Friday, February 22, 2008

Colorado

Carol and I are visiting family this week. We'll be back next week with another FreeBee Friday and more new cards.
-Molly

Thursday, February 14, 2008

FreeBee Friday!

"Today," Friday 15 February 2008, is once again FreeBee Friday. Just as last week, we'll send you a free bee stamp in your choice of unmounted or wood-mounted rubber with a minimum purchase of only $10. This offer is only valid on Friday and will expire at midnight. Instead of giving away a free Queen Prudence II of Cloverfield stamp as we did last week, this week you'll receive a free Beatrice stamp (the full-size Beatrice, not the Baby Beatrice). In order to receive your FreeBee, first place the Beatrice stamp of your choice (mounted or unmounted) in your shopping cart along with a minimum of $10 in other merchandise. At checkout, enter the coupon code FREEBEE2-15 in the appropriate box and we'll include your stamp in your order. Our 25% off space bugs promotion is still running through the end of the month, so if you buy space bugs, you can get a deal and a free stamp.
In honor of FreeBee Friday, I made a new Beatrice card. This card also uses the Good to Bee Home sentiment. I wanted the card to have a homey feel so I used some striped DP (Berry Bliss from SU) that reminded me of wallpaper. As you can see in the stink bugs post below, I'm on a wallpaper kick this week. For some reason I find the idea of wallpaper inspiring at the moment. That is only in theory though. My house has no wallpaper and if it did, I would tear it down. I really mean take it off the wall by whatever means necessary-not paint over it. I have very strongly negative opinions about painting over wallpaper. (They're just as strong as my opinions about painting over wood-paneling.) Back to card talk . . . I thought it would be neat to make Beatrice look like she was framed in with one of those twig frames that you see on Home Sweet Home plaques. Of course, I don't have any twigs in my stamping cabinet and since we do live in the Seattle area and it is rather wet outside at the moment I decided not to go foraging for some twigs in the backyard (which would probably ruin my paper anyway). Instead, I decided to use hemp twine and achieve the same sort of look. For the entire recipe for this card, you can look in my SCS Gallery or the Eccentric Images VIP Gallery at rubberstampchat.net
Carol and I are taking Oblivianna and Miss Moo home to Colorado next week for a little visit with the parents and a our two sisters. I'll take this card with me and give it to my mom. The Good to Bee Home sentiment is perfect for this occasion. So, Mom, if you're reading this blog, try to forget that you've seen the picture of the card.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Stink Bugs!

I made this card yesterday evening and I'm very pleased with how it turned out. Let me start by saying that I love claw-footed bathtubs. You know how some people have little decorating motifs throughout their houses, such as roosters, pigs, or a certain kind of flower. Well, one of my motifs is claw-footed bathtubs. (The other one is piggy banks.) I have art prints of claw-footed bathtubs in my office. I have a mini replica of one on my desk that I use as a candy dish. Maybe someday I will have an actual claw-footed bathtub somewhere in my house. I'd need a much bigger bathroom than the one I currently have for that to happen though. It only follows that this stamp of two stink bugs taking a bath is has a special place in my heart. It is also one of the original images from the table the Carol and I decorated for my daughter Oblivianna. Anyway, I chose to use the polka dot SEI dp as my background because it sort of reminded me of wallpaper you might find in a bathroom and I tried making my sentiment tag have the look of a framed sentiment that someone might have in their house. Not "Home Sweet Home," but maybe "Stinkin' Sweet Stink." Of course, the little flourishes I added are crooked. It seems that my stamping aim is bad even when I'm using clear stamps on a clear block. Unless I use a Stamp-a-ma-Jig, things are always a little off. I used some liquid applique to make some 3D bubbles floating in the water. My 3.75 year-old daughter, Miss Moo, was especially excited about the fluffy bubbles in the water when she saw this card on my desk this morning. Since I am not the scrapbooking type, I generally don't think of uses for our stamps in that sense, but I think that this stamp would be great on one of those pages with a picture of a young child in the bathtub. You know you've got those pictures. I even have them of Oblivianna and Miss Moo. . . I just haven't scrapped them. If you've got a slightly off center sense of humor like I do, and don't mind referring to your children as stink bugs, you can even use the companion sentiment on the page as well.
That's it for the blog today. I only got to make one Helen card this weekend so I'll probably try making more. The stink bug card and the Helen card that I did manage to make are both posted in our Eccentric Images Rubberstamp Chat Gallery, where you can see a bigger picture of the card and all of the "ingredients" I used in making the card.

Saturday, February 9, 2008

rubberstampchat.net

FreeBee Friday is officially over, but we will be back next Friday with another FreeBee promotion.
In other Eccentric Images news, we now have a presence on a super website called Rubber Stamp Chat. By "presence," we mean that we have an official Eccentric Images Gallery in the VIP Gallery and our customers will be able to find posts from us about promotions in the Craft Store section of the forum. My intention is to populate our gallery with exclusive card samples that you won't find on the store website or in my SplitCoast Gallery. Of course, this is going to take a little time for me to accomplish, so please be patient. My first offering up to our gallery is this card called "4 Nigels in a Row." I can't get enough of this Nigel Humphries stamp, but I've been dying to play with Helen-on-Wheels, so I may have to neglect him for a the weekend while I make more cards.
Speaking of the weekend, I intend to enjoy mine. TTFN.

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Free Bee Until Friday

Carol and I decided that occasionally we will offer FreeBees to our customers. Get it? FreeBee=Freebie=Free Bee stamp! Cheesy, I know, but no matter how bad the pun is, you'll still get a free bee stamp with a purchase of $10 or more now through Friday, 8 February 2008. The bee that we've chosen to give away this week is Queen Prudence II of Cloverfield (pictured at the right). On the whole I'm not terribly satisfied with how the layout of this card turned out, but I am satisified with how awesome this bee stamp is and that I did a pretty good job of coloring in Her Royal Highness. Doesn't she look regal in her purple fuzz and lavender wings? Back to the FreeBee talk . . . not only do you get a free stamp with a purchase of $10 or more, the best part about this promotion is that you get to choose which style of stamp you prefer! You folks out there who just love the feel of a wood-mounted stamp can receive what you love while you space-saving unmounted stamp conniseurs can receive your preferred product as well . . . all in the same promotion! To receive your copy of Queen Prudence, add at least $10 of merchandise from our website and add the Queen Prudence stamp of your choice to your shopping cart and enter the coupon code FREEQUEEN at checkout. We'll take care of the rest. This promotion is limited to one free stamp per customer and will last through Friday, 8 February 2008 or until we run out of Queen Prudence stamps, whichever comes first.

Friday, February 1, 2008

Above and Beyond

First of all, I want to display this card that AJ made showcasing two of our new stamps. Meet Buck the Space Cowboy. I was soooo excited when I received this image. I'm very impressed that AJ had the imagination and took the time to do the paper-piercing at the bottom of the card. I'm very glad that we've got AJ as our Guest Designer.
All of our new stamps are posted and for sale on the website today. We have a total of 10 new images and 15 new sentiments. Today also marks the debut of our wood mounted rubber stamps.

As much as I want to write more, my brain is fried from all of the updating on the website we did yesterday. I'd better call it quits until later when I can think more clearly.
-Molly