Waltzingmouse Makes...

Monday, 4 April 2011

...SOAP Day 4...look who's joining us!!!

I'll be back later with my last SOAP sample, there's just too much going on today to put it into one post and I am excited to spill our big news!!

It is with great pleasure that we announce not one, not two, but THREE new Waltzingmouse Stamps Design Team members. These ladies have amazing talent and we are fortunate to welcome them into the Waltzingmouse Stamps’ family. Please stop by their blogs – experience their amazing talent, and show them some “crafting” love.

Without further ado, may we introduce the newest Waltzingmouse Stamps Design Team members:

Tosha Leyendekker

My husband and I own a dairy in central California, and have been married for over 21 years. I'm also a mother to two wonderful children (20 and 17), a lover of all things to do with nature, and an addicted paper crafter. I have been stamping on and off for about 17 years. After joining Splitcoaststampers in 2006, and finally getting up enough nerve to post my first project a year later, I've been going full steam ahead. I love patterned papers, die cuts, punches, lace and bling. The first time I saw Waltzingmouse images, I fell in love. Claire has such a unique artistic flair, and I'm oh so honored to be joining this fabulous team of artists.

You may find Tosha’s blog at: http://stamptalkwithtosh.blogspot.com/

Kate Whelan
I am a bit of an anomaly for my age; I have never been married and I don't have children. I live in a townhome in a Minneapolis suburb with my beloved Bichon, Pookie. I work in downtown Minneapolis for a large financial corporation. Now that I am finished with law school, and trying to establish a "normal life" routine, I have a lot more time for papercrafting. I have been making cards ever since I was a little girl. I have been stamping for a long time, probably about 15 years. I guess there really is a lot one can do with a folded piece of paper! I really love to stamp backgrounds, which is one of the reasons I love Claire's stamps so much. I found Claire's website and have followed her along her Waltzingmouse journey. I had the pleasure of briefly meeting Claire, just about a year ago, while my parents and I were on a whirlwind tour of Ireland. Claire is a lovely and immensely talented person and I am beyond ecstatic to have the opportunity to showcase her wonderful images!
You may find Kate’s blog at: http://sporadicstamper.blogspot.com/

Niki Estes

Hi Everyone! I live in Oregon with my husband and our three beautiful children. I grew up loving to draw and create things. When my oldest son was born in 2003, I began scrapbooking as a way to preserve all the photos and memories of our family. In 2007, I decided it would be fun to include some stamping in my layouts. I've been an avid stamper and cardmaker as well as scrapbooker ever since. I love the stamp designs at Waltzingmouse Stamps and I'm very excited and honored to get to work with Claire and all the design team ladies.

You may find Niki’s blog at: http://nikiestes.typepad.com/my_paper_creations/

So here is the list of folks who will be parading with me today!! Today we are featuring an older set - Spring Baskets - can't wait to see what the ladies have done with this one!!!!

The Competition
Now it’s time for you to get your craftiness on as we invite you to participate in a CASE (Copy and Share Everything) competition.

Find a card or project from any of the projects posted over the past few days by the WMS Design Team, and CASE that project using Waltzingmouse Stamp images. You don't have to use images from the March release, we're hoping that the SOAP event will provide inspiration for everyone, as well as the folks who have their March goodies to hand!
Later today, on this blog, I will put up the official competition thread - there will be an Inlinkz facility where you can link your project.

At the end of the competition, one project will be randomly selected to be highlighted with a Parade of its own on several of the Design Team blogs.

We hope you will enjoy this competition and that it will inspire your creativity. You have one week to complete and link your project as the competition will close on April 10th at 8:00 AM Claire’s time, which is 3 AM Eastern, 2 AM Central and Midnight, Pacific time.

The winner will be announced here on my blog on April 11th.

Sunday, 3 April 2011

...SOAP Day 3 afternoon!

