Sites of the week

Just a little note before I jump into the meat of this post…
Don’t forget to comment on yesterday’s post for a chance to win one of the new sets being released by My Favorite Things tomorrow night! The winner will be announced tomorrow morning along with a slew of last minute sneak peeks! GOOD LUCK!

It’s TCP Tuesday…YAY!
Leigh has come up with a great sketch for this week’s challenge. **Note…as of posting time she does not have the challenge post up on her blog. Go forth and create, just remember to check back on her site for where to link the card. K?

Here’s the sketch. It’s easy peasy with endless opportunities to create and embellish…just my kind of sketch!!

My sample using TCP’s Smokin’ Barbecue, Chef Poochie and the Barbecue sentiment…

Wanna play with us? Here’s the deets you will want to know…
1. Each a week one of the The Cat’s Pajamas DT Members will host a challenge.
2. The challenges will vary {stamp, color, theme/inspiration, sketch, etc.}
3. You will have until {this} Saturday night to complete the challenge.
4. Link your project on this week’s hostess’ challenge announcement. This week you will link your project HERE.
5. TCP stamps are not required, but of course, highly encouraged. {Unless it is a challenge calling for a specific stamp}
6. There will be one winner each month. They will be deemed that month’s Swankiest Stamper and get $25 in Cat’s Cash {money to spend on the TCP site!}.
7. When uploading to SCS, please use the keyword TCPTUES19 for this challenge.
8. Alma will post the entries from the week the following Monday on her blog.
9. The newly crowned Swanky Stamper will be announced on the First of the Month and have his/her winning entry posted on The Cat’s Pajamas website where he/she will reign for the entire month.

It’s that time of the month again…no, not that! It’s time for My Favorite Things‘ new release sneak peeks, or as we like to call them: MFTeasers. On Wednesday MFT will be releasing a handful of new sets, including 2 new Halloween sets…YAY! I think I have said this before, but Halloween is not my favorite holiday for celebrating, but I love all the decor and crafting that goes along with it! On Saturday I showed you two of the stamps that are in the new MONSTER SQUAD set. Today I am showing you the other two stamps AND giving you a chance to win the set!!

HOW DO I WIN? Leave a comment on this post telling me what your favorite Halloween costume was when you were a kid. I will announce a winner on Wednesday morning. I think I was either 5 or 6 when I had a plastic CareBear costume. I LOVED that thing! I laugh each time I come across those pictures. That year my best friend was Wonder Woman, so we were quite the pair!

Here’s the squad…

Good luck and hope to see you at the release party on Wednesday night from 9-11 EST in the MFT forum on SCS!

A while back Julee contacted the Verve DT and asked us to send her a quote that would be part of a set for Anni-VERVE-sary. I love how she put together a set that has a little bit of each us in it. The quote that I chose is:

Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul. ~Henry Ward Beecher

As a child, my parents taught me the importance of gratitude. I was always sending thank you notes after my birthday and Christmas, and I still send them. I thought this quote was perfect for thank you notes. I am also a big fan of floral stamps and this lends itself to pairing with those quite nicely.

Here is a card that I made using my quote from the “Beautiful You” set, which will be released on August 13 {my 30th birthday!…YIKES}…

You might be asking why am I showing you something that is 10 days away from being released. Well, each of the Design Team members has been given a day to “show off” their quote before the actual release. There will be other sets {OMG…you are going to love them!!} released with this one, but we won’t be starting showing those sneak peeks until a few days prior. I hope that you will enjoy seeing each Verve Diva’s quotation creation. You can see them daily on the Verve Forum at SCS.

By the way…you can win this set! Comment on THIS thread for a chance to win!

Announcements:

1. It’s Anni-VERVE-sary time!! Yep, Verve is turning one and you are invited to the party. You will want to check out the challenges and sneak peaks in the Verve Forum on SCS. I will be blogging tomorrow with a sneak peak of one of the new sets.
2. Did you see? My mini pizza box got chosen for Project of the Month over at the TCP site. THANKS!!
3. MFT is having a new release the Wednesday. Be sure to join us for some HOT summer fun, as we welcome in some cool seasonal stamps! BTW-I just happen to have an extra of one of the sets here. Hmmm…I’m thinking that a blog tart on Monday sounds like a great way to start the week.

I have been looking forward to Saturday for a couple days now. Susan and I are headed out to Mineral Wells {about an hour away} to the only scrapbook store left around here. She’s been out there before and says that the paper selection is de-lish, so I am pretty darn excited!
Around here, you know it’s time for another SKETCH FOR YOU TO TRY and A NEW GUEST DESIGNER! Please give a super warm welcome to Bonnie Sharp!

