Stamping "The Rock" with Lynda

Last day for SU's delightful Growth Chart

If you've forgotten to order this fun Growth Chart from Stampin' Up!® you've still got just a few more hours!  Today's the last day it'll be available, so you can still hop over and pick up one (or more) for your kids or grandkids.  (Psst:  Christmas is coming, and they make great baby gifts, too!)

Clearance Rack - a new feature in my online store

Attention bargain hunting crafters! 

Don't miss this brand-new feature of my online store:  a Clearance Rack! 

From time to time Stampin' Up! will make available some retired/discontinued products in this section, sometimes at deep discounts from their original prices.  They'll only be available while supplies last, of course, and the items available there will change over time.  So be sure to check back frequently and of course every time you're placing an online order anyway. 

This morning I noticed several sets of retired Designer Series Papers, among other things, so if you're up for a bargain head over this direction and check it out!

My Digital Studio - Letterhead

The very first thing I figured I'd make once My Digital Studio became available was design myself some letterhead.  Well, as it turned out it wasn't the *first* project I undertook, but rather *among* the first!  So here's my first letterhead design. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE this new digital papercrafting program?!?

You'll be able to begin ordering your own My Digital Studio on Thursday, October 1st.  OR - host a workshop of $400 and get yours for half-price during October!

 

 

 

 

Build-a-Bear - I finally played with it!

Well I finally finished up this card I've had "in progress" for - oh, about a week or so! Actually, all it was waiting on was the 3 minutes it took to run the background through my Big Shot and adhere the lady bear to the front, lol.

So anyway, here's my first Build-a-Bear card:

She was a ton of fun to make, btw.  Main supplies included 2 Build-a-Bear dies (for the Big Shot) - Stampin' Up! Bear and Stampin' Up! Bear Essentials (her clothes), Pawsitively Prints Designer Series Paper, and Stampin' Up! Textured Impressions (Embossing) Folder - Petals-a-Plenty.  All items from the awesome Holiday Mini Catalog.  Maybe one of these days I'll get around to working with the boy bear, too - ya think?!?

If your kids are fans of Build-a-Bear and you'd like to center a birthday party theme around these bears, let's talk!  Or perhaps a set of Build-a-Bear supplies might be in order for Christmas?  Check out our interactive catalog and shop online here.

 

Santa's Gift-Making Workshop Blitz!

Check back here real soon as I unveil my Santa's Gift-making Workshop Blitz for October and November! 9 fun and varied classes to choose from:  take one or take 'em all.  Here's a sample of one of 'em..... 4 glitzy & shimmery cards with coordinating envelopes, and a coordinating, reusable gift pouch....

 

Ready to make your Christmas cards this year?

I've just posted information about my annual Christmas Card Design Studio here.  If you'd like to make your Christmas cards by hand this year, but could use some design & technical guidance, as well as a structured work schedule (and table space, too), then my Christmas Card Design Studio is for you!  Read the details and get signed up here.

A couple more digital album pages

Here are pages 1 and 2 from my first digital album - previewing Stampin' Up!'s brand-new "My Digital Studio", which will be available to order beginning October 1st!  You'll be amazed at what you'll be able to do by expanding the world of papercrafting into the digital realm!  Not only photo books, of course, but cards, calendars, letters, flyers, multi-media presentations, and probably plenty of other stuff no one's even thought of yet, lol.  I am working on my certification for this amazing program, so watch for an announcement about my introductory classes later this fall.

My first digital album

Just a quick post today to share the cover design for my first digital album!  I'm using the soon-to-be-released software program from Stampin' Up!, "My Digital Studio"..... and let me tell you it's AWESOME!

More pix to come, but I had to get this one up today.

Your own handwritten font

Have you ever thought it might be fun to have your very own handwriting as a font on your computer?  Well I just learned of a way to do that ...... kind of.  While I discovered that this particular process unfortunately won't work for script handwriting, with some patience and repeated tweaking I was able to get a fairly decent resemblance to my own printing.  I'm not immediately sure what I'll DO with this font now that I have it, but perhaps someday it'll find its way into some journaling or something.

