Cool October Promos - Oh My!

What better way to kick start the fall then with a couple of cool promos!

In celebration of World Card Making Day this past weekend, Stampin' Up! is offering up to 25% off on select cardmaking essentials from now until Oct 5!

And...have you been eyeing the pretty papers in the catty? Well, now's a great time to stock up on Designer Series Paper with the Buy 3 get one free promo for the whole month of October!

Need some fresh ideas on how to use the pretty DSP?  Here's a handy flyer to take a peek at three inspirational card sketches you can use to get your creative juices flowing. Enjoy and have a great day!

Have you seen the new 2016-2017 Stampin'Up! Catalog?

Hey there friends! The new catty is here! Click on the image above to check it out.  I have to say one of my favorite new stamps sets is the Foxy Friends photopolymer stamps and the super cute coordinating punch! The new Sweet Cupcake photopolymer bundle is super cute, too. There really are so many things to fall in love with...I'll let you take a look for yourself so you can be the judge! 

Enjoy!

This week's Stampin'Up! Weekly Deals {May 19}

Hi there, blog friends!  Happy Tuesday! Hope you guys are having a great week so far. Ready for this week's Weekly Deals? I'm excited that the Birthday Bash Paper is on sale! That's one of my current faves.  Not to mention, the cool chalkboard paper!

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

I am still pulling together my May giveaway extravaganza to celebrate my 500k milestone...stay tuned tomorrow!

Til, then hope you have a great day!  Thanks for stopping by!

Stampin'Up!'s retiring product list is here...

Hi all!  Can you believe it's that time of year already? Stampin'Up!'s list of retiring products is here, so it is almost time to say goodbye to some favorites.  The good news is, you still have the chance to get them while they're still available! You can check out the full list here.  

There's also this week's Weekly Deals to share with you, too!

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Lots of awesome things on sale this week!  If you've been eying the tag punches, the Ornate Tag is an awesome one to add to your arsenal! I love me the framelits, so I would definitely recommend those to you as well. Be sure to check out if your faves are on sale!

Yesterday, I got this month's Paper Pumpkin in the mail! Woot woot! It's been so crazy busy for me though that I didn't even get a chance to open it, so I brought it to work so I could open it there. Do you want a spoiler alert?  Scroll down quickly if you don't want to see what this month's kit looks like! I personally can't wait to create these cute projects!

Being the Bruin that I am, I was very excited to see the blue and gold colors for this month's project, which is perfect for the upcoming Mother's Day and Father's day. I will definitely get good use of all these goodies!  I'll share some pics of the projects once I make a few of them! :)

Well dear friends, I'm going to say toodles for now. But, be on the lookout for a special giveaway soon!  I just passed a BIG milestone while I wasn't even looking.  Over 500K visits to my blog - woot woot woot!!!

There will be more pomp and circumstance for that post, so stay tuned!  Bye for now :)

Sale-a-bration 2015 workshop cards

 

Happy Saturday! Hope you all are doing well! I'm sure glad it's the weekend and so happy I was able to do a Sale-a-bration workshop today for my friend Kaye.  We created the fun cards above and got to use some SAB and Occasions catalog goodies. It was a great time!  One thing though that I realized after the fact is that the Butterflies Thinlits are currently not available for order. Boo.  Fingers crossed though that they will be available again very soon, now that the port strike is over. I will keep you posted, but I am being cautiously optimistic. Let's keep it at that til I know more. :)

Now, here's a close up look at these beautiful butterfly thinlits...

 

Aren't they so pretty? I posted this pic on my instagram (@stampdiehler for those of you that want to check it out).  Hope to get some definitive good news this coming week!

I can't believe we're at the end of March already. Time sure does fly when you're super busy! I have a lot of things I would love to catch you guys up on, so I'm hoping to put out a few recap posts of the latest-goings-on-in-my-neck-of-the-woods soon. It's all good, just so busy - like frenetic pace busy! I'm hoping I get a chance to catch my breath and embrace and enjoy Easter week with the family. 

Thanks to you all for coming by and paying me a visit! 

