Papertrey Ink Stamp-a-Faire 2012

I had a good chuckle as I was reading over other stamper blogs this weekend - a common theme was "I haven't blogged in so long" - so I know I am in very good company in the fact that I haven't posted since February. Yikes!

Stamp-a-Faire brought us all out of our hiatus, at least for the day. I love stamping, but this blogging business places another demand on my time, of which is limited, and I prefer to use mine stamping. I will try to do better though, as I have done some awesome stamping lately, all of it for special days for loved ones.

You can read all about the festivities at Papertrey's Stamp-a-Faire here. This was the best online stamping event I've participated in 17 years of stamping. SO many tutorials and videos from the fabulous designers at Papertrey. Participants ranged from single stampers to large groups, around the world!

What a day - far too much to accomplish or view in one day! Hope to do some of the remaining projects for which I did not have time, as I had to go to work the following morning.

This is my version of the first project, the Morning Make-n-Take, using the exclusive Natural Beauties stamp set created just for this event. All supplies are Papertrey Ink. Two of our sons married two weeks apart 14 years ago...so this competition gave me dedicated stamping time to get their anniversary cards completed. Yay!

The remainder of the projects for this special day involved earning badges as if we were at Summer Camp. A cute idea for someone of my age :-) The badges ranged in theme from Knots, to mini-books, to notecard packs to beaded friendship bracelets using a new die and paper pad from PTI. I didn't get to complete many of these, but will continue to plug away at them, as the tutorials the design team presented were so inspiring.

Here is my entry for the Knots Badge. The "Knot" involved taking green ribbon and creating little leaves for a center embellishment. I didn't have the grosgrain ribbon recommended, but like how this turned out a lot!

And the only other badge I was able to complete was the Conservation Badge using limited supplies from the SAF pre-purchased kit. I had been wanting to try this technique for the background using the large rick-rack die, and think it didn't turn out too bad for my first try. Unfortunately, it took much more time than I had anticipated, which is why I didn't get much more accomplished on Saturday during the hours of SAF!

Again, all supplies from Papertrey Ink, even the little bow around the leaf die cut!