a giant step

Today, I took a giant step to create this blog. I hope to share bits of information about rubber stamping & paper crafts & supplies together with product information from my favorite stamp store, Fond Memories. For anyone new to FM, our friendly staff includes: Kathy, store owner, Doreen, Mary, Sally, Dianne & myself.

This coming week at FM we will be busy cutting paper, gathering supplies & finishing projects for the Fond Memories Spring Workshop on April 5th. I believe this is the 6th anniversary of our workshops which are held in the Spring & Fall. About this time in preparation we start to wonder whether all our effort is really worth it. It's crunch time! Come Saturday, we'll all feel the excitement & enjoy every moment. Well, maybe not quite every moment. There is a point in the day when all of us teaching projects notice that our feet are numb from standing all day, our voice is losing intensity from talking, our backs are aching. Yet, I find great joy & satisfaction in the day. To me, it's a great feeling to show someone how to stamp & put together a beautiful card using products & techniques that they may never have tried on their own.

New products have been arriving almost every day this past week. Kathy & I ordered lots of fun stuff at CHA in February. Some wonderful 12 x 12 papers have arrived from My Mind's Eye, Cloud 9, Imaginisce & Crate Paper. The white pens from Ranger are incredible. We have some wonderful clear stamp sets from Hero Arts, Fiskars, Cloud 9 & Crafty Secrets. The new Elzybells stamps are so cute. We now have the cute notecards from A Muse. I'm really excited about the addition of Spellbinders dies. We have many of the Nestabilities sets. These are sets of dies in circle, square & oval shapes that are graduated in size by 1/4". There are 2 sets of each shape so that 2 sets together will cut shapes in 1/8" increments. Imagine what you could make with these!

Ranger has a couple of YouTube videos showing techniques by Claudine Hellmuth, who recently joined the Ranger staff, and Suze Weinberg. Here's the link: http://www.rangerink.com/videos.htm Another Ranger artist, Patti Behan, has a fun technique using the paint dabbers on her blog. You can see it at: http://www.pattibehan.blogspot.com/ Fond Memories carries most of the Ranger product line so you can try your hand at these techniques.

I plan to post some photos of card samples in the near future. The FM girls are always creating new cards that are awesome.

Until next time, keep creating...