Here's a quick list of the goodies I used in my SAB cards:

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

This Week's Stampin'Up! Weekly Deals {Mar 3}

Hi all! Happy Tuesday.  Hope you all are having a great week! Are you ready for this week's weekly deals?  Well, St. Patrick's Day and Easter are right around the corner, and this week, there are some great deals for crafting something cute for these upcoming holidays! Take a look...

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Lots of packaging options are on sale! I'm especially eyeing the Filter Paper and the Sweet Treat cups, myself!  I saw the cutest little egg favors on Pinterest using the treat cups.  You can check them out here on Paper Ecstasy's blog. They are the cutest little eggs that I think you'll want to make them, too!

Thanks for coming by today. Have a great one! Bye for now.

A basketful of Freshness

Hi blog peeps!  Hope you're having a happy Saturday so far. I have a quick share today - this cute basketful of mints! I totally cased this mint idea using the Jan Paper Pumpkin kit from Instagram friend @hofkissed. I thought it was a brilliant idea and an all occasion use of the cute kit! Just add the lifesavers and you're basically good to go.

I'm blogging on the go at the moment, but stay tuned for a full post from me later today with details and dimensions on making this project using an alternative spring theme!

In the meantime, have a great one!

This Week's Stampin'Up! Weekly Deals for {Feb 24} + NEW Sale-a-bration items!

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Hi blog friends! It's Tuesday, so I wanted to share this week's Weekly Deals that are available from Feb 24-Mar 2.  So many cute things for spring!

I also wanted to share that there are NEW items that will be available to earn for Sale-a-bration starting March 1!

Aren't these so cute?!  If you're interested in hosting a party at your home, or if you want to be the hostess of a virtual stamp party, send me an email and I'll be happy to schedule something for you! As always, you can check out my online store at any time. Just visit here!

Have a great day!

Birthday Bonanza!

Happy Saturday!  How are you all?  Hope you're enjoying your weekend so far.  Birthday season is starting in our family, so I've got a couple birthday cards to share!  I think I'll need to build up my stash, so get ready for more bday cards coming soon :) I can't quite tell you who I created these for since the cards are still in transit, but nonetheless, aren't they so fun and festive? I had a great time playing with the Celebrate Today stamp set and the Balloon Framelit dies that coordinate so perfectly.  I dressed up the envies with the Balloon Bash stamp set. I also love that both the stamp sets I used are photopolymer, too!  Here's a closer look.

The balloon framelits come with the cutest little accent dies, like the banner, bow and tassles that I die cut in the silver glitter paper.

I'm also loving the embossing folders, which add such a nice texture to the cards!

Here's a list of all the products I used!

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Thanks for popping by today and enjoy your weekend!

Hey, Valentine!

Hello there! How are you, friends? Well, Valentine's Day is approaching fast, so I've got a couple of fun projects to share with you today.  The first project is the one above - it's an adorable triangle treat box that was shared with us at Leadership.  This was originally created by Sam Hammond Donald, aka Pootles, and the link to her awesome tutorial is here. I made 2 of these cute little boxes for my little man's teachers.  It makes for such a sweet Valentine with the Stacked with Love paper stack! Here's another look:

 

The next Valentine idea was a ton of fun to put together..primarily because I got to stamp with my son to create his Valentine's cards for his preschool class! I have to say it warmed my heart to see him stamp.  He was just too darn cute and he really did enjoy doing it!  

 

As you can see, he even got to use the Big Shot!  That was probably his favorite. He loved to turn the crank! Do you want to see the finished product? 

 

Aren't these cute?  I am such a big fan of the "Hey Valentine" stamp set! I used the fish image as well as the cute fox #1 Valentine image for the teacher tag. For the Valentine treats for his school friends, I filled them with these mini play packs that all come prepackaged with a small coloring book, 2 crayons, and a sticker.  I have to admit that I did color in the little fish on the cover, but I made it fuss free for the kiddos by stapling the Valentine to the front and just dropped in the play pack without  using any ribbon or string.

Well, my friends, hope you liked these! Would love to hear what you think!  I'll catch up with you all soon.  Have a great one!

Mini coffee cups decked out in Sale-a-bration!

