Off to Convention!!!

I'm leaving Monday morning for Convention in Denver! Yippee!!!! Stamping fun with thousands of other Stampin' Demonstrators. What could be better?! I meant to post my convention swaps before I left. I guess those will have to wait until I'm back. I ran out of time! I will have tons to post from convention. I'll be back on Friday. Have a great week everyone!

Cutting a Rug

Last night we were at my godson, Mark's wedding. My kids haven't been to a wedding that they remember. They were enjoying dancing to the dj. Sam, my youngest, has some truly unique moves. This picture is of him diving between my daughter and me while we were trying to swing dance. My husband took a little video of Sam dancing. It's truly Utube worthy. He is not a bit self conscious and really prefers to dance alone. My sister, niece, and daughter can attest to that. They kept trying to dance with him and he kept running away from them. Anyway, I suppose I should post a picture of the happy wedding couple as well. This is Mark and Kristi at their reception. I don't have a real great shot of them but this will have to do.

I will have shots soon of a couple of my swap cards for Convention.

wow card swaps

I am in a WOW card swap at Session II. I already made 100 swaps for the SCS dinner and I spent a lot of time on those. Now I'm kind of stuck on the wow card swap(a different swap). Many are saying to use a special technique but I just wanted to play and come up with a wow card that's just..... wow. KWIM? Here are a couple I was playing around with. They are both based on sketches from the Splitcoast Dirty Dozen challenges that are going on this week. What do you think? Are these Wow enough?

Holiday Stamp-a-stack

These are the cards we will be doing at my Holiday Stamp-a-stack. Pardon the poor photo quality. At this class you will be making 3 each of 5 card designs for a total of 15 cards with envelopes. The key to getting your Christmas cards done and out the door on time is to start early. Now if I only could take my own advice! The red card with the flourishes is partially cased from a card on Splitcoast by genescrapper. See her card here.
The bottom left card is cased from db2002wall on splitcoast. Thanks ladies for the great ideas! The other 3 cards are my own design. The blue one is based on a sample in the 2006/2007 Idea Book and Catalogue and the other two were based on sketches. It's good to have a starting point for your cards and sketches are a great place to start!

To sign up for this class you can contact me at krhopperstad@juno.com

It's all Harry Potter's fault!

I am sleep deprived today. I took my daughter and her friend to Barnes and Noble for the festivities surrounding the release of the final Harry Potter book. There were tons of people crawling through the aisles of the book store. We didn't pre-0rder the book so I told my daughter we wouldn't be sticking around to stand in an hour line to purchase the book. I'll take my chances on another day. She was practically begging me to go to Target today to purchase the book so we can get started on reading it. She doesn't want information about the book leaked out before we have a chance to read it. We have a tradition of reading the Harry Potter books together at bedtime. We have been doing this since we read the 2nd book when she was in 2nd grade(we skipped the first book because we already saw the movie. I went back and read it with my son Nicholas recently.)

This is a scrapbook page of said daughter. We did this page spread in my scrapbook club in June. I design the layout and everyone in the club makes it. I was dying to do a girly page and this was it. I used Cameo Coral, Apricot Appeal, Certainly Celery and Rose Red craft ink and card stock. I used the onboard chipboard for the big flower. I inked it up with Cameo Coral Craft ink and then dumped Irridescent Ice embossing powder over it and heated it with my embossing gun. The other flower accents are done with our flower punch. The stamped image is from the now retired Mixed Bouquet stamp set.

Contact me at krhopperstad@juno.com for more information about my monthly scrapbook clubs or card clubs.

Thanks for stopping by!

Loving the new colors!

This card was one of the make-n-takes at my open house yesterday. It was very well received. I used the new Stampin' Up! Level 2 hostess set, In the Spotlight. The card layout came from a card sketch Beate posted on her website Fresh and Fun. You have to check out Beate's website! She's got great tutorials, card sketches and is an amazing artist!

Back to the card. I used a couple of the new 2007/2008 In Colors, River Rock and Soft Sky. I combined those with Chocolate Chip to give it that extra pop.

Thank you to those of you who came to my Open House yesterday. There were so many of you I hadn't seen for some time. It's great to catch up with everyone!

Happy stamping!

Christmas in July

I wanted to have a Christmas in July Christmas stamp-a-stack class. Time is getting away from me though and it may have to be Christmas in August. It doesn't have the same ring, does it? Still, it is good to get going on Christmas cards early so it doesn't become part of the craziness that is each holiday season. I need to take my own advice and start my Christmas cards early! This card is from a new stamp set in Stampin' Up!'s Fall/Winter collection called Merry, Merry. It's quite cheery! I used a sketch from Lauren(Mytime)'s blog. Lauren is a very talented artist. Check out her blog and her sketch here.

OPEN HOUSE!!!!

My

New Catalogue Open House

is Tuesday, July 17 from 3:00-9:00 pm. If you are in the Twin Cities area you are invited to stop by. Everyone who RSVP's by July 15 and comes to my open house will receive a FREE STAMPIN' UP! Catalogue!!!! At my open house I will have 2 make-n-takes, lots of samples, some of my retired stamps and accessories for sale and some hand-stamped cards as well. Bring your cameras! If you bring a new friend you will receive a $5 Stampin' Up! gift certificate from me! You can RSVP to krhopperstad@juno.com. I will send you directions if you haven't been to my house before. I hope to see you on the 17th!!!

