Card Catchup Day and Clean & Simple Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Hi friends. I hope that you all had a very Merry Christmas with your friends and family. As you know, the Stampin' Up! Sale-A-Bration starts on January 6, 2015 and ends on March 31, 2015, and it's THE Stampin' Up! event of the year! That is 3 months for you to stock up on some fun, everyday staples that we all use daily in our paper crafting and even more exclusive stamp sets! So exciting! With every $50 of product that you order, before taxes and shipping, you earn free product! This year, you can even pick a set of the new Blendabilities in all of your favorite colors! There are also some other fabulous products in this mini catalog and I love them all. I can't wait to start sneak peeking the products to you and my card tomorrow from my Paper Craft Crew Challenge Design Team will showcase a card that I made using products from the Sale-A-Bration and Spring Occasions Catalog that runs from January 6, 2015 to June 2, 2015, and immediately after that, the brand new 2015-2016 Idea Book & Catalog will be out with even more brand new products! I can't wait to create for you! For exclusive specials, sneak peeks, prizes, videos and tutorials, be sure to sign up for my newsletter!

During this time, you can also join my Creative Stampers Team for only $99. You will receive $125 in products to help you get your business started! Whether you choose to be a hobby demonstrator and your own best customer, I have a place for you on my team. All team members are treated equally and I have been a Stampin' Up! Demonstrator going on 8 years now. The benefits I personally enjoy are being able to order new products 4-5 weeks before the catalogs go live and Stampin' Up! is very generous as to what you can order. For instance, all consumables to use at your events to share with your customers can be ordered in quantities of 3, i.e., you can purchase three 12 x 12 designer series paper of the same paper pack! You can order buttons, ribbon, embellishments and so much more so that you can get your customers excited for the new products. I know I always am when I get a new catalog. I offer you one-stop shopping 24/7 and you can pass this to your customers too! I have had my downline throughout the years that I am an excellent and experienced upline who always works for you and teaching you how to be successful. You always earn a generous 20% off of any product and when you sign up to become a demonstrator, when you place your first order within 45 days, your discount is 30%! I always walk you through this so you can get more bang for your buck. The minute you become a Stampin' Up! Demonstrator, you are eligible for your discount(s) and get immediate access to the demonstrator website. We offer so much support through training and webinars. The support the company offers is phenomenal and at our exclusive Stampin' Connection, you have thousands of demonstrators who are always more than willing to share their ideas and designs with you. My New Demonstrator Packet and gifts to you contains a wealth of information. Stampin' Up! also offers you your own personal blog if you don't have one that is part of DWBS, a demonstrator website where you can post your Stampin' Up! events, send out e-cards, where daily information is posted on promotions, and so much more! Being a Stampin' Up! Demonstrator is just fun! There's so many events you can attend too and make a ton of card fronts as swaps, be inspired, go to Convention, Leadership, apply for the Artisan Design Team and so much more! I have met so many fellow stampers all over the United States in my personal travels and at Stampin' Up! events.

What are you waiting for?! I would love for you to join my team of Creative Stampers, so just click HERE to get started on your new journey and adventure. You will have a blast, make new friends and networking along with a nice discount on your products. It doesn't get much better than that!

For today, I'm going to share with you some projects that I've made over the past few weeks that will also be for sale in my Cindy B Designs Boutique. I know I say this every week but I have organized maybe 1% of what I need to and found the great Ephemera that I wanted to added to my boutique. Oh what a selection you will have from paints to sticky back grid and notebook paper and the always fun office supplies you can add to anything. I already added the gorgeous Christmas Gift Card Set so you're all ready for Christmas 2015. I love this set of cards. They are so non-traditional with bold and bright colors that are so fun and tastefully done. Where else are you going to find these beautiful cards for $1 each with a coordinating envelope that is lined and free shipping? Nowhere. I'm a firm believer in supporting us starving artists! Of course, I will take custom orders on this collection of 12 cards, 4-Bar in size, with 3 cards in each color, meaning that you can pick 4 colors only.

Thank you so much for stopping by to visit me today and God bless you. Make it a day that counts.

Hosea 6:3.

