More Time Well Spent blooms! These were watercolored with Purely Pomegranate and Regal Rose, and the green dots were colored in with a marker. This entire card was made up using scraps from my scrap bin. The flowers are stamped singly and cut out (obviously) and then mounted on dimensionals.
This weekend I stamped up a storm (a tiny, gusty storm, but more stamping than we've seen in these parts in quite some time) and I wanted to use my Artfully Asian set and some more hardware - I'm trying to learn not to hoard things I buy. I was admiring a card given to me by my friend, Jeanine, on my birthday where she used the cracked glass technique and it made me want to do some "glass" cracking of my own. I had to stamp two of these central images because I dragged my pinky (or something) across it and smudged the original beyond get-away-with-it-ability; after the first botched try, I went and washed my hands and then heat-set the color after every addition of a new color.
For this technique I used Ultra Thick Embossing Powder, and heated/layered/embossed it probably 4 times and then I popped it in the freezer for about 15 minutes - but it doesn't necessarily need that long, I just kind of forgot about it when I got distracted by something else; once the card kind of curls on the ends and feels brittle, yank it from the freezer and twist it so you get these little cracks running through!
This card is very similar to one that we'll make at my January Stamp Camps. Everything except the ribbon (Martha Stewart) and the hardware (We R Memory Keepers) are Stampin' Up! supplies.
If you'd noticed I wasn't posting, you may have been wondering where I was. I've been swamped at my day job and trying to get ready for Christmas. In the meantime I had a stamp camp and a stamp club meeting that I made projects for.
The gift card holders are Stampin' Up!'s preprinted holders that I embellished with a scallop punch done twice in different colors and then added grosgrain ribbon in either Old Olive or Real Red. These came out cute once I figured out what to do with them. I don't know if others were confused by them too once they had them in hand, but when I went searching for inspiration, there just weren't many examples out there!
The color is way off in these photos, but I'll show you the layouts just the same. The first is a catalog case as requested by my stamp club hostess for the month. All I changed was the use of rhinestone brads down the belly and the background stamping is a little different.
This second card is also a stamp club card. I'm so sad this set will be retiring so quickly! It hardly seems like it got a chance! The stitching was done with the cutting kit tool used for perforating - I just ran it over the Old Olive pad and then wobbled my way around the edges of the main image a couple times to replicate stitching. The star was colored in, covered in Crystal Effects and then doused in glitter.
Thanks for hanging in there with me! I cleaned off my stamp table and hope to show off more samples (more often) as the new year gets under way. :)
I wanted to send out wishes to you and yours for a blessed Christmas.
Christmas is a time for feeling blessed and being blessed. I wanted to share a few of the things that have been so poignant for me this year.
We had Christmas already with Ky's family, and had a wonderful time. We felt particularly blessed by our quality time spent in particular with our niece and nephew (10 and 13 respectively) and not to be too sappy, but I just really enjoyed our interaction with them and my heart felt warmed to have them as family. It really renewed my intention to try to spend more time with them before they hit the true teen years and lose interest in us! One particularly sweet moment for me came when my nephew asked my husband if he would be willing to teach him to throw pottery like he'd offered a while ago.
Earlier this month we had Ky's Christmas work party at one of our favorite restaurants and the company was wonderful. I was so pleased to get to see Ky be recognized for his efforts. He has been working long days and evenings and hiring really wonderful staff to make things work like they should, and in the president's speech, he mostly focused on Ky and his appreciation for him. The night was topped off when 4 of us (me, Ky, and Ky's co-worker that Ky initially followed to the current company and his wife) were left wrapping up the evening with the president of the company after everyone else had left. We mentioned that we're going to Hawaii in December 2008. At that point, the president said how happy for us to have that as something to look forward to and went on to say that because Ky has worked so hard to make things work better and run smoother for his company, he wanted to give us a Christmas gift and pay for our airline tickets. He told us when we buy our tickets, to send him the bill! I think at that point, my mouth may have actually fallen open.
Then yesterday, we donated our 1996 Jetta to charity (a bittersweet memory, as this is the first car Ky and I bought together before we were even engaged, and it's seen us through getting married, finishing college (for me), moving a couple of times, and over 9 years of marriage). The tow truck driver that came to pick it up came around dusk, and with Ky being the chatty fellow he is, he stepped out to talk to him. I glanced out the window, but didn't go with Ky. Later her related this story to me:
When Ky told me this story, I truly felt happy that we could help someone less fortunate than us, but I also feel so blessed to be married to a man who would give away part of his gift to someone who needed it more.Ky greeted him with a Merry Christmas, and thanked him for coming to get the car. He said the man's face was transformed at the warm words and said Ky
was the first customer to wish him a Merry Christmas this season. They talked about how God and Jesus have been pushed from the season by political correctness, and that it almost feels rebellious to wish someone something other than Happy Holidays. They talked about how the driver was trying to get his own business started and that he donates his time picking up vehicles that were being donated to charity. Then the man turned to go to work putting the Jetta on his truck. Ky went inside to the box of new leather work gloves that I'd given him the day before when we opened presents with his family. He pulled out a pair (of the Costco three-pack) and took them outside. He handed them to the towtruck driver and again wished him Merry Christmas. He said the man nearly teared up seeing Ky's gift of the gloves. He turned his gloved hands palm-up and showed dirty, holey gloves and thanked Ky earnestly saying that he couldn't afford new gloves.
