Thinking Inking

Bird and a Basket

I'm in the middle of several projects tonight, so I thought I'd post a card that I did for last week's CPS Sketch 75 , and hadn't posted here yet. I chose a Grapevine Basket with Bird stamp from our sponsoring company,  Rubbernecker Stamps, and stamped it in Smokey Gray Versafine ink on a vanilla cardstock. It's colored with watercolor crayons and Prismacolor pencils.  (My markers were lonely that night!)

Base layer is a Prism Spring Willow Medium cardstock. I used one of the new Spellbinders Pierceability dies for the right edge--what a fun new toy! The ribbon is a PaperTrey Ink Spring Moss Grosgrain, and the button is a Foof-a-La button from Autumn Leaves. Finished card size is 5-1/2" square--larger than I usually make, but the image was a large one.

I hope that you are having a great week!

'57 Chevy: Classic Cruisin' Card

How about a guy card today? I came back from CHA with this cool Cornish Heritage Farms car stamp and showed it to my husband. "Do you know what this is?"

"Of course!  It's a '57 Chevy," he replied.

Guys and cars--a perfect match! I kept the card really simple, knowing that buttons, lace, and ribbon wouldn't cut it.  I used some Prism Ferro cardstock for both the base and the focal image. The car is stamped with Black Brilliance ink and enhanced with a white Prismacolor pencil. I added shadows under the car with my Copic markers in a W1, W3, and 0, then distressed the edges and sewed the image to a black mat layer.

For the "You're a Classic" sentiment, I stamped in Versamark and heat-embossed using silver embossing powder. Brads are Making Memories square pewter brads. The background in stamped in Versafine Smokey Gray ink using the CHF grid paper backgrounder. All edges are sponged in antique Linen Distress ink to add to the vintage feel. I think I might need that '55 truck next. . .

Thanks for visiting!

Hey Pumpkin: Tabbed Letters on a Curve Tutorial

Yesterday I had posted a card with tab letters following a curve. I had several requests to show how that was done, so I thought I'd show you that today--the easy way! I started with a 4-1/4" square card base, and a mat layer from Cosmo Cricket's new Haunted line (Gothic).

Instead of stamping the main image, I used (are you believing this?) rub-ons! Hey, stampers, don't drop your teeth!--but I had them, and they were so stinkin' cute! Truly, I'm not quitting stamping--just playing with a new toy.  ;-) After rubbing two pumpkins on a circle that I had cut and embossed with a Spellbinders Classic Circle die, I rubbed the third on kraft cardstock and cut it out to mount it on foam tape.  I used some warm gray Copic markers, along with a clear blender, to create shadows under the pumpkin trio, then a pale yellow Prismacolor pencil to add some back-lighting behind them.

Next I stamped my "Hey Pumpkin" sentiment in SU's Pumpkin Pie ink and trimmed it as shown on the left. Have you ever sewn a sleeve into a garment? If so, you've probably clipped a curve to allow flexibility. That's what I did here--clipped only part of the way through the sentiment down to the baseline of the letters. Notice that a strip is intact from the baseline on down?  That holds it all together so that you don't have to glue all of those letters on individually! (That's the fast part. :-D)

In this picture, you can see where I glued the sentiment strip to the circle before assembling the card. I went back and zig-zag stitched it to add a little interest, then stitched different patterned paper strips (Ominous and Gothic) across the bottom third of the card front. I sanded all of the paper edges, rounded the bottom corners, and mounted the card front to the card base.

Finally, I added a sanded black button, along with a piece of Mr. Campy twill, to finish the card. I hope that this helps make sense of curved tabbed letters! 

CPS 76: Always on My Mind and Hinging Die Cuts

If you haven't already done so, don't forget to check out CPS 76 for this week; it's a simple sketch if you've been thinking about playing along! I'm trying to do double duty here tonight. I usually save my CPS card to blog later in the week, but I had been asked a couple of weeks back how to get the Spellbinders dies to cut hinged cards. There are probably other methods, but I thought I'd take a picture of my way tonight in conjunction with my CPS card.

First the details:
Stamps: Always, Stitched by Stampin' Up
Cardstock: Soft Sky, Chocolate Chip, Very Vanilla (SU)
Ink: Soft Sky, Versafine Vintage Sepia
Markers: Chocolate Chip, Certainly Celery
Accessories: Soft Sky stitched grosgrain;  adhesive-backed pearls
Tools: Spellbinders Labels 2 die, Martha Stewart Crafts Scalloped Lace Border Punch

I score and fold my cardstock, then carefully place it on the die so that I have one edge that will not be cut all the way through (as shown in the picture).  See the top of the die? The folded edge of the cardstock doesn't quite meet the edge of the die.  I usually send the card through the die cutting machine twice to make sure that I have a clean cut. If you have a heavy cardstock, it's tough to get a perfect cut every time, but lighter cardstocks will double-cut pretty easily.

