like a 5 year old on...

Christmas eve...

That's how excited I am to be headed back to Ranger U tomorrow.

It's 3 full days of fun & inspiration...

3 full days of tim, Suze & Claudine...

3 full days of being with the Ranger family...

3 full days of visiting with our friend Mario...(the king of Twitter...)

I'm betting he'll post some photos...

click on his name to follow him on Twitter...

3 full days of seeing some friends & having the opportunity to meet some new ones too...

3 full days of being with people who "get this ink thing" (addiction)....

and speaking of ink...

that's one of my most favorite parts...the factory tour...

I've seen it before, but I can't wait to see it again...

It's awesome to see the process of the pads being handmade...

the huge volume of inks is so exciting...

if you LOVE inks, seeing a MILLION of them is really cool...

I think about that every time a box of inks magically appears on our doorstep...

hey...I've seen them make these guys!

then there's the

Stickles machine...

OMG!!

that is like the coolest machine...

I'm especially excited to FINALLY meet...

"the Linda Elbourne"...she's coming all the way from the UK...

We've corresponded for a long time...

thanks to Ranger, we get to meet in person...

YIPPEE!

So, that's where I'll be for the next few days...

getting inky & LOVING every minute of it.

I will post via the iPad, while I'm gone...

but my camera connection isn't arriving before I go, so I doubt there will be any photos...

It's now scheduled to arrive the day I come home...boohoo...

While I'm gone...

take care &...

remember to...

make art!

wendy

It's official...

CERTIFIED RANGER EDUCATOR!!! Yippee!

What a fun fun weekend. I'm embarrassed to say that I took my camera, but failed to use it. My excuse??? TOO busy learning & laughing. My roomie ( Dyan Reaveley) was from the UK and she was an absolute riot. She had me laughing from 5am 'til midnight every day.

Special thanks to the Ranger FAMILY...Alain, Justin, t!m, Patti, Mario, Claudine and Suze for the wonderful experience. Ranger treated us like royalty and they are an extremely GENEROUS company, as evidenced by the fact that I was over the weight limit coming home. That suitcase was LOADED with Ranger goodies. We even got NEW UNRELEASED products...but my lips are SEALED! Check out the booth @ CHA next month. I'll give you a hint...AMAZING!!!!!!!!!! You'll LOVE them all...FOR SURE!

We even got a bottle of Stickles right off the production line. That is such a thrill. The factory tour is just SOOOOOOOOO COOL!

We learned melt art from Suze...got to use Claudine's new products & we had t!m teaching us for 2 full days. Life is GOOD!

I got to meet some new friends that I'll get to see soon @ CHA. Hi to Sharon, Kim, Keychain& Pearl. What sweethearts they are!

Ok...here's a little sneak peek of a Maya Road project for CHA.



I created an inchie! Shari Carrol was @ Ranger U too & asked some of us to do an inchie. I had NO CLUE what she was talking about. But...let me tell you...these things are REALLY fun. At first I thought it was way too small to do much with. But, I got 3 stamps on that baby. Check it out on the Hero Arts blog.

Time to work on getting my CHA LIST done.
Enjoy your day!
wendy

Ranger art, Maya Road & other random things...

I was thrilled to be invited to participate in Ranger's Designer Challenge along with 23 other designers. The Distress Inks come in 24 colors, thus the 24 canvases. Pretty simple concept!

Here's the scoop...

We were each given an 8 x 8 canvas, along with one color to work with. I got Vintage photo...imagine that! I was allowed to use only Vintage Photo Distress Crackle Paint, VP Distress Embossing powder, VP Distress Ink and black & white Dabbers. The art had to be contained within the canvas...nothing hanging off, but we could add any other products. I chose Maya Road flowers & a scroll from the new scrolls set...bet you couldn't guess that! The idea was to create a monochromatic piece of art, that would be 1/24th of the total. Above is the photo. The canvas above mine, done by Suze Weinburg, had fallen off & was out for repair when I had a chance to take this photo. I'll have to find out who all the other participants were, but I do know some were made by Rachel Greig (she's to the left of me), Jennifer McGuire, Donna Downey, Heidi Swapp, Theresa Collins & Suze. I'll try to get the complete list from Robin & update this later.

Here's a closer look @ Rachel's canvas. BAD photos...sorry.

Here's one ...totally not my style, but I totally loved this canvas. Doesn't it just make you smile?? Look @ that face!!

Here's another that I loved!

The other photos that I took are terrible and don't show the true beauty of them. I'll be on the lookout for more photos to share.

*****************************************

Here's a portion of a comment from yesterdays post. It's from my Maya Road "suite-mate" & SWEETHEART...Katie Watson. She does AMAZING art...check out her blog!

Anyway...here's what she said about me...

So, here is the funny thing, Wendy didn't want her "art" to go back with booth stuff, she wanted it to go back with her, so I loaded up ALL her clothes in a big garbage bag (courtesy of the front desk at the hotel!) and brought them home with me to mail to her!!

So the packing decision...art or clothes??? SIMPLE!!!

I did bring the used undies home with me! HA!

That's it!!!

Have a fun Sunday! Hope I made you laugh!
Wendy

ps...here's a link to some photos from the Maya Road booth

Now this is VERY COOL!!

My friend Linda sent me a link this morning. What a nice surprise..I have my Distress Ink tutorial on Suze's site. Check it out here!!
http://www.schmoozewithsuze.com/

Just click on the Maya Road DT link... You'll find lots of great info on her site.

And in other breaking developments...ALL those Stampers Anonymous stamps are now resting comfortably in their new homes. It took me all day yesterday to get them JUST RIGHT! The above photo shows the BORDER drawer. To answer the emails about how I store my stamps...Because I LOVE light & have skylights and lots of windows in my studio, all my stamps are stored in drawers like this. Direct sun is the one thing that is NOT good for rubber. My center island is 4 foot by 5 foot and it is all pull outs filled with stamps. This photo is one drawer of the first stamp cabinet that I bought. I remember bringing it home ( about 5 years ago?) & telling Rick that this much storage would last me forever. Before that, ALL my stamps and supplies were in one shoebox! Little did I know that I'd become ADDICTED to rubber! And to answer the next question...if they are in drawers...how do I know what I have??? Believe me, I know them all. Touch one or move one & I'll KNOW IT! Only one time did I purchase a stamp that I already had. I am dieing to get them ALL inky, but groceries call.

Happy Tuesday!
Wendy