*** Reminder – Tomorrow (June 1, 2014) is the LAST DAY to order from the Occasions Catalog! So make sure you’ve gotten your favorites before their gone by shopping online now. ***
I have been so excited to watch my Fun n’ Crafty team grow and so I’ve been wanting to start doing more to try to provide opportunities for everyone to get together, learn from each other, and have fun stamping together. So, I’ve started working on roughly quarterly group events I’m calling Stamp & Shares. This last time, I wanted to have some kind of game for everyone to play. So, I came up with the idea of an “Iron Stamper” challenge for us to do early in the afternoon. The idea was that everyone would be broken up into teams and we would have to work as a group to create projects using predefined supplies. No one knew what the supplies would be ahead of time, so it was fun for everyone to brainstorm and create together on the fly! 
The supplies they all had to work from were:
- Cardstock – The 2013-2015 In Colors, Cherry Cobbler, Whisper White
- Designer Paper – Eastern Elegance Designer Paper and Gold Foil Vellum
- Stamps – Perfect Pennants, Flower Shop, Petite Petals
- Punches – Pansy Punch, Petite Petal, Scallop Edge
- Washi Tape – three patterns each of washi
- Ink – Early Espresso, Cherry Cobbler, Crushed Curry… and one or two additional colors
They couldn’t use any other supplies than what was provided in the box and the only had 40 minutes as a group to design and create 2 projects using what was in their box. I have to say, I was so impressed with the creativity that came out in that short amount of time!
Check out what they created:
Team 1 – Liz Mitchell, Kathy Thisted, and Rose Bryson
First they created a card. And I love how they came up with using one of the petals from the Pansy punch to make a heart! Way to work with what you have! Plus I thought it was such a great idea to add Washi tape to the bottom of a piece of cardstock and THEN punch with the scallop punch. Aren’t they clever?
At the last minute, they realized the instructions for the challenge was to create 2 projects, so they pulled together this box very quickly:
I loved how they stamped and punched the Flower Shop image and then punched out a piece of the Gold Foil vellum and used it as a punched overlay too.
Team 2 – Tanya Cabral, Annie Lee, Jennifer Blomquist
This group stuck more to cards but really got into the vellum paper. And Tanya came up with the fun idea of stamping directly on the vellum for a central layer:
For the second card, I thought it was cool how Annie came up with the layers of scallop edge punched designer paper on the left side… like a little layer of ruffles! Then the combination of stamping under the vellum and adhering stamped images over the vellum.
You can kind of see that the Petite Petals images and the Flower Shop punched flower are BELOW the vellum, and one of the punched out petite petal flowers is ON TOP of the Vellum.
It was a great afternoon and I’m working on our next group demo event! It is looking like I may hold it off until July so I can run it right after convention and share all the projects and details I learned at convention with everyone! If you would like to be on the email list for more details for when the event is announced and registration opens, let me know at jennifer@nwstamper.com and I’ll make sure you are kept in the know!
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