Game Day!

It's customary for the home team cheerleaders to provide the visiting cheerleaders with a hospitality gift before the game.  It is usually always a bottle of water and a candy bar or snack.  Just a nice little "Welcome to our school" gift.  I enjoy coming up with different ways to present the gifts.  Here's the one I came up with for tonight's game.  The visiting team's school colors are red and white.

 I used the "It's a Cheer Thing" stamp set from Stampin Up and colored using Copic markers.  The tags were cut out using  Nestabilites by Spellbinders.  

Back to School

It's that time of  year again.  I can't believe that summer is already over but I am ready to get back into a routine again and to get back to organized sports!  I love Friday night football so I am excited it will be here in a few short weeks.  My youngest daughter is now in middle school so I am officially out of the elementary school system.  No more class parties or Valentine's.  Sniff, Sniff.  Makes me kind of sad.  

In honor of back to school, I made little paper backpacks for each one of my cheerleaders as little gift from the coaches (Coach Nave and I).  I got the pattern from Splitcoast Stampers website here.  The pocket on the front is really too small for anything so we folded up a little message with this quote:

"Always be a first rate version of yourself rather than a second rate version of someone else."

The girls loved them and I, of course, enjoyed making them.  

We also had a cheerleader come in to help out this week that was on our squad last year.  She graduated this past year and is now cheering at a nearby community college.  She was a lot of help so I made this Hershey's Nugget box for her.  Thanks Amber!

  

Sneak Peek: Xyron CREATOPIA Yay!!!!

I am so excited to finally get to talk about the new Creatopia, Xyron's newest product to be in stores in the next couple months.  (Click on each image for a larger view)

Xyron Press Release:

Scottsdale, AZ – July 18, 2009 – Xyron® Revolutionizes the Craft Industry, Again, with Creatopia™ Announcing the Xyron Creatopia; this creative machine will apply adhesive and laminate to items up to 12 inches wide and .5 inches thick. It will also allow you to emboss and cut paper and other thin materials. The Xyron Creatopia will change the way you think about craft projects. Modular components allow this machine to expand on Xyron's core adhesive tools by adding embossing and manual cutting in one machine. Embossing will be in the form of 12 inch wide pattern rollers and 3 inch wide patterns for borders. Creatopia will cut strips of paper and finish edges using a variety of interchangeable blade cartridges, Xyron will also introduce the first 6.5 inch wide universal die press for use with the industry's leading brands of dies. Creatopia will also be the first in the Xyron line to have a Fabric Adhesive cartridge.  

Creatopia Refillz™ Creatopia will offer three adhesive cartridges and one laminate cartridge at launch. The standard Permanent Adhesive and Repositionable Adhesive will be joined by a Fabric Adhesive. The Fabric Adhesive adheres textiles to the surfaces of your projects with optimal adhesion. The end user can use the Fabric adhesive to hold appliqués and batting/backing in place instead of pinning items; it will remain repositionable on fabric and is washable. Creatopia allows the end user to apply these adhesives to items up to 12 inches wide and 40 feet long with a thickness up to .5 inches. The Two-Sided Laminate cartridge will allow the end user to apply laminate to items up to 12 inches wide and 40 feet long. 

Creatopia Patternz™

Creatopia introduces the industry's first 12 inch wide embossing roller. These rollers will apply a uniform pattern into paper and thin materials up to 12 inches wide with an unlimited length. There will also be 3 inch wide border patterns to emboss only the edge or strip of thin materials.

Creatopia Cutz™

Creatopia allows the end user to cut in a variety of ways with a rotary cutting component. This component has interchangeable blade cartridges with a variety of styles including: straight, perforated, scoring, pinking, scalloped, deckle and postage stamp. These cartridges can be placed anywhere along the 12 inch cutting surface to cut rectangles, squares and strips from paper up to 12 inches wide with an unlimited length. Up to 6 blades can be used at one time to increase the end user's productivity.

Creatopia Shapez™

Creatopia's 6 inch wide universal die press will allow end users to cut and emboss using dies and embossing folders from Cuttlebug, CuttleKids, Quickutz, Sizzix, Ellison, AccuCut, Spellbinders, BossKut and Fiskars. 

Pricing and Availability Xyron Creatopia will be available for purchase in September 2009 from local craft stores, mass craft chain stores and online retailers.  

