5th Annual Christmas Love Campaign

The 5th Christmas Love Campaign starts tomorrow!

The FIFTH one! WOW! I am so SUPER excited! I have to admit, as a sat in a doctors office again this week it was really hard to find much excitement in much of anything and then I had a perfect stranger come up to me and tell me that she recognized me and that she liked my writing and my work, which was cool. But then she went on to say how much she really liked the “that Christmas Love thing’ that is do every year. That made my day and made me realize how important this campaign is. It and WE ALL can make a difference!  And with that I am SO proud to say that our Christmas Love Campaign starting tomorrow, November 1, is going to be out of this world FANTASTIC!!!

So, What is The Christmas Love Campaign?

The 'CLC' is a very dear event that I started five years ago shortly after losing my father to cancer.  My dad had lived a life of always doing kind things to ANYONE & EVERYONE. When he passed away suddenly I didn't know what I could do to continue spreading his kindness and love that he showed and gave everyone.. One day at a scrapbooking crop I noticed how kind scrap bookers can be to each other even though most of the time they are total strangers. I noticed that even happens on the internet. Crafters reaching out to other crafters with words of encouragement in hard times and in good times. After seeing this, I approached The Canadian Scrapbooker in the Fall of 2009 and I asked Katharina Doyle and Jackie Ludlage if I could write an article for their magazine on a topic that was very important to me, entitled 'Scrap Matters'. It talked about the awesome power of arts, crafts, and scrapbooking and I asked people how they brightened other peoples day by being creative? I know my Dad, and my Mom would have loved this!

 

'Simple Acts of Creative Kindness is an AWESOME TOOL!'

  This is the 5th Annual Christmas Love Campaign.

When: November 1,2013 - January 7,2014

The Mission: Create something (anything crafty),cards, sewing, editable art, beads, you name it, and then give it to someone. ANYONE....even a TOTAL STRANGER!
Instructions on HOW to Enter:
CREATE a projectTAKE a picture of what you have createdUPLOAD pic to Mr Linky below LIKE the CLC FB page leave a comment that you left your link here
SHARE your Christmas Love StoryINVITE a friend to join in and Grab a Christmas Love Campaign Blinkie. Your name will then be entered into win  one of several random draws that will be happening during the duration of the Christmas Love Campaign. If you have problems please email susiebeestudios@gmail.com 





There will be themed contests & dates announced every week so be sure to always check.
You can find out more information at www.susankweckesser.com

We have a lot of fun things planned including Hand Made Christmas event where Susan K. Weckesser Inc. has partnered up with some amazing companies in order to show you some amazing and quick Christmas gifts , cards, and other things that you can make and give to someone to #CRAFTUPLOVE.

We also have some amazing designers invited to come , visit and be apart of our Designer Talk which is always a lot of fun!

And we will be having a lot of contest and prize give aways! Once again we have some AMAZING sponsors that are helping to make this event AWESOME!!! You can see all of the sponsors HERE.

Grab a blinkie and join us!

(the image code is just below)

SO, let’s see how many people that we can make smile this year and how many people can we make have  a better and brighter day?

Let pick up are glitter, ink, glue, paper, flowers, yarn and anything else and create someone a smile! Please follow us on Facebook, Pinterest , Twitter, Instagram and use the hashtags ; #craftuplove & #christmaslovecampaign .
Thank-you for all your support and here’s to another fantastic year of showing the world that we care!

hugs & blessings,

Susan xo

Technorati Tags: christmas love campaign,#craftuplove,©SusankWeckesser,Hand Made Christmas,Designer Talk

One play, two projects.

Hello there, it's Jaine here again with the second of my two posts as Guest Designer and today I'm bringing not one but two projects from the same technique but with very different results.

I absolutely love it when a play session can result in several different finishes and that's just what I got when I decided to get out my Gelli plate and the Autumn Grunge  Leaves stamps by Unity.

After brayering acrylic paint onto the Gelli I stamped the leaves onto the surface. I started with a piece of watercolour paper already painted with a green acrylic paint colour. As I stamped the leaves into the paint, I then re-stamped them onto the painted paper to a) clean some of the paint off and b) so as not to waste a good opportunity to get a good print of the leaves. (Wash the paint off your stamps straight away otherwise the paint might dry on the stamp and ruin them for ever!).

