(Mostly) Quickie Quilt Card

This is my mom's Mother's Day card.  She's a super quilter, so I knew (hoped) she'd appreciate my nod to her craft.  She also stamps with me, but I know her heart is truly with the quilting.   :)

This is not a new idea, but I sure like how these littler squares look over top of the Big Shot Top Note diecut.  I took a piece of celery cardstock, sized 5.5" x 4.25" and a bunch of 3/4" punched squares from Bella Rose designer series paper. I ran the celery cardstock through my Xyron machine (making the entire front of the piece sticky) and then started laying out the squares starting in the middle edge going toward the opposite side of the cardstock.  I left a little space between each square like to define the squares a little bit.

I wanted the quilt to look a little more aged, so I sponged it with Creamy Caramel ink all over.  It dirtied it up just enough.  As a final touch, I did faux stitching with my Chocolate Chip marker on each square.

TIP: That little space between each square left some exposed sticky.  When you don't want something sticky to be, well, sticky anymore, you can take your embossing buddy and rub it/pat it over the surface.  That will deposit its powder on the adhesive and voila!

Finally, I used circle and scallop punches to round out (ha ha) the sentiment "button" element.  I covered the top in Crystal Effects for a little more dimension and it was allowed to dry nice and shiny.   (I was glad I put it into a plastic envelope for delivery because for some reason it stuck to the inside of the envelope - but we were able to very carefully pry it out.)

x-acto-ly!

With the Pick A Petal set, I was having trouble with stamping the centers of the images because there's a large solid area in the middle of the stamps. This happens periodically after I've mounted a stamp.

You may have thought of this solution, but in case you haven't, here it is.

The above is a picture of the stamp, the cure, and the problem with that stamp as it's been inked and stamped.

It's a pretty quick fix. Just take your "hobby blade" and slice out the middle. Use your paper piercer to get under the edge, and pry it up and peel it off.

Ta-da! Now you're less likely to ink up the middle and get those irritating stamped centers.

Hey! Rub-on removal ... in case you need to

Ok, now I don't want to remove rub-ons from this notebook (which I love, love, love).

(the outside front cover)


(the inside notebook cover)

But I was able to remove a crooked rub-on from a blue version of this same book. I don't know if it's just because of the surface of the books, but I used an adhesive remover square from Stampin' Up! (at the bargain price of $1.95). Quite glamorous, eh?



I know the purpose is to have the rub-ons stay ON ... but it was nice to undo a mistake, too! It also worked on this glass of buttons (but I did have to remove the buttons to hold the glass flat for some good scrubbing).

My heart is bigger than an elephant

Heh, heh, get it? Bigger than an elephant? Sorry, I really shouldn't write the text for my blog so late at night. I get slap-happy.

The elephant is from the Happy Heart Day set. I colored in the elephant with a Going Gray marker and you can see the lines. I may try using a blender pen to smooth out the marker lines. The heart at the end of the elephant's trunk is colored in with a marker and covered in Crystal Effects.

TIP: When coloring in something that I know I'm going to color in one color and then cut out, I simply color from the outside of one side of the image right on through the image to the other side. For the elephant I then went back in and colored in the toe nails with my white gel pen.

This card features retired Stampin' Up! designer paper. I cut the heart out by lightly folding a square of the designer paper in half and eyeballing/cutting out a heart like we used to do in elementary school. I used my Janome sewing machine to add some stitching around the top layer. The button in the upper right corner with the gingham ribbon threaded through it is hiding the start and end of my stitching.

TIP: when threading ribbon through button holes, cut the end of your ribbon at a very sharp angle and thread it through the top of the button and then back up from the back using the same end. This reduces the need to have two sharply angled cuts on both ends of the ribbon. This is only important because the cut end going through the button hole becomes very frayed, so you do waste a little ribbon, but there's no sense in losing waste from both ends of the piece. You can also do this while the ribbon is still on the roll and then tie your knot and snip off the second end. The cuts down on waste - no pun intended. :)

Edited to add comments that I've received:

Simone says:

"Use a floss threader to thread the ribbon through the button, then you only have to clip the end once. Works great for me." When I emailed her, thinking she was talking about a needle threader (I was picturing something like cross-stitch floss, not dental floss) She was nice enough to clarify, and said, "Nope...tooth flosser thingy. In the aisle of floss there are things called threaders, they are thick like fishing line and have a loop on one end and a point on the other.

