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Saturday, June 21, 2008

party was soooo much fun!

today i hosted a close to my heart (ctmh) party at my house. it was the first time any of my friends had been out to my new house. it was sooo awesome to have all of them here . . . lisa, linda, carl, nadine, jeri, pollee, kathy, sue, cathy, teresa . . . and family too . . . jaycee and lori! we had so much fun!!! my ctmh consultant, margo, was awesome!!! {justmargo} she showed us how to make two cards and was oh-so-patient with us! you rock, margo!!!

the first card we made was a masculine birthday card. this is the first time i did multi-step stamping with clear stamps. i had used stampin' up rubber multi-step stamps and was frustrated because of not being able to accurately place the second stamp. (the perfectionist in me is not happy unless everything is lined up perfectly . . . LOL!!) the clear stamps make lining up the second, third . . . even fourth . . . stamps so much easier. with this card . . . we first stamped the base, then the solid cake color, then the wavy words across the cake, then the yellow candlesticks and flames, and finally the green candlesticks . . .whew . . . makes me tired just thinking about all the steps . . . hehehehe! anyway . . . i am sooo lovin' the clear multi-step stamps.

ctmh bday card
as demonstrated by margo

the second card we made was just toooooo stinkin' cute!! i love this card so much that i have to buy the stamps! there were a couple new techniques that i learned on this card. first . . . i learned to distress the edges of my paper with my scissors . . . lovin' the thick torn up look of the paper!!! i have a distressing tool to do this with . . . but the scissors are soooo much easier. margo also showed us how to mask one image so we could stamp a second image without ruining the first image. the technique i thought was really cool tho was stamping an image on two different pieces of paper in order to layer them. makes the image look so much more 3D. i have cut stamped images out before but never woulda thought to layer another image on the base of the card and then place the second image on pop dots directly over the first image. we did this with the flower, the vase, and the leaf. tooo stinkin' cool!!! oh . . . another thing i woulda never thunk to do is build the base of my card on a separate sheet of cardstock and then tape that to a pre-made card base . . . so simple and a huge duh . . . don't ya think?

happy everything card
as demonstrated by margo

oh . . . i could never figure out why i sometimes had partial images when i stamped with clear stamps on acrylic blocks. problem solved now! margo taught us to stamp on a thin foam pad . . . made the image soooo much crisper! (found this out the hard way when i accidentally forgot to use the foam and my image came out all tweek'd . . . thank god for the back of paper . . . LOL!!!)

margo was sooo awesome . . . not only did she teach us how to make two rockin' cards . . . she also gave me two stamps sets. and as if that wasn't enough . . . she also had prize drawings for us. i won some toooo cute flower shaped bling! ok . . . have i already told you how awesome margo is . . . hehe!

flower bling
{toooo cute . . . huh}

ctmh wishes stamps
thank you margo!

ctmh rustic flower stamps
margo rocks!!

k . . . wanna hear how much of a complete dork i am. i was looking at the rustic flower stamps thinking . . . if you stamp the large square shape . . . how are you going to see anything that you stamp on top of it! (it doesn't stamp in black ya dork!!!)

it's been a really long day . . . couldn't sleep last night . . . was like a kid at christmas too excited about the next day . . . what a dork huh! i'm gonna go be a lounge lizard now . . . so i'll catch ya later! oh . . . huge thanks and love to richard and ryan for spending the day away from the house in blistering hot heat so i could have a house full of women scrappin'! love ya guys!!! and thank you to all of my wonderful friends who drove all the way out to bfe just to hang out and scrap!! i have such rockin' friends!!