I then laid the other half of the watercolour paper on the plate to get the print. I only have a small Gelli plate that's why I can only print small sections at a time but I rather like that duo tone effect across the page. 

To finish my page I stamped the leaves again this time with a Versafine ink in brown and used Susan's border stencil and a black pen to scribble the border and numbers. The heart and it's negative came from the second part of my play session.

Once I'd cut my paper down to fit my journal page I had an off cut from the side which I'd stamped my leaves onto. I took this piece and cut it into a tag using a Sizzix die and used several colours of Distress inks to blend over the tag. The acrylic paint from the leaf prints resisted the ink and the more I put on the more they 'popped' out. With some more of this off cut I did the same and cut the heart and this frame to go with my journal page.

I gave my tag a Halloweeny theme with some black ink and ribbon and used the stencil once again to add some detail.

Have a spooktacular Halloween and get playing.

Jaine x

Time to say Goodbye . . .

Hi everyone, Tracy here today and I hope you will join me in a trip down memory lane, as I look back at my time on

 Susan K Weckessers first ever Design Team

with a few of my favourite things.

A Project made with my first ever stamps by

 Susan K Weckesser Co branded with Unity Stamp Co.

Create your day

I fell head over heels for this set!!

This is now in Donna Downeys Studio for her Altered paintbrush Project.

Onto my first official project using Felt . . .

even back then I started with a plan!

To a selection of cards . . .

  Little tiny Brooches . . .

Time for tea . . .

to altered spoons . . .

from small houses to . . . 

to large wooden houses . . .

journal pages full of memories . . .

to the ones . . . just because . . .

to large plates made of clay . . .

to boats sailing away . . . 

over the deep blue sea . . .

to one of my all time favourites - a mixed media book to chase the blues away.

You can see more pics of this one by clicking HERE.

 The back of the mini book sums it all up 

Create Your Day and be Happy

that is what I would wish for Susan, Cheryl and all the Design Team members past and present and I hope you will all stay in touch, I can`t wait to see what you all create!!

Susan thank you from the bottom of my heart for picking me to be part of your first ever design team, I will never forget the feeling I had when I opened that email . . . woohoohooo . . . I am sure everyone on the street could hear me jumping up and down, running around screaming, lol!

What an AMAZING journey it has been and a pleasure getting to know you and the rest of the girls, I sure have found some wonderful friends, so thank you!

Good luck to the new team and woohoo let the your journey begin . . . .

Big hugs

Tracy Easson

Susan K Weckesser Design Team Member.

Is Home a Place? Or is Home a Feeling?

Good Morning everyone (Smile) … today I am sharing another one of my Art Journal pages with all of you, and just to recap my personal guidelines for art journaling are: 1) to use whatever leftover bits are in front of me after a session of creating and 2) to give that little voice in my head free reign and to do whatever it guides me to do - no matter what. 

Now to be totally honest I started doing this Art Journal thing as way to help me to clean up my counter space since I seem to have a hard time throwing any little bit of anything away (Grin)… but the experience has now evolved into a very personal process and it has become a way for me to express feelings that I find I am suppressing or even hiding from myself.

This page started out as a pretty fall page using all those colors that resonate so strongly in my soul – yellow, orange, amber, gold and brown – but it ended up being a reflection of the emotional upheaval I am experiencing even thinking about moving away from the home that I love so much… the home that my hubby and I have created from the ground up over the past 13 years here in the foothills of Alberta.

I had not even realized I was having all of these feelings until I “uncorked” the bottle I keep that little voice in and all of this poured out!  The creative process took me to all kinds of crazy places… Like tearing a page out of an old book (Freudian stuff here?) ripping it up and gluing it down in a blob(??)  And paper piecing the Susan K. Weckesser house stamp in monochrome colors and fencing it in(?!).  But it was the final step in my process that was the most revealing, 

picking up that black pen to doodle where ever it felt right… and then putting that same pen down and writing from my soul… and what came out was so honest and then so cathartic and finally so healing…

Is “HOME” a place? Or is “HOME” a feeling that we can create and re create wherever we are?  And then I realized that even if we do move, the memory of THIS home will always be in my heart… and that I know I CAN have (and will have) this feeling again now matter where I live.

So thanks for stopping by to share  tiny piece of my soul with me today.  I hope it helps you to reflect on what HOME means to you in your life right now.

