Happy Wednesday Stampers

Well...looks like the heat wave has arrived in NEPA....and what a time to put in an AC unit.

As many of you know, I was flooded last year during Tropical Storm Lee in September...my basement was affected which is where the equipment needed to run my central air is located.  I put off doing anything about it and over the past few weeks have been working on replacing something to keep it cool in my home in the summer.  Well I decided it was going to be easier (in my opinion) to go with the new ductless units.  My son got started last evening on it and I "helped".  He did well until it was time to place the unit onto the wall, which you would think was the "easy" part...NOT!  I told him to let it go until his friend can help tomorrow evening (tonight) which will be step 2 to the process.  It was so warm and messy drilling through plaster walls!  YUCK...but I am hoping that for stamp class tomorrow evening, we'll be sitting cool (maybe some dust stampers) but cool nonetheless....hopefully this is true!

Anyhow, onto a stamping project.  I had a dear friend lose her mother over this past weekend.  It is always so difficult to go through something like this. I can relate losing my dad just a year ago around this time.  It is even harder to come up with a sympathy card, but I did some idea searching and came up with this.

I used the Thoughts and Prayers stamp set coloring in the image with Perfect Plum and Always Artichoke markers.  Used my Big Shot and retired oval frame die to cut out the oval.  The saying was stamped with Basic Grey ink.  The color cardstock was Whisper White, Perfect Plum and Basic Grey.  The ribbon was a retired SU ribbon in Basic Grey.  The background of the WW was run through the Big Shot using the new Textured ImpressionsEmbossing Folder Fancy Fan.  I used dimensionals to raise up the oval image and added some of our rhinestoes to the front. I also included inside a piece of WW which I stamped part of the same image on the bottom of the inside.  I like how it came out, clean and simple.

Here's a close up of the stamped part

I sometimes have a hard time getting a good image using our older stampin' pads, but an idea posted in our current catalog suggests using our new Pierce Mat underneath your stamping and I gave it a try and what a difference in the look of the image....crisp and clear.  I am going to continue to do this and probably order an extra mat to keep for stamping and one for pierceing.  If you haven't seen our new Pierce Mat, take a look at it in the catalog or online.  You can find it on page 181 in the catalog.  It is so much larger ( 6 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches) than the old mat and also we have a new Paper Piercing Tool and new Essentials Paper Piercing Pack inculding 3 unique templates that work with many of our other items.  I have played around with the new items and love them....future sharing projects for you.

Well, keeping my fingers crossed that all goes well this evening for my AC installation...Keep cool...think I'll be serving hoagies for the workers for dinner tonight....too hot to cook

Happy Stampin!

Susan Timchack