...Restocking

Just a quick note to let folks know we are restocking the following sets today to BOTH our UK and USA bases!! woohoo!
2011 Holiday Ornaments, Nordic Winter, Opera Tag Stamps, Fancy Phrases, Say it loud, Very Vintage Christmas, Afternoon Tea, Half Pint Heroines, Vintage Labels 10

Help Us Welcome our Newest Design Team Members with a Blog Waltz!

My all time favourite set is usually the one I'm drawing right now! lol, but I had to pick one and I went for A Cottage Home, with a sentiment from Light of the World. I have a slight 'wee house' addiction.... And why did I have to pick one? Well I'm going to hand over to Lynn to tell you all about it:

Greetings!
Today we are holding a special Waltzingmouse Stamps Design Team Blog Waltz. We have some exciting news that we wanted to share with you, and what better way to do it than to announce it along with lots of Waltzingmouse Stamps inspiration.

What's the news? Our Waltzingmouse Stamps Design Team has grown quite a bit since the end of last year. The "new additions" will be familiar faces to you, if you played along with our sketch challenges because we have promoted our previous Mischief Maker creative team to full fledged Design Team members.
We are thrilled to have them join us and we hope that you will take a bit of time to congratulate them and share a little love on their blogs.

Our team has created projects using their all time favorite sets from the entire WMS catalog for you today, so you should see a wide range of images, since each member has their own special favorites that they reach for time and time again.

So let's get to it. Below is our team list, with the "new additions" highlighted in red. Enjoy!

Kim Duran

Jean Martin

Karin Åkesdotter

Jen Cuthbertson

Iwona Palamountain

Teresa Kline

Edna Morrisedie

Renee Lynch

Jeanne Jachna

Lynn Mercurio

Julia Aston

Tosha Leyendekker

Jennifer Holmes

Sandie Dunne

Becca Feeken

Kelly Schirmer

Laurie Schmidlin

Clare Buswell

Anya Schrier

Sarah Martina Parker

Belinda Chang Langner

...Red Carpet challenge links open

Folks, this is a super simple card to kick off  the Red carpet dress challenge - We're inviting you to take inspiration from your favourite dress of the 2013 Oscars and make a card based on that dress. I have to say the theatrical side of me yearned for some more dramatic dresses to choose from, but I chose this one as worn by Jessica Chastain as my starting point, I may make another card for this challenge as I was a little short of time today, given that I'm getting ready for several new releases....

Anyhow, this little number will get us started and allow me to open the links at the end of this post. Please do play along! I was rather obsessed with creating cutting files for the You're lovely set and I used these for my 5 min card! I will be popping those up at the store some point soon together with the freebie doily cut files. It's not that obvious from the pic, but the You're Lovely cut files will include options for the just dress as well as the dress on the dressform, and also for the bodices etc so it will be super easy to dress your stamps with patterned papers like I have here.

You have a full week to play and there are loads of dresses for inspiration - many can be found here at Vogue. Have fun!

Store News

The big news for WMS folks is that we are gearing up for a release. It's our first of the year and I will be starting peeks in a couple of days and we will have some new goodies for you around the 8th March - and maybe one before that. Although things have been quite quiet at WMS front of house recently, it hasn't all been tea and biscuits at my place, I have been working my tail off to bring you some rather special sets, and once we get going this year, we don't intend to slow down. We'll be back to a monthly release for the rest of this year while I get around to releasing all of the goodies that have been building up in my head while I dealt with other things last year.

I hear the DT have something special in store for you tomorrow, so do pop back to see us, it will be quite the show, we greatly expanded the team and we're looking forward to introducing everyone as our new DT family!

...Monday morning Red Carpet Challenge

So - did you watch the Oscars? I was starting to and then my littlest person's temperature took a turn for the worse and we ended up over in the hospital. Back home with antibiotics and a snuggle and thankfully all seems to be well.

My plan was to make a card based on my favourite red carpet dress of the evening and so far Zoe Saldana is my front runner. I have no clue what this pretty lady is famous for, as I don't really keep abreast of who stars in what, but I do have a thing for red carpet glamour.

So, I'm gong to issue a little challenge - let's make a card based on your favourite dress of the evening. I'm going to upload a post later today with links and my creation. I might go with Zoe, but I might change my mind, I have not seen everyone's dresses yet, and I kinda have to admit I like the texture of Kirsten Stewart's dress.....

So, here's what to do - make a card/project, based on your favourite dress from the 2013 Oscars red carpet fashion pics - I found lots of images here at the Daily Mail site, but nearly every magazine website will have pics this morning.

