Have you ever thought about becoming a demo?

If you've ever wanted to start your own business, meet lots of great friends, or simply just build your stamping and scrapping supplies, this just might be the right time.

From August 11th to October 11th, you can purchase a special Starter Kit for only $119! You can choose from either a stamp-focused kit, a scrapbook focused kit, or a home decor focused kit. This is a great opportunity for those of you who may already have a collection of supplies and don't want to purchase the full starter kit for $249. Plus, you'll receive all the benefits that come with being a demo, including discounts and special previews.

Speaking of the standard starter kit, if you purchase this before Oct. 11th, you can chose any stamp set out of the catalogue for free!! Pretty cool eh? But it gets better. If you sign up with me before that date, I'll throw in one additional FREE set! That's 2 free sets with the full starter kit!

Give me a call or email me today for more details!

Never Before Seen Promotion!!

From August 11th through September 30th, enjoy a 15% discount on select brand new, die-cut stamp sets from the Fall-Winter 2008 Idea Book & Catalogue - no additional purchase is necessary! What an amazing deal! Check out the list below:

Item Code	Pg. #	Description	Regular Price	15% off Price
111690	32	Snow Swirled	$29.95	$25.46
111734	32	Folies de flocons (French Snow Swirled)	$29.95	$25.46
111586	55	It's a Stretch	$28.95	$24.61
111544	81	Putt Putt (Not available until August 18)	$29.95	$25.46
111626	91	Eastern Blooms	$25.95	$22.06
111672	98	Pocket Silhouettes	$22.95	$19.51
111726	98	Silhouettes florales (French Pocket Silhouettes)	$22.95	$19.51
111710	101	Upsy Daisy	$22.95	$19.51
111746	101	Pensées en fleurs (French Upsy Daisy)	$22.95	$19.51
111556	109	Under the Stars	$35.95	$30.56
111644	145	Heard from the Heart	$26.95	$22.91
112875	145	Tout droit du coeur (French Heard from the Heart)	$26.95	$22.91
111570	157	Contempo Alphabet	$48.95	$41.61

Give me a call to place your order!

The New Catty is Here!

And wow, is it ever gorgeous, right down to the scalloped edging! There is so much wonderful stuff in this catty, my list gets longer by the minute!

If you'd like to view the new catty, click on the link on the left side.
It's quite a large file, so if you'd like to refer to it at a later date, I suggest saving a copy to your own computer. If you'd like your own hard copy, let me know and for $5 I can set you up with one (or it's free with every $100 order).

Where I Have Been....

Well that is a long story, but here goes.

If anybody reads this blog they will know that I bought a house recently. Well, I just took possession a couple of weeks ago and have been trying to get things ready. This involves contractors and painters. Plus there is furniture to buy.  I hope to be moved in a couple of weeks. One of the things I am REALLY looking forward to is finally having a proper place to stamp! Wee! One of my spare rooms will be turned into an office/stamp room.  Once I have everything set up and decorated I'll post a pick of my "lab"! Hee

I have therefore been rather lax in communicating things to you.  So here I will try and catch up on a few things.

The 2008 Occasions Mini is still available! They have extended the deadline until June 30th. For more info, click here.

Want a sneak peak into the Fall-Winter 2008 Idea Book?  Who doesn't??!! Stampin' Up! is giving everyone the opportunity to get their hands on 2 new products!  Purchase the Fresh Cuts stamp set for $25.95 and you can get a set of Fresh Cut Notes for only $5.95. I received mine and I love them.  Plus, and I am salivating about this prospect, I hope this is a harbinger of things to come - the stamps were all die-cut!  No cutting!  There's so many things you can do with these.  Here's a sample of one that I did:

I used a piece of Tempting Turquoise designer paper for the background, some Bali Breeze paper (Hint:  This is going to RETIRE with the next catty!  Contact me to order some before it's all gone!) and then some layered pieces of Flower Fusion (this will also retire) and a rhinestone brad.  I think it's really pretty. Plus, the cards come with envies!

To view a copy of the flyer for this great promo, click here.

Check back in a few days for another post about the retired accessories list!

Announcing Decor Elements!

Stampin' Up! just announced a brand new product line:  Decor Elements. What are they?  Think large vinyl decals for your wall!  They're removable too!  It's a great way to give your home an extra decorative touch. Some of the elements co-ordinate with existing stamp sets too, which I think is really neat.

To view the flyer, click here.

I'll have some flyers available soon. If you're interested, drop me a line!

The Retired List is Here!

