Did you know that, every single year, getting organized makes the list of Top 10 New Year’s Resolutions?

So at the start of every January, millions of people around the world resolve that this year is the year that they will finally get organized and stay that way. But by the end of every January, many of those same people have already given up all hope of ever reaching their organizing goals.

This may even sound like a New Year’s Resolution in your own life! If it does, you are not alone.

There’s actually an important – yet little-known – reason for these failed organizing resolutions. The real reason lies in the fact that people try to achieve an organizing ideal, or what they believe organizing should be, instead of organizing their life according to their own rules.

In other words, it’s common for people to see these amazingly organized homes in magazines and on TV, and think: “That’s what I’ve got to do to be organized!”

And because everything seems so picture-perfect, that first thought is followed quickly by this one: “How am I going to pull THAT off?”

Well, I’ve got FABULOUS NEWS for you! You don’t have to “pull THAT off.”

Let me introduce you to my friend Carmen Coker, who is an award-winning professional organizer and productivity expert. She has uncovered four unique organizing personalities, and by understanding your distinctive organizing personality, you can create long-lasting systems to support your best life. (Which is much better than copying systems that look good in glossy magazines but don’t work for you in the end!)

That’s why I’m happy to announce her brand system:

“21-Day Clutter Cleanse: Purify Your Space and Your Life” 

And if you ACT NOW, you will get a fast-action savings of $50 OFF regular price – but only for a limited time!

Find out your Organizational Personality by watching Carmen’s FREE Videos.  Don’t wait any longer – your total transformation (and the “21-Day Clutter Cleanse”) is set to begin very soon.

Go to: http://www.craftyperson.com/ClutterSpecialOffer.htm

Let me know if you decide to join me on this adventure by leaving a comment below.  We can share and support each other through the 21-days!

To your clutter-free life!

Debbie

PS. How do you want your life to be in 6 months, 12 months, 2 years, 5 years, even 10 years from now? I know you don’t want to be exactly where you are now, stuck in a frustrating clutter rut. You want to be living life to its fullest! The time is now, YOUR TIME IS NOW…  Take an opportunity to watch Carmen’s FREE videos, you have nothing to lose except clutter.

My SUN Newsletter customers have been asking me to post some of the same graphics we use in our newsletters.

Click on the graphics to retrieve HTML code.

Static

Blinkie

Here’s instructions for adding graphics to blog sidebars.

My compliments, giving credit is not required however comments and link backs are always appreciated.

Sign up for the 2011 12-day Holiday Helper to be delivered to your inbox every day starting once your subscribe. Having inspiration for great projects, that are simple and easy to do, can be a jumping off point that will spark your creativity.

I couldn’t do this alone! The Holiday Helper by CraftyPerson Production has top-noted Stampin’ Up!® Demonstrators sharing their favorite holiday projects with you. Big thanks to all the demonstrators who contributed this year.  Please give them a shout out!

Sign-up to receive your complimentary copy in your inbox tomorrow!

Getting ready for a fun BBQ and thought I would share some origami folds with you today.   You never know when you might need a pretty box made out of paper right?

Download Instructions Here = http://bit.ly/pzEVgO

We’re so disappointed that we weren’t allowed the opportunity to spoil and thank you with our customer appreciation party this year.  The parties the last few years were so much fun! If you are a SUN Newsletter or Class in a Flash member, be sure to look for us at convention, we have special gifts to give the first 100 customers who find us!

These are the classes Amy and I  are registered for.

THURSDAY

7/14/2011 12:30 PM to 1:10 PM Garden Tour: Model Workshop A Ballroom A-D

7/14/2011 1:30 PM to 2:10 PM Filling Your Garden: Taking Advantage of the New Hostess Benefits to Increase Workshops Main Stage

FRIDAY

7/15/2011 8:00 AM to 9:40 AM Garden Showcase Main Stage

7/15/2011 10:00 AM to 11:40 AM M&T Session 3

7/15/2011 11:00 AM to 11:40 AM Garden Tour: Model Workshop C Ballroom A-D

7/15/2011 7:00pm Every Last Detail (AMY), Village of Cuteness (DEBBIE)

SATURDAY

7/16/2011 9:00 AM to 9:40 AM Stocking Your Garden Shed: Using Reports as Tools to Build Your Business Main Stage (DEBBIE), The Virtual Garden: My Digital Studio (AMY)

7/16/2011 10:00 AM to 10:40 AM Planting Seeds: Growing Your Downline Main Stage

Hope to see you there!

My SUN Newsletter customers have been asking me to post some of the same graphics we use in our newsletters.

