Stampin' Up! *Retired List

 

 

Here is the List!

Wee Gifts for Mom: The Fashionable Clothespin

I have been thinking of some small gifts I'd like to create for my Mother, gifts that would focus the attention on the sentiment behind the gift more than on the object itself. Perhaps you'd like to join me in honoring your mother, or some other woman who has mentored and cared for you in significant ways.

My friend & fellow demo Lisa inadvertently gave me the first idea in the series: a way to display a photograph that Mother will enjoy looking at every morning at breakfast! I should tell you that wasn't necessarily Lisa's intent, but her "thank you" gift to me provides the ideal object to CASE! A giant clothespin is just the right size, inexpensive, and easy to embellish simply and quickly. I can clip in messages, change out the photos, pretty up a memory verse and put it here.

My Mother has significant memory loss, so an object such as this will be examined and enjoyed a dozen times at each meal. Perhaps I'll have to fill a little file box with options to change out regularly! -Kathy

A Place for Everything

We live in an older home with zipp-o storage. The area which was designated for the washer & dryer before we bought it, was - not long before that - a back porch. We managed to make a place for hanging clothes, and to install a couple of shelves above the appliances. Here lives not only laundry soap, stain removers, and bleach, but light bulbs, cat food & paraphernalia, dead flashlights, picnic & beach stuff, coolers, hiking gear... oh yes, and garden dreams (mostly in the form of seed packets) and canning supplies. Talk about a clutter nightmare!

As I was thinking about how to tame this beast, I decided what was needed was some visual consistency (restful to the eyes), a functional way to combine "like items", and easy access. My solution was to acquire a number of large plastic gelato tubs (at the time my daughter worked as a barrista in a coffee shop - convenient!) which I spray painted yellow, then I just laid some assorted leaves on them and shot on some green and rust spray paint, allowing the leaves to act as stencils. The smaller items went into the tubs, and this has successfully worked for some years now - except for now and then forgetting what category was in which tub.

When the framelits labels dies arrived in the studio, I knew the final piece of the puzzle was about to fall into place. I typed my categories into Word and ran them onto very vanilla CS, then ran these through my Big Shot with the framelits and added color with stamps and some vintage buttons (actually, I can still picture the buttons in a row down the front on my grandmother's bath robe).

There you have it. Although in April we have Earth Day to remind us to think twice before we label something trash, my family has always believed in Reduce, Reuse, Recycle as a praiseworthy way to utilize our God-given creativity. Hope this will spur you to think how you might re-purpose some "trash" into useful service. -Kathy

Stamp Club Lawrence - April 2012

...and in Lawrence this month, stamp club members learned to use fabric on cards as a ribbon replacement and/or as a 3D embellishment!

Our hostess for the April club meeting is a quilter, so what a perfect choice. This is the flower featured in the Sale-a-bration brochure that so many of my customers requested to learn. If you'd like to give it a try, you can find it here.

Once again, I must thank a fellow demo from Topeka (you rock, Deloris!) for the basic layout of this card. Isn't it great what just a narrow strip of DSP can add to the overall look?! And the new edgelits dies and embossing folders are just perfect for adding visual and tactile interest.

Enjoy the April showers, Kathy