Okay, where'd everybody go???

No idea where everyone went. I still check in every day, though.

I haven't had much time to stamp lately, but I have designed my Christmas card already. It's fairly simple, because I send out quite a few and need to be able to make a lot in a short time. I'll try to describe it - I sent the one I made to Rubber Stamper - hoping to see it published, but they haven't sent the cards back to me yet (hoping also that means they're being photographed!).

The base is a green card. On the front, I layer red over the lower half of the card (so the front is green on top half, red on bottom half). Over the "seam" where the green and red come together, I layer a ribbon: sheer ivory with gold borders. A small "Merry Christmas" is stamped in the lower right-hand corner, and then a greeting is stamped inside the card.

For past Christmas cards I've made, you can go to:

Wow! They're beautiful. I haven't even started thinking of Halloween or Thanksgiving cards yet. Yesterday I got ambitious and started throwing away things in my craft room closet. My DH made it in to a storage place with lots of shelves when we first moved here. I'll finish today and have two empty shelves for new stamping things...ready for the convention in Oct.

SAD

By "throwing away", surely you mean "giving away"? If you haven't already tossed it in the trash, please check out

and if they're set up in your area, consider posting it for giving away. You wouldn't believe what people are interested in taking off your hands, but craft stuff is a no-brainer. Or, of course, give it to an elementary school teacher.

Alison

SAD/Wave Jumper,

Which Oct. convention are you going to? I'm going to one in Ft. Wayne, IN, on Oct. 22.

Barbara

I have started my Christmas cards and it's a good thing. They are going to take me forever. I am doing an iris fold Christmas tree. Iris folding is new to me. I'm doing the tree on a dark blue cardstock and putting white ink on the bottom half to resemble snow. Plan on stamping and embossing some silver stars in the sky (the top of the card) Then this is adhered down on a white card. Inside I am adhering the tree that I cut out of the blue cardstock to do the iris folding into the inside of the card and stamped Peace on earth across the middle of the tree. I make 50 cards....hopefully I'll have them done in time to send out. Hopefully the finished product looks as good as it does in my head. Hope this all made sense. Sharon

This quiet is really the norm, and if you're going to break it, it's going to take some consistent effort. Not that I object to it, but I'm not likely to be much help, since I've been in a slump for about a year now :-(

I haven't decided what I'm going to do this year. I've sent Christmas cards since I was in the 6th grade, and have made my own since 1998. But, with this slump, I just don't know. Last year, I only managed 26 a-list cards, and maybe 20 b-list, and the rest were store-bought. Those a-list cards were pretty freakin' awesome though, if I do say so myself... I used the Holly Berry House snowflakes embossed in pearlescent white on pale blue cardstock, embellished with pale blue glitter, detail cutting and layering to make an ornament that I hung into the opening of a open version of Stampingtons flip-flop card template:

are pics, but yahoo gives only a little bandwidth free, so don't be surprised if you can't get in: problem that I have is that my a-list cards each year outdoes the year before, but I think last year was the pinnacle. Sad, but true, I'm not kidding about "a-list". That design, each year, is the one that's time-consuming and complex, and the only people who get them are the people who make it known that they really appreciate receiving a work of art from me. Call me a b****, but that's my deal.

There, I blew all my words for the year in one post! :-)

Alison