You say Goodbye, and I say Hello..

Well all sorts of things to talk to you about tonight. First, Goodbye.. Last night, after a fun Happy Hour with my friend Ruthie, who owns Blue Box Events (yes, I choose all my friends based on whether or not their companies have Blue in the name!! ) I came home and turned on my Tivo'd Martha Stewart show in my stamp room as I do every day, and just got my heart broken when I learned that PawPaw, her chow, had passed away on Saturday. I've been seeing PawPaw in her magazine for more than a decade and I loved that dog. It was like he was my pet. Such a beautiful and sweet dog. I will miss PawPaw too. Visit her blog to see more pictures and leave a comment for her if you want. She lost her mom recently too, so Martha has grieved a lot this year!! I love this picture of her snuggling him in his last hours. Goodbye Paw Paw.

Then - for some REALLY big, fun and thrilling news!! This is a big HELLO!!! NEELAM IS NOW A STAMPIN' UP! DEMONSTRATOR!! YAY!!! This is so exciting!! Neelam is a neighbor of mine and an UBER talented stamper - she always kicks our camp projects up a notch with her creative touches. She is also quite hilarious, and she has quite possibly the world's most beautiful daughters. So a round of applause for her, please, and if you're going to convention, you will get to meet her!! I totally can't wait for convention!! Her demonstrator number is north of 2 million - mine is in the 36000's, so you can see how many people have signed up between May 2001 and now! Fun!

Then, for Hello #2 - OMG LOOK AT THIS!! I got this card from my friend Yvonne - and I have a lot of things to say about this. FIRST - this is a "just because" card, which just squeezes my heart. Please remember when you're stamping that the most important element of a card is the POSTAGE STAMP that goes on the envelope because you're sending it. I can't describe how fun it is to get a handmade card in the mail - I LOVE it, so please share what you make. it makes people so happy!!! SECOND, when I flipped it over, I noticed that Yvonne has gone all professional on me, and stamped on the back is "Greetings by Yvonne" and her email address - how brilliant!!!!! But THIRD, and most importantly LOOK HOW FREAKING CUTE THIS IS!! I'm thinking that sassy Yvonne used copics, because the colors are brilliant and blended. And I'm so excited that my photo shows the Crystal Effects she put on each dot on his shell. Then the beloved cuttlebug played a role, the brads, the twine, and my favorite part - the fact that she separated the three pieces of the background from each other so that you can see the card base in between. It's like adding an extra layer - STUNNING! I love this stamp and the greeting. Yvonne, if you're out there, post a comment on this entry and tell us where you got that stamp - her card says it's a "stamp of the month" but I don't know what that means. If it's a Stampin' Up! stamp I'm gonna be so embarassed!!

Finally, I know you won't believe this, but I actually did stamp last weekend. I just didn't have time to post. So to kick off my weekend of stamping and catching up, I will share last weekend's creations with you. I told you I got those stamps from ArtNeko, with the gorgeous bunnies, the blue fox and lots more. I got a sheet of "year of" asian stamps - so for all the Chinese New Year symbols, there are these beautiful little images. This year is the Year of the Rat, in case you didn't know. I made a whole set of these with one for each animal. I thought it would be fun to use them as birthday cards, so if someone was born in the year of the dragon or the tiger, that would be the card that they got. I went super minimalist and spare. Because the images are so small I didn't want to overwhelm them with color or detail on the rest of the card. Hope you like them. I'm including a couple close up s of the different images so you can see how cute they are. I used Basic Grey patterned paper, basic black ink, and a narrow strip of Real Red on the top third of each card.

So this weekend, get ready to see some cute Doodle Factory cards! I'm finishing up my Design Team work on the Doodle Factory Country Images, and I'm sooooo excited about the new Fairytale set - I should have that this coming week. I actually went on a bit of a stamp binge so I'm hoping to have lots of new images to play with in the next few weeks. I hope I have a lot of time to stamp. More importantly, I hope YOU all have a lot of time to stamp. Take care.