Put one end of ribbon through the loop part and pull through with the flosser, then clip to make pretty. Sometimes the ribbon frays when I try to just thread it with a good point, like you do, but with the flosser I don't have to cut the pointed end at
all.

Look for them, it's like $1 for 5 or 10. I use them on all kinds of things. The needle threader is too flimsy (I broke mine) but the floss threaders are perfect."

And Melissa also commented with her solution:

"Singe the end quickly with a lighter, then it won't fray at all. The S.U. ribbons work amazingly well for this."

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to check out my stamps for sale in the post before this one!

Tips on A Little Birdie Told Me

Tip One: Do not eat cheddar sunchips while stamping or you'll have to find a way to cover up your cheesey fingerprints (hence the giant Prima flower stack that you'll see on a similar card in a later post).

Tip Two: Pay attention when lining up your phrase or it makes the whole card look a little drunk.

Tip Three: attach metal embellishments with Stampin' Up! mini glue dots with great stick-a-bility. To get the dots off the waxy, non-stick paper onto your item, press your item onto the dot, the dot will pull away with your item, and you won't have to fight to get the dot off your finger.

Stamp mounting TIPS for the little birdies: Before you even mount your stamps, you may notice that the large bird and the central phrase are on the same piece of rubber and are meant to live together that way forever.

But it doesn't have to be this way. You can mount them separately! I preferred them separate from one another so that I can put the sentiment wherever I want to.

However, you need to remember to remember that you did this, rather than thinking it came that way because otherwise, you'll spend needless time scouring your work surface patting piles of scraps, looking under your desk, incriminating your dogs, only to find, when you go back and count the stamps, that there are 12 in the set, and you count 12 blocks ... Learn from my mistake, people.

Back to the actual act of stamping these birds for paper piecing. Stamp your birdies' bodies on small scraps of designer paper - and don't worry about the legs.

[said in your best monster truck rally advertising voice:]
Stamp the bodies, BODIES, BODIES, because you'll NEVER NEED THE LEGS!
Ahem. Back to stamping.

Then cut them out of your designer paper, snipping off the tops of their legs, and even their beaks! Cutting off the beaks was figured out after this picture was taken, but you can see the clean lines that resulted from this decision in the first picture in this post (from a different card front), versus the second picture.

Stamp your two whole birdie buddies on a piece of cardstock that you'll use for your central image. Add hats, umbrella, flower, whatever you'd like at this point. Since these are B-day birdies, they've got hats.

Fill in birdie body #1 with some glue - I used Stampin' Up 2-Way glue. Try to stay in the lines, but don't freak out if you don't.

Lay your birdie body cutout over your glue covered silhouette, and press it into place.

TIP! You may have some glue overlap, but that can be handled with an Adhesive Remover. This little gizmo is just under $2 and lasts for months and months. It works to remove adhesive spillage from 2-Way glue, rubber cement, glue sticks, etc. Anything but actual tape. You just let your adhesive dry and then rub the Remover over the affected area and it balls it up for removal.

TIP! This results in adhesive "boogers" being stuck on the corners, but when enough pile up, just take your scissors (but probably not your "good" scissors), and snip, snip them off! Good as new, and only marginally smaller.

Thanks for looking, and let me know if you have any questions!

[Retired] Layers of love

This card uses the retired items A Light Heart stamp set and Petals and Paisleys designer paper. A couple of things that make this card work, I think, are the bold Purely Pomegranate with the softer colors of the card base and the designer paper. I also love the use of the stick pin for a little flare.

You can see though that this pin has a SHARP end to it. My solution for this situation if I don't have a pin cap/sleeve, is to simply put a dot of Crystal Effects on the tip. It's pretty clear in this picture, but on the card itself, you hardly notice it, whereas if I didn't do something about the tip, someone would likely poke their finger, and then they'd notice it for sure!

The picture above also shows the ribbon groove that I punched out. Stampin' Up! has a little slot punch that's perfect for this size slot, but clearly, it wouldn't reach that far in.

