Stampin‘ Up! surprised us by giving Demonstrators a chance to pre-order a brand new stamp set that won’t be available until the Fall-Winter 2008 Idea Book and Catalog.  I got my set on Monday and had to put it together immediately.  The best part was that it took me a matter of minutes because the new set was die cut!  I love cutting and mounting my stamp sets, but I have to say I do love the convenience of die cut stamps especially when I have a large pile in front of me to put together. 

I know I’ve mentioned a million times that Colin is going to be out of school as of the 27th of this month.  I want to give his teacher and assistant a nice parting gift, so I am making them each a few handstamped cards with matching envelopes.  As a teacher myself, I know that there was always a time during the school year when I needed Thank you notes, so that is the route I am going.  I made the first one with Old Olive, Chocolate Chip and Pretty in Pink.  The layout is fairly simple and easy, so I punched it up with a row of brads along the bottom of the card.  I am often asked how I get them so evenly spaced and in a row.  The answer to that is simple.  I use my mat pack as a guide and the paper piercer punches a hole that is the perfect size for the prongs of the brad. 

This second card was made exactly the same way, except I used the colors from the Color Combination Challenge on Tuesday.  This card uses Certainly Celery, Blue Bayou, Whisper White and Soft Sky. 

I also want to let you know that I have been doing some work on my blog behind the scenes.  In order to do it sometimes all of the information on my blog may not appear all of the time – especially late at night.  My husband has been helping me set up my hosting account so that I can try to use some Open source software to manage my blog.  The good thing about that is that the software is free and I can therefore eliminate my monthly blog bill.  I’m not sure if the whole change-over will work for me or not, but it’s at least worth the try.  My blog address won’t change.  It will still be http://igotstamps.com but instead it will stay on that page instead of forwarding you directly to typepad.  I’ll let you all know more as time moves along and I can see how the software works for me. 

Jenn

Stamp set -(card 1 and 2) – Fresh Cuts

paper – card 1 – Old Olive, Chocolate Chip, Whisper White, Pretty in Pink

paper – card 2 – Certainly Celery, Blue Bayou, Whisper White, Soft Sky

ink – card 1 – Old Olive, Chocolate Chip

ink – card 2 – Certainly Celery, Blue Bayou

accessories – card 1 and 2 – mat pack, vintage brads