Introducing Brenda Hugar

Brenda Hugar

 

Brenda has been a Stampin’ Up! Demonstrator for 7 years.  She attended a class that her best friend, Diana (and later, upline!), was doing in town while she was visiting that she invited Brenda to attend.  Brenda remembers that she was instantly hooked on Stampin’ Up! when she saw how well the cardstock, markers, pads, and other great accessories coordinated with each other!  Unfortunately, she lives 2000 miles from her upline and her one downline, Jackie (who happens to be Brenda’s older sister), but says that they get to share ideas back and forth almost daily via the phone, the internet, and through their blogs. 

Brenda’s favorite experience while stamping was when she got to attend her first convention and met up with her upline and several friends.  She recalls the swapping and sharing that took place, both stamped items and ideas, and fondly remembers how inspired she was when she left Convention!  She still looks forward to attending Convention and Regional Workshops as often as she can for the camaraderie and the sharing that takes place there.

Brenda’s favorite Stampin’ Up! product is the markers.  She loves to use the markers to color an image directly, but also to use them to color on a stamp, especially for the very small details.  She tells us that she uses her markers with her blender pen or aqua painter, as well as with the Color Spritzer tool for a speckled background.  She even uses them to color ribbon so she has matching ribbon in all the colors!

Brenda’s stamping are has changed a few times over the years.  She presently has her own room to stamp, but says that she has worked to find time almost daily, even if it meant stamping on the kitchen table or the counter.  Brenda works “solo” these days – until last month, her Siberian Husky used to wander in and out to remind her that she had been in her room too long and it was time to put away the stamping supplies and pay attention to the family! She finds inspiration in everything –in nature, as well as in magazine layouts or in cards that she might receive in the mail.  Brenda is always amazed at what people can come up with when doing punch art, and tells us that she now looks at a punch with “new eyes” as well, in order to figure out what she can create with them!

According to Brenda, her strength lies in making her card layers complement each other.  She likes to layer her images, and says that she is careful to get out her pencil and “do the math” to make sure that all sides are even.  She reminds us that we should “measure twice, cut once” when preparing our layers! 

We can’t wait to see the wonderful creations that Brenda is preparing to share with us on the Royal Blog Tour!

Introducing Marilyn San Clemente

Marilyn San Clemente

Marilyn has been a Stampin’ Up! Demonstrator for 9 years.  She initially started out scrapbooking the lives of her kids when her daughter was born 15 years ago, using it as a stress reliever, and working on her scrapbooks until late into the night after the kids were in bed.  She wanted to stay home with her kids (besides a daughter, Emily, who is 15, Marilyn is married, and also has a son, John, who is 19), so her husband encouraged her to find a way to pay for her “hobby”.  She attended a Stampin’ Up! party, but didn’t know how to use the stamps or other products.  Her friend, Michele, helped Marilyn to get started by teaching her different techniques.  Ironically, after Michele and her husband adopted a little girl and she wanted to be an at-home mother as well,  Michele  quit her job and signed on as Marilyn’s first down-line!

Marilyn loves all of Stampin’ Up!’s colors, cardstocks, and the fact that everything matches and coordinates.  She especially loves all of the designer papers.  She is always sad to see a favorite color or pattern go, but then realizes that there is always another one that she absolutely loves which replaces it!

Because Marilyn worked in a stationary store for a few years, she feels that her strength in stamping is in helping a Stampin’ Up! customer to design a card.  She used to help those customers in the store design a wedding invitation that was not “off the shelf”, so now Marilyn enjoys the challenge of using a particular stamp set with a specific color theme, and creating from there.  She says that she finds inspiration everywhere – in color combinations and the shapes and layouts of magazine pages, but also from a few favorite blogs that she regularly visits to get her mojo going.  She also relies on her down-line and sideline to inspire her, noting that she is always very pumped up after leaving her monthly group meeting.  Marilyn hosts spring and fall stamping retreats for her Stampin’ Up! Demonstrator group at her house on Cape Cod, which leaves everyone motivated and inspired!

Marilyn doesn’t have any stamping secrets except to tell us that there are so many new techniques and products that come out, so she’s always learning something new after 9 years!  She says we also shouldn’t stop looking for the new challenge or experience!

We can’t wait to see what Marilyn has to share with us on the Royal Blog Tour!  It’s sure to teach and inspire us as well!

