every Day Enchantment DSP, and Every Day Enchantment Ribbon and Brad pack!}
• Join my team!: You can join by purchasing a starter kit for $125, AND in addition, you get your choice of a free Designer Series Paper or Free Digital Downloads each month for the rest of the year! 

Sound like fun?  You can shop online 24/7 at my demonstrator store anytime.  Or, if you'd like to find out more info about the Stampin'Up! opportunity, you can always email me with questions you may have and I'll be more than happy to talk you through! :)

Enjoy!  Hope you have a great day.  Toodles for now.

Sale-a-bration Sneaky Peeky

Hello there dear friends!  I'm back with a combo Sale-a-bration Sneak Peek using the yummy Everyday Enchantment DSP in a layout I created in My Digital Studio {MDS}.  AND, I got to incorporate a few more pics from the Stampin'Up! Leadership conference, too!  Mark your calendars, cuz Sale-a-bration starts tomorrow!!  For those of you that may be wondering what Sale-a-bration is, it's an awesome annual Stampin'Up! promotion where you can earn free stamps or products from the Sale-a-bration catalog for every $50 you spend in Stampin'Up! Merchandise!!  It's quite the deal if you ask me.  I personally LOVE this Everyday Enchantment DSP, which comes in double sided 12x12 paper as well as in Digital format, too!  In fact, all the new Sale-a-bration offerings are available as a Digital CD download as one of the free product options.  Pretty cool, if you ask me! ;)

Now, here's a look at the 2 page layout I created:

I am having a lot of fun learning and experimenting with all the different elements in MDS.  Not to mention, after seeing all the different books and pages that you can purchase in the printed products, I am really hooked!  I have a few projects lined up that I want to try - first, my Leadership Conference book, and then a board book for my cute little guy.  I'll definitely share once I have them ready to go.  Don't you worry, though - I am still a stamper and paper crafter at heart, so more cards and papercrafting projects are coming up soon.

In the meantime, I am gonna continue going through my photos and will post more soon.  In the spirit of Chinese New Year, I want to wish you all "Gong Hei Fat Choi!" {Happy New Year!}

Some highlights from Stampin'Up! Leadership

Hello there bloggie friends!  I am back from the Stampin'Up! Leadership conference and came away with so many new creative ideas to share as well as some new ideas for making my Stampin'Up! "My Way."  First, let me share some fun pics of the displays that definitely gave me fresh inspiration:

 I love how they made flowers out of the Fashionable Hearts embosslit!  So so pretty!

How about these sweet little love notes?  Such a cute idea with the card and pen holder, AND the Balloon Frame.  Do you see that heart box with chocolate in it?  We got to sample some of that chocolate and it was DELISH!!!  Home made by a Stampin'Up! employee!

Here's a broader look at the display - love the Doily banner.  Just gorgeous!

And I love the yummy ice cream cone card - not to mention those fun jelly brad embellies!

These pillows using the Dresden die are truly inspiring me to learn to sew better.  How pretty are these!

You know I LOVE me the buttons, so I just loved this display of button ideas.

And, last but not least, the gorgeous Blossom punch.  The card idea is so so fun and summery - must case or recreate in some way!!

And, here's a picture of the fun group of gals that I got to spend lots of time with - from left to right: AnnMarie, Michelle, Liz, {me}, and Norma. 

So, besides all these awesome creative displays and fun Make and Takes, Leadership was also a great source of motivation for Demos to take an introspective look at their own businesses and provide insights on areas of growth or improvement.  What I really liked was this year's theme of doing business "My Way."  Being a working mom, many of you that have been following my blog know that I'm still trying to tweak my schedule to incorporate my stamping and blogging.  So, it's really nice to know that I can create my business to suit my needs and adjust as necessary.  Of course, I'm totally motivated now about my stamping business, so I'm rejuvenated by the idea of optimizing my schedule to fit everything in that's important to me.  Let's say it'll be an active work in progress, with more regular blog posts with stamping and crafting ideas coming in the future :) 

Here are a few highlights of the classes that we got to take:

• Why Women Buy - sounds like such a simple concept, right?  Carrie Cudney shared some great insights about the buying patterns of women and what made me laugh was her example of how a woman shops at the mall vs how a man shops.  Hilarious.  Bottom line is that we women want what we want - isn't that right?
• Then, we also got to learn about our individual career plans and benefits.  Bonnie Thurber was the presenter and I just LOVE her.  She's got such a great sense of humor that made it even more fun and entertaining to learn about the great benefits at the Sr Supervisor level of being a demonstrator and gave us inspiration to shoot for the stars ;)
• As you all know, stamping and papercrafting spans across a broad demographic of women of various generations.  Amy Swartz and Paula Critchlow shared with us how to include new generations to share the love of stamping.  I couldn't agree more - the art of stamping should be shared with young and old alike, so exposing a new generation to stamping is a no brainer in my book.  And, I just love how digital stamping makes it even more accessible!  {Love me the MDS, too!}

The biggest highlight, as always, is getting to see Shelli. 

She's one of those amazing women that just never ceases to inspire. It was great seeing her and getting to chat one-on-one for a quick second, too. Thanks, Shelli!

