Merry Christmas!

From our family to yours, we wish you a wonderful Christmas and a bright new year.

The STAMPlorations family thanks you for your support all these years. We are excited to be back in full swing in the coming new year!

After Three and a Half Years

The Russ family, October 30, 2025

After three and a half years, STAMPlorations is making a comeback. I'd like to thank our loyal friends and customers who supported and helped me, Shery, through my breast cancer journey.

While my metastatic breast cancer is incurable, it's treatable, with many lines of treatment available. I'm in treatment for life. The good news is that I'm still on my first line of treatment and I've been NEAD (no evidence of active disease) since February 2023. It took my body a while to get used to all the medications I'm taking but I am finally at a point where I'm able to handle all the side effects at a reasonable level. I still tend to run out of energy quickly, but I have learned over the last 3 years to prioritize, rest, and listen to my body when it tells me I'm not the Energizer bunny anymore so I better stop for a bit :o)

I'm not the same person I was three and a half years ago, but I still love paper crafting, still love stamping, still love painting, still love everything about this community and so I'm once again taking the leap and throwing myself fully on STAMPlorations.

Re-opening wouldn't even be possible without my awesome design team -- the amazing ladies who stuck by me and waited so patiently for me until I feel well enough to pick myself up and get back to doing what we all love doing. I owe a lot to these amazing, creative ladies, and I'm excited to see the next few months unfold when their creativity takes flight with STAMPlorations products.

And so from today until the end of the year, we're doing a re-opening sale. I'm offering existing stock at huge discounts to make way for new stock and new products in the new year.

I've lived the last three and a half years of my life in utter and complete reliance on Jesus, believing and trusting in Him and His plans for me. He gave me a great cancer care team: knowledgeable and competent doctors, nurses, medical assistants. He gave me a supportive community: family, friends, church family, and even fellow crafters I've never met but were moved to either lift me up in prayer or donate to help us get through our initial daily struggles.

Back in April 2022, I believed I wouldn't live long enough to celebrate my children's birthdays that year. And now three and a half years later, I'm still here. My girls, now 10 and 7, still have a mom. I've celebrated Kathryn's birthday 4 times, Winter's 3 times (soon to be 4 times, as her birthday is coming up next month). That's what I call blessed! :o)

And so...I hope you'll take a look at our store, check out what we've got on offer. Maybe pass on the word to fellow crafters who might be interested. And please know how thankful and grateful I am to and for YOU. <3

With love,

Mini Album Mania Challenge

Hey there! It's been a while. While I'm not able to fully get this blog and store back up just yet like before, I'm taking little steps, particularly when it comes to creating. I've been painting, picked up a new skill (cake decorating), and making handmade mini albums.

I'm fortunate to be part of a new challenge led by the awesome Leslie Turner. It's called Mini Album Mania Challenge and I invite you to check out the projects by the design team and then perhaps join in. The challenge is all about all types of handmade mini albums -- no more than 6 inches on any side, at least 3 pages, embellished and decorated, photos are optional. It runs for 6 weeks so plenty of time to create :-)

Here is my mini album -- my main project photo + a flip through of the different pages. For the pages, I used the Mixed Media A2 Card Fronts. For the front and back covers, I used thin basswood sheets (approx. 5.75x5.75 inches) and covered them with designer paper from my old stash.

I have to disclose that I had help in making the album -- my two girls :-) They decorated the cover and the pages with the rub-ons and chipboard stickers (again, from my old stash).

I hope you enjoy looking through my mini album. I call it The Shopping Cart 2021 Mini Album. On September 25 of each year since 2018, I have been taking photos of the girls while they are seated in a shopping cart. This year I will have to be creative, as the girls have grown and don't exactly fit in the shopping cart seat anymore :-)

Spring | Summer Coffee Lovers Hop - updated with WINNERS!

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WINNERS!

$20 gift code - #13 Geri S

Bloom in a Red Cup painting - #33 Kim Klinkovsky.My Kraft Kloset

Ladies, please send an email to [email protected] to claim your prize.

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Welcome to the STAMPlorations stop on the Coffee Lovers Spring | Summer 2023 Blog Hop! I love this event and am so happy to be participating in it again. There are fab sponsors and I hope you will check us all out - hop list links are at the end of this post :-)

Here's my project:

Bloom in a Red Cup

acrylics on 8x10 canvas panel

Digital stamps are great not just for cards, but for other projects as well -- like the one I made for this hop: a painting :-)

I used one of the images in the Cupful of Blooms set. But instead of using the flowers in the images, I simply used the cup and painted in hydrangeas. See the photo collage below that shows how I painted this from start to finish. Want to paint one for yourself? Painting classes and kits with step-by-step instructions and videos will be available in the store sometime in June. (I am still working on getting back into the swing of things and fatigue is something I continue to deal with daily after finishing active treatments last February, so I am not as fast as I used to be.)