So I was a little late today on account of the fact that I lost my scalpel - yep I got more than one craft knife, but I've had this particular tool for over 20 years... it took me through Art College...sniff...
Anyhow today's SOAP sample features the Vintage Labels 18 stamps we released in March - if you are new here - here's a quick run down of what's going on:

We design and sell clear photopolymer stamps - Our monthly releases were fast and furious and our folks - you - were not having time to play with the new goodies before we were foisting new goodness upon you!! Soooo we're slowing down the pace - We're releasing the same amount of stamps, BUT we're having a new release every OTHER month - which means, we have a month in between to show you more ideas on what to do with your new toys!! April is such a month - It's a SOAP month - our Stamp of Approval Event.

Here's what were re-covering - these are the sets that released in March:

Here's who is parading along with me today - I know I already posted this in this mornings infopost, but just in case you missed it...lol, we have a debut VIDEO today - check Anya out!!!

And here are the deets to my project today:

I made a little simple Birthday card - I was going for shabby Chic, but I dunno - I think I'm a little clinical for that...lol, anyhow, I liked it!

I stamped them in a pale blue - Memento Summer Sky... and trimmed them out with the co-ordinating die template. These stamps are designed to co-ordinate with the new Spellbinders Labels 18 die templates # S4 310 - see here. I have these on order for the store they are due this week and I'll be adding them soon as I get them.

Then I trimmed out the centres. The stamp is designed in such a way that there is a neat square shape that may be trimmed out easily and also a smaller circle shape that can be cut out with a classic circle die - 3rd from smallest in the Spellbinders classic circles small set. See the tape holding the die in place before I run it though my Grand Calibur.

Here's what they look like after sponging...

Then I stamped my sentiment - from Say it with Style onto the back panel and layered the frames on top. Simple! I love the stacked look this gives!

I had prepared a larger than average card base - 4.25 by 6.25 inches finished size so that the ribbon and lace would sit out well at either side, a little flower and a touch of ribbon! The card base was also stamped with a texture from Text-It.
Hope it tickles - I'm off to visit the girls - I've only been to Anya's and Bonnie's so far and WOW already!!!

...SOAP...day 3...

Good morning folks - I will be back later today with my project - in the meantime here are the ladies who are parading with me today!!

Don't forget to leave a comment on this post to be in with a chance of winning stamps!

Saturday, 2 April 2011

...SOAP day 2...

Good morning and welcome to the second day of our April SOAP! - If you have no idea what I'm talking about - just scroll back a post and read up!! We are spending the first 4 days of April on a stamp parade of all the sets we released in March - plus another peep at an older set on Monday.

In March we released:

and we're taking the opportunity to have a little parade of new ideas for these sets. Our next new stamp release will be May.

Here's who else is parading along with me today!!

My project for today focuses on the Bitty Banners set. I thought I would use it to make some itty bitty bunting!!!! So cute and not as time consuming as it looks.

I started by lining up 4 of the bitty banner stamps on my block so that i could mass produce the bitty bunting elements. Once I had stamped enough in one colour - I trimmed them out easily with scissors.

Then I sponged the edges - i always think things look a little naked till they are sponged!! lol.

When I had plenty of these little bunting pieces made up - I started to sew them together - very simple - I used a shorter stitch length than for normal sewing so that they would stay stitched when I trimmed sections apart later.

This was all quite quick - it took maybe 10 mins to make the bunting sections and another couple of mins to sew them together.

Hey-presto - bitty bunting!!

Next thing I did was stamp up some background card - I used the same method of lining up several stamps at once on my block.

I made my card base larger than usual - about 4.25 x 8 inches, so that i would have plenty of room to string up my bitty bunting! I sponged it plenty to soften up the white (antique linen - distress ink, surprise, surprise...lol) The sentiment is from Vintage Banners.

Next i dressed up my little pot of pencils - these are to be a little gift for my larger lady - she won a badminton match last week and was presented with a trophy - her first and I just wanted to pop a little card and such her way to recognise that. Here is the plain pencil tube before I dressed it.

I stamped another piece of card with the same background pattern as the card and wrapped it around the tube. Then I strung the rest of my bitty bunting around it to finish.

