CTMH - Holiday Heyday Clearance Sale.

Close to My Heart is having a huge clearance sale! There are lots and lots of papers, stampsets, acessories, and cards kits for sale. Email me and I'll send you a copy of the list. The sale begins Wednesday morning 9am MT (which is 8 am for us on the west coast). Sale items are only available on my website http://kbgerlach.myctmh.com. Items not on clearance must be on a separate order.

The owner of the Red Coach Restaurant, arguably the best hamburger place in Portland, asked me to design a card for her to put together to send to her best customers. Her 300 best customers. She has a database of over 2000 customers that she sends birthday coupons to. She tracks those that use coupons and wants to send them a handmade Christmas card. So I came up with a simple design for her to do in stages. She loved it, handed me her credit card and said "just order whatever you need". I got over 600 tags cut since I got home at 5 tonight. I finished about a 1/2 hour ago. I managed to stop for dinner, kids homework, and mafia wars in between making tags. Gotta love a cuttlebug.

I deliver tags, card bases, envelopes, stamps, inks, and ribbon to her tomorrow. She has the tough job of stamping and assembling all 300 of them. Luckily I was able to keep her costs down and she's able to make the cards at a cost of about 35 cents a piece for consumable products. Once she adds postage she's still under $1 per card. Well worth it to get business in her door and hopefully a referral or two for me (oh and a free lunch for cutting all the tags - did I mention that they are the best hamburger place in Portland?).

My very creative kids

Macie and Harrison took over the craft room this week. They stamped and colored and learned how to use liquid applique. Harrison may have stamped everywhere on his card, but he really took his time and colored the surfing santa very carefully. He also wrote a special note to his 1st grade teacher Mrs. Gahlen. Since his spelling still isn't so great, I hope he told her what it says! :)

Macie looked at lots of stampsets, ribbons, inks and asked "does this look good mom?" lots. To which my response was "honey, it's your card you can design whatever you like. If it looks good to you it will look good to everyone." She did a great job on her card to. She's made 2 other cards since. I have to get pictures of them to post. She also gave her card to her teacher. I think soon they will want to make cards for their classmates for Christmas.

It's nice to see them realize that it isn't always the fancy expensive things that you give people that mean the most. It's that you cared enough to take time, think about it, and make something from the heart.

Regional Celebration in Portland

I had the best time at the Portland Regional Celebration. It was so cool to meet Jeanette Lynton. She is an incredibly gracious lady with a huge heart. I'm amazed at all she has accomplished and all she still wants to do.

Regionals was cram-packed with news from HQ, business classes, a special project taught by Jeanette, a sneak peak at things to come, and lots of great techniques learned in the creative classes. I always thought I was a little bit of a pessimist - well after taking Christine Whitfeld's class I now know I'm really a determinist. I'm still trying to figure that one out.

I was horribly rude as I interupted my first business class to run to the front of the class and grab sticky boy! I'm so happy I finally have one all to myself. Who's that you ask? He's the first stamp by Jeanette from back in 1988. He was the first one made for testing of the clear My Acrylix stamps. As the legend goes, when they were brainstorming names for the clear stmaps David, Jeanette's husband, said to call them 'sticky boys'. Well sticky boy has shown up at every Close to My Heart consultant event ever since. He is left everywhere from door stops, to bathrooms, to under chairs for consultants to find. We had tons of fun searching for him over the 2 days we were there.

I have many more pictures to show of all the projects we made. I'll post those next. If you want to learn how to make any of these great projects email me!