The Big Cheese of the Week

Good morning!

I am here to announce this week's Big Cheese winner. Wait until you see this card!

This week's winner is Cammie Murphree with this gorgeous creation.

The simple design of this card is just stunning. The creative combination of different stamps (from Faux Fun Circles, Nordic Winter and Fancy Phrases) and the perfect placement of each.. really, I'm head over heels. Thank you for sharing this beautiful card, Cammie. And thank you for reminding us that there are hearts in Nordic Winter!

Congratulations, Cammie! Your project will be added to the Big Cheese highlight album in the WMS Gallery. Please send me an email and I will provide you with a discount code for $10 off your next Waltzingmouse Stamps purchase.

The second card I would like to share today is from Karen Haman.

Gingham pears. Is there anything cuter than these? Karen revived an oldie but goodie - Peace and Plenty and used the pear image to perfectly execute her punny card. The soft, springy colors are sure to bring a smile to your face as well.

The last card I would like to share is from Erin Thiem.

Erin's choice of color and texture have 'masculine' written all over them. A great guy card for sure. The layout is a versatile one too, substituting different images or sentiments could take this in an entirely different direction. So glad you shared, Erin.

Thanks to all of you for joining us this week. Please, keep them coming! We so appreciate you taking the time to share your projects with us and the WMS Gallery. This week's thread is here in the WMS Forum, we would love for you to share what you're working on.

Have a great day!
Anya

Blog Party “Sweet” Recap

Just like any good party, you spend time reliving the great moments from the event.  WMS is doing the same thing today as we revisit some of the amazing projects that our customers created for the January WMS Blog Party.

Before we get to the highlights, we spent a little time going over the new format for our Blog Party; reviewing what worked great as well as those things that we can improve.  The timing of the event is one of those things we are re-thinking, based on some feedback.  For February we are considering the following span of time in which to link up your Blog Party projects:

UK - 6:30 p.m. 17th Feb - 4:00 a.m. 18th Feb
USA (New York) 1:30 p.m. 17th Feb - 11:00 p.m. 17th Feb
Australia (Queensland) - 4:30 a.m. 18th Feb - 2:00 p.m. 18th Feb
Canada (Alberta) - 11:30 a.m. 17th Feb - 9:00 p.m. 17th Feb
Malaysia - 2:30 a.m. 18th Feb - 12:00 p.m. 18th Feb
Norway - 7:30 p.m. 17th Feb - 5:00 a.m. 18th Feb

In Claire’s post on Wednesday she asked your opinions of these times, so if you haven’t weighed in on these proposed new times, please visit THAT post and leave a comment.  We want to make this as easy as possible for you to play along. 

Now on with some great WMS inspiration from our customers.

Chris L shared a wonderfully “sweet” creation with us using the Sewing Box Hugs set and created a romantic shaker card.  What a fun way to send a Valentine greeting.  Chris created “love in action” with the shiny heart confetti within the heart shaped shaker focal point.

 

Next, we found this awesome project from Jeanne J that she made for her Mom; a very lucky Mom, indeed.  Jeanne used a wooden box decorated with lovely paper using Waltzingmouse’s Sweethearts , Gingham & Co. and Cameo to Go to coordinate the gift set.  The fun rosette wand with a streamer of little hearts is just the sweetest addition.  Great job, Jeanne.

 

 

And lastly, we bring you this invitation to tea from Debbie Marcinkiowicz.  She created this ensemble for the birthday of a friend, who surely was impressed with Debbie’s level of attention to detail.  Debbie used Afternoon Tea and Afternoon Tea Sentiments stamp sets to create the tea tag, tied onto the cup with a bit of baker's twine.  She used the Piece of Cake template, available at WMS, to create her birthday cake box.  The paper teacup is Claire’s A Nice Cup of Tea PDF template that Debbie created in beautifully soft and totally SWEET colors.

 

 

Everyone did an amazing job with their projects for this first Blog Party of 2012. Thanks to everyone for taking part of this fun event.  If you haven’t yet checked out the creativity of the participants, please click on over RIGHT HERE and have a cup of tea while enjoying the “SWEETNESS” found there.