Every time Stampin' Up! releases a new catty, there are always a number of stamp sets that are retired.  Hey, they gotta make room for all the new stuff!  We're always sad to see our favourites go (fond farewells, Carte Postale) but I'm excited to see what the new catty will bring.

To view the list of retiring sets in alphabetical order, click here.

To view the list of retiring sets in numerical order (by page number), click here.

Happy Belated Mother's Day

Sorry I have not been posting much of late.  Remember a while back when I said I was looking for a house? Well I found one!  I will soon be living in Mississauga, which is not too far from where I am now. I have decided that this would make the perfect subject matter for my first scrapbook! Yes, I am going to start scrapping - I blame it all on Wendy!  Anyway, more on that later.

Here's a pic of the card I made my lovely mum for Mother's Day

The base is Brocade Blue, and the mats are Bashful Blue and Lavender Lace. This is my first go at watercolouring with ink (not the watercolour wonder crayons), and can I say, I think this is my favourite stamp set, Bloomin' Beautiful from the Occasions Mini. Perfect for watercolouring. I used some retired white organza ribbon (PLEASE, please, let them bring this stuff back!!) and a little Dazzling Diamonds for sparkle.  Mum really loved it.

Waterfall Cards

Ever wanted to know what a 'waterfall' card is? Well, it's this nifty little card that moves! What do I mean by that? Well, you pull the ribbon, and the images flip over onto themselves to reveal the final message. I have great fun making these. They're not very difficult, and they're a real show-stopper. Here's a couple that we made in a recent class

This one is done in Tempting Turquoise and uses the Carte Postale, probably my favourite set in the catty. Almost. Ok, ok, I have several favourites. Ok, many favourites. Sheesh!

Finished Flinging!

Wow, I had an amazing time at Spring Fling last weekend. Yes I know, it was last weekend and I haven't posted in a week - sorry!  I had a great trip there and back with my upline, Wendy, and another friend Colleen. I prepared 56 card fronts for swapping...odd number I know but hey. I had traded about 50 of them when the root beer I bought decided to explode when I opened it. So much for the other 6! :-) I also made 16 3-D mini photo albums. They took a long time but I love how they turned out.  Here's some pics

And here's a close-up of one of them:

These are the cards I took to swap. 

If they look familiar that's because they are.  I made a whack of these for another swap I was in, and just made extra for this swap. Less work is a good thing. The most popular one was the one with Gable Green background. So many people said they hadn't seen that colour combo before.  But I love it.

Check it Out!!

Here are the cards we completed today at Caroline's workshop. 

Card #1

I am in love with this colour combo- so fresh and "springy"!!  The stamp set is Just Like You, and $2 from the sale of each set goes to Ronald McDonald House.

Card #2

This card has a different fold, and is held closed using the slit punch and flowers from the Flower Fusion kit. Notice it uses the fabulous designer series paper Bali Breeze and has almost no stamping!   And I love the rhinestone brad in the middle of the flower.

Card #3

This card uses card stock from the the Wild Wasabi Special offer. I just trimmed a 1/4" off the long side and 3/8" off the short side. We embossed in clear on the background, and coloured in the flower with markers, and also used them for the ink on the sentiment. 

All in all, an excellent day up in Mansfield.  Now to go and work on my swaps!!

It's been a while!

Hello All

Sorry I haven't had much time to blog of late.  I've been house-hunting in-between trying to get ready for a workshop on April 20th, my Bitty Birthdays Class on April 25th, and all my swaps for Spring Fling on April 26th! It's a wonder I remember where my bed is at night!!

I will be posting some pics of our April 20th workshop cards tomorrow. The workshop is being hosted by my wonderful friend Caroline, whom I have known since grade 9. 

In the meantime, here's a picture of my beautiful cat Dustbunny:

Why "Dustbunny"?  Well actually I can't take credit for that. When we went to the shelter to pick her out she was the only long-haired kitten in a litter of 4. The shelter had named her Dustbunny because of the colour of her fur.  She really is a beautiful cat, although I am not biased in the least! HA!

Sympatico is SOOO Wonderful!!

So I come home tonight to find my email not working. Nothing I tried did anything. So I make the call to Sympatico. Now normally I have no problems with them at all.  But I think they have a MAC deficiency.  

Anyway, so nothing is working, and the agent, who is of course in another country and has a heavy accent, tells me that they've changed the servers.  And just WHEN were they going to tell people??? So fine, we change everything, and still not working. Then he says we need to delete the accounts and establish them again.  I hesitated because "delete" is not a good thing. He assured me no problem. So I did. And, you guessed it, it deleted all emails in my inboxes. I had more than 200!! Yes, yes, I know, I need to file them blah, blah, blah...but I just didn't have time. And now they are gone forever. I am so mad I could spit.  

