Why I'm doing Grab and Go

Someone said, "you must have a lot of stamps".  Well....here is a portion of them.  I forgot to take the ones that were sitting on top of the bed and the seasonal ones that were sitting under my table and these don't include any of the alphabet stamps or the sentiments which each take up a box of their own.  These containers are stacked seven layers deep. IN the second box there are fourteen plastic storage boxes about 1.5 inches deep.  Each box holds six to eight individual 3 in. stamps.  I have them grouped in some semblance of order. Flowers, fun, animals, nature, hearts, winter, large background stamps.

 I went through and took out all the sentiments from my Stamping Up sets.  I  grouped them all in their own boxes like Get Well, Thank You, Wedding, Baby, Birthday, Sympathy.  I find I get much more use out of them since I did that.

Now when I say Grab and Go you will get more of an idea of WHY I decided to do that.  I just stick my hand in a container and pull out a box and then pull a stamp out of that.  Sometimes I do it blindly and sometimes I just take the top pack.  Today's cards were all made with the Grab and Go agenda.  I did however have a couple of challenges I wanted to meet and I just made the stamps I picked up fit into the challenges.  I will be posting them each separately as each one needs it's own URL tag.

Grab and Go #3 & #4

 What fun.  I actually used nine stamps for these cards.  The set off to the left was a gift to me from my daughter Sarah.  It's called Bitty Bouquets from Stampin Up from way back in 1999.  She found she wasn't using them and she had a bag of goodies for me to go through.  I, of course, can't resist a "free stamp set".  I really like this set as I am a sucker for little stamps.  That was always a challenge for me.  I would purchase all these little stamps and then not know what to do with them.  I so love my Cuttlebug and the die cuts that make it easy to use small stamps.

 The frames on the two cards were made from the Fancy Tag dies from Nestablities.  Stamp TV has a great tutorial that Gina did.  What beautiful results with this technique. I love it when something simple turns out so gorgeous. (sigggghhh with a smile)

 I decided I would go through all my winter stamps as 'tis the season.  I really found it hard to get into the winter stamping this year so it was a good challenge for me to start in that box.  Maybe I can still send some out while it's cold and give people a warm winter cheer up on these -17 degree days.  Even though the sun is  shining brightly it's pretty nippy out there.  I think everyone gets a smile when they go to their mailbox and find something personal there, don't you?  And I hope you get a smile while viewing these fun snowmen off on the right. Well, I'm enjoying my personal challenge and I hope you are too.  Thanks ahead of time for all your sweet hugs via comments. :)

Grab and Go (using up what I have) #2

Card # 2:  I used Designer Paper (DP)  well, this is one DP that I have used several times.  I got an opened pkg. at a rummage sale a couple of years ago for fifty cents. .  It is Stampin' Up (SU) and it's reversible so I chose to use both sides. I don't have much left of this paper, I don't think, unless there's more hiding in that big stash somewhere. I embossed the little snowflakes on the white paper.  Total stamps used THREE!  I'm not counting my sentiments stamps in this project as I do use most of what I have quite often.  I'm on my way!

Grab and Go (using up what I have)

I just had the idea while in my stamping room. This year...I will begin using every single stamp I own. I will start in one bin and pick up a stamp and USE it.  I am officially calling this my Grab and Go Project

I will be posting these on my blog so if any of you want to follow along you may.  It's easy to subscribe by e-mail in the box to the right.  My other rule is every week I must use/ make at least one card with designer paper. agggghhhhh! Did I really say that???? 

So tonight was my first project and it is an ugly tree stamp that I have never used. I think I got it free from a give away bin somewhere and I thought it would be good for Halloween but I have never used it. It actually turned out not so bad. I didn't want it to be for Halloween. So those are my thoughts. (p.s. I hope I win some stamps...lol last year I won 4 sets) yahoo yippie yi yay!

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Image is shadow stamped with mustard first and then close to cocoa SU colors, I stamped the leaves on the BG paper and then pencil colored lightly and used a blender pen to fill them in. I brayered the tree image with Spectrum rainbow pastel colors, sponged the torn edges, added the ribbon and then I thought about hand printing the sentiment.  The CS is done with CB folder argyle.  One down, 7 more boxes, bins to go.  :)