I took so many photos - I just need a bit more time to look through and edit so I can post more card samples and conference pics to share with you all! Will do that soon. Thanks for visiting! Bye for now!!



Greetings from San Antonio!

Hello blog friends! How are you all? I am posting this morning from the Stampin'Up! Leadership Conference in San Antonio! I arrived yesterday and kicked off the session with picking up my cute little bag then it was off to Make and Takes. Here's a couple of pictures I took to share with you all:







I'll post more in a bit. In the meantime, have a fantastic day!!

{Heartstrings} Forever and Always

Pin It

Hello there dear blog friends!  Hope you had a nice weekend.  I'm just popping in with a quick post - a simple card I made from the extra hearts I had left over from my "you're just my type" card in my previous post.  I'm a big fan of clean and simple, and for this month's So Shelli Challenge, I think this card fits the bill!  What do you think?  I love using twine on my projects and am so thrilled that the new Occasions Mini has twine in the In Colors!  Here's the super simple recipe for this card for you...

{Forever and Always Heartstrings}
*Stamp Sets: Take It to Heart, Loving Thoughts
*Cardstock: Crumb Cake, Whisper White, Calypso Coral, Pool Party
*Inks: Crumb Cake, Calypso Coral, and Pool Party Markers; Early Espresso Classic Ink Pad
*Accessories: Fashionable Hearts Embosslits, Calypso Coral and Pool Party Baker's Twine, Corner Rounder

Hope you like it!  Thanks for popping by today.   Have a fantastic week and I'll catch up with you guys soon.

you're just my type.

Hey there friends! I've got my first card for the year to share with you.  I am so excited that I got a chance to craft for a quick second!  I got to play with some of my fave new goodies from the Occasions Mini catty.  What do you think of the little sneaky peek above?  I love this new stamp set, called "You're My Type" and I'm also a big fan of this color scheme - Calypso Coral, Pool Party, Early Espresso, and Crumb Cake.  Yummy vintage retro Valentine with a splash of color.  Here's a look at the full card for you:

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I had so much fun playing with the new Labels Framelits and the pretty Doily sizzlit.  Don't they add a nice touch of texture to the card?  How about the sweet little hearts?  Those are a new embosslit called Fashionable Hearts..just too cute!

 .

Here's another angle of the card.  I love that Stampin'Up! now has twine in the In Colors!  How cool is that?  For this card, I used Pool Party and Calypso Coral and added a button embelly as well.  Hope you liked this Occasions card!  Here's the recipe for you:

{you're just my type!}

*Cardstock: Crumb Cake, Pool Party, Calypso Coral, Whisper White, and Sweet Shop DSP

*Inks: Early Espresso, Calypso Coral, Crumb Cake

*Stamp Sets: Just My Type

*Accessories: Paper Doily Sizzlit, Fashionable Hearts Embosslit, Labels Framelits, Pool Party and Calypso Coral Baker's Twine, Twitterpated Designer Button, Sponge Dauber, Corner Rounder

Thanks for stopping by for a visit.  Have a great day!

The Occasions Mini Catalog is {HERE!}

Hello there bloggie friends!  Are you ready to check out the new Occasions Mini catalog?  It's chockfull of CUTENESS and has already burned a hole in my pocket {wink!}.  I'll let you check it out for yourself and you let me know what you think.  In addition to the must-have array of stamps, there are also cool new framelit dies that are absolutely to die for, plus of course, all the yummy accessories!  The cover alone gives you a pretty good sneak, don't you think?  Just in time to kick off the New Year with some stylish crafting.  Have fun perusing the catty!  And remember, if you get the itch to shop, you can order online anytime on my Demonstrator store.

Now that I've semi-reorganized my craft room, I am chomping at the bit to bust open my new goodies.  Hope to have some crafty samples ready for you soon!  Have a great week!

Happy New Year, dear bloggie friends!

Hello there!  How are you guys?  Hope you had a nice time over the holidays.  It always seems to go by so quickly.  So much so, that I didn't really get a chance to post very often to the good ol' bloggie blog.  Nevertheless, this was an especially memorable holiday season with Denver.  The entire family had lots of fun doting on him.  It's a lot of fun seeing Christmas through a child's eye!

Then, after the holidays, it was time for some much needed {early} Spring Cleaning at the Diehl house.  Is it just our household, or do you guys accumulate a bunch of stuff, too?  It's incredible how instantly things can pile up!!  Now, this might be a good segway for me to share some of my New Year's Resolutions with you {as it primarily involves me managing my piles - heehee}.

1.  I resolve to keep my house and my crafting studio neat.
2.  I resolve to work out, eat well, and stay fit {this is an annual resolution!}.
3.  I resolve to make sure I keep a good family/work/crafting balance in my life.

Those are the top 3.  I figure if the list gets too long, then nothing gets done, so I am going to focus on these. Wrapped into #3 is figuring out how to manage my time with crafting and this good ol' blog, so I appreciate you all hanging in.  I have so much crafting energy stored up, it's just a matter of time for me to find a way to share it with you all!

Now enough about me. What about you all?  I would love to hear about your New Year's resolutions!  Feel free to share if you'd like.

Hope you all have a great first week in 2012 and I'll catch up with you guys soon!  Bye for now.