Blue Christmas

The only stamping that will be happening soon will be quick stamping.  This card is a case of a couple that I've seen online.  Very easy!  Punch a "moon" out of a large post-it and leave the moon piece on the card while you sponge over it with various blue inks.  Then swap the moon piece out, and put down the big post-it piece with the missing "moon" and sponge the moon in a light yellow.  Stamp your trees and Santa scene, add some layered mats, and you're done!

Wandering Words stamp set, a 1-1/4" circle punch and post-it, Lovely as a Tree stamps, sponges and a post-it note mask.

Christmas Cardinal - SAS card #3

Here is Stamp-a-Stack card offering #3.  The cardinal is colored in with markers after being stamped in black Stazon ink on shimmery white cardstock.  I wouldn't normally have put black on a Christmas card, but it seemed like the best way to tie in the black on the bird, and in the end, I liked how it turned out!

Stamp the Old Olive layer using the branch silhouette stamp, add a little ribbon for some more festive cheer, and you're done!  To give the branches more dimension, just follow the hatching/shading lines that the stamp's artist already included, coloring them in with a darker shade of green than the rest of the branches/leaves.  The only other thing I might add is some Crystal Effects to the berries - since everything papercrafted can benefit from Crystal Effects!  :)

Punch happy - SAS card two

This is the quickie card mentioned yesterday.  This card uses the set Christmas Punch.

It's so easy that there's not much to say about this card. :) A stamped background, and a main image stamped and punched, some ribbon and matting and it's done!

Thanks for stopping in!

Updated 10/28/09 with another look at this card in blue

What do you think?  Which do you like better?

Winter wonderland - SAS card one

I managed to put down the wool and do some stamping last night! This is the first card offering for my stamp-a-stack on November 7. 

This card uses the sets Winter Post and Teeny Tiny Wishes.  With coloring and glittering, this card is slightly more labor intensive, but with the use of punches for the sentiment (no worries about stamping it straight) and simple layers, it's still a pretty quick offering.  Tomorrow's card is simpler yet!

If you liked my felt offering, you can now see those on their own blog.  I think they're going to be frequent enough, and I wanted to keep them separate.  You can either click here, or use the Felting Through the Tulips button/icon in the menu on the right.

I'll be back to stamping soon. Promise.

Last night I tried needlefelting! I bought a kit from Fancy Tiger last night on my way home from work, and after dinner, I whipped this little guy right up! The kit includes enough wool for two owls. The wings aren't even part of the original pattern, and I was able to fashion them pretty easily after making the rest of the bird. Not including the wings, he's about 1 3/4" across, with the wings, about 3".

Can't stop by the store? They have an etsy shop where you can buy kits like the one I used!

All you need is wool roving, a barbed needle and a foam block. Some repetitive stabbing/poking and it starts to "felt" the wool, making it essentially (I think) hold on to itself.

Seen below are some progressive photos of the process. Isn't he cute? I think I'll be making some more today. I'm going to stay inside since it's only 20 degrees so far and it's supposed to snow.

Birthday sleeve

This is a reusable coffee cup cozie/sleeve that I made for my friend's birthday. It's made of felt and embroidered all the way around with a little monogram J stitched in just for fun.

She is a fan of coffee and she's the one who got me into stamping, so I feel a little weird not giving her something stamped. BUT, I'm very hopeful she'll appreciate the effort and friendship that I stitched into this project. And while this isn't a stamping projects, I used the Big Shot and Daisies die to cut the felt. It was so, so EASY. All the flowers came out beautifully! I can't imagine cutting out all those petals from felt. Although felt doesn't ravel, it can kind of fuzz/fray if you tug on the edges of a cut piece, too much.

Below are the shots of each of the flowers that I sewed on and their accompanying embroidery. I can totally see how I could incorporate this into a very special card, but if possible, this takes me longer than making a stamped project! However, you may get to see a few more projects like this, at least while football season is going on. I like watching football, but have trouble just sitting there watching, so this has been keeping my hands busy while I watch.

Some French knots ... aren't they cute? And easy, easy to do!

