Countdown to Christmas - Day 8

Today I'm sharing a little project we did at my Christmas camps that would make a great card and gift in any color combination!  I love calendar projects and wanted something clean and card-sized so it could be mailed.  With everything else in my camp being shades of red, I really wanted something wintery for the color that wasn't winter looking.  Enter Night of Navy.

For the stand on this project, I just cut a strip of cardstock that was 6 x 1 and scored it at 1 1/2, 3, and 4 1/2.  It's adhered on the inside using Tear and Tape.  That way the weight of the calendar will not pull the card flat on the table! 

As for the rest of the project, I just stamped a piece of 5 1/4 x 4 Whisper White and then added the Flourish framelit to it using our Fine Tip Glue Pen.  Then I mounted the calendar on a piece of Floral Boutique Paper (size depends on the calendars you buy) and added that to the piece using Tear and Tape again.  Since it will sit for a year, you should use really strong adhesive on this project.

Supplies:

• Cardstock/DSP: Night of Navy (8 1/2 x 5 1/2, 6 x 1, scrap for Flourish), Floral Boutique DSP (sized to fit calendar)
• Ink: Night of Navy
• Stamp Set: Wild for Flowers
• Accessories: Big Shot, Cutting Mats, Platform and Precision Plate, Sixxiz Brush and Mat, Fine Tip Glue Pen, Flourish Thinlits, Tear and Tape, Adhesive

ORDER ONLINE

To order supplies for these projects, please visit my online store here.  Please use this hostess code when checking out when you find something to order if ordering by December 24th. 

• December Code:  The code through Christmas is WEEMARQ7.

CURRENT PROMOTIONS

It’s our Year End Closeout Sale – take a look at these great specials!  These include discounts up to 60% on retiring holiday products, clearance items, and high inventory items.  Those placing orders through my Web site will be put into a drawing for a doorprize – hint – it’s something new from the new occasions catalog!

Link to Online Store: https://www.stampinup.com/ECWeb/CategoryPage.aspx?categoryid=10600&dbws=80380

Just a few notes:

• High inventory items are on discount through January 3rd.
• Retiring accessories are while supplies last.
• Retiring items will all discontinue as of January 3rd.
• Retiring holiday stamp sets are guaranteed through December 21st.

WHAT IS PAPER PUMPKIN?

While we have many great products on closeout, there is one program that you really should check out as well.  I only sell things I'm passionate about and this product line is definitely one of my favorites!

Paper Pumpkin is creativity in a box.  It costs $19.95 plus tax and ships to your mailbox once a month.  It contains everything you need for your own creative escape.  Besides the instructions and pieces for the cards or project, it also contains ink and photopolymer stamps and usually the adhesive you need as well.  My subscribers will also get a project sheet with tips and additional ideas and instructions that they can make with the supplies in the kits and sometimes some supplemental supplies.  They also are invited to participate in a free Paper Pumpkin Playdate to make their kits using any of my additional supplies like framelits and punches!  It's a wonderful program and I'd love for you to try it out!  Sign up by the 10th of the month to get that month's kit!

You can sign up here: https://mypaperpumpkin.com/en/?demoid=80380

JOIN MY TEAM

If you are interested in joining out team and participating in monthly meetings with free make-n-take projects and outstanding company, contact me today or go here to sign up!  You can get $125 in free merchandise that you choose yourself for only $99 plus tax.  The new Occasion catalog is coming out and you could pre-order from it as a demonstrator!  Contact me today for more information!

Come back tomorrow for more ideas!

Have a craftastic day,

Stacy

Holiday Calendar Prep Underway

Before My Digital Studio, Stampin' Up! used to sell calendars. Mom and I would spend months designing and prepping kits and it was our most popular and most difficult class of the year.  Since buying MDS and learning how to use it, I've been able to make my calendars in under an hour!  And that's without a template!

This year I am making 12 x 12, Desktop, and Easel calendars.  Below is a sample page from the October calendar page in Conlyn's calendar.  The month is on the first side and this is the back of the easel.  These photos capture our Halloween evening, our pumpkin picking, and also our pumpkin carving party this year!

 

Supplies:

 

Background

• Color = VERY VANILLA 254,249,232

Stamps

• Yippee Skippee\Yippee Skippee - you can never have too much happy, Color = PUMPKIN PIE 255,130,1
• All Holidays\All Holidays - halloween, Color = PUMPKIN PIE 255,130,1

 

 

Couple design elements to mention:

• Cropping - I used the Happy Halloween from All Holidays and used the cropping too to remove the Happy.  Then I could use the sentiment from Yippee-Skippee with this image and get it to follow my frames.
• Photo Frames & Base Colors - I turned the base of my calendar to Very Vanilla so the white mats would show up against them like frames.  Then you use the drop shadow feature to make them look raised and it looks like a photograph with a border.
• Bleed Area - Make sure you turn on the Desktop Calendar bleed area with these easel calendars.  If you use the Calendar bleed area, your elements will not be spaced evenly on the top and bottom.

