Darcie Heater

Hope your Holidays were the Happiest!

Hi Blog Friends!

I hope your holidays were full of happiness and relaxation!  I'm working on tons of new products for the rapidly approaching CHA show in January, and look forward to sharing them with you here in the coming weeks.  I'll have some freebies for you this week and a project to share.... but in the meantime.... here's one of my grandsons anxiously awaiting the arrival of Santa.

 
Isn't that the sweetest little face?  We were blessed to have him and his family stay with us over the holidays, and enjoyed the excitement of Christmas morning with little guys running around.  (The other little guy wouldn't hold still long enough, kept running out of the photo, lol).

I hope the rest of your year is filled with all of your favorite things!

See you soon! 

:) Darcie

Believe!

Hi Blog Friends,

Well, I think I'm finally getting my house back in order after the massive Stockings for Soldiers project.  I reclaimed my two spare bedrooms that were FULL of stuff people donated. I also finally found my kitchen floor under the "droppings" from making 600+ cookies. The donations are still trickling in, so I'm still packing and shipping stuff. One more amazing thing..... the first set of packages arrived in 4 business days!  Oregon to Iraq!!!!  Holy cow, that is unbelievable. Woohoo!  Sounds like they're eating lots of goodies and that they got the tree I sent all decorated.  (They're saving the stockings for Christmas.)

Soooo, back to new products!  I wanted to show you one of our new acrylic frames:

This cute shadowbox frame full of glittery goodness was made using my Clear Polymer stamp set, #POL8 Flourish Snowman, and my new Acrylic Shadowbox Frame #ACR 20, Raine Acrylic Frame.  It's like a great big shaker frame with all the glitter shreds inside....everyone wants to pick it up and shake it. It's kind of hard to see the acrylic on the face of it.... I photographed it so the glare reflecting from the acrylic wouldn't show, as it hides the details.  However, photographing it without the glare doesn't show you the pretty, shiny surface of the frame.  (The stand isn't included).  Here's what the frame looks like in the package:

I didn't have an unassembled frame that matches the "Believe" frame shown above, so this one is ACR23 Bella Acrylic Frame.  The kit includes one backing piece of chipboard, three pieces of chipboard cut to shape, (which form the "shadowbox" portion of the frame), a piece of acrylic cut to shape (it's the blue piece behind the chipboard shapes - the acrylic comes with a protective film on both sides of it so it doesn't get scratched in the package), and four frame clips.  Some of the smaller shape frames include a chipboard frame stand also.  Both of the frames shown retail for $7.99.  Holy Cow, that's a good deal!  The Raine frame shown in the top photo (the one with the snowman in it) measures 7 3/8" x 7 3/8" at it's widest points.  The Bella frame in the second photo (shown in the package) measures 10 1/4" wide x 6 3/4" tall. Here are the papers we used on the project:

The "starshine" background is from my U-Cut #UC488 Flourish Snowman ($1.39).  The project can also be completed using the U-Cut instead of the polymer stamps, if desired.  You would need 3 of the U-Cuts to complete the project as shown, as there is only one tree on the U-Cut.  Here's what the U-Cut looks like:

We used Tim Holtz's Distress Inks and an Ink Blending Tool to "antique" the edges of each of the pieces for the frame.

For more information on the acrylic frame shown here or to order any of the products used to complete the project, call us toll free at 1-800-945-3980. 

OK, I'll be back soon with more new products and techniques.  I hope you are all ready for the upcoming holidays and that you're enjoying a stress-free season!  

:) Darcie

  

oh. my. GOODNESS!

Hi Blog Friends,

I am simply amazed at what small town America can do.  I shared with you in a previous post that I was working on a little project to send 300 Christmas stockings to the companies of our family members who are serving overseas.  I started the project by just sewing stockings.  Pretty soon other family members joined in and we had a couple of stocking sewing days.  They kept asking me how I was going to fill the stockings.  My response was "I'm not worried about it, the Lord will provide that part.  I'm just going to make them and see what happens." I contacted the local paper to see if they were interested in doing an article on it.  They gathered the information and two days later it was on the front page. Here's the article:

Here's the tricky part.... the day after the article came out, I left for a stamp show in Madison, Wisconsin. The article said to drop off any donations to my husband at his real estate office.  Yikes.  He was gone the next morning and when he came in to work, his office was FULL of stuff.  He had to bring it home in order to work.  By the time he got back, it was full again.  Well, that continued for two weeks!  The donated items filled the floor of two of our spare bedrooms.  The only bad part in all of that was that I have been traveling for 3 weeks in a row - two trade shows, then off to Portland for Thanksgiving.

So you may be wondering where I've been.... I normally work on my blog in the evenings, but for the last month I've been up until 12:00 a.m. or later working on stockings, fillers, counting, sorting and packing. Ho, Ho, Ho, Holy Cow!  Last night was the big "fill the stockings, pack it all up night".  Here's some of the fun:

Dan with his mountain of boxes:

Here's Dan and his brothers working on the stocking stuffers:

Hmmm, I'm wondering if they called each other to color coordinate their outfits?  Here's the post office this morning:

The post office opened up early for us to bring the boxes in.  (Part of that small town America thing I love so much!)  We had four of those racks full of boxes!  And yup, I look just like I was up till 2:30 a.m., lol.

I'm so thankful to the community, our friends, and our family for the tremendous outpouring of love to these guys who are sacrificing so much...to benefit all of us here at home.  We were able to send stockings to every member of two whole companies, with an additional 30 boxes of stuff to share.  AND, I haven't even finished packaging all of the cookies.  I think I made 600 myself, and friends and family made several hundred more also. THANK YOU FAMILY AND FRIENDS... WITH THE HELP OF ALL OF YOU, IT BECAME POSSIBLE.

Whew!  I am soooooo ready to "settle down for a long winter's nap".  Getting ready for Christmas is going to seem like a piece of cake compared to this.  Tonight I'm going to have a cup of hot cocoa and soak in the tub.... and worry about cleaning up the mess in my house later.

Thank you to all of you who emailed to check on me, and I apologize for the absence on the blog.... but it was for a good cause and well worth the effort.  I know our guys don't get a day off to celebrate, but hopefully it will put a smile on several hundred faces...even if it's for just a few minutes.

I'll be back soon with some new products and some new techniques...but for now all I can think about is that hot bath...and bed!!!

:) Darcie