The Main Unit with Permanent Refillz Cartridge MSRP is $149.99. 

Additional Adhesive and Laminate Refillz MSRP are $39.99.  

Border Patternz Starter Kit with Floral Pattern MSRP is $24.99 Additional Border Patternz MSRP are $8.99 12 inch Patternz MSRP are $24.99 

Cutz Starter Kit with Straight Blade and Guide Wheel MSRP is $44.99

Additional 2 Packs of Cutz blades MSRP are $14.99

Xyron Shapez MSRP is $69.99 

Learn More About Creatopia For additional information on Xyron Creatopia, contact Chris Potter, or visit www.xyron.com. Xyron and Creatopia are registered trademarks of Xyron, Inc. Xyron is a subsidiary of Esselte (www.esselte.com). About Xyron Founded in 1996 in Scottsdale, Arizona, Xyron is a world-class provider of transformation tools for both creative home users and creative professionals. For the creative home user, Xyron develops products in the craft, hobby and stationery departments of specialty and mass retailers worldwide. These products include award-winning adhesive tools, all-inclusive scrapbooking collections, unique handheld dispensers, and patented cold-lamination products that require no heat, batteries or electricity.

Oh my heck!

Today I dropped $15 on one of my favorite card making publications, Card Creations.  This one is put out by Paper Crafts magazine a few times a year and I got volume 7 today.  I open the front cover and to my complete surprise was the Xyron ad featuring my cards and card box.  They didn't even tell me it would be in one of my all time favorite publications!  YAY!

I'm hoping all my readers had a very safe and happy Fourth.  I had to help my cheerleaders with their fireworks stand and got sunburned at a baseball game yesterday.  Saw an old friend both Friday night and Saturday night so I had a pretty great holiday weekend. 

Both my girls will be in Boston all week so I will try to get those pics posted of the few projects I have finished.  They are super cute.  

We go the extra mile...

I had a Tee-riffic day in technical support today.  We had a customer that had a cutting problem and she had been emailing us rather than calling in.  She stated that she preferred email.  When it was evident that her problem was beyond fixing via email, I suggested that she call into support so we could log into her computer and have a look. When she finally called in, you can imagine our surprise we when found out that she was hearing impaired.  Operator assisted calls, though necessary, are very difficult to work with in a technical support situation.  Just when we were about to give up hope on finding a way to fix it, I got the idea to use an instant messenger to talk to her.  Low and behold she uses Yahoo Messenger and I was able to "talk" to her.  Within an hour I had her Wishblade software fixed and she was up and ready to create.  It felt so great to help her in the unique situation we were faced with.  I LOVE MY JOB!

I have been getting a lot of positive comments in person about my permanent tribute to my mom.  I never would have guessed that something that hurt so bad would feel so great.

Sorry, Dad, I know how you feel about tattoos but I think you and the boys all need a teal ribbon tribute tattoo.  It reminds me every day how wonderful she was.  For those of you that don't know, the teal cancer awareness ribbon represents ovarian cancer of which I lost my mom to in 2001.  I would really like to add a quote on the bottom saying something like "Fight like a Girl" but it would make it look tacky and it really looks good like it is.  I need to go back in once more to get the teal brightened up a little more.  

My other tattoo is the one I have in honor of my two amazing princesses, Miranda and Morgan.  I wanted something unique and that would make people wonder what it stood for.

It's on the back of my neck and no one ever sees it anyway since I have such long hair.  Artistic people such as myself tend to express themselves with art and both these say so much about the person I am.

I know I know, you don't have to tell me....

I have been a HORRIBLE blogger lately.  I could come up with all kinds of excuses: forgot my blog account password, got sucked into the Facebook world, dog ate my homework.  The truth is that there is no excuse.  I didn't realize that anyone actually checked my blog until people commented that I hadn't posted anything new in awhile.  Also, I haven't created anything worth posting either.  Getting ready to created some very cool things for my cheerleaders this week. We are operating a fireworks stand and each day I am going to have a cute little gift for them. Is there no better summertime smells then that of fresh cut grass and exploded fireworks?  I LOVE summer!

In the meantime, it was finally in bookstores!  The July issue of CardMaker with my projects and the ad is on the back COVER!  Feeling a little special here.  I'm thinking about framing the copy that Xyron sent me.  I also bought one for my dad to carry around and show his hot rod buddies at the the coffee shop.  