US Sample Version

Click on the graphics below to retrieve HTML code and/or URL at add to your blog sidebar, website or DBWS.

US VERSION
Static

Blinkie

CA VERSION
Static

Blinkie

Here’s instructions for adding graphics to blog sidebars.

My compliments, giving credit is not required however comments and link backs are always appreciated.

My SUN Newsletter customers have been asking me to post some of the same graphics we use in our newsletters.

US Sample Version

Click on the graphics to retrieve HTML code.

Blinkie

Here’s instructions for adding graphics to blog sidebars.

My compliments, giving credit is not required however comments and link backs are always appreciated.

This is a feature to our popular Class in a Flash Product. We will be posting a sample of a card using the Class in a Flash monthly card layout we provide to our Demonstrator members. See our Tip of the Month for more details.

My SUN Newsletter customers have been asking me to post some of the same graphics we use in our newsletters.

US Sample Version

Click on the graphics to retrieve HTML code.

Static

Blinkie

Here’s instructions for adding graphics to blog sidebars.

My compliments, giving credit is not required however comments and link backs are always appreciated.

This video will show you how to create a watermark using MS Paint, a free program that comes with Microsoft Operating Systems on PCs. I will first show you how to create a watermark and then how to apply it in MS Paint.

I apologize, there is no audio portion of this video. I have it on my list to re-record.

RULES OF CHOCOLATE

provided by Whitney Richardson

see Whitney at Leadership for a great 3D Swap

1.      If you’ve got melted chocolate all over your hand, you’re eating it too slow.

2.     Chocolate covered raisins, cherries, orange slices & strawberries all count as fruit so eat as many as you want.

3.     Why is there no such organization as chocoholics?  Because no one wants to quit.

4.     The problem: How to get two pounds of chocolate home from the store in a hot car? The solution: Eat it all in the parking lot.

5.     Diet tip: Eat a chocolate bar before each meal.  It’ll take the edge off your appetite and you’ll eat less.

6.     A nice box of chocolate can provide your total daily intake of calories in one place.  Isn’t that handy?

7.     If you can’t eat all your chocolate, it will keep in the freezer.  But if you can’t eat all your chocolate, what’s wrong with you?

8.     If I eat an equal amount of dark chocolate and white chocolate, isn’t that a balanced diet?  Don’t they actually counteract each other?

9.     Money talks.  Chocolate sings.

10.  Chocolate has many preservatives. Preservatives make you look younger.

11.   If not for chocolate there would be no need for control top pantyhose.  An entire garment industry would be devastated.

12.  Put “eat chocolate” at the top of your list of things to do today.  That way you’ll get at least one thing done.

We aren’t meant to deal with life alone… Where’s the chocolate

I found this cheat sheet very interesting and thought you might too!   I’ll be referencing this piece of information from Sendible in my upcoming free tele-seminar on web traffic in January.

Business Brilliance University™, the only One-Stop-Shop for getting your business foundation set up easily and affordably.  I know many of these speakers personally and they are top-notch.  Sign-up to receive some valuable information for FREE.  http://bit.ly/ch7Zfz

I’ve been following Laura Hollick at www.soulartstudio.com for a long time now.  She is one of the most creative people I know and I’m so inspired by her body of work.  I’m thrilled to share with you that she has created a FREE video series on creating more wealth, more beauty, more creativity in your life & business.   We all want that don’t we?   Take a moment and make sure to subscribe to the video series and we can share what we’ve learned together.

Join Laura for the FREE video series 8 Soul Art Secrets

http://www.soulartstudio.com/soul-art-secrets-signup.html

Who doesn’t need help with organization during the holidays? I absolutely love this holiday organizer that Alison came up with last year. You can keep this through the years. They are great memory makers. You can add pictures every year to them. They are, in a way, their own little scrapbooks. These are hard workers though. Through the holiday season, they serve to keep me organized and on schedule. This year is no different.

I used to purchase one of those fancy holiday organizers, but they never seemed to fit what “I” wanted. Making your own, you can personalize it to your needs and special memories for your family. You can decorate it to match the theme of your holiday. You can add pictures and memories and truly make it your own.

With a simple spiral binder purchased at the office supply store and Stampin’ Up! supplies to decorate your organizer you are ready to start. Another alternative is to use the On Board Art Journals or Albums instead. Tabs for things like Christmas Card List, Menu Planning, To Do List, Gift Ideas, and the list goes on, will keep you organized and on task. You can make these as elaborate or as simple as you would like. Make them small enough to fit in your purse or desk size to keep for reference.

Download Holiday Helper 2009 – Organizer

Thanks Alison! If you like these…you are going to love Holiday Helper 2010 arriving here in September 2010.

