Of Hobbits, cupcakes and rings

Sometimes I wish I had been born a hobbit.  Don't get me wrong, I love adventuring, but I also love staying in my hobbit-hole sometimes, and you know a hobbit-hole means comfort. 
Sometimes, when I start adventuring out in this stamping world, I get a little scared (even with a ring that makes me invisible)!

You know AmberInk is pretty new to this stamping world and a few months ago our girl  PINKY suggested we start a challenge, so without much thought (hobbit's don't like to think too awfully much) we did.

Then our girl SHANNAN suggested we sponsor someone else's challenge, so without much thought we did.

Then our girl RACHEL suggested we sponsor her challenge, so we did.  But this time we thought and we researched.  Hobbits tend to get themselves into trouble when they think too much.  I looked at challenge after challenge after challenge.  It took me most of an entire day!  There are like a KAZILLION MILLION challenges out there!  It scared me.

I think I'll stay in my hobbit-hole for awhile and sip my Ent-draught, and look at all the pretty things that Amber makes, and the torchbearers make, and the challenge players make and the wonderful people who use AmberInk products make.

Thanks for keeping me safe...and comfortable.

'Tis the Season and a Cupcake

Is it officially "The Season" now?  To really get us in the mood we are sponsoring this weeks  Cupcake Inspiration Challenge, and if this cupcake doesn't get you to feeling like it TIS the season, well then...time to make some figgy puddin'.

Here are some of Rachel's Sweeties interpretations:

DENIMO!

ANITA!

RACHEL!

PIALI!

A random winner will be chosen from the Cupcake Challenge Entries on Sunday.  They will receive $5 worth of ipaper and a digi set of 'Tis the Season.

Check back throughout the week as we show you our Torchbearer entries.

Wassail anyone?

It's Aloha Friday...

No work till Monday ...doo dee doo doo dee doo dee doo dee doo dee doo dee doo.

Bear with me while I rant a little...or just skip to the pictures.  Oh why oh why?  Why do we (me) show our gratitude by eating and eating and eating some more?  Don't know why we (me) do it EVERY year but I (me) did another 12 hour marathon which included stuffed mushrooms with crab, bacon wraps, baked brie, the Macy's Day Parade,  Chinese pork hash with pomegranite hoisin, Wensleydale cheese with cranberry and crackers, the .  Westminster Dog Show, lots of  family,  Dixie Salad, lot's of gratitude and holy schmoly, those are the Hors d'œuvres.  Okay...I need to stop.  This is looking bad ! Next year I will start the day with a Turkey Trot!  For now,  I will get back to Aloha Friday before you lose R.E.S.P.E.C.T!

#1.  What TV family would you want to spend the holidays with?

#2.  A place you like to go with your family for the holiday

#3.  Something you always bring to the table for the holidays.

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It's best to save an image to your computer file first.

Make sure you put the category # (1,2,3) and your name.

That's it! See...easy peasy.

Enter once, twice or thrice.

Keep your fingers crossed and Amber may reward a random winner

with a little prize to the store, otherwise just chalk it up to a fun start to your weekend!

See you Monday!

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HAPPY T.DAY!

May your turkeys be fat, your drinks be divine and your smiles be sincere. 

Happy T-Day from the babes @ Amber Ink.

WOYWW!

Figuring it out.  I wasn't sure how to design packaging for these hairslides that I'm opening up an Etsy shop for.  Every time I buy something on Etsy I thrill at the way it's packaged.  So I sat down and tried to THINK.  Then I got a popsicle. Then I tried to THINK.....

Here's the map to my thinking....

After A LOT of scrapping and failing and starting over and mild cursing, I finally came up with this:


Which I kind of love.

Now I'm working on more hair slides. Like a CARROT.  I don't work with a pattern and I just kind of let the colors speak to me.  I hold this one fact to be self evident.

1. inanimate objects are cuter with faces. 

