Spotlighting the Wheel!

Hi Stampers!
I have been remiss.  I started this blog in January and I have not used one of our most amazing tools- the Stampin' Around Wheel!  There was a time when I couldn't imagine not using the wheel for a week, much less 5 months.  I used it for backgrounds, borders, foregrounds, made plaids, masked and used sections.  One Demonstrator told me she actually cuts the rubber off the Wheel itself and uses it as a flat stamp.

 My favorite use was to decorate the gift bag.  Let me tell you a story.

When my children were at prime, what I call, birthday party age (I'm thinking Elementary school, but maybe as high as Middle school) Beanie Babies were all the rage.  The price point was perfect, the beanies were so cute (and collectible!  worth thousands!  and always introducing a new one that had to be purchased!).  You remember those days.  Well, birthday parties seem to fall often on Sunday afternoons during the spring and summer months and our family would be found inland at the river enjoying the sun and warmth, drag ourselves away at the last minute and scurry back to the coast for said party.  Luckily the "one horse town" on the river had a little locally owned drug store that carried Beanie Babies, and being in the sticks usually had the latest ones that were sold out in the more metropolitan area around home.  Sandy, sun burnt, in flip flops we would troop in, make our purchase, ask for the nice paper bag still flattened, throw ourselves back in the car, and here is where it gets tricky;  wheeling the bag without a proper flat surface while driving a long and windy road.  Not a skill you ever thought you'd need!  The results were charming (always give children credit for charming results), and we would arrive just a few minutes late, quickly digging out some warmer, hopefully not too dirty clothes from back of the car, grab the hair in a ponytail of sorts, and wave the child goodbye to enjoy the party delights.  Don't you keep a wheel tucked away in your car in the off chance you may need to decorate a party bag?  No?  Me neither now that my children are adults.  This is a close approximation of what the gift would look like:

Keep in mind I dug this bag out of my OLD sample pile, the actual wheels and colors are long since retired and it looks like the bag has seen it's glory days long past- but you get the general idea.  The self inking handle makes this easy enough for children to use as well with good results (remember charming?).
The project that I made for you today uses one of our Jumbo Wheels.  If you are looking for the Stampin' Around wheels in the catalog go to page 6 (thank you Sarah for finding that for me) or you can go HERE.  The handles (102971 standard, 103661 Jumbo) and cartridges as sold separately (101529 standard, 103678 Jumbo, 121206 triple cell).  These are un-inked cartridges and you will need to purchase a re-inker in your color choice to ink the cartridges.
Here is my project:

Now the joy of the self inking handle is that you don't need to ink up on a stamp pad and you get continuous rolling.  However, for a small project, like this card that only takes one rotation of the wheel or less, you can use your stamp pads to ink up the wheel.  This is handy when you don't have the cartridge in the color you need.  The Jumbo wheel I used is Friendly Words (oops recently retired but you could use Jolly Jingles for the same look!).  I inked it up on my Pink Pirouette Stamp pad first and wheeled tone on tone on the pink layer.  I then inked with soft suede on Whisper White cardstock for the main layer.  I wanted to use all these words as my focal point so I added very few embellishments- a couple of brads and some crumb cake seam binding.  Going for a vintage look I distressed and sponged the edges, including the punched lace edge on the bottom.  This was a quick and easy card to come together and it will be in the mail today!

This is a long post but I wanted to show you how I often come up with my color choices.  The color Coach (120148) is so valuable to me I want to show you what it looks like:

I chose the Certainly Celery card and it gives me some color combinations to work with.  You can also be assured that all colors in a collection are meant to coordinate so you can confidently mix your colors and know you will have a nice looking project.  The Color Coach helps to break out and try some new combinations.  I really liked this combo of Certainly Celery, Pink Pirouette, and Soft Suede.
Thanks for stopping by!
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