Come back later on and link it up to the Challenge blog post that I will put up this evening. You will have one week to play. Fancy?

In honour of the challenge, one random player will win a You're Lovely stamp set!

...challenged....

A couple of weeks ago I threw out a challenge - the Cranberry Sauce pic, If you were lucky, you will have completely missed it. It was a colour challenge. Well I don't think anything has ever given me as much bother. I made this, I made that, I could not get the colours to work together. It was a range of reds and purples with a little light grey. if you must see the hideous challenge pic, click here. I started out liking the picture, but by the end of it I was grinding my teeth...

In the true spirit of bad workmen everywhere I decided that the materials were at fault, a blind man on a galloping horse could tell that quite obviously I didn't have the right shades of cardstock, ink, papers, ribbon - everything was the wrong colour.

Nothing at all to do with the fact that I was obviously completely colourifically challenged the day I picked such a dodgy image....

Ended up going all minimal and cheating slightly...made up a little felt baggie - I trimmed an oblong of felt along one of the long sides using a Spellbinders edgeability die. I then folded it in half and stitched along the 3 other sides to make a baggie. Punched a circle of grey cardstock and stamped with the Hyacinth image from Vintage Garden Flowers. With love is from the Opera Tags stamp set which should be restocked soon.

Things that made me sad about this project: My total inability to make a card with this palette
Things that made me happy about this project: There is chocolate inside the bag.

February Blog Party Recap...and the Winner is...

We had such wonderful projects linked up  for the February Blog Party.  It’s apparent that the love for doilies hasn’t waned and we loved each and every one of them. If you haven’t had a chance to see all the fantastic projects, it’s not too late, they can all be found here.

Each and every project was truly fabulous; each one unique and creative in design. The following three projects really caught my eye.

Aneta, a/k/a Artisant created a beautiful card that uses many images from Claire’s Dainty Doilies 2 Small set. She created a frame around her beautiful wreathe and colored in parts of the image to really draw your attention to those two eggs. She die cut her doily, foliage and banner which holds the embossed “Easter Greetings” sentiment, all done in lovely colors. Well done, Aneta.

LaurieJ did a fabulous job with her offset doily from the same Dainty Doilies 2 Small set, adding a splash of color to it. The embossed design on her ribbon banner adds interest and dimension and the lovely rose cluster perfectly balances her large doily with the sentiment at the bottom. Amazing design, Laurie!

And lastly, Tammy really blew my mind when I saw her gorgeous project. Her lovely color combination was amazing and I adore how she used the Very Vintage Labels 10 set as a background for that beautiful blossom.  The sentiment, from the Say it Loud set looks amazing on the kraft cardstock! Stunning, Tammy!

It’s truly a difficult task choosing only three projects to showcase because the team is always in awe of the creativity from the Waltzingmouse Stamps fans. Thanks to all who  participated.

As promised, we have randomly chosen one person from all who participated  to receive a special code, good for one free Waltzingmouse Stamps set.  Congratulations goes to this month’s winner:

Claire A

Please e-mail me at Lmercurio at sbcglobal dot net and I will provide you with a code to use upon checkout in the store. The code is good for several months, so if you want to wait for the “set of your dreams” feel free. I request that you please use BLOG PARTY WINNER in your subject line.

We appreciate EVERYONE’S participation and support of the “Blog Party”.  We hope you had as much fun creating your projects as we did getting all the inspiration from them.

...Monday morning made this

 

So, I was completely blindsided on Monday morning by the fact that it was half term here and all the wee folks are off - the cry was up for pancakes for breakfast and since I am good, nay, since I excell at making pancakes, I was not hard to persuade.....

Look at that rolled pancake,  dripping with lemon juice and maple syrup and real maple syrup thank you, none of that pretend stuff here...LOL....it's like an ad for M&S....it's my one thing that I'm good at in the kitchen, so I can be forgiven for blowing my own trumpet a little

It was pretty much Monday night before I remembered that it was Monday at all.....Tuesday has been most constructive so far though, lots of admin completed and tonight I will be dancing my way through the doily blog hop, tea in one hand, left-over pancakes in the other....just kidding there are NEVER left over pancakes when I make them....... :)

February Blog Party–Doily Love

Hello and welcome!. We are thrilled that you stopped by today! You are in for lots of fun and inspiration today as we host our February Blog Party! Are you ready? If so, let's get this party started.
This month we have chosen a doily theme which continues to be very trendy on cards, scrapbook pages and various other crafty projects. However you feel inspired to express your love for doilies – we are anxious to see your Waltzingmouse Stamps creations.

