The End of an Era

This photo was taken at our Grand Opening - more than 6 years ago! It's hard to believe that Jean Keefe has been leading Learn at Lunch demos nearly every week for the last 6 years. Where did all of that inspiration come from? This Tuesday, September 1, instead of our regular demo, we will be having a farewell party for Jean from 12-2. She has decided to take some well deserved time to enjoy her retirement with her husband (although I've teased her repeatedly about being the worst retired person EVER - she already has classes scheduled monthly through the end of the year). Please join us for some light refreshments as we wish Jean well. Our new leader of the Learn at Lunch series, Jennifer Ellefson, will be there as well to meet you. She'll be taking over the reigns on Tuesday, September 8.

Owl Never Get Tired of this :-)

From our previous post, you can see we got a TON of new Hero Arts stamps. One of their bargain sets ($2.00 for a clear stamp and lots of self-adhesive gems) features this adorable little owl. Marilynn highlighted him in front of two Marvy circle punches (I love how she off-set them) and accented the card with this circle ribbon. We have the circle ribbon in a variety of colors for your shopping pleasure should you want to make other color palettes on your own. Stop by Thursday from 10-9 to make this little cutie - no charge and no reservations required!

Bring on the Hero Arts!

Hero Arts just released a huge batch of new images, and we ordered them all!

As you walk in the door, you will notice that we have started a Christmas section at the store. Hero Arts came out with a ton of new holiday images, so you will want to be sure to take a look. The holiday backgrounds are particularly wonderful!







Across from the register we added Hero's brand new individual clear stamps. These stamps are very affordable and even come with a few rhinestones in the package!

We also added Hero's new cling stamps to the display. These stamps adhere to acrylic blocks and even have a picture on the cling for easy placement.












Our regular Hero Arts section is absolutely bursting! We have many of your favorites such as the cloud background, grid background, floral embellishments, and dolls from around the world.

I forgot to take a picture of the newest Hero embellishments. We received all kinds of gemstones as well as felt shapes to adorn your cards or scrapbook pages.

One of the added bonuses to receiving a huge shipment of stamps is that we had to move some of the older merchandise over to the sale bin in order to make room. You will definitely want to stop by and check out the deals!

A New Look from an old favorite

If you follow our blog at all, you know we LOVE Memory Box stamps - the clean lines and open styles that are so great for coloring. So, to keep us on our toes, Dave switched things up a bit with this card. We love the collage look he achieved by using a variety of his image and word stamps. The finishing touch is his new snowflake bling! Come make one for yourself this Thursday - no need to make reservations and the card is free!

Embossing Elegance

Jean has packed multiple techniques for working with brass stencils into this 2 hour session! She's used chalks, embossing paste, glitter and more. If you've found you don't have the patience for the more traditional embossing, you may find some of these other techniques more to your liking - so don't toss those stencils out! Stop in between 12-2 on Tuesday and find out more!

A Few Changes

If you haven't been in the store lately, you might not have noticed that a few things have changed.

I know it can sometimes be confusing when things move around, so I thought I would take you through a mini-tour of the store.

First, check out the wonderful new ink pad display wall. Doesn't it look great? Also, notice the ink pad guides hanging from hooks. The guides will help you see what the colors look like stamped.




Many of the adhesives and tools have moved where the inkpads used to be.













On the other side of the adhesives/tools, you can find Staz On pads, and Ranger items such as Distress inks, Adirondack sprays, alcohol inks, and Claudine Helmuth products.











Okay, these papers aren't staying here, but we just unpacked some new paper from My Mind's Eye, and I thought they were pretty. Back to the tour...











Glimmer mists moved over by the Twinkling H2O's since both add a nice shine to your projects.

I hope the tour will help you find items at the store. Of course, you are more than welcome to come in and check things out for yourself! :)













See you soon!

This one's a beauty!

Marilynn has outdone herself with this week's Free make-and-take project. She created the background with alcohol inks on glossy card stock, then stamped the image and outlined it with a white opaque pen to really make it stand out. Stunning! Make one for yourself any time Thursday between 10-9. Quick, easy and beautiful!

Fun with Dave!

Dave Brethauer (owner of Memory Box) is one of our absolute favorite guest artists! We are so thrilled he has visited us three years in a row, and we've already started begging for his return next year. His colored pencil and watercolor classes are stuffed with tips and techniques - but in a way that makes you believe you could recreate his "look" at home. And that's important!

(Dave and Angela after the full weekend of classes - still smiling!)












In addition to his coloring knowledge, Dave is also a master storyteller! Those of us working up front were very jealous at the number of times the classroom erupted with laughter. You can tell from this photo that Dave is "all business" in his classes - HA!











Even with all the fun and silliness, lots of learning took place. Look at all of these great projects Jenn took home! Truly stunning! We'll keep you posted on the "Bring Dave Back" petition we'll be started just as soon as Dave gets back home to the West Coast!

A Great Big Smooch!

The new colors of Smooch have arrived, and they are lovely! These colors greatly enhance the original 8 colors so that your flowers and other projects have some shading to them. We love these highly metallic paints that dry on absolutely everything! Jean likes to demo them to their full potential (using them on glass and acetate), but that sure makes it hard to photograph. Sorry about that! Come in and see them in person at our Learn at Lunch, Tuesday from 12-2.

Another Video

Hi all. Some of you might have already seen my latest video on one of my other blogs, but I thought I would go ahead and post it here since the stamp and papers I used are back in stock at Angela's. The video shows how to stamp images using Twinkling H2O's instead of ink. I hope you enjoy it! If you would rather see a larger view of the video, you can view it directly on YouTube here.

Welcome Dave!

In anticipation of Dave Brethauer's visit this weekend, we are featuring new Memory Box stamps and papers in this week's free make-and-take. We got the new What's in the Box for fall and winter a little over a week ago, but if you weren't here the day it arrived, you probably didn't see it. Three HUGE boxes arrived yesterday to restock our shelves, so come, see and play! The make-and-take is available all day Thursday, and no reservation is required!

6th Anniversary Open House

Today was so much fun! We really enjoyed getting to know the fine folks from Clear & Simple stamps. The two projects they offered during our Open House make-and-takes were a huge hit! Everyone begged them to come back and teach a full class, so we are working to get our schedules to match up and have them come back! Their stamp sets are so "clean" and perfect for coloring! And their card and 6x6 page samples are truly amazing! You definitely need to stop by and bring your camera. I didn't count how many samples they provided for us, but I bet it was nearly 100! Maybe more!

Donna taught a project doing metal work to create dog tag necklaces. It was fun to see how different everyone's looked as they proudly wore them throughout the rest of the day. Donna had different metal color choices and pattern designs to choose from. Demand was high for additional classes in metal, too, so Donna is planning something for January. Stay tuned for more details!

Another very popular project was working with the Copic air brush system. I would have to say it was addictive! I'll post more pictures over on our Facebook page, so drop by and take a look. If you joined us today, please feel free to post a comment with your review. I wish I had taken a photo of all of the items we collected for Facets! As always, you were extremely generous for those in need in our community. The representative who came to pick the items up was thrilled she had a big truck!

I'll be hopping on a plane first thing in the morning to attend a Post-CHA wrap up in Boston. I'll be doing some ordering and bringing back some catalogs and projects to share during the Learn at Lunch demo time on Tuesday. I can't post pictures like I normally do on Monday, because I won't be back yet with my samples. So, stop in Tuesday from 12-2 and be surprised!