Do You Get Support for Your Business From Those You Love?  Great Teleseminar coming up.  Find out More http://bit.ly/d0MNUy

The Demonstrator Business Web Site (DBWS) is a must-have tool for any demonstrator, if for no other reason than the online ordering. But Stampin’ Up! continues to keep adding value and business support through the features of the DBWS — and all for the same great price! I want to highlight one of those new features today – E-Cards Importing HTML.

Totally customizable E-cards, sound great huh?  But what really got me excited is when I heard you can import HTML newsletters. I have done some quick testing to see if you can import my newsletters into your DBWS so you can connect with your customers consistently without spending days creating your own.  And…the answer so far is YES. But, always on the caution side, I want to have more testing done and this is where I need your help. In return, I have a free gift for you.

Please test importing my Free Trial Holiday Helper Newsletter into your DBWS e-card.  I have the instructions below. Once you’ve imported the trial newsletter, send me a copy and I’ll send you a free sample of my latest Catalog Helper to send to your customers.

Here’s the instructions:

==> Log-in to your DBWS site.

==> Select E-card Manager.

==> Select E-card Editor.

==> Give a Name to your E-card – “Holiday Helper Sample”.

==> Describe your card.

==> Select ‘Paste HTML Code” button.

==> Open Holiday Helper Free Trial Sample.

==> Retrieve and copy all HTML. Instructions are here.

==> In DBWS E-card Manager, select where you see Please paste your HTML here.

==> Select Preview button.

==> Close HTML Preview screen by selecting the “X” on the top right side.

==> If everything looks good, select Save & Send button.

Here’s the video:

DBWS E-Card Video

==> Send an email to yourself and one to me at service@craftyperson.com.

Do you own My Digital Studio? If you do, I want to let you know there is a new color update available to you for FREE!   This is what you get once you update to version 1.0.1.

• 2010 In Color Card Stock
• 2010 In Color Patterns Designer Series Paper
• 2010 New Card Stock
• 2010 New Color Patterns Designer Series Paper

You will need to download and run each of the individual updates above separately, but boy is it worth it.  Free Card Stock and Designer Series Paper – Oh My!   Our special way of thanking you.

The new In Color digitial items include the following not-to-be-missed colors==> Concord Crush, Poppy Parade, Peach Parfait, Pear Pizzazz, and Blushing Bride. You can see pictures here.

Run, don’t walk to this MDS Updates Page to download your FREE merchandise.

I use these boxes all the time at showers for decorations, games and take home gifts. I’ve also used them for small baby gifts such as a rolled up pair of socks or shoes. You can make these boxes in all different sizes as well since this is a basic box pattern. When making larger Onesie Boxes, just use the scissor…s to …cut the sleeves instead of using the Slit Punch. Yea, yea, I know the Slit Punch is retired, but it is not leaving my office. No way, no how! I love the Slit Punch! You can download the tutorial.

My friend, Lisa Manyon, is a Press Release extraordinaire. She has a FREE tool on her website to walk you through creating Press Releases. How cool is that?

After listening to Lisa’s great advice, I think every business needs to produce Press Releases.

Write On Creative Writing Press Release Producer @ writeoncreative.com

View Project – http://bit.ly/bIkt3y

This is a new feature to our popular Class in a Flash Product. We will be posting a sample of a card created in My Digital Studio using the Class in a Flash monthly card layout we provide to our Demonstrator members. We want to help expand your My Digital Studio business, with this post only you are free to copy the monthly card sample below and post it on your blog for inspiration for your readers. To get the HTML or Picture URL, click on the graphic below.

Click Here for More details.

This is a new feature to our popular Class in a Flash Product. We will be posting a sample of a card created in My Digital Studio using the Class in a Flash monthly card layout we provide to our Demonstrator members. We want to help expand your My Digital Studio business, with this post only you are free to copy the monthly card sample below and post it on your blog for inspiration for your readers. To get the HTML or Picture URL, click on the graphic below. More details.

My SUN Newsletter customers have been asking me to post some of the same graphics we use in our newsletters. However, this blog sidebar blinkie is to entice workshop guests at your next Chicks & Chocolate workshop. Need ideas for your workshop, we’ve posted a few here.

US Sample Version

Click on the graphics to retrieve HTML code.

Static

Blinkie

Here’s instructions for adding graphics to blog sidebars.

My compliments, giving credit is not required however comments and link backs are always appreciated.