Moving

No, I am not moving. My good friend Ellen is moving to California. Although I'm sad to see her go I know this is what she wants. She is off on a new adventure and I'm happy for her. She has packed her stamps and stuff so I told her I would make her moving cards to announce her new move and address to her friends. This is the pile of cards I made for her.

Stamps: Loads of Love, Loads of Love Accessories, Rough Texture Jumbo Wheel, See You Around Wheel
Ink: Chocolate Chip, Brocade Blue, Jet Black Stazon
Card stock: Whisper White, Chocolate Chip, Creamy Caramel, Brocade Blue
Other: watercolor wonder crayons, aquapainter, ribbon, ticket corner punch, circle punches.

Flower Trio

Here is a card with the new set Stem Sayings. This set features a set of 4 with a curvy verse that resembles the stem of a flower. Brilliant! You can use this with most any flower stamp set. Here are the supplies I used:

Stamps: Stem Sayings, Big Pieces
Ink: Groovy Guava, Soft Sky, Wild Wasabi(all of these are new In colors!)
Paper: Whisper White, Purely Pomengranate, Soft Sky, Groovy Guava, Wild Wasabi, Soft Sky Designer Paper
Other: Silver brads, photo corner punch(new!), Scallop circle punch, 1 1/4 inch punch, paper piercer

My new catty order is here!

I am so happy to have new stamps, inks, papers, and accessories to play with! I just received all my goodies this afternoon so I haven't had much time to play. Here is a quick Halloween card I made using the new stamp set, "Batty for You." I LOVE Halloween and this set was a must have! I used a layout I did before with a similar set called Figures of Speech. The new patterned paper is called Creepy Crawly and of course I love it! I used the new scallop circle punch, pumpkin pie ribbon, and the Sanded background stamp. I hope you like it!

Playing tag

I haven't played much tag since I was a kid but I guess I'm playing now!

I got tagged today by Sunflower Stamper. Another version of Blog Tag. Here goes!

List Seven Random things about yourself:


1 I am the 9th child out of 10. There are five girls and five boys in my family. I am the youngest girl.

2. I am addicted to chocolate

3. The last movie I saw was, "Evening". It has an all star cast and is really good! It's a definite chick flick though. My husband would have been snoozing during it!

4. I love Halloween! I love the colors, decorating for it, making scrapbook pages of it and creating cards. There is so much whimsy to this holiday!

5. I am planning a trip to Disneyland this fall. Actually I haven't done any planning at all except telling my husband and kids that we are going. I guess I better get on that! If you have any great tips on planning a vacation to California I'm all ears! I want to hit Disney, the beach, Hollywood, Seaworld, etc. We're going to pack a lot in!

6. My godson, Mark, is getting married at the end of this month. He's my mom's first grandchild to get married.

7. We are going to my son, Nicholas', soccer tournament this weekend. It's right here in town so that's good. I love to watch him play!


Post Rules & the bloggers I tagged here:

1. Kristina at Balance
2. Britta at Made by B
3. Wendy at Wickedly Wonderful Creations
4. Diane at DDStamps
5. Debbi at Debbi's Design Stamping
6. Chris at For Love of Paper
7. Sherri at Fun to Stamp


Leave tagged bloggers comments on their web sites so that they know they have been tagged

STAMPO!!!!

It has become a tradition for me to hold Stampo events. My customers love them! It is fun for me to see how excited everyone gets! I love holding a fun ladies night out for everyone. This past Friday night we had another Stampo event at my house. This one had a Hawaiian theme. We had lots of Hawaiian decorations and food including fruit kabobs with fruit dip, Hawaiian cake, punch and other munchies. We played 2 rounds of Stampo(a very easy dice game played like Bunco). At the end I tallied up the winners while everyone made 3 fabulous make-n-takes. I held this event with 3 of my downline - Kelly, Kristina, and Paula. We had a great time! Our next one will probably be in October with a Halloween theme. I expect a packed house!

Happy July

It doesn't seem possible that it is July already. Summer is flying by. I did a little stamping last night and here are the fruits of my labor.



This first card is a shadow box card. These are a lot of fun and not hard to make. You can let your imagination run wild with this. I used the Weathered background stamp in Always Artichoke ink on Always Artichoke cardstock. I cut the circle out with my Coluzzle circle cutter.
The images inside the shadow box are from the Happy Camper stamp set. I think the idea for the bear roasting the hotdog on a stick came from my downline Kelly. If I remember correctly she did a convention swap with this idea last year. Click here for a tutorial on shadow box cards.

The second card is using the Baroque motifs stamp set and the Brocade background paper. Both are in the new catalogue. I used the new River Rock ink as the swirl background on the main image. Then I stamped the flower in Chocolate chip. The smaller flower is stamped in Old olive with a little flower stamped in chocolate chip in the middle of the flower. I then put an brad from the Vintage brads and gave it some dimension with a Stampin' dimensional. The color scheme came from the background papers.