Here’s a beautiful card that Kathie Bailey, of the SS Design Team, sent to me.  She made the card using our new Candlestick image – 1237E.

FYI – Serendipity Stamps is closed for summer break from July 29th – August 8th.   Go ahead and place your orders online or leave messages on the phone.   We’ll get caught up as soon as we can when we re-open.

I haven’t been very good about announcing our Design Team’s Challenges or organizing Customer Challenges and I so apologize for that.   This week’s challenge has been one of my favorites so I wanted to make a point of encouraging everyone to take a look!   They were asked to make a Christmas Card featuring a stamp that is not a typical Christmas stamp.   Boy did they get the creative juices flowing!  I promise - before long I’ll announce a similar challenge for our customers – so start planning!

And I want to take this opportunity to introduce Serendipity’s Guest Designer!   Jenny Gropp will be working with our design team for the rest of the year.   I’d been noticing the beautiful cards that Jenny has created using Serendipity Stamps and asked if she’d be interested in being our GT and she said YES!

This first card was made by Jenny Gropp using 233E Candy Jar and668C Merry Christmas Small.

Next we have Amy Cokley’s card made with 1201G Chipmunk and 668C Merry Christmas Small.

Next is Kathie Bailey’s card made using 213H Typewriter.

Below is Anya Schrier’s card made using 282K Cheryl’s Postcards and just the top part of 1140E Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

And last but not least is Lynda Benden’s card, made using 992G Mare and Foal , 1194H Winter Fenceline and 668C Merry Christmas Small.

The sugar snap peas in my garden finished up about a month ago.   They are one of my favorite vegetables to grow.   So easy to plant (nice big seeds you just plop into the dirt) and you can start picking them and eating them in aearly June!   Once it gets hot, they’re done, and then you don’t have to pay attention to them anymore!  I’ve gotten a couple of wonderful cards from the design team made with our two new “pea” images and thought I’d share them with you along with a picture of my garden peas. 

The cards below were all made using 1210QCL Peas Cling Set, or the individual stamps 1210F Pea Package, and 1211D We’re Like Two Peas.  The card below was made by Anya Schrier – first the outside of the card, then the inside. 

The card below was made by Kathie Bailey.

And last but not least is a card from Sue Eldred.

My youngest daughter and I took the train recently from Kansas City to St. Louis.   Over the years I’ve heard horror stories about long delays along the normally 5 hour route, but recently I’d heard that most of those problems had been resolved so I decided we’d take the chance.   The train ride was great!   Very comfortable seating, similar to an airplane but with lots more seating space.   We left from Independence, MO, just east of Kansas City (home of Harry Truman and the Truman Presidential Library).  
 

It’s a small train station, staffed for just a few hours a day by volunteers.  There was a small, well kept parking lot, and benches on which to wait.     The train stops at least a half dozen times as it crosses the state, but only for a few minutes each time.    Much of the route is right along the Missouri River, through small towns, and farmland.  Very pretty scenery – much better than what we see from the highway (no billboards!!!!).   The trip takes just about the same amount of time as driving, and with two of us, we spent a bit less than we would have one gas.   Our trip back was not quite as idyllic – the air conditioning in our car was working only sporadically.   But the passengers took it in stride – most where St. Louis Cardinal fans traveling to Kansas City to watch the series with the Royals (I’m proud to report that our KC Royals won the series!), and were in festive moods.   This lack of grumbling really made the difference between what could have been a very long, tedious trip and what ended up being a “warm” , but fun adventure.   All of this is a not-so-subtle lead in to a couple of great samples made by our design team using our new Train Engine Large – 1217J image.  The name of each designer will display when select each photo.

I love it when stampers get creative with our stamps.   Color a Coneflower yellow and it becomes a Sunflower.   Put a snowman in front of a summer porch, add some white gel pen to the bushes and you have a winter scene.   Kathie Bailey simply colored our new little Goldfinch blue instead of yellow and viola!   He’s an Indigo Bunting!   Kathie used our new Goldfinch 1219G and Quick Note Vertical 251D to create the outside of her note pad.

A few of the Iris have started blooming!    A few years ago, a woman in my town who raises a huge variety of Iris thinned her beds and gave me a garbage sack full of bulbs.  Well, I’ve been remis over the years and many of the colors have died away leaving me with mostly purple and white.   But even they are breath-taking and provided the inspiration for our Iris stamps – 546K and 547E.   Below the Iris is a beautiful card created by Pat Connelly.  On Pat’s card, you’ll also see the Spring Flower Background 578H and We Turn Not 573D.

Congratulations to Velta Wesson!   You won the random drawing from our Customer Postcard Challenge!   Velta gets a free QCL sized cling set of her choice.   Thanks for entering Velta and here’s the pretty postcard you sent.   She used our cling set 712QCL – Adirondak Chair.   You can check out Velta’s blog at http://www.impressionsbyv.blogspot.com/

 Watch for my next post to see what our next Customer Challenge will be.