These were the projects for November's stamp camp. I can tell I'm REALLY far behind because I've had our DECEMBER stamp camp since the last time I posted! I'll just have to do my best to post those soon.
The candle we altered started out as a plain vanilla pillar candle. We progressively layered paper, wrapping it around the candle and securing it with red sticky tape. The branch and flowers were stamped and the flowers and leaves were watercolored using ink from ink pads. It was then colored and attached with Crystal Effects. The ribbon is held in place by the brads that were pushed through it after poking a starter hole with the paper piercer. When everything was where we wanted it, and how we wanted it, the flowers and leaves were dabbed with Crystal Effects.
This card is the second project for the club. It relies on texture and dimension for its impact. I think this is a great way of showcasing how a few details can give a lot more visual excitement.
I had a very small group of customers come for round two of this year's stamp-a-stacks, but I had a great time. I got to meet one new customer who found me through the demonstrator locator on the Stampin' Up website, and I also had time to sit and stamp a set of cards for myself while lending a hand with tying ribbons for others, and stamping series of images. It was just a very relaxing, but productive time with some of my stampers.
This card was a quickie using some of this year's Stampin' Up! Dashing designer paper. The trees are colored in with markers and spritzed using the Color Spritzer. The ribbon is given a festive twist by using a flat piece of 3/8" red grosgrain, and tying just a small strip of Always Artichoke 1/4" grosgrain around it. The real cheat is that if the green ribbon wants to slip, just add a dot of Crystal Effects glue to keep it in place!
The second card was also a quick one (as most should be for a stamp-a-stack), and it was previously described and the faux silk idea was credited in my "it sure is snow-bling" post.
I do have to admit though, because of the number of rhinestone brads that would have been necessary for the number of flakes, I did go with plain, glass rhinestones in place for the event. They looked great, and I explained to the ladies that it just wasn't cost-effective for me to do the brads.
Sorry I haven't been posting! I've been busy creating banners and watermarks for customers of my design services. I'll be posting a few of my posts from my drafts folder today.
This card went with a candy apple for my niece when I went over there for dinner on Halloween. I thought the soft, fuzzy yarn (from the $1 spot at Target at least a year ago) would be something she would like. This card also used up scraps that I had sitting around on my desk. When I cleaned up recently, I realized I hadn't been USING scraps, I'd just been making them. The pumpkins are striped in Crystal Effects. She really liked the card and told her friend that I always make her cards, I never buy them. I felt so proud that she noticed and that she likes them. She is such a sweet girl!
Santa's hat and coat are paper pieced and glued on and the presents are from the set, Punch Pals. His belt is made from a piece of ribbon and the buttons on his coat are black brads. Before stamping Santa, I made a reverse mask using my large oval punch for the "rug" on the floor so he'd have something to stand on. I just colored over the blank in the mask with my marker, and then "stitched" around the edges with my white gel pen.
Then, I had a happy accident when the designer paper I wanted to use as a mat highlighted those cool blocks of color behind the main image. I've taken a picture so you can see what the paper under Santa looks like. The white line is a representation of what the main image covers.
These cards were made with Stampin' Up Dashing designer paper and scraps. I also wanted to use the set Punch Pals. This little snowman is one of my recent favorites. I think his cheery little scarf is so cute, and the way he's wearing it is inspired by co-worker Adrienne. Can you tell we spend hours together every day? Her name pops up here a lot!
Happy Halloween! Last night I made some treats for my co-workers that I handed out this morning. Most of my co-workers got a 2-pack of Reese's treats wrapped in Stampin' Up designer paper (4"x6" was a perfect size to cover each). I wrapped them in some of the now retired copper cording and tied on a tag with a Booglie Eyes character or saying on it. Other than the tags that had marker-colored characters, this was a quick project and I got a lot of happy reactions to them! I wrote on the back of the tag that they were from me.