Scrapbook Lynne

Susan K. Weckesser Design Team

Note: I used the Happy Homestead Stamp by Unity on this project

Create Your Day . . .

 Hi everyone, Tracy here today with a journal entry to share with you all using . . . 

. . . my favourite Susan K Weckesser/ Unity Stamp Co.Stamp set . . .

Create Your Day

along with

Pan Pastels
My Minds Eye - The Sweetest Thing Papers.

For those of you who don`t know me, I live in Scotland where . . .
Up on the hills on a Scottish Summers rainy day,
when the fields are all in bloom,
 verges are scattered with wild roaming flowers
and then
the sun tries to push it`s way through the clouds
to cover everything in a golden glow . . .
It`s a sight to behold I promise you!

I used 3 sheets of MME papers from the collection to create-
 the wildflowers, the fields of rapeseed and finishing with the sky.
Next up it was time for some stamping, snipping out the shapes and fixing in place with a little Maimeri Matt Gel Medium.
Ohhhhh, I doodled the little Bee Hive up above with the busy buzzing bees and snipped out a fence from more paper.
 Next out came the Pan Pastels, followed by a little doodle doodle doo with a fine black liner pen.
But it wasn`t finished yet . . .

 . . . I do like to keep a note of all the products I have used to pop it altogether, just incase I want to re create it onto a canvas.

Here`s a photo of the finished pages and I hope you like my little touch of Scotland!
Well that`s it for me today
Thank you so much for taking the time to look.
Till next time
Happy Crafting
Tracy Easson
Susan K Weckesser Design Team Member

Whimsical Jewlery box

Hi everyone!  I have a cute little project to share with you this week.  I had this old box lying around, it originally contained a watch and bracelet set.  It is hinged and opens up to a velvet lining inside.  I used Susan's banner stamps "Celebration of Simple" to decorate the box as well as scrap paper and embellishments that I had lying around.














Above is the finished product.

1.  I first stamped many time the images from the stamps set onto some paper I had by Melissa Frances. I think I did about 24 banners and used 3 of the banner styles in the set. 
2.  I then cut out the stamped images and layered them around the base of the box, over lapping them and gluing them down.
3.  I then cut out a strip of paper to cover the edges of the top part of the box and a piece of cardstock to cover the top.
4.  I hot glue gunned crystal door knobs onto the bottom of the box so it would have feet.  You can see them peeking out from under the paper.
5.  I found various items to put on top of the box, including some lace appliques, fabric flowers that had buttons on them, plastic beads and a large metal crown.
6.  I also punched out a number of paper flowers to edge the top of the box. 
7.  Once I had the box all covered with paper I layered all the items on to the top of the box starting with the paper flowers around the edge. 
8.  Once I was done I added black bling to the edge of the box as well as into the enter of the flowers and the bead to bring it together. 

Here are a few more shots of the finished product...my husband thinks it looks Medieval, LOL not sure where he came up with that....well I hope you enjoyed this weeks project and everyone is enjoying the "fall" weather or what ever the weather is where you live!  Bye for now, see you again in a few weeks!

Hugs Jennifer

Saying goodbye

Hey there sweet bloggers, Rita Barakat here and

today is my last blog post for Susan K.Weckessers team 

most of the time people don't write about that but I wanted to.

Starting on a new team is so exciting but although I am leaving,
 I wanted share a little about my time on this team.

One of the things that struck me right away was the

the spirit of encouragement - all of the ladies were so 

very sweet and encouraging to each other. You know how that happens?

Great leadership. Susan is fantastic and she has an amazing head DT 

Cheryl that not only embraces her vision, she runs with it. 

So then when we actually meet each other in person it's like meeting

old friends! We hug, we chat a mike a minute, we try to make plans to meet again.

They have something here. It's a good thing, 

but in that they also encourage you to grow, to do your own thing.

They are open to ideas and encourage you to run with them.

They are very free free and open with information to help you succeed

in the way you want to go. In the time I spent here I feel like I found my niche.

These ladies encouraged me to follow my dreams and offered to help 

in any way that they can. You do not find that all the time.

So although I knew it was my time to leave, to pursue other things I know

 I am not leaving the beautiful friendships I made on the way.

 I am forever grateful for my time on this team.

 So for the new team, congrats you are in a great place.

For those on the old team, thank you for being so sweet.

And for those reading the blog come and visit me sometime. 

Letsembellish.blogspot.com