I hope my project has given you ideas on how to use digital stamps.  They're truly versatile and the only limit is your imagination.

Leave a comment on this post for a chance to win a $20 prize code.

If you are in the US, you are automatically entered to a second drawing, as I am giving away the Bloom in a Red Cup painting featured in this post to one randomly drawn commenter :-)

If you're inspired to create a non-card coffee-themed project, there's plenty of digital stamps in the store that you can use. Just for this hop, they are 50% off. Use code SPRINGDIGI on checkout. The code works on digital stamps only and good for one-time use per customer. Our digital stamps are available for instant download wherever you are in the world.

Oh, and individual stamps, dies, and paper goods are once again available to buy, and I have adjusted shipping options so individual products can be shipped worldwide. You will see shipping options and rates during checkout.

Thank you so much for hopping! Have a wonderful, blessed day!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Hey there! Some bit of good news :o)

Exactly a year ago today, I wrote this post. Within a month of that, I received my official diagnosis. What followed was a blur for me really...but back then, I just about shut down this blog and the store, believing the worst. With God's grace, things started happening quickly. The next few months saw us receiving all kinds of help from people from our community, online, and around the world -- help came in the form of money, gift cards, gas cards, hot meals, shop orders, emotional support, babysitting, cards and letters, care packages and gifts for my children, spiritual support and prayers. I have never been so humbled and blessed at the same time. I found myself having conversations with God, mostly thanking Him for giving me time and bringing me the help my family and I desperately needed to get us through a truly dark time.

Three weeks ago, I saw my oncologist. After 8 months, I was finished with active treatments and about to start on the long-term endocrine/hormone therapy. I also was there to find out the results of my last PET/CT scan done two weeks prior. As he read the results, my heart rejoiced and I held on to my husband's hand tight. I heard words like "clear", "no FDG uptake", and "unremarkable", and then finally, my oncologist said, "in remission." I couldn't believe it. Actually, I could -- because we have an awesome God who makes all things possible!

Nine and a half months ago, I sat in the same room with him telling me that the treatment he was putting me on is mainly to give me quality of life and make me comfortable for however long I have. I didn't believe I was going to live to see my daughters' birthdays (in August and December) and I started either throwing away, selling, or packing up my things; I didn't want to burden my husband with all the stuff I've accumulated. But Jesus is good and He is faithful, and His plan is always good.

My husband thinks my oncologist didn't mean to say that I'm in remission; that he probably meant to say "resolution" because he was reading the results for my bones -- where there are no lesions at all in my pelvis or other areas. And when you are a Stage IV or have metastatic breast cancer (MBC), there's no such thing as remission; instead it's NEAD -- no evidence of active disease. But it's all semantics, right? At the moment, there is no evidence of cancer in my body -- not in my bones and not in my tumor markers! If there is cancer, it's at a level that no test can detect.

The last 3 weeks have been the best weeks of my life (see photo collage), and it makes me so happy to give my little girls some semblance of normal life after nearly a year of disrupting their routine. While the active treatments (first chemo, surgery, second chemo, and radiation) I received have a host of side effects that I continue to experience and make it a challenge for me to get back to normal, I'm so filled with gratitude and hope for the future. In the last 3 weeks: we have gone out twice to eat; we have taken the girls on Wednesdays for Adventurers Club (our church's version of boy/girl scouts); I started painting again, something I thought I would not do again after I packed up my brushes and art supplies last year; I started helping out my husband more on homeschooling the girls; I took the girls to Hobby Lobby; and we were able to accept a social invite for the girls to play with baby goats! After a long time, we didn't have to plan our day around my treatment schedule.

My/our family's journey is not over. This time, the goal is to keep my NEAD status for as long as possible. It involves continued consults with my oncologist, taking my endocrine/hormone therapy medications, having monthly injections, and going for regular labs, tests, and procedures that doctors in my care team order. To those of you who have been following my journey and been praying for me/my family, I am asking that you continue to lift us up in prayer.

As for this blog and store -- the plan is to re-open in May...honestly, I have not thought too much or in detail about this because I have been focusing on making up for lost time and opportunities with my girls and husband -- time and opportunities I thought I wouldn't have a year ago. The store continues to be partially open, and purchases there continue to help us financially.

I meant to write a short post, but here ya go...some bit of good news from the Russ family :o) From my family to yours, we pray that you are well and blessed! Thank you for following our journey and supporting us through the years -- most especially in the last year!

With love,

Merry Christmas!

 

From our family to yours, we wish you a most blessed Christmas and a hope-filled new year.