The little orange center is kind of "pooched" up in the middle; it feels especially nice to the touch. :)

A close up of the J. On this one, the orange circle behind it kind of flares up around the edges giving it even more dimension.

On this one I stitched across the circle/center and then layered French knots over the top.

More little French knot seeds in the flower center ...

And then, kind of a corset-looking closure to keep the girliness going. I also lined the inside of this cup holder with another piece of felt to cover up all my stitches. It ended up feeling very cozy and soft to the touch. Perfect for a hot beverage holder.

Birthday Rocker

This was my sister's birthday card this year. I used retired papers and the skull stamp from Just Jawin' to make an unusual card that made me smile and she seemed to like it too. :)

Nothing too tricky here. The sentiment was printed using my computer. I think the font is Rosewood.

The skull is kind of a metallic, transparent champagne (using shimmer paint) but because I didn't want the teeth to be that color, I masked them off before I painted over the skull.

Above you can see the mask stamped onto a large yellow sticky note with the plain white skull behind that. The crossed bones behind the skull were previously stamped onto brushed silver cardstock and cut out and adhered. Small note: you can see the big chunk of missing "forehead" from the stamp, and that's because it kept stamping a small smudge on my projects where there shouldn't be one.

Cut out the teeth from the stamped mask and layer them over the original. In this case the teeth are sticky-backed because I stamped that part of the image on top of the sticky from the paper (the sticky is on the back).

Sponge your shimmer paint or other color over the entire front, then just peel the mask away.

For my glitter eyes, I put down some Tombo mono-multi glue, filling in the eyes fully.

Dump the glitter on top, then tap off, returning excess to your container.

If extra sticks around the edges, just use your adhesive remover block, or even a clean pencil eraser.

As a final step, I put some Crystal Effects over the teeth just because I could. Hope you're having a good week! Tomorrow I'm going to post something totally different for me. But it's still a craft project. :)

Birthday boy's card

This is the card for my mom's husband's birthday. I was in need of a masculine card and could NOT think of what to do, so I went blog browsing.

Thankfully I found my inspiration. My card is based on Sharon Johnson's card from her blog. I left her a comment earlier this week thanking her for posting such a great card! :)

Happy birthday is from the set Teeny Tiny Wishes. The designer paper is from the retired Muirfield paper pack. Love it, love it. What do you think of my (our) card?

New Stampin' Up! Clearance Rack

Shop early and often at the new Stampin' Up clearance rack! They're offering retired inventory at reduced prices, but only while supplies last. Today I saw that they had designer series paper, and ribbon and rub-ons at GREAT prices.

The only catch, and I can't really consider it a catch, is that you have to shop online for these deals. You can go through my site for these awesome deals. There isn't a set promotion timeframe, so you'll want to check back to see what's up there every so often and see what goodies you can find. :)

Fresh Fall Flowers

OK! Here's the final stamp camp card. I really like this one, a lot. There are lots of little elements to this card that I think make this card special. Brads, ribbons, striped paper, scallop punching, corner punch elements ... whew! But for all that, this is a very quick card. :)

These flowers and grass are from the Inspired by Nature stamp set. I pulled my color inspiration from the striped designer paper from the Autumn Traditions paper, and colored in my flowers using markers in More Mustard, Elegant Eggplant and Always Artichoke.

I'm off to cut paper for camp ... so if you're one of my stampers and you're coming, but haven't let me know - ahem - be sure to let me know as soon as possible so I'm sure to have supplies ready for you! :)

Fall is almost here

I'm sorry the photo on this isn't the best, I'm just trying to get it out there before I head to bed tonight. :)

I think this is one of the cards that we're making for stamp camp this weekend. One more to design! You like my preplanning skills? Ha! I usually know which sets I want to use, and what the theme is, but don't have the final design in mind.

This card uses the set Season of Friendship and Tall Tales designer paper. The bird and ribbon are in the color Dusty Durango, and the other colors are chocolate chip, old olive and so saffron.

You may be reading this on a Monday and I hope if that's the case that your Monday is going great. Have a good week and stop by later for some more cards, including the last stamp camp card. Thanks!

