Good morning, crafty friends! I hope you had a great weekend! Yesterday was a day of recovery for me as the TE Team and I rolled back into town around midnight after a weekend of crafty fun. We took the show on the road to Collinsville, IL (near St. Louis) where we set up a huge booth full of our favorite goodies for upcoming holidays and occasions. It was so much fun to meet many of our longtime customers in person and also introduce crafters to Taylored Expressions for the first time! It’s always good to be home though and each night in my own bed gets me a little bit closer to my normal routine. Here’s a ‘road trip’ pic of me and the TE Team (minus Jon – he was driving the big truck).

When we made it to Collinsville, we met up with two of the most energetic, bubbly, happy people on the face of the planet – TE Creative Team members Keia Shipp-Smith & Noriko Fairchild who both live in the area! If you attended the show on Sunday, you were one of the lucky ladies who got to watch Keia & Noriko in action as they demoed our new Liquid Watercolor. If you were too far away to make it to the show, there’s a short snippet of Keia’s demo on our Facebook page.

And before I get to today’s project, here are a few pictures of the booth and the activities we had going on while we were there. The next stop on our series of summer road trips is Shakopee, MN on July 7th & 8th. If you’re in the Minneapolis area, I hope you’ll come to see us! You can find all of the event information HERE.

And now for today’s project! Each day we’re creeping closer to the 4th of July so I thought this would be the perfect time to share some 4th of July projects featuring both new and previously released products appropriate for the occasion. I’m starting the week with a clever project by Jean Manis:

Jean expertly combined our previously released Star Stacklets, Pinhole Star Stacklets, and Fireworks Embossing Folder with our new Caps Lock – USA and a sentiment strip stamped with two phrases from the Land of the Free stamp set. By creating a guide within her MISTI, Jean was able to perfectly align the sentiments to create this striking strip.

Once you’ve gotten the spacing down for the repeat sentiment effect, this card would be easy to mass-produce! Here’s a look at the full supply list for this project:

Thanks so much for stopping by today! I’ll be back tomorrow with another fun patriotic project!