We are off for family photos today so I hope you have a craftastic day and a great Sunday doing something you enjoy!

 

Stacy

 

 

My MDS Classes - Today and Beyond

Today is my second My Digital Studio (MDS) class.  I'm so excited to pilot it with some of my favorite people!

Today's class is covering the following topics:

• Calendars
• Converting Templates to other scrapbook page sizes
• Free Form Tool
• Setting Photos as Backgrounds

I am loving putting together the flyers and teaching these small classes to you all.  Today's class required you to do the Basics class first so that you were familiar with the buttons I'm talking through and to see if we could keep it at an hour, which is hard for wordy ol' me. I love how much I've been learning while I put together these classes.

Remember that I am willing to set up the Basics or Calendar classes at your availability.  One of the perks of not working for somebody else - I can set my schedule (with Callie's permission of course!)  The only thing is that  you have to come to my house so I can use my cables and show you all the wonders of the tool.

Today's sample is another page from my Mother-in-law's calendar that I'm doing month by month.  I created a calendar as a Create Your Own.  Once opened, I clicked Insert and Add Other Template Pages.  Since I was doing a 12 x 12, I started with my 12 x 12 templates.   I found The Best Year which I had purchased to do scrapbooks for friends for Christmas.  I selected the pages I wanted from it and added them to my Calendar.  I dragged and dropped them until they were in the right order and then I deleted the pages that were added by the tool when I created the calendar originally.  Then I was able to journal and highlight the fun things that happened during that month!  I moved some of the text boxes and embellishments around but am using these templates pretty close as they originally appear. 

March is always my favorite month and it's crazy for me to think that next year we'll be back to sleepless nights instead of baseball and changing diapers instead of reading by the pool!  At least I will be able to have a beer on my birthday!  :)

My next MDS class is being scheduled for Monday, October 7th at 3pm and 5:30pm.  The class will be 60 minutes and we will be walking through how to create Christmas cards and newsletters in MDS to help make your holiday check list a little shorter!  Having the Basics class will be helpful but will not be required.

I will be trying to have an MDS class on the first Monday of every month so make a note on your calendar so you don't miss out!  You can also be a hostess for an MDS class.  Then if your friends and family purchase the program at the free workshop, it goes towards your party total to help you qualify for free merchandise!

Have a craftastic day,
Stacy

Project Life Calendars & Converting Templates in MDS

Being on vacation, I was finally able to go through some of the MDS (My Digital Studio) videos I've been pinning for months.  I was really interested in a video posted by Erica Shaw about converting the "The Good Year" template into Project Life-like page layouts and saving them in MDS.

Watch the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nac02Q2igc

This template is amazing.  I bought it to do summary scrapbooking for 2013 and never thought of using it for layouts for other books.  As I started completing the steps in Erica's video, it hit me that this would be a great template to use for my Christmas calendars this year.  But was  I smart enough to figure out how?  Thankfully, yes!  :)

First, the content in this download is amazing.  It's $19.95 which is on the high end for our downloads but you get an amazing amount of images and embellishments.  To view the contents of this kit, click on the itty bitty image below.  Once you land in the online store, click More Images to see the close ups of each page.  You will want to do this!

The Best Year Photobook Template - Digital Download  132566 

Price: $19.95

 

Download includes:

* 28-page photobook designer template (12" x 12")

* 49-piece SVG stamp brush set*

* 12 Designer Series Papers

* 90 embellishments

* 4 punches

 

So how did I make this into a calendar?  Here were the simplified steps:

• I started out by creating a 12 x 12 calendar in MDS. 
• I added a calendar month to each of the odd numbered pages using the Calendar option on the Design Center.
• I removed the blank pages from the entire calendar so I was only left with the 12 calendar months.
• I went to the upper tool bar and selected Insert/Add Other Template Pages.
• I clicked on the 12 x 12 and scrolled to The Best Year.  Click Next.
• Click on the pages that you don't want to import into your calendar.  I removed all but the cover and the first pages for each month that had the JAN, FEB, etc. on them.  Click Next.
• Click Next to manually populate photos.
• Click Finish.
• Then I dragged and dropped the pages into the right order.

Eventually, I did go back and add in the other page for each month at the end.  This let me steal embellishments that I needed if I didn't have enough photos or if I needed to change out a tile based on the photo I wanted to add.

 

Here is what my first page came out like for my mother-in-law's calendar.  Cute, eh?  I love all the text prompts so that you can truly put a variety of pictures on each page and get through it quickly!

 

 

Remember that if you create one of these, it's best to create the template out as much as you can and then save it before adding text and photos.  That lets you use it for other calendars without having to redo any of the text boxes or things you already changed.

 

We will talk about this at my MDS class on September 9th.  To attend that class, you need to have gone through the Basics class.  Contact me today if you are interested in that 1:1 class before September 9th!

 

Have a craftastic day,

Stacy