The exciting thing is that these little critters are going to make an Amber Ink. cameo in the future.  I'm still figuring that part out, but I'm pretty sure you can expect it come Valentine's Day. 

xoxoxo

P.S. Now I have an Etsy shop! I feel like a real girl. Hehe.  It's sparse but growing and I'm super blissful about it.  http://www.etsy.com/shop/amberbop
 

Pop on over to Julia's, if you can find her!  We've kidnapped her and made her craft-dance on a regular basis now.  I'm so giddy that she agreed to Amber INK. with us this month.

Happy Wednesday, loves!

Challenges, Challenges!

We are frequently served humble pie.  We usually plaster it with whip cream and and swallow HARD!  When it comes to  AmberInk's InKredible 21 Day Challenge  though, our pie is mile high deep dish name your poison ala mode!  No humble pie here!  And it is because our winners take the cake!

Remember the first win?  Lynne Phelps set the bar for Challenge #1 with her "Let's Communicate"

Wendy Price won Challenge #2 with "Best Fishes" which is in our current release.

Of course you can follow their stories on our Extra, Extra read all about it PAGE

We are THRILLED to announce that Karin Martin is the winner of Challenge #3!

She and Amber will design a set together for our next release in December.

Of course you know that Karin with an "i" not only has an eye for paper, but an "i" for ideas as well!

Here are a few of the preliminary ideas -

"My ideal set is the concept of a door, a door with interchangeable parts. The panels would be separate, so you could have 4 or just the two at the bottom and on the door could be a window. Maybe a door knocker, a pineapple, a door mat with space that says Welcome or bless our home, you're invited...A topiary tree to put on either side. A basket that can be filled with things for the holidays... Maybe a wreath for the door that could have spaces to add things for the holidays, berries, or hearts or shamrocks or eggs or leaves or stars...Or maybe another idea is a wreath set of its own with all those different add ons. Ahhh...

My other idea is an animal set, since your artwork is super cute in that area. I love cows and pigs, but dogs and cats are good too. Somehow a cute critter holding a sign or maybe two critters holding a banner between them that would have some cute/useful phrases...I will keep thinking. "

Keep checking back as our exciting new set develops!

And now it is YOUR turn! 

Our next challenge has begun.  The clock is ticking.  Better hurry to check your next assignment!  Somehow we think this is going to be our biggest challenge yet!

TAKE A PEEK @ AmberInk's next

InKredible 21 Day Challenge!!!

 

Please RELEASE me!

Today is the day!

At Amber Ink we like things pretty and we have a couple of pretty girls that will just NOT stay in a back room somewhere (you know how those pretty girls are) !

Tis the Season! & Perfect Package

'Tis the Season and Perfect Package wanted to come out and play again for the
Holidays!

Amber has created some Gor.Gee.us ipaper to dress them up even more!

We'll call these midnight blues for now, since the uploading part is making us blue and they should be up before midnight!

The patterns and rich colors are stunning.

Try printing them off on some top notch paper (or as one of our torchbearers would do, send them over to a print shop and have them print them off on top notch paper.)

Here's our new line of Holiday Cheer!

(oh, and see the size of this SQUARE...you know ipaper comes in 12 x 12 too!)

Add your touch of glitter and bling and WOWZA!

Instant paper to match your Amber Ink images!

The talk of the town is the set designed with Wendy from Challenge #2. We hope you've been following along with the process. At Amber Ink we love pretty, but we love love pretty cute. We were always a sucker for the class clown. Can you maybe spot a few stage stealers here?

Best Fishes

We added a new line to the shopping cart in the store to make it Simple-Simon for you to spot everything from the new release. You can spot it here, right underneath "shop by type".

Now...It's a debut for our new babes! Check out the creative flow-jomojo in these new projects.

ANGELA!

JULIE!

KERRI!

JULIA!

STACIE!

Did we buy the latest jump lower run slower shoes or something? It's hard to keep up with these torchbearer's. Lots more ahead - here's to hoping we can keep up ;-)

It's Aloha Friday...

