Alaska Cruise Photos, More Paper Purses & a Space Shuttle Delight!

I'm just back from the fantastic Stampin' Up Alaskan cruise — a huge thank you to all my customers and fellow demonstrators in the 3-2-1 Stamp group who helped me earn this wonderful trip. If you hang with me through a few cruise photos, there is a great larger variation of the paper purses that I shared recently -- and of course you can just skip to that at the end of this post. Plus the space shuttle part is also at the end.

The very first Stampin' Up trip that I earned in my 14 years as a demonstrator was the first Alaskan cruise that my family enjoyed back in 2005. This lastest return trip was just a little different as the current space shuttle mission meant that my husband could not go — plus we stopped at Skagway this time and sailed up the amazing Tracy Arm Fjord on our way to Juneau. Here's a photo from that relatively narrow Fjord, which has an incredible glacier at the end -- love that blue ice! It was a four hour trip up and back the Fjord, which has steep rock cliffs on both sides dotted with numerous waterfalls. Our captain turned the ship around right in front of the glacier for the trip back out.

The glacier was a highlight -- and later that same day came the second best highlight of the trip — a whale watching trip in Juneau that included sightings of humpback whales, killer whales and sea lions! We saw so many whales that it was almost unbelievable.

Here's a killer whale that we sighted:

And the tail of a humpback:

And two Humpbacks with their blowholes in action:

And here are some sea lions lounging on a buoy and doing their best to keep other sea lions in the water nearby from climbing aboard their sunny spot:

I mentioned that Bill could not go because of the shuttle mission, so my dear friend Shelly came along and we had so much fun! ( I have to laugh because I'm wearing the same coat and hat that I wore back in 2005 and that's in the photo at the top of my blog with Bill! -- maybe it's time to change that blog photo!)

I'll share some more photos in the coming days, but now on to that larger paper purse project. The smaller ones made from a 6 inch paper square can be seen by clicking here. But these new ones start as a 12 inch square of Designer Paper. These were made as goodie bags for my daughter's 11th birthday party.

They really hold quite a lot -- we stuffed in lots of candy and nail polish, lip gloss, etc. as it was a spa-tacular theme.

Just like the smaller version, these were inspired by fellow SU demonstrator "Frenchie" and I'll put a link to her how-to video, but first here are the scoring measurements that I used:

- Score 2 & 3/4" from two side edges

- Score 4 & 1/2" from the other two sides

Handles are 5/8" by 12" long card stock

My top edge "binding" is 6 & 3/8" wide and 2 & 1/2" tall and it's scored at 1 & 1/4" along that long edge so that it folds in half easily.

Click here for that link to Frenchie's large version of the paper purse.

Finally in this much longer than normal post -- I had to share a link to a very special video from the CBS News program Sunday Morning today. It's about the end of the shuttle program, and yes, somewhere in the middle you'll see my husband Bill. And the end of the video is amazing — I was standing there watchng atop the CBS news building at the Kennedy Space Center as David recorded the ending in one take, timing it perfectly for a zoom over to the last launch of Endeavour. It's a very bittersweet time here on the Space Coast, with one more launch to go July 8. Click here to watch today's Sunday Morning shuttle story and enjoy.

 

Comments

[Beth]

You have great photos of your trip Catherine. And thanks for sharing the space shuttle video. Very interesting and I liked Bill's last comment.

[kivonne]

I have always appreciated you NASA pictures. Thank you so much...I am sad it's our last trip but I have hopes that it will be the end with a new beginning! Thank you!