The Twinery gets Sweet and Sassy!

   

Welcome to the Twinery/Sweet and Sassy Stamps blog hop. If you came here from Julia Aston's blog you are right on track. These two companies are such a great team together as you will see from all the inspiration along the hop. More importantly there will be TWO prizes awarded for those who leave comments on all participating blogs.

The Twinery will give away to one winner:

One Ultimate Color Sampler Pack (retail value $25)

Sweet & Sassy Stamps will give away to one winner:

One Season of Change Stamp & Die Set (retail value $28)

I was lucky enough to receive the Seeing Spots stamp set from Sweet and Sassy and immediately had all sorts of ideas flowing especially as the set includes super sweet sentiments such as "for my friend" - i thought that was delightful and its in the tiniest font which adds huge points to its charm factor. I just had to incorporate that in my project somehow.

The second line of thought came to me rather unexpectedly as i was strolling the city of Zurich last week and came across a toy store closing down. Being the recycling/obsessed collector type that i am i promptly wandered in. I was of course amongst several other pushy "collectors" who were frantically shuffling through boxes at the very back of the store. As i got closer i realised said boxes were full of stationery! To cut a long story short i discovered lots of small red paper bags and several more slightly larger green bags. Hello Christmas i thought to myself!!

So even though the stamp set has no hint of Christmas i went right ahead and used them as my background on the bags..the great thing is there are nine different spot designs so there are unlimited themes you could use them for. 

In a nutshell that is the story of how these elements became super smart christmas cookie bags!

I stamped a mixture of the 'spots' with Versafine Black Onyx on each of the small bags and layered the tiny stockings on top. The maraschino twine was a no-brainer - there aint no Christmas without that colour twine - it should be a staple in everyones collection especially with the "season" almost upon us. Last but not least i stamped the adorable "for my friend" at the top of each bag and all i need now is to bake some cookies.

Thanks so much for coming by today and I hope you enjoy the rest of the blog hop - your next stop is Kim Schofield! The deadline to leave comments is 11:59 EST, Saturday Oct 22nd. Winners will be announced on the respective company blogs, Sunday Oct 23rd. Dont forget you have to leave comments on ALL blogs on the hop.

Have fun and good luck for the draw, "my friend"!!! (i just couldnt resist stamping a couple more times with this sentiment before i slipped it back into its packet lol.)

Operation Julie's Smile Blog Hop

“I am so glad that you joined us on this amazing blog hop for Operation Julie’s Smile. If you came here from Tifany deGough’s blog, then you are in the right spot. If not, you may want to start from the beginning at the Sweet Stamp Shop’s blog and take your time. You have ALL WEEKEND to hop with us and win prizes!”

The creative blogging community is coming together this weekend to help one of our friends, Julie Ranae.  You may know her as the Design Team Coordinator for many wonderful companies from bakers twine, die cuts, rubber stamps and more.  What many people don’t know about Julie Ranae is that she has had some pretty major dental surgeries in her lifetime due to medication she had to take as a child.  It was in her plans to think about having all of her teeth  replaced at some point in the next 5 years, a decision that was pretty easy to plan out.  But then it happened…she chipped her front teeth on a weekend a month ago. The dentist told her there was no way to save them & that it was his recommendation that she give in and have all her teeth removed soon, but for that day, they needed to get her front teeth done so her gums could begin to heal. He said he would 'work out payments with her to have ALL this work done...but when she called to make her appt for the first step of impressions, they told her the amount of money that was needed and that the 'payments' applied only to the two teeth that were extracted that day. Her husband Paul was with her & that too, was his understanding as well. So this is how she has found herself in this situation…Needing at least $4000 to get started and another $3000 to finish the process…a total of $7000. Nicole Rixon, owner of Sweet Stamp Shop put together this benefit after finding out about this situation and before Julie Ranae knew it, it took flight! Because she is an event organizer by trade, she has taken on the job of organizing all of the blogs in this hop as her way of ‘working overtime’ for what she needs, the same as if she were able to work overtime at an outside job to pay for the work to be done. It is the goal of all of these generous friends & sponsors to help make this situation more do-able for our friend so that she can share a brand new smile with all of us soon. If there is anything you can do to help with a financial donation, there is a donation button ready for you to click.  Any amount is appreciated and ALL DONATIONS will be eligible for prizes from our sponsor pool of over $2500.”


I wanted to share with you today a very simple idea that my son initiated actually. It seems to be the birthday season in his class at the moment and he is celebrating someones birthday almost every week. In his vast 9 years of birthday party experience??! he told me he wanted a birthday tag that he could just write the persons name on and go - not unlike "nutella and go"which is what he happened to have in his other hand at the time. Being the accomodating Mami that i am i decided to make his wish come true and came up with this clean and simple tag...well bunch of tags actually..his go-to stack shall we say.

(Stamp: Stampin Up, Ink: Versamark)

I simply printed the sentiment on my computer and stamped the fun bunch of kids underneath. I love the pink/brown combo so blossom and cappuccino Twinery twine was a no-brainer. I decided he should also at least write his own name and left a huge blank at the top for him to creatively draw the recipients name. The latter may not quite gel with my son's rather more minimalistic approach but at least i left him a suitable space should the mood arise one fine day.

“I hope you enjoyed your stop here on the hop!  The next stop is Grace Hester’s blog.  Make sure you leave a comment here before you go so that you can have a chance at the amazing prizes up for grabs and if you can, please make a donation so we can help bring back a new smile for our friend”

JULIE RANAE