Time Flies! Plus a Tutorial

I can’t believe it has been over a month since I was last here to write to you and show you what I’ve been working on. WOW! A lot has happened in the last month. My family was here to visit (Mom, sister, and brother-in-law). They were here from Ohio for two weeks. Then I went to convention in Salt Lake City. Then just four days after getting back from SLC, my husband and I went back Ohio and Pennsylvania where we are both from for two weeks. We just got back on August 9th. I spent last week TRYING to get into my stamp room and then finally over the weekend I did.

While we were visiting back east, we had the opportunity to visit Lancaster, PA where my husband is originally from. I love that part of the country. It is beautiful and the home to of what he calls the Pennsylvania Dutch (Amish). We visited the Lancaster Central Market which celebrated its 200th anniversary this year. We were fortunate in that it was open when we were there. It is only open a few days of the week and sometimes when we go back we miss it. Plus, while we visited his sister, brother-in-law, and brother treated us to a Maryland Blue Crab feast! OH MY GOD! I ate sooooo much. It was delicious.

Also, we managed to get a visit in at the wineries in the Finger Lake Region of New York. We were in Hammondsport, New York to be exact. My sister and her husband have been visiting that part of the country for the past 30 years. It is “their” spot, and they were kind enough to show my husband and I around. It is amazing how many people from this part of the country that have never heard of The Finger Lakes. Makes me wonder where they were in their social studies class when they were in school. Maybe because I was born in Pennsylvania and I grew up in Ohio it was just a part of the country that I was inherently familiar with. 🙂 One of the wineries we visited was Bully Hill. It was my first time there, but I had heard about Bully Hill Winery a bazillion years ago when I took an advertising class at Youngstown State University while working on my undergraduate degree. My brother-in-law had the same instructor for the same class. She had us do a full-blown advertising campaign for the Bully Hill Winery as a class assignment. He first visited the winery over thirty years ago. I finally had my chance. It was fun, and the wine was delicious! We visited many other wineries and tasted a lot of other wines too. But Bully Hill has special meaning.

I have a couple of things to share with you. The first is a card using a stamp set from the Holiday Mini Catalog which goes on-line next week on August 28. I can only show you the card. I got the idea for it from the most recent Stampin’ Success magazine. It’s a combination of two projects that appear in the magazine. The name of the stamp set is For All Things.

I just love the colors I used. Don’t you? The colors are Marina Mist, Crushed Curry, Rose Red, and Soft Suede. I would have never thought myself to put these colors together.

This next card is done using the same colors, but I used the stamp set called Amazing Birthday. It can be found in the current Annual Catalog.

Finally, I want to share the gift I made for my room-mate at convention this year. I meant to do this a few weeks ago, but you know how that goes. I’ve included the link for the tutorial to make this box along with links for diagrams for the lid and bottom. I call this a Convention Survival Kit.