Then, for my department co-worker who is a die-hard chocolate lover, I gave her
cheddar cheese! These were individually wrapped cheese packages that were at Target (why doesn't the cheese sound good when I add in the Target part??). Anyway, in spite of her affinity for chocolate, she is on a low-carb diet, and I didn't want to thwart her plans. I do know though that she loves cheese, and knew she'd understand how happy I was that the cheese's orange color fit in with the theme. These packages were each stamped with Autumn Apparitions characters, popped in the refrigerator until they dried, and then tucked in a cellophane bag that I topped with more designer paper and some eyelets and ribbon. This package was extremely well received. :) Makes it always fun to give things to her!
I hope you and all your friendly ghosts and goblins are having a hauntingly good day! Thanks for stopping by.
This card was based on this card made by Laurie Schmidlin. I loved the non-traditional, bright colors. :) This card uses sets Punch Pals and Naughty or Nice. These sets go really well together because they're both done in line-drawing style. They're also great for coloring in, but I think the open expanse that is Santa's body is also really wonderful for paper piecing.
I also go to use my snowflake embossing envelope with my Cuttlebug. His beard is covered in Liquid Applique and Dazzling Diamonds glitter. I've used Liquid Applique before, but WOW, did it ever puff up this time! This photo below is a side view of his beard and hat after I heated the applique up.
Then there's a closeup of the beard and dry embossed piece behind the main image.
I have seen these paper pumpkins on SO many blogs in the last few days that I KNOW I'm not the first to come up with the idea of turning paper lanterns into pumpkins, but in case you haven't been cruising the blogs like I do, I thought I'd show my version using the current Stampin' Up Halloween paper. These are so easy to do, and if you don't have enough patterned paper for your strips, don't be afraid to supplement with solid cardstock strips - take advantage of the fact that Stampin' Up designer paper features the EXACT same colors as the solid cardstocks. I did this on the largest pumpkin shown above as well as the pumpkin in the back.
You can also make different sizes of pumpkins, based on the length of your paper strips, but keep in mind, as you increase the length of the strips, you'll need increase the quantity of strips to have enough volume to fill out the circle. And while I like the look of the "solid" pumpkin, I also like the one on the right NOT being solid so that you can see the pretty paper on the INSIDE as well.
For this card, I used a technique described on Nicole Heady's blog as Faux Silk. I won't go into the steps of the card too deeply, but basically, you stamp your main image, crumple a piece of tissue paper and then glue it on over your main image. This gives a really soft, textured look that's pretty cool!
I liked the textured effect, but it was still too flat for me. I got out some of my new taffeta blue ribbon and some of the new rhinestone circle brads from Stampin' Up. Now I was already feeling pretty proud of myself for using up some of the accessories that I've been hoarding, but I didn't want to overwhelm to card either. So instead of using all rhinestone brads, I also glued on some tiny diamond-like glass pieces. I love the color contrast between the blue rhinestones and the white shimmer of the "diamonds" as they're sprinkled over the card. You can click on either of the images to get a closer look at the texture on this card.
The sentiment was stamped with the help of my Stamp-a-ma-jig and is from the set, Many Merry Messages.
I was looking for some inspiration last night for stamp camp, and I knew that I wanted to use the Boatloads of Love set because I wanted to use the Crop-a-dile to put ADORABLE (can you tell I'm really proud of this look) eyelet "tire" bumpers on the side of the boat like I'd done in an earlier card.
I don't think you can see their impact on this shot, but man, oh man, do the little puffs of steam really "make" the card. I also liked the added ribbon with the eyelets run through along the bottom. I hope my stampers like this!
Side note - I am so mad at myself. I went back to link to a photo of the previous card - AND I DON'T HAVE A PHOTO of it! It was adorable, too! (if I do say so myself). Humph! Moving right along...
For my card I used the Fall Flowers designer Stampin' Up paper, because I didn't want to use the red/green combo shown in the sample on p. 53 in the Idea Book & Catalog (and shown below). I will have other sentiments that they can put in their "word window", but I used "friend-ship" which is available in the set. I was trying to move away from watercoloring because I wanted to showcase other techniques at stamp camp - which is what I was hoping to be inspired to create samples for - but markers just don't do coloring in like watercoloring does. 
This Friday and Saturday I'm holding my monthly stamp camp. This is one of the cards that we'll be making. Watercoloring is always a hit!
When I saw this set in the current holiday mini catalog, I knew I wanted to watercolor it. They highlighted watercoloring techniques at this past summer's Stampin' Up convention, and what I really brought away from it was the need for white space within the watercoloring. I also realized the importance of actual watercolor paper, and using enough water to move the color around. I hope that I can help pass along some of my insights onto my stampers/painters.
I stamped the sentiment with the help of my Stamp-a-ma-jig and even with that, I held my breath while I pushed the inky stamp down on top of my newly painted image. :)
I am very pleased with the softness of the Groovy Guava paper behind the striped paper and liked that it was an unusual color choice that tied right in.