First up is this super masculine clean and simple Christmas card using the Stag Head die-cut from Essentials by Ellen with a Papertrey Ink Terracotta Tile card base with the Merry die-cut using Stampin' Up! Chocolate Chip card stock from Papertrey Ink Wet Paint: Holiday Words. You almost need sunglasses for this one! The wood grain sequins are from Studio Calico and I cut the stag head out from Stampin' Up! Brushed Gold card stock piling it on 4x for depth and dimension. A lot of crafters use Tombow Mono to stack their dies but I just get glue oozing out the sides no matter what so I use a glue pen and it works like a charm! No muss and no fuss.

My next card is another 4-Bar size beauty (I'm obsessed with this size of card lately) using Gina K. Designs Close Knit Friends stamp duo. I like to use Papertrey Ink Grid card stock a lot on my projects rather than white card stock just for a little something. I stamped the image and sentiment using Memento Tuxedo Black and colored the cute knitting basket in with Copic markers. There was no bleeding at all, which surprised me. Then again, Papertrey Ink Stamper's Select White is my go-to card stock for Copic Coloring. I just like the way that it goes on and blends, and believe me, I've tried every single paper out there on the market. Gina K. Designs Pure Luxury 120 pound White card stock does not bleed through, which is perfect for one-layer cards. I used the Edgers #1 die on the bottom of my card. I coordinated the paper that I chose from a couple of Lawn Fawn paper pads with my Copic markers. This is another out of the box card for me as I usually don't use any patterned paper anymore and especially not in little strips like this. Everything was adhered to a Smokey Shadow card base by Papertrey Ink. I'm taking iPhone pictures still and it does not do my work any justice. I'm going to have to get to know my dad's "too much for me camera." The weirdest thing is, is that I can't find the cord to hook it up to my computer. Mine has broke several times so I got a few more off of eBay but they do not last very long. I did the same with my dad's camera too. I did pick up a cheapie camera at Best Buy but I hate it and it's going back. It's wireless so no transfer wires but I followed directions and wasted an afternoon trying to set it up. Forget it.

I had so much fun coloring this card. I've been wanting to use it for a long time now. Coloring is so relaxing – until your puppy gets a hold of a bottle of red pigment ink and takes a good bite out of it on your beige carpet.

Up next is a very clean and simple card that you can easily mass produce for your Winter or Christmas cards and it's a beauty! This card was chosen as a Favorite at Splitcoast Stampers last week! I used a Cherry Cobbler piece of card stock for my base, layered on Whisper White, die-cut the Damask Snowflake and Double-Ended Banner using Stampin' Up! Red Glimmer Paper and Whisper White. I adhered the snowflake to the card using Stampin' Dimensionals and the sentiment banner was stamped with Papertrey Ink Tremendous Treats: Christmas, and adherd to the banner using glue dots. Two Studio Calico enamel dots were adhered at each end of the banner. My banner placement is what made this card adhering it at an angle rather than the expected straight across.

Last, but certainly not least, is my gorgeous and fun Christmas Card Ensemble featuring Lawn Fawn Snow Day for my Christmas Trees, WPlus9 Hand Lettered Holiday for my sentiment, and Papertrey Ink card stock and ink of Limeaide Ice, Raspberry Fixx, Royal Velvet and Tropical Teal. If the card base is Tropical Teal, then the Christmas Trees will be the other 3 colors. Each card set as one color tree popped up in the middle. I really thought this set out and should have done a video on it now that I found some software that a Kindergartner could work and so can I. I love this set.

That reminds me of a Bailey story. I have 12 years between kids 1 and 4, with Kid #1 being Mike. So we are having this huge soccer party at my old farmhouse in New York and there was an easy 50 people there. The entire soccer team and their parents and siblings were at my house feasting and enjoying the bonfire out back. Some of Mike's friends came in to play Nintendo and Bailey wanted to join in and she did. One by one, these 14-year-old boys got up and walked away defeated because my then 2-year-old daughter was kicking their collective tails in Nintendo – the hard games too. You have to admit for a 2-year-old, that's pretty excellent. I'm glad I have those memories.

Here is my set of Christmas cards and don't forget to come back tomorrow to visit me for my Paper Craft Crew Challenge Design Team work where I will be showing you one of the new Sale-A-Bration stamp sets called A Happy Thing. You will love coloring these images with our new Blendabilities – and speaking of which, I will also be revealing to you a new color of Wild Wasabi!