September 2011 Release Day 1

Hello, and welcome to Day 1 of our September Release! For those of you that are new to Wplus9, we will spend the next couple of days getting up close and personal with the products that we will be releasing this month. All previewed items will be available for purchase on September 5th at www.wplus9.com.

This month we have 4 new stamp sets and 1 new coordinating die. We are also switching it up a bit this month, I will be going it alone this week, and the design team will start joining in with their projects over the next two weeks. So today and tomorrow I am going to be showing you Class Act and the coordinating background building set Design Basics: Classroom Backgrounds.

Class Act

• is a 6x8 clear photopolymer stamp set
• contains 18 stamps; allows you to create multiple styles of journaling cards and more with 1 pre-built journaling card, 5 card building pieces and 9 sentiments/titles
• will be available for purchase September 5th for just $19

Design Basics: Classroom Backgrounds

• is a 6x8 clear photopolymer stamp set
• contains 5 background building stamps
• will be available for purchase September 5th for just $19

It's that time of year and the kids are all headed back to school. Class Act and Design Basics: Classroom backgrounds is perfect for documenting those memories. Now be forewarned, I am not great (or even good) at layouts. But, as tradition holds, if design it...it would be helpful if I actually used it. Right?!

My boys were NOT happy about Summer ending...but they were troopers, and put on some big smiles for me for the first day of school. The new shoes and book bags helped too. This layout kicked my butt, and my sewing machine too. So please pardon the stitching. I broke two needles in the process, I didn't even know that was possible! Let me show you some of the details.

I created the CLASS SCHEDULE tag tucked up on the top left by stamping a portion of one of the background pieces from Classroom Backgrounds. I trimmed it out and rounded the corners before stitching down. The little assignment card is the pre-built journaling card included in Class Act, I added the "A+" also included in the set instead of adding personal journaling.

The background for my title was created by stamping the primary journal lines from Classroom Backgrounds in white onto a blue strip of cardstock. These backgrounds stamps are approx. 5.75" long, making them very easy to line up and stamp across a full 12 inch piece of paper.

For my jounaling, I decided to stamp one of the interior stamps onto a tag instead of building a journaling card. It fit perfectly and makes a great accent to add a bit of personal story. Finally, keeping with the theme, I added another of the background building images from Classroom Backgrounds across the bottom of my layout in white.

Now of course, I haven't forgotten my card making roots, both sets are wonderful for card making as well!

Here I've layered two of the journaling cards on top of each other for my focal point. I used the card building pieces to create my own custom card. The wonderful thing about this is that you can create a horizontally or vertically oriented card. I will show you more detail on that tomorrow. I stamped the "Great Job" sentiment repeatedly in red ink for a watermark effect, and added the "Well Done" sentiment onto a label (more on this later this week) for my primary sentiment.

I have only scratched the surface with these sets so far. Be sure to stop by tomorrow for more.

Would you like to win Class Act and Design Basics: Classroom Backgrounds? I will be showcasing these goodies both today and tomorrow, so leave me a comment by 11:59 PM EST September 2nd telling me if you prefer scrapbooking or card making and why. I will select one random winner from all comments. Winners will be posted here.

Thanks for joining me and I hope to see you tomorrow!

Project Supplies

Smiles Layout
Stamps: Class Act, Design Basics: Classroom Backgrounds (Wplus9)
Ink: Black Archival Ink (Ranger); Riding Hood Red (Stampin' Up!)
Cardstock: Going Gray, Bashful Blue, Kraft (Stampin' Up!)
Patterned Paper: Stampin' Up! retired scrapbook kit (including stickers and brads)
Other: chipboard letters (Stampin' Up!); Upper Crest punch (Fiskars); Circle punches (Stampin' Up!)

Well Done
Stamps: Class Act, A Pocketful (Wplus9)
Ink: Not Quite Navy (Stampin' Up!)
Cardstock: Rustic Cream (Papertrey Ink)
Patterned Paper: Schoolhouse (October Afternoon); Class of 87 (Kaisercraft); Nordic Holiday (Basic Grey)
Other: buttons and twine (Papertrey Ink); Circle punches (Stampin' Up!)