Canning Season

Hello Stampers! 
Welcome back to The Classic Card!    Wow... that was one hot weekend!  I hope you were able to stay nice and cool with the help of a little air-conditioning, cool drinks, and maybe even a fountain or pool to splash in! 

All of this nice summer heat is doing its job to ripen all sorts of fruits and veggies and soon canning season will be here! That reminds me of a fun quote: "We eat all the fruit we can, and what we can't, we can."  Does anyone out there can anymore?  I must confess that my preserving is pretty much limited to making freezer jam these days.  But I certainly remember my mom peeling fruit, mixing, bringing things to a boil,  pouring into hot jars, wiping rims, and lifting the lids out of scalding water with tongs and carefully placing them on the hot jars.  Of course then there was the big canning kettle, the jar lifters, and all sorts of equipment.  And all of this slicing, dicing, mixing and boiling was done in a sweltering kitchen in late summer.  I don't know about you, but canned applesauce and canned tomatoes from the store taste just fine to me. 

So by now you are probably wondering if the heat has addled my poor brain.  I hear you thinking to yourself "What is her point?"  Well, I'm just leading up to showing you a fun card using the new Holiday Mini-catalog set called Perfectly Preserved, which you can find on page 29.  What a great set for fall cards!  And what's even better is that it has a matching set of Framelit dies, so that you can cut out each stamped image perfectly.  There's even some coordinating Designer Paper called Orchard Harvest. 

This cute card was made by Lynn Baskin and I received it as a swap at a recent stamping event for demonstrators.  The colors are Real Red, Basic Black, and Whisper White... always a classic combination.  She stamped the canning jar on a clear window sheet ( page 160 of the big annual catalog) with Jet Black Staz-On and then cut it out by hand.  The "just for you" banner comes with the set and she used the Bitty Banners Framelits to cut it out.  The cherries inside the jar are cut with the 1/2 inch circle punch and given a bit of dimension with a white gel pen (p. 157 of the big catalog).  Some white baker's twine adds just the right touch secured around the jar lid.  The new Delicate Designs embossing folder adds a pretty touch of texture, as does the Perfect Polka Dots embossing folder.  I think sitting down with this cute set and making some pretty fall cards would be a lot more fun than canning fruit in a hot kitchen, don't you?   

Well, stampers, that wraps it up for today!  Try to stay cool
Susan