Ok, so if you're intrigued, here's the site to work with.  (And lucky YOU, 'cuz it's even free!) The overall process is actually pretty straightforward:  you'll download and print a special PDF form (I'll call it a worksheet), and then handwrite a sampling of each letter it prompts for.  Then that completed worksheet is scanned back in, and then the scanned image is uploaded to the fontcapture.com website.  Moments later your custom font has been created and it's ready to download and install into your font folder!

If you'd like to give this a try, I recommend allowing yourself at least an hour or two to play with it.  I found that the first several attempts I made did not really look like my handwriting at all.  One sample I submitted was my handwriting in script.  NOT good; each individual letter ended up printing independently with its little serif connectors taking up space and then looking really goofy when the letters don't connect anyway.  So I gave up on that idea quickly and decided to stick to printing.  Here are a few tips I can share based on my experience:

• You'll need to use a fine-point Sharpie-type marker on your worksheet.  A regular pen will be too fine, but a regular Sharpie is too fat.
• When you download the worksheet upon which you will write your letters, go ahead and print off a half-dozen or more copies right at the outset.  You'll probably end up using at least most of them anyway, and it's a frustration to have to go print yet another sheet each time you need one.  (Plus, you lose your writing rhythm and have to practice all over again before starting again.)
• Once you've scanned in your completed worksheet, crop it close to the edge of the printed part before uploading your scanned image.  My scanner left borders of white that were too wide, so the program couldn't orient itself until I cropped in close.  I kept getting error messages before I figured out what was wrong.
• Practice writing each letter individually on scratch paper immediately before writing it on the worksheet.  I found that my letters looked too "forced" the first several times through, so I discovered that by practice-writing a letter several times first, I was able to get my hand to relax and yield a more realistic result.  
• If you include too many flourishes with your writing, your letters will be spaced too widely apart when using your font.  I found that by using Stampin' Up!'s white gel pen over the excess flourishes I could narrow each letter, which yielded better spacing and easier readability of my text. 
• Be prepared to submit several writing samples before getting one you like.   I found that each one I submitted looked a little better (a little more like my real writing) than the previous ones.
• If you get a sample that is *mostly* ok, but with only a few letters you don't like, rewrite those specific letters on those extra worksheets, cut out those specific squares and adhere exactly in place on top of the "mostly ok" worksheet.  And then re-scan it and resubmit.  I had to do this several times, but it proved the biggest key to eventual success.  This method is better than re-writing everything in the hopes of improving one or two letters.  If you attempt to rewrite everything you're likely to mess up something that was once just fine.
• Be sure you type plenty of trial samples with every letter before you consider your font complete and accept it.  If you find there seems to be a certain letter that's just got goofy spacing (esp. too wide to be appropriate within a word), look for a possible tiny stray dot on your worksheet.  I found a couple of cases where there were such almost imperceptible spots on my worksheet; my eye could barely detect them, yet the software was picking these dots up from the scan and considering them part of the formed letter, which messed up that letter's spacing in relation to other letters in a word.  To resolve that, all I had to do was mark out those stray spots with that white gel pen again and re-scan.
• There are many more letters or symbols on the worksheet than most of us will every use.  Some I'm sure I have never written in my entire life!  But I discovered that if you're sure you'll never write that particular symbol in your own handwriting you can just leave it blank on the worksheet.

So have fun creating your own custom font, and then I invite you to leave a comment here and share what you will be doing with your new font!   

What a great day!

What a great day to be a Stampin' Up! demonstrator!  Just had to share how excited I am about this upcoming season! 

We got some rain overnight (finally), and there's apparently more coming this weekend...... my preordered copy of "My Digital Studio" should be arriving today (yes, I stayed up waaaaay late Monday night, into Tuesday, Sept. 1st, to get it preordered and even expedited, and then continued to read all about it until after 3:30 in the morning, lol)! 

And I've heard from several of you that you're excited for Christmas Card Design Studio, I get to stamp all day today in preparation for the weekend's Stamp-a-Stacks, and most of all I finally get to see a bunch of my stampin' friends again this weekend and next week, too! With my recent goofy August schedule, that has meant no Stamp-a-Stacks, Club meetings, or even workshops for an entire month, I have REALLY missed you guys!  Sure made me appreciate how much a part of my life y'all have become.  THANK you!...... and I can't wait to see you real soon!

PS:  I can still take a few more at my Stamp-a-Stack sessions this weekend.  Call me quick, though, while I still have time to prep enough cards!