A bit about Bonnie in her own words…
Oh my goodness, when I first received Jen’s e-mail asking if I would be interested in being the guest designer for August, I really couldn’t believe it!
But, here I a little bit of history for you– I have been very happily married to my high school sweetheart, Ron, for the past 28 years and he actually seems to semi-support my habit.
By that, I mean 50% moral support “Ohhhh that’s pretty, what’s for supper?”
Thank goodness he has his own hobbies so he doesn’t complain. It helps that I get the mail (Visa bill), pay the bills (Visa bill) and that our house has a separate entrance to the basement where my stamping room is located! (sneaky sneaky)
It all began (put your feet up) when my daughter, Marcie and my niece, January actually FORCED me to put together a few pages for my mother-in-law’s Christmas present –
I said “ Nooooo WAY!!! …..I can’t do that! I won’t do that! I hate cutting and pasting!……” They said, “blah blah blah…..whatever”
Long story short – there was wine involved……but the pages turned out quite amazing for a first try and after that day I was IN!!
Nowadays, stamping is pretty much my day’s fun, after gathering eggs, mucking about in the barn and the odd golf game - very odd!
Truly - I love stamping!…… I love stamping when I’m happy and I love stamping when I’m blue — because it makes me happy!!
I am sooooo looking forward to this month and working with Jen and her fabulous team!!
Thanks Jen!! YAY!

Here’s the sketch for this week…

My sample, using stamps from the upcoming release {this Wednesday} from MFT…

Bonnie’s cuuuuute sample, also using MFT…

My pals, Amy R., Amy S., Shannan and Susan have samples for you to see, too. Carole’s still my pal, but she’s taking this week off vacationing {and probably still stressing about all the stamping she *has* to get done}.

Back in June when Susan and I ventured to the Great American Scrapbook Convention, we stopped by the Inky Antics booth. Of course they had their slew of adorable stamps, and Jackie was demonstrating coloring techniques. After admiring her coloring techniques and chatting with her for a minute, she pulled out a binding system. My mind automatically went into the “time consuming, bulky, difficult and expensive” mode. THEN she showed it off…and I bought it. LOL!! Turns out it’s not time consuming. I put together the book shown below in about 15 minutes {including cutting all the paper}. Not bulky at all! It can easily fit into a desk drawer! Difficult…nope. I’m pretty sure my mom could figure this out {hi Mom!}. Expensive…about $30…that’s $30 less than the Bind-It-All that I have {collecting dust}.

**Note…I do not see this on the Inky Antics site, nor do I know where else it is being sold. HERE is the customer service page if you wish to contact them. HERE is what I found trying to do a search with the product name/manufacturer {Carl Manufacturing Co. Ltd.}.

ETA: HERE is the link for the Inky Antics page that has this product.
Also, Taylor is also going to be selling these by the start of next week on her online store, Taylored Expressions! YAY!!!

**I checked to see if the BIA coils will work with this. It looks like it will be a very tight squeeze, but if you really wanted it to work, you could do it. You would have to hand squeeze them, tho.
**My chipboard is very thin. It was actually part of paper packaging.
**I do not know if it will need replacement blades. I imagine it’s more like a punch that can be sharpened with foil after several uses.

Let’s put a little book together, shall we?

First, pics of the product…

On this pic, the paper placement flap is folded under…

I put together a book using thin chipboard, vellum cardstock {as dividers} and 60 sheets of copy paper all cut to 4.25″ x 5.5″. Please note that I said THIN chipboard. This is not made to go through the thick stuff.

View of me lifting up where you slide the paper under to line it up. This is magnetic, so your paper won’t slide…YAY!

Thin chipboard is all lined up…

Flip down the flap that is used to line up paper. You can see the chipboard now hanging over the edge, ready to be punched.

The punch is slid on and lined up in the grooves, ready to punch!

Holey Holes…

All done with one, now onto the rest…

Not shown… A cool feature that the punch has is a plastic “catch” for all the punched pieces. Easy peasy clean up!

The book and the coil {which comes in MANY different colors} ready to get hitched…

Here we go round and round…

Viola {15 minutes start to finish!}…

Are you saying, “Um, that doesn’t look done to me!” Well, I just wanted to show off the product today. You can add DP before or after punching. If you add it after, you will have that “seam” where the binding is. I am sure that I will be getting a couple of questions in regards to this product and I will be editing this post to answer those. Also, I am going to try to give IA a call and find out if you can order these through them.