The sample above is a slight cheat! Cutting files were used to create a doily from the artwork for the Dainty Doilies set - I just could not resist, I mad a doily and a mat and I sponged the doily with various colours before layering it on the cream mat - I used AC cardstock and I'm finding it a lovely match for the Cameo! If you'd like the cutting files pop a comment on this blog, if a few folks like them I will make them a freebie on the store.

Here’s how the party works works: Upload your entries to your blog or on-line gallery and then enter your direct URL link your creation using the inlinkz tool at the end of this post. We will leave the links open for 24 hours so that everyone will have a chance to play along, even if you haven’t created anything yet!  Then after you link your project, why not take a little time and check out all the other inspiring projects by just clicking on their link.
Be sure to include the Blog Party Logo (seen at the top of this post) on your blog to easily identify your participation). How fun and easy!
The festivities begin right here, according to your location, as indicated below:

UK - 6:30 p.m. 17th February- 6:30 p.m. 18th February

USA (New York) 1:30 p.m. 17th February- 1:30 p.m. 18th February

Australia (Queensland) - 4:30 a.m. 18th February- 4:30 a.m. 19th February

Canada (Alberta) - 11:30 a.m. 17th February- 11:30 a.m. 18th February

Malaysia - 2:30 a.m. 18th February- 2:30 a.m. 19th February

Norway - 7:30 p.m. 17th February- 7:30 p.m. 18th February

At the end of the appointed time, the linking option will be closed.
As we mentioned before, you have 24 hours to link up your creation!  And we all look forward to see your creative and inspiring projects.  Be sure to check back on the 20th of the month right here where we will highlight a few of the entries that really catch our eye. We are looking for projects that showcase extra special effort and creativity! We will also select and announce our winner of the FREE stamp set of choice, using a random generator from those participating in the Blog Party! Will you be the winner?
Let the fun begin and enter your direct link to start the party.

...What IS she doing?

Ladies, quite often it looks like nothing is happening...zilch...lol, this is never the case - yep, true I have not, as yet finished the cranberry challenge....but I will! What I am doing is getting all my ducks in a row for he next release.......I can. not. wait!

OOh and yep the thingy above is sort of to-do with the next release.....

Christmas Hearts

Hello – Lynn here, posting on behalf of the Waltzingmouse Stamps Christmas Card Challenge. I’m hosting the challenge this month and I hope that you will consider joining me for another challenge, giving you the opportunity to make a few Christmas cards each month so that you won’t be in a panic come December. YEAH!

This month, since we probably already have our heart shaped stamps lying on our craft table in preparation for Valentine’s Day, I thought it would be fun to incorporate hearts into our Christmas cards. For general guidelines for the challenge, please check out this post here.

It's totally understandable that you may not be totally enthusiastic about getting your Christmas craftiness so early in the year. Amidst the Valentine card and decorations around your home, you may be more focused on February 14th, rather than December, but it's a great time to get a head start on those cards because days turn into weeks, and weeks into months and before you know it, the big day will be here.

You can join in the challenge by posting your challenge cards to your blog, and feel free to grab this cute little WMS Christmas Card Challenge logo, to include as well. You can post them in February or any month you have your project completed. Then just pop into the forum and let us know you have posted your project....because we all want to see your creative projects, and we love the WMS inspiration – anytime of the year.

...a spin around Wicklow

This is why I have no cards for you this week! Last weekend DH spirited us away to Dublin for the weekend. We stayed in a lovely hotel just outside the city, but we chose to explore Wicklow while we were there instead of the city and this is some of what we found. It's been over 20 years since I was last in Wicklow and I really should make more of an effort to get down there a bit more frequently - since the new road links have opened up it's less than two hours away and as my wee mum would have said "It's better than a tonic for you."

Along the roadside there were still some jewels of winter to provide a glimpse of the sparkly beauty that must have encrusted the place the weekend before when the snow was here. There were pockets of frozen stalactites and stalagmites all along the road where the frost had cloaked each blade of grass individually.

A close up of the 'stalagmites' from above, you can just see the individual blades of grass in the centre of each one, the kids were fascinated - I was fascinated! They do say that little amuses the innocent....

Saturday was a beautiful crisp day in the wicklow hills on the way down to Glendalough.

 

Glendalough is one of Ireland's most beautiful places and you can find out more about it on this site, we took a good few snaps - and I really wished I had a better camera operator...

Leaving Glendalough behind we drove on towards sally Gap, and came upon this lovely valley.

Wicklow is gorgeous, totally worth the extra laundry....

