I spent Friday evening and all day Saturday with several of my downline yesterday at the Stampin' Up! Regional Convention in Chattanooga. We had an amazing time stamping and learning fun and exciting ideas. The camera on my cell phone wigged out and I don't have any candids from the trip. I have asked the girls to send me copies of their pics, but in the meantime I thought I would share some pictures of the goodie baskets I made for the girls. This was the first time for many of them to attend a SU event, so I wanted to help make it a wonderful experience.
For the baskets I started out with popcorn bowls that I bought at the local dollar store. I put my electronic cutter to good use and customized them with the SU convention logo and added "Chattanooga Regional". You will notice that I used my Silhouette Cameo to personalize several gifts. (I will tell you more about that later.) I wanted these to be over-the-top WOW, so I took some left-over frabic from a home dec project and stitched up basket liners. I knew I wanted include stamped projects using the Orchard Harvest collection and this fabric went well. The best part is that it didn't cost me a penny because I already had several yards in my fabric stash.
I added some felt flower accents using the Flower Folds and Circle #2 die for the flowers and the Autumn Accents die for the leaves. Here is a close-up of a burlap pencil case I decorated. I included a package of hand wipes in each one. These were really cute and only took a few minutes. I used hot glue to assemble and attach them to the project. I purchased the pencil cases at a big box discount store for only a dollar each. Woo hoo...you can't beat that!
Most of you know I love using My Digital Studio and now the images are available in .SVG format. This is great because not only can you resize them without the image distorting, you can also use them with your e-cutter to create cut files. For the water bottles I used the new Tweet Leaves digital stamp brush (#131230)($5.95 US). If you have ever cut vinyl on an e-cutter you know how difficult it can be to "weed" (pull away the negative pieces) of digital cut files, so to save time I omitted the inside portions of the images. It still gave a great effect, but it with much cleaner cuts and a whole lot less work. I personalized each bottle with the name of the recipient. I had never used aluminum water bottles before, so I decided to do a test run to see if the vinyl would stay on. It worked really well, but I would recommend hand-washing. I also noticed that the bottles sweat when filled with ice water, so I decided so whip up bottle huggies using self-adhesive fun foam and some Essentials Designer Fabric (#126892). This was a super easy sewing project and I was able to make several in just a short amount of time. I used an old water bottle huggie that I had laying around as a template and added about a half-inch to the sides so it would slide on easily.
I will tell you more about our road trip and have more stamping projects to share with you this week. Doesn't it sould like fun? I would love to have you join my team of fun and creative stampers. Just contact me today at cmcc3@comcast.net to find out how.