Ky's bosses' (two brothers) mother passed away this week and I needed to make a card for each of them from us. Thankfully it's so rare that I have to make a sympathy card that I needed some inspiration. So I turned to Splitcoast and searched the gallery for "sympathy" - and what a wealth of cards came up as a result! I based my cards on shelart's beautiful card and I'm so pleased with how they turned out.
Both cards are watercolored and use the Define Your Life set as well as flowers from the hostess set, Oh, So Lovely, and with visual texture provided by the Sanded background stamp on both the main image and the card base.
September's stamp club host wanted to focus on Halloween. We're making 2 projects at each club, and these cute little bag toppers are going to be one of them! I don't know what candy she's supplying to fill them up, but I think I'm going to have to check out which candies either coordinate as they are, or have coordinating wrappers to go with the topper. :)
Because these were my samples, the Frankenstein piece and the Boo piece were both watercolored to show different versions of Booglie Eye sets, but the Boo sample was done on Whisper White cardstock, while Frank up there was watercolored on watercolor paper.
This is the first time I've gotten to emboss with a mixture of clear embossing powder and Dazzling Diamonds glitter. I discovered it's almost irridescent on a dark background, but sort of rainbow/holographic-y on a light background. I do love that the glitter doesn't fall off when done this way, but it's also not at all the same as using 2-way glue with the DD glitter.
My stampers will make 10 of these on Saturday at my Stamp-a-Stack for World Card Making day. I'm excited and I know my stampers are looking forward to it, too!
The following photo is a close-up of the main image piece on this card so you can see the glitter effects a little better. :)
This is card #1 for Saturday at my Stamp-a-Stack for World Card Making day. We will make 10 of these in addition to 10 of a second design. There was no way for me to photograph the main image piece of this card to show it off, but it's so pretty in person! It's stamped on Shimmery White card stock. This paper is so pretty! I don't think we've ever used it for a stamp camp project, and I'm excited to show it to my stampers.
The main image is stamped in Blue Bayou and is from the set Season of Joy except for the snowflake which is from Punch Pals, and is stamped in Soft Sky and punched out with a 3/4" circle punch. That piece was then mounted on a dimensional. The Wild Wasabi strip was inked up in same-color ink and wheeled with the Whimsy wheel which reminded me of swirling snow.
I absolutely love the untraditional colors and clean lines of this card. I hope my stampers do too!
This card was commissioned by a co-worker friend for her friend who is turning 50. My co-worker wanted a cheerful card, as opposed to a black and white, over-the-hill style card. I really liked the white gel pen highlighting that finishes off this card. I thought it came out as a very happy card and my friend who requested the card was happy, too!
The word happy on this card come from the Stampin' Up set Hugs and Wishes, and because the usual sentiment on this card is "happy anniversary" I simply used a marker to pick up only the "happy" portion. I inked it once and stamped it three times to get the color variation. The "50th" was handwritten. The light blue ric rac ribbon is from a ribbon set from last year, as is the 1/4" Regal Rose. The 1/2" chocolate chip ribbon is current from this year.
Thanks for looking!
This card is a take on the Workshop Wow featured in the October 2007 Stampin' Success, a magazine sent to Stampin' Up demonstrators as part of their demonstrator benefits. In their card they showed multiple moons in different colors (that I didn't like because, well, Earth only has one moon...unlike Jupiter). However, I really appreciate their card because it's another reason to own the Dots Are Hot set, and I happen to own it AND the wheel featured on this card. Hooray! No purchase was necessary - I even used a spare scrap of Pumpkin Pie ribbon that was on my desk - and I like how my card turned out better than the one in the magazine. :)
Happy (early) boo to you! Have a great Friday!!
I can't believe that today is our nine year anniversary. Time has just flown by during the time that we've been married. I can't imagine anyone better for me than my husband. He's so supportive of me and only wants what's best for me. He's really a wonderful man, and I'm so lucky to have him share my life.
Maybe tonight we'll go out and buy our co-anniversary present to each other... a new dishwasher. One that really works! Not a traditionally exciting gift, but we've discussed it, and well, we would both be really happy to not have to fight our existing dishwasher any more. Maybe we'll be more excited, well, ok, willing to do the dishes if there's a better chance they'll ALL be clean at the end of the cycle.
I hope you're having a good day today and that you can take a moment to be thankful for those who mean a lot to you.
This is so very NOT stamping related, but it really had me laughing when I saw it linked from Cute Overload - the face at the end is the best.
I picture the covers making little ticked-off noises and the air being filled with "@#$! Why can't I get out of here?! What the...? @#%*!!"
Not that my dogs are ever in bed under the covers long after everyone else has gotten up....