Introducing Melissa Rodgers

Melissa Rodgers

Melissa has been a Stampin’ Up Demonstrator for 11 years, and says that she can’t even remember what her life was like before stamping!  Since she was very young, Melissa has always enjoyed crafts. She tells us that, once she discovered stamping and Stampin’ Up!, she has found that they have supplied her with all the tools and options she could ever need to create!

Melissa finds inspiration from everything around her: magazines, browsing an antique store, enjoying the outside, or brainstorming with her blog buddy, Gayla.  She can’t single out a single stamping experience, but states that nearly every get-together with friends and stamping has been life-changing for her.  Melissa loves the new people she’s met and the friends she’s made through the craft.

Distressing is probably Melissa’s favorite technique, and she’s fondly referred to as the “Distressing Queen” by her group of SU! demonstrators.  She says that she can’t pick out a favorite project as there are” just too many”, but says that one can usually spot her project among a group of creations because of her stamping and distressing style.

Melissa has to be extremely organized to fit in her stamping time.  She’s a full time Process Manager, a mother of 5, and a grandmother of 7!  All of her kids live within 10 minutes of their house, so she sees them often and says that her family is her life.  Her husband and her son remodeled her office to make a stamping space for her, and she says she can’t wait to use the space as a full-time stamper!  She typically utilizes this stamping space in the early morning hours before heading to her “day job”, a few evenings a week, and again several hours over the weekend if she’s lucky!

Melissa’s stamping tip that she shares with us is to be kind to ourselves and to our ideas.  Often, she says we are too critical of our work.  If we find that our project isn’t turning out the way we think it should, she tells us that we should walk away, and when returning, we just might have the “aha!” moment we needed to make things fall into place, to become the project that we perhaps visualized in the first place!

We can’t wait to see the creations that Melissa is so eager to share with us during the Royal Blog Tour! 

Introducing Carol Matthews

Carol Matthews

For Carol Matthews, Stampin’ Up! really is a family affair!  It was Carol’s niece who first introduced her to Stampin’ Up!, and it was a bequest from her brother that finally provided her with the funds that she needed to buy her Starter Kit and other products that she needed to get started.  Now, two and a half years later, she has 5 downline, regular classes and a whole lot of new friends that she’s met through Stampin’ Up!  And every day she thinks of her brother and how much joy he has given her.

As Carol has grown in her Stampin’ Up! business, she is finding that she gains a great deal of inspiration from her fellow demonstrators, especially her downline and new friends that she meets at Leadership.   But, when she needs to come up with something that is all her own, she uses the new Color Coach, and peruses magazines and other publications for color and design inspiration.

With all the Stampin’ Up! products that Carol uses, her favorites are the Simply Scrappin’ kits.  There is so much that you can do with them, and she loves to make mini scrapbooks out of them, not only for herself, but to sell at craft fairs.  She says that they’re popular at her classes, too. 

While Carol finds that just about everything about her Stampin’ Up! business is enjoyable, she recalls one early class where she offered 10 cards to be made, and 20 people signed up.  Let’s see, 10 x 20 = ?  200!!!  When she realized that she was going to be cutting papers and ribbons for 200 cards, she learned not to do that again!  A good lesson for all of us, I think J  And she’s learned to keep the make and takes for her workshops simple and inexpensive, and save the big complicated projects for her classes (but not 200 of them!).  Now that makes everything enjoyable!

Of course, Carol will be saving some of her BEST work for her Castle on the Royal Blog Tour.  Be sure not to miss it!

Introducing Tammy Baldwin

Tammy Baldwin

If you ever run into Tammy Baldwin on the streets of Georgia, you’ll recognize her because of the stamp in one hand and the ink in another!  At least that’s according to her husband, who claims that she’s a 24/7/365 stamper.  Tammy doesn’t dispute that claim, saying that she even dreams about stamping, and has withdrawal symptoms if she doesn’t stamp every day!

Of course that may all be an exaggeration, especially now that she has My Digital Studio and the Sizzix Big Shot in her repertoire.  The Big Shot is, hands down, her favorite Stampin’ Up! product, though she says she hasn’t found any Stampin’ Up! product yet that she doesn’t like.  Tammy loves to participate in sketch challenges, and has a blast using My Digital Studio to come up with wonderful but quick takes on the sketches – you can find lots of those great ideas on her blog.