Hope you enjoyed the mini tour, meantime I am scratching my head over the cranberry color challenge, me and cranberry can't seem to get along....

...Washi Winner

Good Grief where did the week go? I still have not even visited all of the Washi tape challenge players yet (I will get to them all!), but it was high time we had a winner - so the random number generator thingy generated a random number and our Washi Tape Challenge winner was No 25 which was Pauline P!  Pauline, pop me an email with your set of choice and I'll get it right out!!! Thank you to everyone who played along - there is still bags of time left to play along with the colour challenge for fun here.

...Cranberry Sauce Colour Challenge

ED - the link is now up and I'm late with my sample!!! arg, I am finding this colour group hard to work with - you?

I thought a colour challenge might be fun this morning! I was delighted to see so many folks trying to make their own washi tape and I look forward to hopping along the blogs later, but I thought I might take it a little easier on you this week....and on me - I was one lucky lady at the weekend and got whisked away for a little break in a nice hotel!  It was a belated birthday present from Mr B and I can't smile wide enough.

I just wanted to pop up this inspiration photo so's you can make a start - it's me making Cranberry sauce just before Christmas, but I thought it was fairly colour-appropriate since I'm pretty sure you are all knee deep in Valentines prep...you are, aren't you?

Well then, come show me what you make with this colour palette, or as close as you can. We're leaving this one wide open to all stamps, we don't require you to use WMS although we are hugely tickled if you do....

This week we're playing just for fun, and tomorrow I will announce the winner of the washi tape challenge.

To play along with this challenge simply make something using this palette - Ranging from black through a dark plum colour through red and maybe a little dove grey?

Since I'm late adding the linky thing - you have more time!! you have until next Wednesday night, and something tells me we're going to need it, this colour scheme is a challenge for me!

February Blog Party Details

Hello friends.  2013 is off to a flying start and here it is February 1st already. It’s a new month and time to reveal our theme for the February 17th Blog Party, which will be here before you know it.

Watching trends come and go, we see some trends that are so useful and interesting that they become a staple in our designs. Doilies are one such tend. They have been around for a while on the crafting scene and they don’t seem to be losing their appeal. So we want to encourage you to get your doily thinking cap on, and whip up a creative project for the blog hop using the theme of  DOILIES. Use your imagination and show us some ingenuity.  Design a doily background, use doilies as embellishments, make you doily a faint background or focal image, or go wild and make them fluorescent colors - really push those doily boundaries and “get your craft on” and whip up  a card, a 3D project, or even a scrapbook page, using images from Waltzingmouse Stamps and join the fun.

We will follow the usual schedule for the February party, and below you will find a schedule of beginning and end times in which you can enter your direct link to your project.  Your post on your blog, or on-line gallery, can go live anytime you wish on the 17th, but you will need to post your direct link here on the WMS blog using the Inlinkz widget that will be available during the time frame (outlined below) .

The festivities begin right here, according to your location, as indicated below:

UK - 6:30 p.m. 17th February - 6:30 p.m. 18th February

USA (New York) 1:30 p.m. 17th February - 1:30 p.m. 18th February

Australia (Queensland) - 4:30 a.m. 18th February - 4:30 a.m. 19th February

Canada (Alberta) - 11:30 a.m. 17th February - 11:30 a.m. 18th February

Malaysia - 2:30 a.m. 18th February - 2:30 a.m. 19th February

Norway - 7:30 p.m. 17th February - 7:30 p.m. 18th February

The linking option will be closed after that time.  From there you can just click on any of the projects linked and be directed to any of the participants’ blogs to get a closer look at their creativity.

Although we call this a "blog party", it is perfectly fine to use an on-line gallery for your project, if you don't have a blog.  It doesn't even have to be the Waltzingmouse Stamps gallery either (although you are most welcome to upload as many WMS projects as you like there).  On-line galleries such as Flickr or Picasa or other galleries are also fine.

You only need to do three things:

1.  You will need to be able to link your project here, using a direct URL

2.  Your project needs to contain something directly related to the theme – color or other inspiration should be noted in your description

3.  You must use Waltzingmouse Stamps images somewhere within your design

We encourage and welcome you to grab this "party mouse" blog button (at the top of this post for your blog sidebar, and to use it at the top of your post on "party day".

On the 20th of the month – we will highlight a few of the entries that really catch our eye and you'll be able to see those here on the WMS blog.  We will also select and announce our winner of the FREE stamp set of choice, using a random generator from those participating in the Blog Party.

So now that you know the date - you know the time - and now you know the theme, what are you waiting for?  Find something to occupy your kids, turn off the computer and get crafting!  See you the 17th!