As promised, we randomly selected one lucky participant to received her choice of stamps set from Waltzingmouse Stamps.  The lucky winner for January is:

#32 ~Ali~

Congratulations, Ali.  Send me an e-mail at lmercurio@sbcglobal.net and I’ll forward the code to for you to use when you visit Waltzingmouse Stamps.

For information on the February 17th WMS Blog Party, check back here on February 1st.  We will reveal final details as well as announce the theme for the “party”.

The Big Cheese of the Week

Hi there. It is time again to announce the winners of this week's Big Cheese contest. A big thanks to each of you that participated this week, I know that I enjoyed looking at each of your submissions. Please remember that to be eligible for the contest, you need to provide a link to your creation in the WMS Gallery. If you don't have your own album, it is easy to set one up! The instructions can be found here.

This week's Big Cheese is Helen Berry with, I am sure you will agree, a gorgeous cameo card!

The grays make such an elegant color scheme, and paired with the layers of delicious ribbon, keep the monochrome palette exciting. The images contribute to the elegance as well, featuring a cameo from Cameo Creations and the loopy text from Say It Loud. And it may be a little touch, but the half doily framing the top part of the label really adds so much to the card.

Congratulations, Helen! Your project will be added to the Big Cheese highlight album in the WMS Gallery. Please send me an email and I will provide you with a discount code for $10 off your next Waltzingmouse Stamps purchase.

Wendy ten Hove shared an adorable baby card this week:

If you needed a reminder of how cute the baby animal images are from L'il Buddies, check out Wendy's paper pieced version. Say it with me... awww! The tone-on-tone flourish background stamping adds interest without adding distraction. A great card!

Rounding us out today is a yummilicious card from Jennifer Cuthbertson.

Oh, those colors! They are so fresh - and gray, one of my favorite neutrals, is popping up everywhere. I like how Jen added a tag to her card front, it helps to reinforce the collection of elements yet it still stands out as her focal point. This is a real beauty, and to me, would be perfect for a good friend.

Thanks to all of you for joining us this week. We so appreciate you taking the time to share your projects with us and the WMS Gallery. This week's thread is here in the WMS Forum, we would love for you to share what you're working on.

Have a great day!
Anya

...a cuppa sweet

Good morning! Happy Wednesday! I made this little clay tag for yesterdays Blog Party and I thought I'd pop up a wee 'how-to' here today.

First though, a wee word about yesterday's Blog Party times - we will be reviewing the timing of our blog party for next month - my hand is right up in the air, I done picked a wrong time - I must have been somewhere in a giggly cloud of mulled wine when I decided on yesterdays times as it was pretty much impossible for anyone on this side of the pond to participate if they were at work yesterday...doh! My apologies for that!

So, what I'm proposing for the next blog part in February is this - I think I'd like to kick off the party link at around 6:30PM my time, and close it at around 4:00AM the following morning - I'm thinking that this will be between lunchtime and bed time in US...how does that sound?

So, our schedule for Feb would be something like this:

UK - 6:30pm 17th Feb - 4:00am 18th Feb
USA (New York) 1:30pm 17th Feb - 11:00pm 17th Feb
Australia (Queensland) - 4:30am 18th feb - 2:00pm 18th Feb
Canada (Alberta) - 11:30am 17th Feb - 9:00pm 17th Feb
Malaysia - 2:30am 18th Feb - 12:00pm 18th Feb
Norway - 7:30pm 17th Feb - 5:00am 18th Feb

OK, let me know what you think of the proposed times, and we'll try to take it into consideration, thanks ladies!

Back to yesterdays party and I must say tho, that the folks who were able to take part were on fire!! We'll be doing a little round up post on the 20th to point to a few that especially caught our eyes!! Outstanding stuff!

How-to

In the meantime, I have a couple of these little clay taggies to show you. Super simple, once these dry you can use them time and again, decorative ornaments, place setting ornaments as in my pic above, napkin tags...whatever tickles...

Can I just mention those delicious chocolates in the pic, they were sent to me by a friend in USA - I only just opened the package yesterday, I'm in caramel heaven!! Divine Caramel creations by Ellie...and they are!!