As we get into the Holiday season, you’re bound to find some great 3-D projects from Tammy, who especially likes to use the Big Shot to make boxes – all kinds of boxes!  And she loves to mix up her colors to decorate them, as well as to decorate all her other projects.  Her current favorite color combination is Early Espresso, Cherry Cobbler, Daffodil Delight and Very Vanilla.  Now I’m going to have to go see what I can do with those colors – a combination I’ve not yet used.  How about you?  Hmmm.  Maybe we’ll even see some of that on Princess Tammy’s Castle for the Royal Blog Tour!

Whatever we see at Tammy’s Castle, it’s sure to be creative!

Introducing Laura Bement

Laura Bement

Laura Bement-Jaroscak has been a Stampin’ Up! demonstrator for over 10 years.  And like most of us, she’d been having fun with Stampin’ Up! products for several years before that. 

What Laura has that’s really special for her is her 11 year old dog, Toby, who has grown up with all of Laura’s stamper friends and customers, and who just loves it when they all come over for a workshop.  It’s great for the dog, as well as Laura’s customers, that she has a great area for stamping workshops in her home, which is where most of them end up happening.  They all have to be careful, though, to place their purses up on a table or chair as Toby has been known to pilfer goodies over the years.

A full-time teacher, Laura is very happy that she is able to combine her teaching job with the flexibility that Stampin’ Up! offers to its demonstrators.  Of course, even when she is not stamping, she is always looking around her, paying attention to store and magazine layouts, trying to notice how colors and textures work together.  Her favorite types of stamps are all the wonderful floral stamps offered by Stampin’ Up!, especially as Laura loves flowers, but doesn’t have much of a green thumb (that little bit of Old Olive on her thumb doesn’t count?).  She is quite happy to be able to be successful with her flowers that thrive on paper rather than on dirt.

Laura is most creative in the morning, which means she has to be equally creative with her scheduling.  She has been known to set the alarm for 4:00 am on a school morning so that she can put in some stamping time to start her day.  She just loves to have a few creations behind her before the day is even really started.  She’s even embraced scrapbooking, even though she resisted when Stampin’ Up! first introduced their scrapbooking products to compete with her first love, card making.

I’m sure that you’re going to love Laura’s blog – it’s based on Stampin’ Up!’s Demonstrator Business Website blogging tool, and her projects are so creative.  She’s had the blog going for a little over a year and manages to keep it up even with her teaching, other school and family responsibilities, and other (gasp!) hobbies – biking, knitting, reading – where does she find the time?!   Ah, yes – at 4:00 am in the morning!

Introducing Janice Rosenthal Rock

Janice Rosenthal Rock

Janice started out dabbling in stamping but found the whole process rather mediocre. She had been introduced to a company that specialized in clear-mount stamps but just wasn’t feeling the love.  Then a friend introduced her to Stampin’ Up and it totally changed her mind about the whole process. She was awestruck by the wonderful products and was immediately hooked. One short month later she signed up as a demonstrator and convinced her best friend to do the same. The rest, they say is “history.”

She was excited to do her first Stamp Camp with her friend! They carefully cut each and every piece for every project and carefully packed up their supplies into little cellophane bags so nothing could get lost. Their efforts really paid off until they realized they had forgotten to include the card base. Janice and her friend still get a good laugh when they think about that first event. Don’t feel alone, Janice. I am sure we all have a story that relates.

Her favorite Stampin’ Up product is ribbon. She uses it on EVERYTHING! She loves to embellish her projects with whatever she can get her hands on. Ribbon is often at the top of her list but she doesn’t limit herself to one embellishment. If you visit her blog, you will see that Janice adds something to every card she designs – ribbon, brads, pearls, or anything else that will add some bling and pizzazz! And she does a fabulous job of it, too.

Janice taught high school for 18 years and that teaching expertise has carried over into her Stampin’ Up business. She loves to teach other stampers new techniques and projects. After doing it for so many years, it just comes naturally to her now. And her customers and fellow stampers appreciate her for it. She gets her inspiration from other stampers by starting her day with a “blog surf.” She likes to see what others can “dream up” and share with her. Stamping is her therapy; therefore she seldom loses her mojo. But when she does, she just takes a day or two off and then gets back to the “surf” for a little inspiration. 

Janice has just one secret to share with us about stamping. She wants us all to know that “a good glass of wine goes GREAT with stamping!!!” You know, I have heard that before J.  And, of course we all know chocolate does too J

Be sure to visit Janice’s castle and see her beautiful embellished cards and projects. I know you will visit often.