Hey there, blog friends! I've got a fun share today. I've had these mini coffee cups for quite a while now and can you believe I had not gotten around to creating anything with them yet?  Well, I finally decided it was time to bring them out and decorate them in the finest of 2015 Sale-a-bration DSPs! And, I think they turned out pretty cute, don't you? ;)

So, I can't take credit for the mini coffee cup pattern - I actually got that from Jill Coleman's blog.  I also ordered these 4 oz coffee cups from the webstaurantstore.com. I used the pattern Jill created, though I did have to tweak a little and trim a teenie bit off the bottom after I adhered the DSP to the cups.  The pattern definitely makes it easy peasy to dress up the cute plain little cups. {Thanks, Jill!}

What I did create was the carrier, which is actually, just a reboot of the carrier I created for the milk cartons on this post, with the only difference being the measurements.  Are you ready?:

You'll need:

*2 pieces of 4 1/4" x 4 1/4" cardstock  for the carrier base

*1 piece of 5 1/2" x 2 3/8" cardstock for the center handle

1. Score the 2 pieces of cardstock at 1" all the way around.  Then cut to the 1" scoreline at the creases along the 3 3/4" edge.  

2. Assemble the base and glue together using the Tombow Multi-Purpose glue.  Set aside to dry.

3. For the 5 1/2" x 2 3/8" piece of cardstock, punch the handle using the hexagonl punch.

4.  Assemble the carrier by placing the handle in between the 2 base boxes and gluing together using the Tombow Glue.  

5.  Embellish the carrier with DSP or cardstock.  I used  2 pieces of 3/4" x 7 1/8" DSP to decorate the base.  Score the pieces at 4 3/8", and then 6 5/8".  for the handle, I cut out 2 pieces of 2 1/8" x 5 1/4" DSP and adhered one piece at a time and punched the handle after adhering each one to the base handle piece, otherwise it gets too hard to punch!

And here's another look at the whole Mini Coffee Cup and Carrier ensemble:

Ta da! I would love to hear what you think!  Not only is this project really fun to make, these little cuties would make great teacher gifts or co-worker gifts for Valentine's day! I definitely encourage you to give it a whirl.

Thanks for popping over to visit.  Enjoy your day!

Hearts and butterflies birthday card

Hi there, blog friends. I have finally gotten some time to stamp and play a bit more with my new Occasions and Sale-a-bration goodies!  Though, I have a confession to make. I was going through a bit of creativity block trying to come up with a card design. Do you ever get that feeling of having so many ideas in your mind that you don't know where to begin?  Top that off with being a little rusty from not crafting as frequently as I'd like to and that's exactly how I felt. I had a lot of stops and starts before I was finally able to design a card that I was excited about!

This is not a typical color palette for me, but one of my influences for this navy and reddish-pink {Night of Navy and Rose Red, to be exact} combo was because I've had France on the brain. I wanted to pay respects to the French in my own little way for the recent tragedies they experienced. So, this is where the inspiration came for the card, and I'm really pleased with how it came out.

The Butterflies Thinlits dies are so pretty, that I had lots of fun die cutting a bunch out of different colored cardstock to see how they looked!  (This diversion definitely helped in getting my creative juices flowing!) Despite their very intricate appearance of the die, these thinlits are really easy to work with.  The main tip here about die cutting with this amount of image detail is to use a layer of wax paper between the cardstock and the die and the die will easily peel right off! Now, let's take a look at the background, shall we? I love the look of those dots. I basically double stamped the dots to get the lighter shading of Rose Red.

Here's a closer look:

I love that one of the symbolic meanings of the butterfly is that it represents "new life." It makes me happy to create cards keeping that in mind :)  I'll defnitely get a lot of use for these thinlits!

Here's a list of the supplies I used for your reference.  Note that the items shown as $0.00 are Sale-a-bration items, which means that you can earn the item for free with a $50 purchase. Not bad, huh?  You can take a peek and shop at my online store if you'd like. You can also click on any of the items below to get to the store, too  :)

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Thanks for popping by today. Have a great weekend!

