Back in the stamp of things

Tonight was my monthy stamp night. It felt so good stamp with my buddies again! I didn't realize how much I had been missing them. We had a pretty good sized group for our class tonight. I know several people couldn't come due to other commitments, but...we'll catch them next time!

As promised, I am including a picture of my potato peeling crew from a few days ago. They were such great helpers! I am going to miss having all those extra hands to help me can when they all go back to school. This picture has three of mine and an extra child that was helping. If you are at out house when we can, you will be put to work!

Here is a picture of the first project I did for our class tonight. This may look a bit familiar to you. I cased the little red coaster frame I showed a few days ago on here. It was so easy and fun to make! We did a Halloween version using the Creepy Crawly paper from SU. I am not a big Halloween fan. In fact, that particular holiday could disappear and I would not miss it at all. I especially don't like the dark side of the holiday. BUT, having said that, I totally love this patterned paper! It is so fun and colorful! For my frame, I used a medium weight coaster I purchased at American coaster online. I used my 1-1/4" square punch and punched right through the coaster. I lined up the edges of the first punch and punched four times, overlapping on the edges to get the bigger square hold. The hole is approximately 2-1/2" square. I used my snail to adhere the coaster 'frame' to the patterned paper and then cut around the coaster with my scissors. I used the hobby blade to cut an X in the patterned paper inside the inner square. I folded each triangle around the edge of the inner square to get nice clean edges. I adhered the black grosgrain with my snail and then stuck a Fire Rhinestone Brad in the junction of the ribbon. I used the Cropadile to punch through the coaster. Easy peasy! I used the M3 to color the pumpkin on the stamp and then stamped it onto white cardstock.I stamped the same image on pumpkin pie cardstock with black and then used two different sized circle punches to punch out the inner pumpkin and the pumpkin and words together. Then I just layered them using the Dimensionals. The back coaster is scored at 1-3/4" and stuck to the front coaster with sticky strip.

The funny thing about this project is that , although the square punch worked great to make the frame at home, at the class it would NOT work! So, we did it differently by just covering the whole coaster and layering a piece of black cardstock measuring 2-1/2" square. They were all very cute and very different!

The next project used the chipboard flowers that we were offered at convention as a special purchase. The card base is Barely banana. I used the new wide summer green growgrain ribbon across the front and a folded piece as a faux leav. The Gg is stamped with Apricot craft. The chipboard flower is inked up with Almost Amethyst and embossed with Irredescent Ice embossing powder. The inner flower is inked with Blush blossom and embossed. I added the definition of Gratitude in black and two silver brads to finish it off. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this alphabet and the words/definitions! There will be no more lonely letters! This Define your life set has a word and definition for every letter of the alphabet! I think it is awesome set! I am so glad I splurged and bought it! Now I am going to 'splurge' and go to bed before 2am!