Introducing Jennifer Weide

Jennifer Weide

Say Hello to Jennifer Weide, AKA Sunflower Stamper from the great state of Nebraska.  She started stamping with a friend who was a Demo when they were both stay at home Moms. When her friend moved away, she knew she couldn’t be without Stampin’Up! so she signed up!  That was just over ten years ago and she’s loved every minute of it! According to Jennifer, stamping is her sanity in this crazy world!  

Life can get pretty hectic for a busy wife and mother with a full time job besides Stampin‘Up!, but for Jennifer, the pressure causes those creative juices to flow! “Having to stamp is usually the best inspiration, but I also spend time reading blogs of other demos and looking at ideas online.  I do my best work when I’m up against a deadline. Sadly that leads to procrastination, but it works for me! It also leads to very late nights on occasion!”  

She used to spend those late nights in the back of the basement family room. When they built their new home, she assumed it would be in similar area, but the new home had a bonus room that her hubby thought would be a great stamping room. The downside of having her own room is that she’s away from the family, but the upside is that she can close the door on the mess!  She has her own TV and stereo and tries to spend a few hours there each evening. When the pressure is on, the TV is off and she stamps to her favorite country music. 

Jennifer holds several Open Houses a year where she features four cards for all attendees to make. Because she can’t be in four places at once, she asks the girls from her club to help out. She loves to see them sharing, teaching and interacting with other stampers.  The other thing she loves is when her regular girls ooh and aahh when she pulls out the next card they will be making. That’s her reassurance that she’s doing the right things!

Spend some time on her blog and you will quickly see that the Big Shot is her favorite SU product. She incorporates texture from the embossing folders, the Top Note and other dies and magnificent color combinations to create one of a kind designs like only she can!

I can only imagine what awaits us at her castle on the 2010 Royal Blog Tour!

Introducing Ros Davidson

Ros Davidson

Ros has been stamping since she was a young teen girl.  Luckily, her mom was very supportive of her hobby and channeled money and support to keep her going!  Ros was introduced to Stampin’ Up about 3 years ago.  She enjoys creating projects and preserving memories for those close to her.  She tells us that she especially loves punches and punch art when she does her stamping.  

Ros’s craft desk and supplies are in her study, right next to the computer.  This makes inspiration very easy to come by!  She usually stamps alone, although the kids are always popping in and out during the day.  She loves the nighttime hours where she can create uninterrupted, and can play her music to keep her going.  She tells us that we are never too young to start creating however!   Ros’s 7 year old son loves to re-create cards that Ros has made, and displays them in his bedroom.  He’s very proud of what he has made!

Ros recalls giving her grandmother a selection of handmade cards in an accordion-style card holder recently.  When her mom asked her where she had purchased the box, Ros was thrilled to tell everyone that she had created it!  She also remembers making a mini scrapbook for a high school friend when she was younger.  The photos featured this high school friend with Ros, along with friendship quotes, that she presented in an accordion wallet.  Several of their girlfriends put in requests for their own scrapbooks for their birthdays that evening!  This is one of Ros’s favorite memories!

Please visit Ros’s castle during the Royal Blog Tour to view all of her fabulous creations!

Introducing Lucia Kaiser

Lucia Kaiser

It’s now time to meet the Royal Blog Tour’s fearless leader, Lucia Kaiser.  Lucia was an avid stamp lover who found Stampin’ Up! through a demonstrator’s booth at a stamp expo.  She signed up under Helene Murdock, who later quit Stampin’ Up! for health reasons—but now Helene is back and has rejoined under Lucia!

Lucia has the most fun holding classes for children, despite having to hold some of the mothers back from placing stamps on the kids’ projects, where their children don’t want them!  Fortunately, Lucia keeps extra materials on hand, so “helpful” mommies can stamp wherever and however they like on their own project.

The embossing folders for the Big Shot are among Lucia’s favorite Stampin’ Up! products.  Lucia especially enjoys embossing card stock, then punching out embossed pieces with the ornament punch, to create paper roses.  Lucia is also partial to My Digital Studio, because it allows her to create digital designs when her tactile materials are not handy or available.

Lucia feels her strengths lie on the business side of her Stampin’ Up! demonstratorship.  She’s really good at encouraging others and giving feedback on their work.  She is extremely grateful for everything she has learned from other demonstrators, and from the privilege of constructing and heading the Royal Blog Tour.