This week's Weekly Deals {Jan 13}

Hello all!  Happy Tuesday to you! I wanted to pop in real quick with this week's Stampin'Up! Weekly deals for Jan 13-19. The 3/8" ribbons are a great deal!  Also, if you need to round out your punch arsenal, the tag topper punch is a great time saver if you're making a bunch of tags and the itty bitty punch accents are a must have! Not only do they add quick cuteness to a card, but you can turn your scraps into cute embellies or confetti by punching out these cute shapes.  You can check these and all the new Occasions and Sale-a-bration goodies on my Online store!  

Sorry it's been a bit quiet this past week on my blog. 2015 has kicked off to a fast and busy start!  I promise to catch up with you all soon!  Hope you all have a fantastic day! :)

Happy New Year! It's time for Sale-a-bration!

Hi there blog friends! Happy New Year to you!  Hope you all had a great holiday with your friends and family. It was a busy time here at the home front, but it was nice we got to spend some quality time with my brother's family who was visiting from Alabama and we also got to do a road trip to San Luis Obispo to visit my hub's sister and family.  So, as you can imagine, the days pretty much just whirled by and here we are!

I'm exited to announce that today kicks of Stampin'Up!'s Sale-a-bration catalog, which is an awesome way to start the year!  From January 6 thru March 31, 2015, you can earn free products in the Sale-a-bration catalog with every $50 purchase. 

Today also marks the start of the new Stampin'Up! Occasions catalog, which is AMAZING as always this year. You will definitely not be disappointed! So, the pairing of these two catties is just a heavenly way to get your crafting started for 2015. You can do your shopping and earn free stuff! Woot woot!

To whet your appetite, how about video so you can take a look at one of the stamp sets you can earn!

Thanks for visiting today.  Have a great one! 

Year End Closeouts!

Hey there friends! I hope you had a great week! If you happened to miss the Online Extravaganza that ended at the beginning of this week, well don't you fret!  The good news is Stampin'Up! is having a Year End Closeout sale from now until January 5th where you can get up to 80% off select merchandise.  Now, wouldn't you say that's a sale that's worth perusing?! I just took a peek and there are lots of great deals!  This closeout is while supplies last, so if you have your eye on something, you might want to get it before it runs out!

Hope you have a great weekend!  We've got a busy one coming up - it's tree trimming and home decorating time at our house and I am SO LOOKING FORWARD TO IT! I'd say it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

Thanks for visiting today and I'll check in with you guys soon!

Clutter girl cleans her craft room

Hi all!  Happy Friday! Now, before I get started,  I have a question for you: Are you more of an organized crafter or a tornado-came-through-your-room kind of crafter?  Well, I would like to say I'm the former, but clearly from the title of this post, I'm the latter. :) As you can imagine, when you couple a crazy work schedule and busy family life, a craft room can quickly go into disrepair if unattended.  Creating a card here, a banner there, and before you know it, it's a hot mess.  So, slowly, I began the process of sorting, organizing and editing. It's still a work in progress, although much more presentable. Today, I'm going to take you behind the scenes of what is now the current view of my craft room. And, to my hubby's delight, you can now walk in it without the danger of stepping on something!

You may recognize the table - it's provided the background of many of my crafting projects! :)  Prior to the table, I was a "floor crafter".  I'm happy to say that not only does the table provide a more friendly work surface, but it also has a nice shelf beneath for storage and keeping things nice and tidy.

This piece of furniture is from Ikea - it's a workhorse and houses many of my supplies.  What I love is that the baskets are great for organization and storage and are a great way to keep things looking neat.

I got this from a big box store and love that it houses my buttons, ribbons and accessories.  You may recognize a few of these projects on display, too.  Time for me to update with this holiday season's crafts!

Here's a look at my work area.  When I need to sit and design something, this is where it happens.  On my desktop, you'll also see those 2 Ott lights on top.  These are great for taking pictures of projects when there's not enough daylight.  Hence, these are my go-to light sources since I often craft at night.

This is a view that you may have seen in this post.  I started my craft room cleanup and organization here. These cabinets used to have a hodgepodge of crafting supplies. Now, they house most of my clear mount stamps, card stock, and an assortment of Big Shot dies.  You wouldn't know that all this stuff was in there....