No stamping tonight

Instead, we are watching the Colorado Rockies live at Coors Field in
downtown Denver, just a few blocks from work. We're just 16 rows up in
my company's seats. They got turned in late when they couldn't be used
with clients, and since I was working late, I got to take them! Go
Rockies!! :)

Cupcake card

I think this is one of the cards we'll make at next week's stamp camp. Seriously, I really could use someone to tell me the truth, though! Is this card cute enough for others to make, or am I just fooling myself? I messed with it and messed with it and had the hardest time making it look good to me.

But once I figured out what I was doing, it wasn't a hard card to make.

This card uses two stamp sets, Crazy for Cupcakes and Everything Nice. The patterned paper is Razzleberry Lemonade, with Rich Razzleberry, Melon Mambo and Whisper White cardstock. The orange glitter is from the Fine Supernova set. It's very sparkly!

The cupcake stand is colored in Razzleberry, the frosting is So Saffron and the cherries are in Melon Mambo and topped with Crystal Effects for shine. I love that the In Colors are available in markers now! Finally, I watercolored in the cupcake wrappers with Soft Suede so that I could dilute the color a little bit.

The two main image pieces also have lines drawn in around the edges using Melon Mambo and Pumpkin Pie markers. Because the designer paper has sort of a doodle feel about it, I thought I could get away with that as a way to fill up space when I had too much white space still showing after the card was assembled. I think it's a casual way to bring in more color and vibrancy! :)

Frankenstein Treat Bucket

My project should have been up yesterday, but apparently, the end project that I had in mind, wasn't where the project wanted to go ... Instead, a little Frankenstein decided to come out, just a little later than anticipated!

It's kind of funny, but I had a hard time taking a picture of this project. I really do think it's cuter in person, by quite a lot! His eyes are done using a 1" circle and 1/2" circle project. His eyes and nose are punched out using the Modern Label Punch. The mouth was just doodled in with a permanent marker.

My original project that I started with used the Just Jawing set and this little bucket from the Target Dollar Spot. As you can see, there's no part of Just Jawing in here. :) I finished the feature piece with that set, but I'll have to post that later. I may be a little absent this week as I have a busy week at my day job.

Entering the teen years

Today's card is for our friend's son. He's entering the teen years on Monday. He's a great kid and I wanted to be able to give him a special card. As a new teen it doesn't seem like he'd appreciate a "kiddie" card, and I don't have a lot of teen-friendly stamps, so I opened Photoshop and made an image with the number 13 and then I flipped it before printing it on some brushed silver cardstock. I flipped it so that it could be cut out and still face correctly.

When I inserted my brads, they were too smooth and shiny so I took out a cotton swab and dipped it in the Platinum shimmer paint. I daubed it on the brads and let it dry - I think it gave it a nice, almost hammered finish.

I thought the background for this card would be perfect if I could replicate diamond plating. I pulled out some cardstock and my texture plates and ran it all through the Big Shot. I spritzed my cardstock with alcohol to help make the impressions deeper (used alcohol because it dries faster than water and doesn't affect the color).

Once the paper dried, I got out the frost white shimmer paint and a sponge and lightly brushed it over the textured paper, bringing out the texture even more.

Happy anniversary!

Today is my wedding anniversary. This is the card that I'm giving to my husband. Marriage is work, but it's the most fun work I've ever done. We'll probably go out to dinner ... or something. :) We don't worry about the celebration aspect too much because we feel like we have such a good life together anyway that we just enjoy anything we do to celebrate as a special time to spend together.

I don't have a lot of detail to share about this card ... I used the recipe stamp and "yummy scale" stamp from the set From the Kitchen Of and the i [heart] u is from A Happy Heart.

The black and white designer paper is from the Day & Night.

Shown above is the heart punched out with a 1/2" circle and inserted into a Build-a-Brad. The Build-a-Brads come in a kit and you have the base, you attach your 1/2" circle with a mini glue dot or drop of Crystal Effects and then put the self-adhesive acrylic bubble over that.