One stamping secret Lucia leaves us with, is to close up product and put it away as you use it.  Speaking from unfortunate experience, Lucia says this practice will keep your work area neat and help avoid spills that can ruin your project, or your materials.  I wholeheartedly agree—glitter is pretty, but not when it’s caked onto my glue pen!

Introducing Tammy Fite

Tammy Fite

 

Tammy Fite loves to add color to everything.  Just ask her hostess from several years back whose kitchen – where the workshop was taking place – was all white!  There was Tammy with a stampin’ around wheel and a Brilliant Blue cartridge.  Can’t you just see what was going to happen?  Zing! and that cartridge filled with blue ink shot across the room.  But Tammy’s just such a fantastic demonstrator that everything worked out just fine, and that hostess became her first recruit.  Tammy is quick to say today that she does NOT miss Brilliant Blue!

Tammy’s first career was as an air traffic controller.  When she resigned from that job to stay at home with her children, she knew she had to do something that involved other adults.  When she was a hostess at her first Stampin’ Up! workshop, she had such a great time she signed up as a demonstrator.  At first it was a great social outlet for her.  Now it’s become a business for which she is very thankful.

With all the products that Stampin’ Up! has to offer, the Sizzix Big Shot has become her go-to product for just about every project.  She especially loves the embossing folders because they’re such a quick way to make even a plain card just “pop!”   I’m with her on that – and also with Tammy’s technique for getting her creative thinking going again when she’s been under some stress.  She cleans off her desk!  The result is that she can think more clearly and her creativity returns – as does the messy desk, of course.

Anyone who’s seen Tammy’s work lately knows what beautiful designs she develops.  And she loves sharing her ideas and creations with her fellow Stampin’ Up! demonstrators who also share in return.  She’s always amazed that, just when she thinks she’s mastered some product or another, someone else comes up with some new way to use it.  All this sharing results in all of us continually learning new and wonderful things.  I’m sure you’ll love learning something new and wonderful at Tammy’s Royal Blog Tour castle!

Introducing Wendy Hawkinson

Wendy Hawkinson

Having already stretched the family purse strings by trying "all things crafty", Wendy Hawkinson was more than a little concerned when she realized was addicted to stamping after attending her first party.  Luckily, her mother-in-law found stamping at about the same time, so Wendy had a comrade-in-arms!

Wendy Hawkinson started her stamping career as a professional purchaser, doing her part by helping other demonstrators meet their sales quotas for years and years!  She finally became a Stampin' Up! demonstrator in August of 2003, and won her husband over, when he realized how passionate she was about stamping, and that stamping was not just a passing fancy.  It also helped that Stampin' Up! was a small business Wendy could run from home while raising their daughters.

Aside from accidentally setting our flip-top ink pads alight while trying to open them, and catching them in midair before they can land on the carpet (ink side down in the palm of her hand, of course), Wendy doesn't mind getting her hands dirty.  Getting inky fingerprints on her cards has resulted in some very pretty results because of the layers she has added to cover up the smudges!

Wendy's favorite Stampin' Up! product du jour is our cardstock. A self-proclaimed paper hoarder, she believes “You can never have too much paper!”  She gets a lot of her inspiration online from other stampers, and Wendy wants to make sure you know, "You can never spend too much time stamping. Stamping is good for the soul."  I recommend you take advantage of Wendy's blog right now to get some inspiration, while you're waiting for the Royal Blog Tour to start.

Introducing Pam Staples

Pam Staples

Pam has been scrapbooking since the early 1990’s.  She returned home from a trip to Europe while in college with a large amount of photos and knew that she wanted to preserve those precious memories!  She started with a magnetic album and some journaling to put together her first album.  A few years later, she was introduced to Stampin’ Up by a friend where she was introduced to stamping.  Her favorite project has become a memorial scrapbook for her brother and his family about their beloved Great Dane, Princess, who passed away last October.  Her brother’s family greatly appreciated the gift and thanked Pam profusely with tears in their eyes – that’s when Pam knew that she had truly touched their hearts.

Pam’s favorite workshop memory was actually what she calls a “dud workshop”, but it has still excited her about Stampin’ Up.  She did a workshop for a friend, to which many people failed to show up.  There was only one attendee besides the friend and her son.  At the end of the workshop, her friend’s son asked to sign up as a demonstrator because he loved the stamping so much!  Unfortunately Pam had to tell him that he needed to wait 10 years, but she still loves that he has become a great “client” and is excited to attend some classes with his mom!