Here's what I did:

I made them from Fimo light, air drying clay. It is white when you purchase it and all you have to do is roll it out to the desired thickness and stamp it!

In the pic you can see a piece of it rolled to - I stamped it with the heart from Seasons of love tags. I used Stampin' Up cherry cobbler ink and just inked up as usual and stamped right onto the clay, I pressed it down a little all over and I was very happy to see that it held the colour really well. You will get a little hairiness in your impression and if you press too deep then you might find that other parts of the stamp also leave a trace of ink, but you only have to try it once to get a feel for it.

Next I set my Spellbinders heart tag die template on top as if i were going to trim it out and then I used a scalpel to simply trim away the excess clay.

When I removed the die I had a ready made guideline into which I pressed an embossing tool to create a row of dots around the edge. That was pretty much all I did, the hard part is waiting for it to dry...OOh and don't forget to make a hole for the ribbon if you are making an ornament to hang.

For the second ornament I simply trimmed the heart as before and then added some dots around the edge as before and stamped an unlinked sentiment and a scroll (Seasons of love tags) into the centre.

Once dry, I sponged it with Ink, the indented sentiment stayed nice and white, putty...I thought! And easy peasy!! Hope it tickles!

Welcome to the January 2012 Waltzingmouse Stamps Blog Party

Hi It’s the 17th and we want to welcome you to the January 2012 Waltzingmouse Stamps Blog Party! We are going to have a great time getting some wonderful inspiration from fans of Waltzingmouse Stamps.

This event is held on the 17th of each month (except December) and this month our theme is “SWEET THINGS”. Sweet things can be food items, a Valentine for your sweetheart, something you consider to be a sweet thing, or however you are moved to create as long as you use Waltzingmouse Stamps images and show us how you interpret “sweet things”.

We used to hold this monthly even on the Waltzingmouse Stamps forum, but we are trying something new this year, and are holding the party RIGHT HERE on the Blog.  You are all probably familiar with the Inlinkz tool that we use on our Sketch Challenge Blog, and this will work the same way.  You have until 10:00 a.m. Central Time, 8:00 a.m. Pacific, 11:00 a.m. Eastern, and 4:00 p.m. Dublin time to post your direct link using the Inlinkz tool at the bottom of this post.  The linking option will be closed after these time deadlines, but then the party will REALLY begin  as we click on links which will direct us to the participant’s blogs where we will see the “sweetness” created from YOU. 

On the 20th of the month – we will highlight a few of the amazing entries right here on this blog! We're looking for projects that showcases extra special effort! We will also randomly select a winner for a coupon code good for a free set.  Sweet – yes?!

Let the fun begin and use your direct link to start the party.

The Big Cheese of the Week

Welcome to our first installment of the Big Cheese of the Week for 2012! We hope you all had a happy, restful holiday and are ready to get back to it.

The ladies highlighted today helped us jump into the new year in the right way, sharing their beautiful projects in the WMS Gallery.

Our Big Cheese this week is Charmaine Stack, who shared this beautiful birthday card.

Charmaine carried her 'homespun' theme throughout this card, reinforcing her sentiment with images and papers, and really creating a warm and cozy feeling. She combined sentiments from different sets to say exactly what she wanted - isn't it great to have that flexibility? And what's not to love about the doily from Dainty Doilies 2 standing in as a flower?

Congratulations, Charmaine! Your project will be added to the Big Cheese highlight album in the WMS Gallery. Please send me an email and I will provide you with a discount code for $10 off your next Waltzingmouse Stamps purchase.

The next card I want to share is from Sarah Humphries.

Isn't this a beautiful Valentine? I love the elegant take, with the gold embossed heart from Seasons of Love and the delicate doily behind it. Combined with sheer ribbon, perfectly placed scallops and a scattering of pearls, this card is truly an expression of love.

Rounding us out for this week is Laurie Jones.

This is such a perfectly-composed card, with the layered flowers and balancing sentiment. Laurie stamped the stitched flower from Sewing Box - Hugs multiple times onto patterned paper and then cut each layer out... her choice of paper really resembles fabric! One of my favorite touches? The stamped stitched border around the outside... an easily overlooked image from Off Beat Backgrounds.