A little mini banner on top with matching sentiment to finish - this is just two triangles of card with a cocktail stick wedged and glued between.

So, you tickled?

Don't forget to comment on yesterday's post to be in with a chance of winning a prize....some stamps of course!!!

Friday, 1 April 2011

...SOAP...

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I welcome you to our very first SOAP event!!!! Hurrah!

You might be aware that recently we changed our schedule to move away from a monthly release of new stamps to a more leisurely bi-monthly release plan. This means that we will be releasing new stamps every other month and in between we have SOAP!!

SOAP is our new Stamp of Approval Parade - and it's what we will be doing in the 'in between' months. It's our chance to have another peep at what we just released this past month - and it's your chance to find new ideas and inspiration for things to do with your newest goodies, which, hopefully you now have at your fingertips.

We appreciate that many folks have only just received their new goodies right about the time when we are usually beginning to show what's coming out for the next release and we thought that it would be a good idea to slow things down a little so that we can all have time to appreciate our latest stamps and keep that lovely 'new goodies' feeling for a little while longer.

We aim to produce around the same amount of sets per year, but we think that spreading them out in this way will help us to get more out of our investments. We're hoping that you will be able to find inspiration that you can actually play along with, and to that end, we have a little competition coming up at the conclusion of our SOAP event - here's what the schedule looks like:

April SOAP event - 4 days

April 1-3

• samples showcasing our March release. Begin here at the WMS blog and you can follow the links to see who else is parading!

April 4

• Final day of samples
• Exciting announcement that you will not want to miss!!!
• You are invited to play along in our CASE competition - details on the day.

Sound ok so far? Good!

Now, leave a comment on this post telling me what you really think of this plan - we can handle it! Don't hold back!!! - I will draw one random comment to win a large set of stamps of your choice! I will make the draw on Monday evening.

Here's who is parading alongside me today:

Laurie Schmidlin
Lynn Mercurio
Mona Pendleton
Sandie Dunne
Sarah Martina Parker
And here is my project for today, I made a little pennant (- well, not so little actually,). It's big enough to pop up on the wall alone as a decor item. I didn't get a chance to use the banners during the release, I was knee deep in cowboy land back in March and so here is something I wanted to try.

I love the clear embossing powders used over coloured inks - see the sheen on the little banner stamps.

I started with one of the medium sized banner stamp designs from the Vintage banners set we just released. In the pic below - the mini pennant on the right was stamped in red ink and trimmed with a Spellbinders Nested Pennant die template from this set. The one on the left was stamped first in red ink and then I stamped another in blue. I trimmed both with the die template and then I used a craft knife to trim the top section off the blue one, following the line of the design. I adhered it over the red one to get a two colour pennant. I found this easy and so I made a little batch of them.
I laid them out in a pleasing arrangement and began to stitch them together, which was super easy because they are such simple shapes.
Once they were stitched together I trimmed a backing mat out of blue cardstock. I used one of those edge punches to give a fancy edge.

I made a little sentiment panel using a lovely new Spellbinders fancy tag die. I paired it with two semi circular banner designs from the Mini Banners set - these are super easy to trim out with a 2" circle die or punch.
Did you like my flower? - I am ever so slightly botanically challenged - I normally don't make or use flowers much, but I really wanted one for this pennant.
I laid out my Spellbinders Blossom dies on the base plate of the Grand Calibur and cut all my petals in one go. I love that the base plate actually says 'base plate' as I am really good at getting the plates mixed up normally.
I stamped the blossoms with a text stamp from the Text it set and then set to work with a little smooth headed tool - massaging the petals on a piece of foam until they started to curl up and take on some dimension.
Thought you might like to see my stamping foam - someone noticed it in a previous post and I thought you might like to see it all - my itty bitty girl illustrated it for me so's I could see us all in the middle of the night while I'm working and they are sleeping!!!! lol!

I use the stamping foam for every project I make, I stamp nothing, not even a tiny sentiment without a little foam under the cardstock - the difference it makes is very noticeable and I swear by it!!

Hope it tickles!! Don't forget to call back and tell me what you think!!!