So, I just pencilled in a little box as a guideline, and then took my Crop-a-dile and punched consecutive circles down the box until I had a slot. Then I cleaned up my edges with my paper snips and I was ready to go! At that point I put the ribbon up through the white piece and taped on the Pomegranate piece along the long sides only so the ribbon was sandwiched between them but was still adjustable for when the whole card was assembled.

Calm, manly goodness

The background idea for this card is taken from Nicole Heady's project here. Well, really the whole card is inspired by hers, I just used Stampin' Up! stamps instead. Below is a photo of the card without the sentiment. I think that the earthy colors and natural stamp make this a very masculine card. As Ky put it, it has a very Zen feeling to it, adding that that was impressive since Dante's not usually a Zen kind of guy. :)

TIP: When you have a small image that you want to have impact, add layers as well as items to draw the eye toward it. Notice how my hemp string is tied so that they almost make arrows pointing inwards?

I used the sets Embrace Life and the hostess set, Infinite Goodness.

Two Genuine Cards and the ATG tape gun

I'm going to try to make up a batch of masculine cards to have on hand. Since this doesn't come naturally to me all the time, I thought I'd use a masculine set, and try to CASE something from the Stampin' Up! catalog to get the creative juices flowing.

Then in real life, the actual card was VERY lifeless and boring. I couldn't believe it! I showed it to Ky and he agreed it was plain and not very interesting - but he thought the same thing of the card in the catalog (on p. 107 if you want to check it out for yourself). So I reworked the card(s) completely using the already prepared "Genuine" pieces and I like both my cards. These cards are made of all scrap material and I'll count it a success. :)





I also got to use my new tape gun. It's an ATG 714 which uses 1/4" tape. Using it is a snap, once you figure out how to load the gun! I plan to take pictures and post them because there's nothing very hard about it, but it isn't explained well. I bought my tape gun from framingsupplies.com, but I'd recommend using the links for the gun or tape because you have to dig on the site to get to them. I like the tape pretty well, too, so far. It seems to stick really well (even on the uneven surface of the crumpled paper) and is kind of similar to Snail or mono adhesive, but it's got a little more brawn to it and doesn't seem to pull apart from itself or the project like the snail and mono sometimes do.

TIP: to make the paper easier to scrunch up for the card on the right, I misted it very lightly with a spritz of water to soften it.

And apparently, what's stamping without pups to support you? Here I am sitting in my chair with Lily under the desk, resting her head on my pseudo-crossed ankles. Boy, am I a sucker for this dog!!

Thanks for stopping by! Happy Friday all!

Cover your boo-boos with glitter!

This main image idea for this card was showcased by Brent Steele, Vice President of Creative Services at Stampin' Up at this year's annual convention. He is a VERY entertaining presenter and always has fabulous ideas. His presentations also tend to include at least one "bird card." I thought it was so cute that the penguin was dragging along a tree and gifts to share.

I EVEN thought ahead and got out my Stamp-a-ma-jig for the sentiment from the Many Merry Messages set. I marked up the first line of the sentiment and got it all lined up, huffed on the ink to rehumidify it, and, unfortunately, the stamp wasn't totally clean. :( Wah! Hate that.

On the photo sample of the phantom wording above, I tweaked the contrast so you could see the faint imprint that was causing so much consternation. Grr. What to do, what to do? Especially since I'd already re-stamped and colored my main image piece for the second time when the Real Red ink smudged! I thought I'd camouflage it with my Color Spritzer and see if that did enough. I picked out blue because I thought it might look "snowier."

That helped, but didn't solve the problem. Then I wondered if I could add a flurry of glitter? Of course the 2-way glue pen was my natural choice, but it doesn't fit in the spritzer... So, I just leaned the glue pen tip on the outside of the spritzer air outlet tube with my non-dominant hand and held them together.

I worked the air pump bulb with my dominant hand and I got just the spritz of glue that I was looking for!! (You can see the drops of glue below - they're the shiny droplets that I've circled below. Click on any photo for an enlarged image.)

I sprinkled some glitter over the top and tapped off the excess, and, voila! A wintery flurry of snow that "just happens" to cover up my phantom words. :) Hopefully this tip will help YOU out of a jam sometime, or at least help you to pretty-up a project.

