Off to school she goes!

German Phrase of the Day: Ich habe zu viele Ferien! = I have too many vacations! My daughter actually said this to one of our German friends the other night. I know how she feels. I actually miss my own home! I'm here for just a couple days before we fly to Birmingham, England on Tuesday to join my husband who is already there for a trade show. We'll also visit Bath, Stonehenge and the coast before coming home on Sunday. Then...our travel slows down a bit, thankfully!!

I've been so exhausted I haven't even been able to stamp. Yesterday, I took my parents and sisters to the train station to send them on their way to Brussels and the start of a 9 day riverboat tour of Belgium and The Netherlands. Less than an hour later I took my husband to the airport...and then I had my daughter and house to myself. She wasn't too happy about losing all of her playmates, but we'll survive! Today I finally made it up to my stamp room for the first time in over 2 weeks! WOW!! I don't know how long it's been since I've had that long of a break from stamping...a year at least! It was nice to get back to it.

And...I have all this wonderful new acrylic that's been dying to get dirty just waiting...so I pulled out my newest Sophia. Isn't she the cutest one yet? Julia asked me to color her in to look like her, so here she is with her pink backpack (which we just bought for Julia) and matching lunchbox heading off to school for the first day. I can't believe my baby will be doing just that in a few more months!!

I stamped Sophia on stamper's select white with Brilliance black ink, then colored her in with prismacolors and OMS/blending stumps. It was fun to do that again...but I gotta figure out why my ink was bleeding into my colors a little...any tips? Next, I mounted her on some lovely Bazzill paper Christie sent me, then put together my card with some more textured cardstock for the base, and this lovely blue/green paper is also from the Pretty Boutique! I decided for my first card in 2 weeks I'd start simple!

So, do you know what's so special about Off to School Sophia? She's the first set in our new Stamp of the Month club! You should go check out the details of this awesome new club, and always get your new Sohpia FIRST, since club members will get PRE-RELEASE stamps (this Sophia is NOT YET AVAILABLE in the boutique - sorry!!) How cool is that?? Almost as good as being on the design team! ;-)

I hope all you moms out there have a wonderful day today. My husband realized yesterday about an hour before leaving for the airport what today is, so I said we could postpone celebrating until we're in England together. I'll try to get a few more things made tomorrow to share while I'm gone, but then should have some good stamping time once I'm back! (I hope!!)

Supplies: (all supplies from Paper Pretties unless noted)
Stamps: Off to School Sophia from Paper Pretties
CS: Bazzill textured papers, printed paper
Ink: brilliance graphite black
Acc: prismacolor pencils, OMS, blending stumps, ticket corner punch from SU!, organdy ribbon

TFL!