This is a new feature to our popular Class in a Flash Product. We will be posting a sample of a card created in My Digital Studio using the Class in a Flash monthly card layout we provide to our Demonstrator members. We want to help expand your My Digital Studio business, with this post only you are free to copy the monthly card sample below and post it on your blog for inspiration for your readers. To get the HTML or Picture URL, click on the graphic below.  More details.

Our class planners, includes several Microsoft Word Documents such as the step-by-step customer instructions, customer summary document and a marketing flyer. You can use the instructions to send home with customers so they have the confidence and inspiration to continue stamping on their own. We offer the documents in this format in case you want to change the supplies used or supply only part of the instructions. But, most word processing software programs don’t come cheaply. I use Microsoft Word 2007 but it comes at a hefty price tag if it wasn’t preinstalled on your computer. I wanted to give our customers another option so if you’re looking for a top-notch word processing software that is absolutely FREE, take a look at Google Docs.

Google Docs is Google’s answer to a web based document system. To use the software all you have to do is have a Gmail account or go to docs.Google.com and register for a Google account. It’s free. In addition to word processing, you can create spreadsheets, forms, and presentations.

Once at the Google Docs website the rest is easy.

Step #1  Click on the new document tab in the upper left hand corner.

Step #2  Choose the type of document you want to create. If you’re familiar with Excel, MS Word, and PowerPoint, these document types will look and feel familiar.

Step #3  Once you’ve made your document choice a new document will open. If you’ve, for example, chosen to create a text document you’ll see the same type of toolbar at the top of the page. You can format your content the same way you would a Word document. You can choose your font type, size, and formatting. You can justify the page right or left, highlight, list items, and include text links.

Step #4  The final step is to save your document and here’s one of the ways where utilizing Google documents really pays off. You’ll save your document as a Google document. It won’t really ask you how you want to save your document. And it will store the document in a main folder or you can create sub folders, label them and organize them how you see fit. Whenever you sign into your Google or Gmail account you’ll have access to your Google documents.

Step #5  If you want to export the document and store it on your desktop or hard drive all you have to do is click on the file menu and choose “download as” from the pop up list. There you’ll see you have the option to download the document as HTML, Open Office, Text, Word, RTF or PDF. That means if you’re sending the document to customers, you can download it as a PDF doc and send it to them quick and easy.

Step #6  Here’s the final reason Google documents is a great resource, you can share your documents by simply clicking the word “Share” in the upper right hand of the document toolbar. There you’ll see you have a number of options including sending a link to the document to a person, emailing the documents to a person or persons, inviting people to view the document or publishing as a web page. This makes collaboration really easy.
Google documents is one of those resources that makes creating, editing and sharing documents quick and easy and perhaps best of all, it’s extremely user friendly and it’s free.

Haitian Disaster Graphic

Sample Version

Here’s the code to add the graphic to your blog.

US/CA Version

<img title="Help to Make a Difference" src="http://www.craftyperson.com/sun/images/CraftyPerson_1001Haiti.gif" border="0" width="150" height="150" /><br />

Here’s instructions for adding graphics to blog sidebars.

My compliments, giving credit is not required however comments and link backs are always appreciated.

When working with project photos or My Digital Studio pages, you will occasionally need to re-size your photos and graphics. If you have graphic software, you can do that quite easily. Unfortunately, graphic software can be expensive, and most people do not have any. If you are among the people that do not have a graphics program, there are a couple sites on the web that allow you to alter your graphics for free.

If you know the dimensions that you want your graphic to be, you can visit resizepic.com. You will see an Image Resizer box. Click on the browse button to browse through your computer files for the picture you want to re-size. Below that box are two boxes, where you can input what height and width you want to change the image to.

Photobucket.com allows you to resize images to predetermined measurements, as well as host photos, create slide shows and more. You’ll need to register for an account with them to use these services.  They offer paid accounts, but you only need the free account to do the things mentioned above.

You will find a box on photobucket’s main page that allows you to upload your images. You simply hit the browse button, look through the pictures stored on your computer, and hit upload once you have selected the picture you are looking for. This picture will be uploaded to your album.

When you are viewing your album, you can click on the image you want to alter. This will open a new screen with a large view of your image and several icons, such as ‘rotate’, ‘send to email’, and ‘resize’. The resizing option has several preset sizes, such as “avatar” size to use on message boards as well as a “website” size that you can place on your website. Just choose which size you would like, hit “ok” and your image will be resized.

This is a new feature to our popular Class in a Flash Product. We will be posting a sample of a card created in My Digital Studio using the Class in a Flash monthly card layout we provide to our Demonstrator members. We want to help expand your My Digital Studio business, with this post only you are free to copy the monthly card sample below and post it on your blog for inspiration for your readers. See our Tip of the Month for more details.