Have a great afternoon! Thanks for looking. :)

Define Your Life - a strategy for reading backwards

When I first recieved my new Define Your Life set, I was very excited! Until I figured out that I would never remember which one said what, and/or what each stamp said in full because they're double-mounted, meaning back-to-back rubber, so they don't have a coordinating label on the back of the stamp. This is the vision that stared me in the face when I finished mounting all 28 stamps....

I knew they were all listed in the catalog...but no way was I going to look them up each time I even pondered using the set! I also needed to figure out a way to get me to use them because this is an expensive set. Gulp. Granted, I used my free merchandise credit to get them, but I could have used that credit elsewhere if I wasn't going to use the set!!

Well, I decided to make an index card. I measured my stamp storage box inner dimensions and cut a piece of white card stock into two pieces that would fit. I was pleased at this point that I was able to fit the stamps into a smaller size box than the one they came in because I got my two index cards from one piece of 8.5 x 11 paper. Starting in the lower right corner of the box, and the lower right corner of the paper, I stamped the first stamp, flipped it over, inked it up and stamped it on the 2nd piece of paper. The stamps don't need to stay in the same position in the box, but this way, if I find the "kindness" stamp, I know that on the other side, I'll find the "lucky" stamp.

I mounted one index card face out in the lid of the stamp box, and then mounted the other index card with its back to the first so that I can flip back and forth to find the saying I want, and I can actually READ them because they're full size and they're not backwards!

(the view from inside the case)


(the view from outside the case)

I hope this tip helps you with this set, or maybe gives you ideas for similar sets! Have a great day. :)

Final cased layout for stamp camp

This is another CASEd layout from page 115 of the current Idea Book & Catalog. I don't have the Office Accoutrement set but I liked the flower with the lined paper, and the way they used the spiral punch down the side of the card. I did want to incorporate some designer paper, too, though, so I used some of the Petals and Paisleys paper and I like the happy, light feeling that it brought. This is a good example of making use of what you have on hand....particularly when your order of new catalog goodies wasn't slated to arrive until AFTER your camp has already happened. :)

The card on the left below is the original that I cased.

IBC layout CASE

This is one of the cards for tonight's stamp camp. Because my "campers" will be getting their copies of their catalogs tonight, I want to focus on the usefulness of the catalog outside of just ordering from it. It's such a resource of IDEAS! I know that when I started stamping, I felt the pressure to come up with ideas for cards - as though I should know how to do it just because I wanted to. Hopefully, this can help them see that you don't have to make an exact replica, you can instead look for inspiration to guide you.

This layout was inspired by the layout on page 55 (see below for photo of original in the catalog) of the new Idea Book & Catalog. I was going to do a straight CASE of the layout using different colors, but then I didn't like how it was turning out, so I just started fiddling with the elements. I just LOVE how soothing these colors are together.

Another feature that I love about this card is that is uses ONE set, rather than multiples. A bonus for the budget-conscious stamper.

2007-08 In Color combinations

Stampin' Up has released its trendy new colors for 2007-08, but as I was sitting down last night to stamp, I realized I wasn't sure how to pair them. Then I remembered that last year they'd put out a chart of In Color + Classic colors. Turns out, they did it again with this year's colors. I like it because it's in a readily printable format, and currently, I don't have my computer in my rubber room (but that's going to change SOON). However, when I DO have a computer at hand, I like to visit Scraptitude.com and their SU color combo database which includes a search feature and a random button.

Here are thumbnails of Stampin' Up's color chart which is linked as a PDF above. I hope you find that perfect color combo!

Scrap rhino birthday

Another rhino card using the new Zoofari set! I love the smile on this guy. This set (and MANY others are now available for purchase through a Stampin' Up demonstrator, like me). :)

This rhino was stamped on So Saffron, and I whitened up his teeth with my white gel pen. His head was cut out and mounted on dimensionals. I love cutting this rhino out for use, but hate cutting out his toes. Can you see my sneakiness?

Here are a couple of the same rhinos with toes intact in my June 14th post.

That's right, I cut out along his foot outline, and just colored in some toenails with my white gel pen. Ha ha! I felt very triumphant. :) Here's a close-up of today's rhino toes.