That wraps us up for this week. Thanks to each of you that submitted projects. We so appreciate you taking the time to share your projects with us and the WMS Gallery. This week's thread is here in the WMS Forum, we'd love for you to share what you're working on.

Have a great day!
Anya

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas–AGAIN!

The new year brings a new set of Waltzingmouse Stamps Christmas Card Challenges to you.  I know what you’re thinking; “What?  We just put away the Christmas decorations”, but the months pass quickly and there is no better time than right NOW to get started on your cards for Christmas 2012.

The challenge is pretty simple.  While you increase your stash of Christmas cards, you increase your changes of winning a wonderful prize as well.  Here are a few basic guidelines for the monthly Waltzingmouse Stamps Christmas Card Challenge:

• A new challenge will be issued on the 10th of each month in the Playroom Forum. 
• Once you have created your project, upload it to the special WMSCCC gallery  Each card must contain some Waltzingmouse Stamps’ images, but does not have to be exclusively WMS products to be eligible for prizes (yep, there are prizes awarded those to play along each month)
• All projects will be Christmas themed. You may make as many projects as you like for each challenge, but only ONE is necessary to enter the challenge. We encourage you to make batches of cards since our end goal is to have enough hand-made Christmas cards for each person on our “list”.
• You can play along when and if you want – make it suit your schedule. For example, challenge cards for January may be uploaded anytime before June to be eligible for the “halfway point prize”. The same goes to be eligible for the GRAND PRIZE – projects for all twelve months must be uploaded to their appropriate gallery prior to the end of December.

To get you started, I have a sample to hopefully motivate you.

This month our challenge is to create cards that showcase either a day or nighttime sky.  I chose a star-filled snowy scene.  For more details on my sample cards and to join in the challenge for this month, you can visit the January 2012 challenge thread on the Waltzingmouse Stamps’ forum.

I hope you will join us this month and every month!

Happy New Year 2012

With a new year comes new beginnings.  We say goodbye forever to 2011 and walk right into a new year full of fresh adventures.  The same start of a new beginning can be said for the Friends of Waltzingmouse Stamps Blog Waltz as well

.   

The changes to this monthly blog-a-thon are minor ones.  One change coming is the name of this event.  Going forward we will call this event the Waltzingmouse Stamps (WMS) Blog Party.  This title accurately describes the fun and festive atmosphere of the “hop”.   The event will continue to be held on the 17th of each month and we will still have a theme from which to base our projects, but rather than have you link your blogs in the forum, we will hold the event right here on the Waltzingmouse Stamps Makes blog. 

You are all probably familiar with the Inlinkz tool that we use on our Sketch Challenge Blog, and this will work the same way.  Your post can go live anytime you wish on the 17th, and you will have until 10:00 a.m. Central Time, 8:00 a.m. Pacific, 11:00 a.m. Eastern, and 4:00 p.m. Dublin time to post your direct link using the Inlinkz tool.  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.

On the 20th of the month – we will highlight a few of the entries right here on this blog! We're looking for projects that showcases extra special effort! At this time we will randomly select a winner for a coupon code good for a free set.

So…with that being said, are you ready for the January 2012 theme?  We want to leave plenty of room for your creative imagination so our theme for January 17th will be “SWEET THINGS”.  That can be food items, a Valentine for your Sweetheart, something you consider to be a sweet thing, or however you are moved to create as long as you use Waltzingmouse Stamps images and show us how you interpret “sweet things”.  To get your creative juices flowing, check out some of the sweet sets that might inspire you from WMS.

    

   

Now, let’s see what you can do.  Come back on the 17th with your direct link and join the fun for an all new WMS Blog Party! 

*****

FAQ

I don't have a blog - what do I do? - it is perfectly fine to use Flickr or other on-line galleries such as the WMS gallery, etc.  

I don't have any WMS stamps - what do I do? - We love to see what you do with your WMS at these monthly blogs - so if you don't have any stamps you can still enter by using any of the complimentary templates or digital stamps that make available in the Freebies section at our store!

Got more questions?  Just post them here.