No work till Monday ...doo dee doo doo dee doo dee doo dee doo dee doo dee doo.

In just 6,5,4,3,2,1...days it will be THANKSGIVING in the USofA!! 

In honor of that blessed event we will attempt to shake Aloha Friday up just a bit and  play an old game from an old day called "I'm going to Gramma's house".  We will call it "I'm going to Amber's House" out of respect for being on Amber's Blog (and also to remind Amber that her little sister will be visiting her in NYC for the big day ;-).

You have to know your alphabet for this one, and you have to be wikiwiki (that means fast for all you non-Hawaiians).  If you get out of order you WILL be deleted and then you will have to try again. 

You get three entries. 

This time put the LETTER of the alphabet instead of a number and don't forget your name.

It's always best to save an image to your computer file first.  Connect to a URL if you can.

Keep the alphabet in order. It's gonna be SO FUN (I hope!)

 I'll go first.  Oh! That WAS fun.  I'm going to go second too!   Oh no...I'm sick and addicted to my own game!  I'm going again ;-)  Okay...I'm gonna stop now...promise! 

See you on Monday for a VERY EXCITING week!

Oh, and if we get to Z start at A again!  Don't get deleted!!!!

I'm going to Amber's House and in my bag I am going to pack...

INTRODUCING...

Our InKredible new Amber Ink (Th)Ink tank! You probably saw a flash of light and wondered what it could possibly be! Not a contrail, not a U.F.O.? No doubt it was the new torchbearers then, catching the hand-off in mid air, and already running with all their might!

Join with us in cheering them along!

Stacie Gorse runs a blog called “Hestia’s Helper” and for those of you who may not be up to snuff on your Greek Mythology, “Hestia” is the virgin goddess of domesticity.(obviously :-)

With one husband, two kids, two cats and two dogs, Stacie may not exactly be the virgin goddess, but just look at her blog and you will see that she definitely has the goddess of a certain North Carolina sanctuary part down pat. When she’s not busy tending to her hearth, she runs her own building services company and builds farms on facebook. No doubt Stacie will be able to teach us a thing or two about keeping a fire burning. We are feeling so toasty about Stacie's running with the Amber Ink flame!

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Julie Elak is a card making, cake decorating, puppy training, (we would say logical also, but with a Westie on board we wonder *lol* ) systems analyst who hails from Connecticut. With all of these extra curricular activities plus one husband, three children, Bolt (the Westie) four fish and one frog her specialty MUST be organization and implementation!

Julie still finds time to read and her favorite place to hang out is in a chair in her son’s room where they read books together. Okay, hearts' officially melted. Sounds like the perfect presentation to us! We are so thrilled that Julie can not only run a computer, but a torch as well! Please... let's all try to keep up with this Last Minute Crafter!

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With over 500 images posted on SCS , an Etsy Store, too many past and current Design Team positions to even mention in this small space - let it be known that the stamping world should be ecstatic that Kerri Michaud did not pursue her first dream of becoming a Veterinarian! While her Yorkie, Hannah benefits from this first love, her three children and husband of ten years, Barry, benefit from Kerri's being a retired R.N. and a stay-at-home mom. Kerri is a self proclaimed reality TV junky and once you see her blog there will be no question that she and Project Runway's Mondo have a pretty bright and cheerful color palette in common! See Kerri's perfect presentations and perfect posts @ http://cardsbykerri.blogspot.com/

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There is a certain aura around Ms. Julia Dunnit that exudes light. For anyone that peeks at her desk on a weekly basis there is an oft chance that you may sometimes catch a few bits and bobs, and perhaps sometimes they may even seem out of place, but always, always there is a glow. Could it possibly be from the out-of-this-world windows that Mr. Dunnit (of 25.8 years no less) created for her? Could it possibly be from the energy of a certain sweet 17 year old Miss Dunnit who lives on the premises? Could it possibly be from the consumption of that coffee, gin and tonic, or gin and tonic, coffee, depending on the time of day? Alas, we think it is all of the above but mostly it is from the magic of a gifted Brit (who will not use Pritt) named Mrs. Julia Dunnit. Once you plant your feet on her stamping ground, we guarantee you will never want to pick them up again!