Pam’s strength in creating her projects probably stems from her Minor in Art. She’s taken some photography classes over the years, and has even done some semi-professional photography. Her artwork reflects her knowledge as she thinks about composition, the rule of thirds, the horizon, spotlighting and texture, to help her find the right balance for her scrapbook pages and cards.  She says that she finds her inspiration in her Christian faith and in the beauty of creation all around her.  When Pam loses her “mojo”, she says that she uses workshops to get her back on track, since these workshops require her to find her focus as she organizes as plans for them. 

Pam’s favorite Stampin’ Up product is ribbon.  She uses it for just about everything and has been affectionately dubbed the “ribbon queen” by her friends. If she can’t use it on the card or page, she might even “tie” the scrapbooks together with ribbon like she did with her adopted son’s profile scrapbook.  Pam is usually accompanied by her cat and two Golden Retriever dogs as she stamps, as well as her 1 year old with whom she shares her crafting space.  She notices that her son’s toys are “taking over” her space, and her cat prefers to lay on top of whatever project she’s presently working on!  She also has a puppy, Cooper (she was unable to convince her husband that he should be named “Stamper”!) who loves paper and has made a meal of at least 4 of her card creations in the past few weeks!!   

We hope Cooper will let us enjoy Pam’s creations on the Royal Blog Tour and can’t wait to see what she has prepared for us!

Introducing Nola Burhard

Nola Burkhard

“I love the RBT” says today’s featured Princess, Nola Burkhard, “I think this is my third time to be a princess!” Nola has been stamping for over 10 years with pretty much only Stampin’ Up! roducts.  What keeps her coming back? “ It would be the quality of our paper- - It’s simply the best out there.”

As she has mentioned in previous interviews, her favorite item is the Big Shot. “I use it with just about every project I make. I own a lot of the dies, embossing folders and anything else they put out to go with it. It just helps to take my projects to the next level.” 

She enjoys hosting workshops and stampin’ get-to-gethers. This year she ran quarterly gatherings set up in a shoebox fashion and open to anyone who wanted to stamp with Stampin’ Up products. “I can’t limit it to just current products as there are just too many wonderful sets and embellishments in my cupboard, so I let everyone use current and retired items.”

Whether you’re a beginning stamper or a seasoned designer, and you live in Nola’s neck of the woods, it just doesn’t get much better than that!

Introducing Elaine Wright

Elaine Wright

 

Elaine Wright's Stampin' Up! story begins in Tennessee.  A friend of Elaine's who was a Stampin' Up! demonstrator moved there from California, and asked Elaine to join her stamping club.  Elaine's friend stopped selling SU!, and Elaine wanted to keep stamping so she found another demonstrator's club to join.  Then that demonstrator moved, and Elaine finally saw the light and signed up to become a demonstrator herself, and started her own club!

One of Elaine's favorite things to do is try a new technique!  You name it, she has probably tried it.  With all that experimentation, Elaine has become a master at covering up mistakes.  You won't be able to find her boo-boos, because she can work them into her layout to make it look like she meant to do that!

Elaine gets much of her inspiration from the great outdoors. Elaine says “I find inspiration around me, in my garden and orchard, in the woods behind my house and in my grandchildren's imaginations.  I never can tell what will inspire my next project! “

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If nature fails to motivate Elaine to create, all she has to do is look online in the Stampin' Up! demonstrator forums, or on other demonstrators' blogs, and she will inevitably find something she just has to make!

Elaine’s stamping secret is probably one that we all secretly keep. She has an organization problem. “My stamp room is a wreck!  Not just a mess, a total wreck.  I spend more time trying to find things than I do actually creating.  It's sad.  I think about getting organized but I seem to have a problem with brain freeze when I try.  I remind myself of the people on Hoarders except there isn't a bunch of garbage in there and the other rooms in my house are reasonably clean and neat.  I need to hire an organizer!  My grandson actually told me when he followed me into my stamp room that I could be on America's Messiest Homes if my whole house looked like that.  I didn't know there was such a show but if there is, he is probably right!”

Don’t worry Elaine, your secret is safe with us…and from the looks of your projects, no one will mind the mess! Make sure you take a minute to stop by Elaine’s castle and see what amazing talent she has to share with us!