Star Baby and reception freebies, shown as promised!

     Let's start with the card, because I haven't posted one in awhile. Today's card is for my neighbor's newborn granddaughter. Her, (the baby), name is Stella, hence the theme of the card. I used the Imagine and Nursery Tales again, because I want to get as much use out of such a baby oriented cart, when I can, being the mother of a 20 year old son in college ;- ) All of the paper and images are from this cart, except for the shooting star, which is from Everyday Paper Dolls, accessories 2, shifted. It's the accessory for the astronaut. The paper for the star is from Core'dinations Couture line. I colored the star with a Copic marker and added detail with the Starlight Glitter pen. All the images were popped up with pop dots. The sentiment is from Clear Stamps Greetings and was embossed with gold metallic embossing powder. The rose is Prima.

     The papers on the inside are also from the Imagine Nursery Tales cart. The sentiment was done digitally, however the images were stamped. The star, under the word "star", was with Studio g pigment chalk ink and a stamp from Northwoods  and the ones on the bottom are with Mementos Angel Pink dye ink and an un-named stamp, that I got from a friend. The fonts are LD farfetched, (from Learning Delights)  Wizzard (free on the internet) and Storybook (also free on the internet - try Urban fonts). The blue paper was stamped with a stamp by The Stamping Bug and embossed with Kaleidoscope embossing powder. (The last names have been obscured in iPhoto to protect the innocent - ha, ha!)

     What would I have done differently? Well, there is the usual, stamp straighter, on the inside ;- ) Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with the way this one turned out. The Imagine, didn't do a very good job cutting the the stripped part on the front and I could have made it do that again. I had re-calibrated it just the other day, so I don't know what it problem was. Maybe the heat and humidity.

     With the Prima flower on the front, I used my Ultimate Crafter's Companion to make and envelobox for the card. That's an envelope that has some depth to it. It still isn't quite deep enough but it's better.

     Here are the gifts in the goodie bags that  50 people received at the Splitcoaststampers "Cupcakes and Cocktails" at CHA.

Susan and I both got the same color of Flower Soft, but we got different stamps from Taylored Expressions.

Our stamps were different from Unity Stamps.

These were the same for both of us.

This was also the same.

This was the same.

This was a special stamp from Splitcoast themselves ;- ) Who dusts?

     I thought these were wonderful, generous gifts. Thanks so much to the sponsors! The cupcakes were great too. There were door prizes, but we were not the lucky ones. Now I said I'd share our return home story. Since we left from the hotel, instead of the convention center, we entered the parking garage a different way. In the morning we'd taken the pedestrian walkway to the convention center which was on the floor where we parked our car - color green. We got to the elevators, level G color red, get on and there is no color green. I said let's go up 1 floor, because we weren't up very high. We go up and there isn't a green there either. We walk to the edge to look for the walkway and see it below us, huh? Fortunately, I said we should walk down, instead of taking the elevator. There is a floor in-between, where the elevator doesn't go. Then we start to look for our car - D1. we can find Ramp D and Ramp C but no just D. God must have been guiding me, because I get another idea to go up and around and Ramp D is part of the interleave that makes parking garages work, which I've never understood, but knew must be cool. Once on the road we had no more troubles. She and I do go and pick up my son from college with no trouble, handling all of the mess of the downtown Chicago expressways. Somedays you have it and somedays you don't ;- )

     Thanks for dropping by a spending some time with me. Please, take a moment more, if you have it and leave a comment, so I have something to read from you. I'd love to know that you were here. Have a blessed Sunday!

CHA SuperShow in review ;- )

     Well, yesterday was the day my friend Susan accompanied me to the CHA SuperShow, as it exists now. Susan is not a paper crafter. She is a quilter, but she came because she is my friend and knew I wanted company and she is always up for that. We both basically knew were it was, but exact directions, escaped us, so from her driveway, I called my DH and got his input. Off we went and after exiting the tollway (let me explain here, that first you get off at the O'Hare airport exit, but from there you exit to a street before you actually reach the airport, that was why we didn't have actual directions, because this is a confusing exit), and finally getting to the street level we drove a bit and then realized, this isn't right. We tried to figure out our way back and after awhile, we were sure we didn't really know how to get to the convention center from where we were. We phoned my husband and interrupted his meeting (it was an informal one), he had the people there trying to figure out where we were going. I said, " I know the address of where we are going, it's where are we now, that's the problem." We eventually got there and since Susan and I are both practical, we had left plenty of time and weren't late at all.

     We procured our tickets to Splitcoaststampers cupcake reception. I will try to post photos of the wonderful gifts that were in the goodie bags we received there. They were so generous. Then we went to the Lion Yarn booth and they were showcasing a new loom, (think the modern version of the kind you used to make pot holders with long ago) by Martha Stewart that will be coming out soon. It has modular pieces and can be made to the size to make place mats down to about 2 inches on each size. That's the size I used to make this flower at the Make and Take.

     A bit later we did the Make and Take at the My Favorite Things booth. They were soooo generous and allowed us to keep the stamp set we used. The ribbon project was the first, of it's type project, that Susan ever made. She was happy that we weren't the first group, so she got to watch the people before us, but she did a wonderful job and was faster than me. Thankfully, she brought an extra pair of reading glasses, that were 1 times magnification, because the brads holding the pin backs on were so small, I couldn't see to open them ;- )

     Our next Make and Take was probably the one from Crafter's Companion. Susan was very impressed with their pearlized cardstock. (One of my planned purchases, though I wasn't getting it until later, so I wouldn't have to carry it.) We used the new boxer board to make this, as well as the Ultimate Crafter's Companion.

We stopped by Archiver's booth and made this.

     Flowersoft gave each person a different little tag or picture, that they could try out some Flowersoft on. We enjoyed talking to the people working at this booth for awhile. Here is mine. 

     One of our great discoveries was a company called RaisinBoat. They are about a year old and they have such wonderful images. Their booth was full of examples made with their stamps and we were told that they had sooo many more in the gallery on their site. Each image had a great variety of examples, all done very differently and all done without a design team. The very unique thing about this company is they don't only sell their stamps, but they also have a rental plan, that works like NetFlicks. What a great idea. You get such a variety of stamps and your cards will always look different.  You should check out how it works and see their interesting designs here. One of the lines I remember from one of their retro sets was something like "May all your clouds be hairspray." I just thought that was so original. The people we talked to at the company were extremely friendly as well. We also, found that they had a Make and Take as well. The stamp was a graphic one from a set called "Splash."

     Upon returning to Crafter's Companion to get my paper, I was happy to run into Sara. She is the beautiful brains behind The Ultimate Crafter's Companion, Rock-a-block, the Boxer, Envelobox Creator and The 5-1 Clevercut Rotary Paper Trimmer. If you've never been to their site, you should check them out too. Both the US and the UK site, because if you sign up on the UK site there are some great member digital freebies monthly.  www.crafterscompanion.com/ and www.crafterscompanion.co.uk/

     Well, like I said I'll post info on the free goodies we got from the Splitcoaststampers reception next time and our trip home story. Yes, there was a story there too, ha ha. This was a long post, but I hope you found it informative. Oh, I forgot to mention, www.stampsbyjudith.com. She was another creative and wonderful person we met who was doing demos. No, Susan's not going to jump into papercrafting. She likes it, understands why I do it, but knows there is only so much time in a day and has 3 unfinished quilts at home ;- ) Thanks for stopping by and please leave a comment if you have any time left ;- ) Have a blessed and playful weekend.