I ended up speaking with a supervisor. He's the one who told me they couldn't retrieve them and that I shouldn't delete my accounts. I politely suggested that he tell his other agents not to give customers the wrong directions!! What I wanted to say I can't leave in print here. Anyway, he did apologize several times. What else could he do? He's not the moron.  Sigh.

And now it is almost 8pm and I am finally going to go and eat my dinner.....that I was supposed to eat 2 hours ago before I had to make this wonderful call. Yes, I was on the phone almost 2 hrs! Thank goodness it wasn't long distance, then I'd be really ticked!

Card Swap Time

Ok, so I finally finished my entries for a demo swap that my upline is hosting. The idea was to use the same stamp set and make 3 different cards with it. Two cards should be demonstrate-able and the third can be as complicated as we want. We'll then swap with each other and we all get a fresh set of samples to show our customers.  My stamp set was One of A Kind.

Card #1

 

The background is Taken with Teal, and the designer paper is from the Bali Breeze collection. I layered Whisper White on Pumpkin Pie and then stamped the flower in Old Olive. You can't see it very well but I also used Taken with Teal marker to put dots in the flower. Next a piece of Old Olive Poly-Twill ribbon (love this stuff) and a ribbon slide from the new Hodgepodge hardware, and finally the sentiment stamped in Pumpkin Pie and layered on Taken with Teal. I rounded off opposite corners using the Corner Rounder punch.  And of course coloured in the tiny flower with the Taken with Teal marker.

Card #2

For this card I used the Purely Pomegranate as the background, and stamped it in the same ink with the small flower stamp. Then I took 2 co-ordinating pieces of designer paper from the Berry Bliss collection and cut those diagonally and made a rectangle. Then I have Shimmer White cardstock stamped with the Purely Pomegranate layered on Chocolate Chip. The flowers on this piece were off-stamped 2x on scrap paper before stamping on the cardstock. The sentiment is in Chocolate Chip on White and layered on top of Pretty in Pink. Then I whipped out the markers again ( I LOVE my markers) and coloured in the tiny flower. Then a piece of Purely Pomegranate double-stitched ribbon was added with a loop at the top.

Card #3

Now here is the more complicated card, but I think it is my favourite....and of course it has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that there is purple on it! (nudge nudge, wink wink). The base is Whisper White with a Basic Black mat on top and then a Gable Green mat on top of that. I took a piece of Lovely Lilac and ripped the edges (gasp! shock!) to give it a distressed look. 

Now comes the fun part!  Using the Dazzling Diamond Dust technique, I sponged the ink all over pieces of Glossy White cardstock in Lovely Lilac, Gable Green and Bashful Blue. This took a while until I got my latest delivery with my Stampin' Sponges. They are huge and were just the ticket to cover such a large surface. Then I stamped the flower in Basic Black. Then I applied Versamark all over the surface and sprinkled everything with Iridescent Ice embossing powder. Then out came my trusty heatgun (my version of the "power tool") and voila! This technique gives the most amazing, shiny, sparkly finish, I just love it!  Plus it 'texturizes' the cardstock, if that makes any sense, which adds dimension. 

I then sat in front of the TV watching CSI New York on Wednesday night and cut out the flowers. I used the Boho Blossoms punch to punch out the small flowers and added a silver brad to each; these were glued in the middle of each large flower.  The sentiment is in Lovely Lilac on White and then Layered on Bashful Blue, also with distressed edges.

Surprisingly, what took the longest with this card was designing the darn thing. But it's done and I think it's really lovely.  I hope you do too!

Isn't the sun beautiful this morning!  

Sometimes I get in a design slump. I have so many ideas running around in my head that I can't decide what to do.  I have 2 of 3 swaps finished and they are due tomorrow. Luckily I only need to make 5 cards.  Once they're all done I will post some pictures.

Ok, now back to work!

Ok, so here it is. My very first post on my very first blog! I can't believe I'm doing this! I can't believe I'm doing this, and looking for a house at the same time! More importantly, I can't believe I figured out HOW to do this! :-)

I hope that this will be a place that I can post some of my artwork, let people know what's going on in the world of Al-Karena, share new ideas and generally wax poetic about the joys of stamping!  There will be tutorials at some point, as soon as I write them!  

Thanks for stopping by, and enjoy!