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Angela Hathikhanavala loves Detroit, Roller Derby (she trains with Nancy RayGun) Indie music, her hilarious hubs and her two girl cats, Marty and Dexter. Is it any surprise that her college students (she teaches writing and literature full-time) rate her as hott, with two t's? This quirky daddy's girl started stamping and scrapping nearly a decade ago when she decided to make her own wedding invitations. If she's not doing ALL of the above, she may be cooking or eating pie and maybe a homegrown heirloom tomato or two, but NEVER meat!

Angela had us at "hello" and we are so excited to see her voice as a torchbearer for Amber Ink! You'll be amazed at what you'll find in Angela's paper cupboard!

It's just around the bend!

Today is officially the last day of the run for our total babes!  We hope that they'll keep running just for fun and to cheer us all on, but let's give a hollar to these skilled ladies...

SHANNON ERSKINE!!

Go BLUE!!

RHONDA MILLER!!!

GO PURPLE!!

JACKI RANDOLPH!!!

GO BROWN!!

EMILY LEIPHART!!!

GO ORANGE!!

LORRAINE LOWE!!!

(we caught Lorraine in a month when she was under the weather,

but wait until you see who she's passed off to!!)

GO PINK!!

A round of applause as these girls on fire run off to join the AmberInk Alumni!

Come back tomorrow for the pass off. 

We promise it's gonna be Amber Ink InKredible!!!

Of Bacon and Woodland Creatures and Holiday Cheer

My workdesk is schizophrenic tonight! It's going to be a crazy busy week, and there's so much to do, so much to do! I love the buzz of multiple projects so here's what's buzzing around my desk today.

I'm taking some portraits of my little "hair slides" which is now my new favorite word. Thank you for teaching it to me a few weeks ago when I showed you the barrettes I was working on ;)

In prepping for DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN.... The second to the last Harry Potter movie release, I am keeping up tradition. Every year, right before the premiere we gather around my 'movie theater' and make freezer paper shirts while we watch the most recent movie.

I am pushing it this year, because during the Harry Potter slumber party we had last Friday, I spent more time taking "what is your Patronus" tests online (Let's hear it for the hedgehogs!!!) than making my shirt (shame face).

I'm scrambling to catch up tonight. Here's the themed shirt I am making to wear to the midnight premiere on Thursday!

*Yes, I am painting with liquid diamonds tonight. This paint needs a shout out. It's DecoArt SoSoft Glitter Fabric Paint in Quick Silver/Mercure. I buy it in bulk as just about every obsession I have involves things that sparkle ie. Vampires, Patronus', Diamonds, White Sand etc. It stays glittery through the wash. It is the reason I make freezer paper shirts like there's no tomorrow. Try it. It just might change your life.

While that dries..... I'm working on some new iPaper for Amber Ink.com This will be released on the 22nd when we unveil this month's release. We're sponsoring http://cupcakeinspirations.blogspot.com/

on the 28th of November. I am stoked about the cupcake that's going to be inspiring everyone with Amber Ink. It looks too pretty to ever think of eating.

I'm designing some papers and letting the challenge cupcake inspire me for this coming release. Its a fun circle of inspire.

OHHHHHHHHH AND I'm talking to the Duchess all about Kate and Prince Will. Gossip Gossip Gossip. I'm afraid we didn't get much done at work today. We really had to spend about 8 hours looking at close up pics of that ring and gabbing about what we'll do when we become princesses.

SO yeah, our work desk is all over the place. How's yours faring?
Check out our favorite WOYWW at Julia's... where the magic starts!