So I was informed that the instructions on how to make the projects was not on the website as the ad states and that could partially be my fault.  I can make the projects but I am no instruction writer.  I'm not a writer at all as you would tell from my posts.  My Facebook friends LOVE my one sentence status updates that usually include bits of humor but I cannot write more than that.  I will check with Xyron this week on those instructions and get my attempt to recreate the project to them for major editing before they can post to the web.  =)

Stay tuned, I'll be posting some new things this week (or next week--I make no promises).

Patting myself on the back...

My card box and cards will be in the Xyron ad for the July issue of CardMaker magazine.  I originally made this box for a QVC project but it didn't work for that, so Xyron used it for this ad. Yay, me!  Did I mention it's a full page ad?  LOL!

Card Tote

This is a tote idea that I got from my favorite Stampin Up blogger, Becky Roberts, at Inking Idaho.  She always has such great ideas and she is such an inspiration to me.  I used the North Shore paper collection from Scenic Route and lots of Bazzill Basics cardstock on this project. I have several pictures of this project so you can see all the goods that went with it. 

This is a matchbook calendar and a sticky note pad that I created and placed in the large pocket on the side of the tote.

 

 

On the other side of the tote are three small pockets. In the first pocket, I created two small bookmarks.  The middle pocket contains a small candy bar that I made a custom wrap for.  The third pocket has four small altered gel pens.  

  

The inside of the tote has two transparent pockets (they are hard to photograph) that are there to hold the cards and envelopes in place.  I made five cards for this project.

 

 

 

I can always tell when the weather is starting to get nice because I feel more like being outside than being inside creating projects.  Happy Spring!

Mojo Monday Week 74 Challenge

I really love the Mojo Monday blog with the weekly sketch challenges.  Here is this week's sketch:

Here is what I created using the enormous stash of Little Yellow Bicycle Love Letters that was sent to me.  I love LYB!  I rotated it and made it a landscape card rather than a portrait card.

All the embellishments on this card are LYB as well.  I use the Xyron Personal Cutting System and the Wedding design book to cut out the heart padlock and key.

Men of Xyron

Sneak Peek at Xyron's newest video:

Mojo Monday 68 Sketch

The Mojo Monday Sketch 68 sketch:

I really do like the sketch so I used it for a monthly card swap that that I joined this year to make love themed cards:

I used the Stampin Up "Loads of Love" stamp set.  I love this set and I just happened to get lucky and traded someone on the Cricut forum for it and the accessory kit because they wanted one of my Cricut cartridges that I never used.  I think I got the better deal!  Colored in using Copic Markers. The pink solid piece was embossed with one of the Fiskars embossing plates using the Cuttlebug.  Use this sketch and see what you can come up with, I'd love to see it. Email to me at xyronts_tami@yahoo.com and I'll post your version on here as well.

Finally time to create again!

Finally got back into my studio to create something.  With Valenines day coming up, I have all these ideas scurrying around in my head and desperately needing the time to get them created.  I absolutely loved this box idea from Becky Roberts blog.  I stalk her blog religiously and she always has the neatest creations.  You can customize the size of the compartments on the inside to fit whatever you choose to fill them with.  Endless possibilities.   I am giving this one to Morgan's teacher for Valenitne's Day.

I used KI Memories paper that I had leftover from Valentine's Day projects last year and the glitter hearts were punched with Martha Stewart's new Valentine's punches.  I ran them through the Xyron Creative Station upside down and applied the Doodlebug glitter then attached them to the box using pop dots.  I only used the Wishblade to cut the patterned paper piece for the box lid.  Becky's instructions had measurements to use your paper trimmer but it seemed so much easier for me to use the Wishblade and just import the measurements in there.  

It's Been Awhile...

It's been a few weeks since I last posted.  We have been incredibly swamped in Wishblade technical support.  Many people received Wishblades for Christmas (YAY!) which has doubled the number of calls everyday.  We discovered a bug in the print & cut feature in the new Create & Cut Plus Mac version and working with the software company for a patch and testing it.  I am finally at a place to start posting more creations.  Stay tuned...

First I have to post this youtube video of this commercial that I absolutely love.  This is all too close to home.  Go back about 16 or 17 years and that guy would definitely be my dad.  Even the name is right on.  Dad, you will completely appreciate the humor in this!  =)