New Stamper Excitement!

After about 5 days of playing either the "hurry up to wait" or nursemaid game, this morning was a treat! (I haven't spent much time stamping the last several days because my daughter had knee surgery last week. She has really been pretty much of an ideal patient, but still, there are a lot of extra tasks associated with all this, and they're ALL stealing stamping time!) I held a "mini class" today for some new-to-stamping crafters and their "kids in a candy store" enthusiasm for the things they learned and the things they saw in the catalog re-energized me!

It's easy to forget about those early days of stamping, back when you had no idea what half the goodies in the Stampin' Up! catalog were for, back when there was little appreciation for coordinated colors and one-stop shopping. Wow! How spoiled we become!

The ladies in the class expressed an interest in the stamping wheels, so both projects we did used wheels for background texture and decorating the envelopes. I then threw in only a couple other tools and embellishments, in hopes that I wouldn't totally overwhelm anyone.

The Stampin' Pastels (chalks) are a good overall coloring option, so I used them with the Poppin' Pastels technique. After stamping the floral spray from the "Thoughts & Prayers" set with Versamark ink, we used q-tips to apply Lavendar Lace and Sage Shadow chalk to the image. That piece was layered onto Basic Black and Lovely Lilac cardstock and adhered over the crimped Sage Shadow cardstock strip with Dimensionals. The "Sweet Swirls" wheel and Almost Amethyst ink were used on the Almost Amethyst card base, and everyone was able to choose which sentiment they wanted to add to their card from the "Sincere Salutations" set.



The other project we did was a gorgeous card I had in my file that unfortunately needed retired cardstock, so I updated it using Pumpkin Pie and Apricot Appeal. The ladies were intriqued by the "Flight of the Butterfly" 2-step stamping set and I assured them that the different stamps DID NOT need to be matched up perfectly. They did a great job with it and loved the 3D vellum cardstock butterfly.


They all took catalogs home with them, talking of putting post-its on the pages they like. I just smiled, soaking in all that new stamper excitement!