See?  My kitty Ollie loves to be the helper in my craft room and now makes sure I put everything back when I work on projects. :)

Thanks for stopping by today!  Now that I have a cleaner and more usable craft space, I'm inspired to craft more often and share with you all. Have a great day!

Don't forget! I have a November Blog Candy Giveaway to celebrate my Stampin'Up! Anniversary!  Leave me a comment here to play!

Weekly Deals {Nov 11} and a new photopolymer stamp set!

Hello blog friends and Happy Wednesday!  Just wanted to pop in and share Stampin'Up!'s Weekly Deals this week from Nov 11 to Nov 17.  And, I also wanted to share the new photopolymer stamp set called Banner Blessings.  It's such a sweet set of sentiments and I love the whimsical handwriting font:

What do you think?  Super cute set, right?  Well, dear blog friends, if photopolymer stamps are your cup of tea then you'll want to check out Stampin'Up!'s collection of photopolymer stamps here! I personally love the photopolymer stamps, too, for many of the same reasons you do, I'm sure.  It's great to be able to see exact placement of your stamp image, and I love how they adhere so nicely to the acrylic blocks.  Lots of reasons to love these!

Hope you all have a great day! 

Don't forget! I have a November Blog Candy Giveaway to celebrate my Stampin'Up! Anniversary!  Leave me a comment here to play!

{Easy as pie!} - Unboxing the October My Paper Pumpkin Kit

Hi there blog friends! How are you all?  I  hope you had a fabulous Halloween!  I know we had a great time here - stay tuned for a Halloween recap soon.  For today's post,  I'm excited to share the My Paper Pumpkin October kit!  I had a few hours this afternoon where I got the chance to craft, so I had some quality "me" time and got some much needed crafting therapy on.  How do you like that sneak peek?  Don't those pom poms look so fun?  Well, here's what the package looks like...

Seriously.  As soon as I opened up the box, I was really excited to put this project together.  These My Paper Pumpkin kits make crafting so easy! Here's a closer look at all the supplies you get to make this adorable Thanksgiving pie...

Now for a look at the big picture below...

You know what was the best part of this project? Making the POM POMS!  Not only are they fun to make (I mean, it makes me feel so crafty!), they really make the pie look that much more scrumptious!  

Here's a perfect slice, just for you!  Now, if you love this project, I definitely encourage you to sign up for a My Paper Pumpkin subscription!  You'll get a new craft project each month delivered to your door.  Plus, you can check out the My Paper Pumpkin Pinterest boards to get your creative juices flowing and get inspired with more projects you can create from each month's kit. :)

For those of you that are already My Paper Pumpkin subscribers, you also have the opportunity to get extra kits from past projects while supplies last.  I love this option because there will be months where you just fall in love with the project and need or want to make more, so you can order more.  The caveat here is that it is while supplies last.  So it's definitely something you want to take advantage of right away.  I'm certainly going to order another October project because I think this will be a great little treat for my co-workers!

Hope you liked this project. Thanks so much for popping by today! I know I've been posting sporadically, so I do appreciate your visit :)

Ciao for now!

Birthday wishes from a Stormtrooper

Hi all! I think I'm in one of those modes where Birthday cards are becoming an area of specialty for me...purely based on my personal quirk of having to create the cards based on the theme of the party.  So, for today's share, I've created this Stormtrooper card for our friend Luke's 6th birthday.  It was a little daunting for me, but with the help of my hubby, who drew it out on paper first, I then translated the drawing out of punches and dies.

Here's a few more pics for you:

I created the head out of the new Party Pennants Bigz Die, his eyes were made from the Triangle punch cut in half, his mouth was from the Oval punch, and his gills were made using the Fringe scissors.  Then, for the circles, I used the 3/4", 1", and 3/8" circle punches.  For his ears, I used 2 strips of cardstock that were 1 1/4"x1"  and 3/4" x 1". For the background, I used the cool Tiny Triangles embossing folder, which totally looks like the Death Star background, don't you think?

All in all, I was quite pleased with the outcome!  Here are some of the new products I used:

Party Pennants Bigs Die:

Tiny Triangles Embossing folder:

Fringe Scissors:

I'd love to hear what you think about the card! Thanks for stopping by today!