The next picture shows an open view of the card so that you see what the hinged side looks like after it's cut. I use this method often to cut scalloped cards with the Long Rectangle sets--you can get a card that's about 6" x 3" with the largest scallop, and leave one long side slightly hinged. I hope this helps, and I hope you have a wonderful Sunday!

Charmed Zinnias

Tonight I worked mostly on a couple of last-minute card submissions, but I still have one small item to show you--smaller than it looks from the picture anyway! I stamped the Zinnias image (Lockhart) in black Memento ink and colored it with the Copic markers shown below. I then punched it out with a 1-1/4" circle punch and sandwiched it between two layers of thin glass. After wrapping it in wavy copper foil tape, I soldered its edges. (All Simply Swank soldering supplies that I used are available in the soldering section of Ellen's store.)

The top piece is actually half of a piece; I was having a hard time getting my scrolls on tonight, so I gave up on them and bent a long piece in two until it broke, then used half of it to solder to the top edge. Next I ran a jump ring through the little scroll at the top--it worked better than the scroll pieces for me!

If you are in need of more pictures to explain the steps, this charm involved the same steps as the one that I wrote a tutorial for here; I hope that it's helpful.

I hope you have a delightful weekend!

Halloween Treats

It's time for a PaperTrey Ink challenge again!  This month the challenge issued was to create a Halloween treats package; it's been a true challenge for me in the sense that I kept coming up with ideas, but not an idea that I just knew was THE Idea. So how about two ideas?

First is a PaperTrey 4 oz. square clear-topped tin filled with eight topped miniature Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. (And, for the record, I plead the fifth amendment on exactly what happened to most of the bag while I was brainstorming. . .)

I covered my tin with Prism Papaya Puree Dark cardstock, cut to 7/8" wide x about 10" long. I  stamped bats from the Spooky Sweets set in Versamagic Purple Hydrangea ink before adhering the strip with redline tape. For the lid treatment, I used the "treats" sentiment from Spooky Sweets, stamped on Plum Pudding twill with Palette Noir ink. The spider on the top is made from clear shrink plastic. For the Reese's cup toppers, I used Versamagic Purple Hydrangea and  Stampin' Up  Pumpkin Pie inks. I added some black glitter pen to the spiders for a little extra  shimmer. To cut the circles, I used two circle punches, an EK Success one that measures 1-1/16" (though I thought it was supposed to be a 1" punch), and an SU 1/2" punch.

Next, I  slightly tweaked a  nuggets box pattern posted by Chris (username cdjkssss) on Splitcoaststampers; I used her four-long pattern and made it just about 1/4" shorter to fit three Reese's cups. Here is the post with the four-long pattern. If you have never seen this whole thread before, it's an amazing resource--Chris rocks!

Here are shut and open views of my tweaked box. The pattern on the outside of the box is my out-of-the-box attempt for the week month. It's using the Guide Lines set stamped in white craft ink on black cardstock, with patterns filled in with Versamagic Spring Peony and Mango Madness inks. After I got both patterns stamped, one of them stared at me. . . and I remembered having some little googly eyes somewhere. So what do you think--am I the only one seeing eyes here?  My son was impressed anyway. ;-)

Be sure to check out these other challenge posts for Halloween Treat ideas too: Amy, Heather, Lauren, Lisa, and perhaps Nichole too. Have a great day!

Courage: Just Rite Stampers Brayton Preview

Today I had a chance to play with another cool CHA prototype toy--meet Brayton, the font that I begged for! As much as I've enjoyed the Just Rite Stampers Small Letters with the round blocks, I was really excited about their new larger font offerings that would enable me to easily set up any sentiment I wanted.

As you can see from the picture below, Just Rite is going to be offering long wooden blocks on which you can build horizontal sentiments. I've shown only the larger block and one font set, Brayton, but the Harmony Rectangular Set includes both large and medium-sized blocks, compatible with any of their fonts. The fonts come complete with 25pt., 50 pt., and 95pt. sized characters in each set--296 pieces per set, stacked in an area about 6-1/2" x 2-1/4" x 1-1/2" tall! I really like using the wooden blocks because it's the simplest way to use my own ink pads. I read on the JSR website that these will be shipping in mid-September, but they are available now for pre-order if you "need" them as much as I did!

Now for the details: I used Cosmo Cricket Fleuriste paper in the 8" x 8" pad, along with Antique Linen Distress ink and Versamagic Perfect Plumeria ink. I did a little edge-distressing with the side of my scissors, along with a bit of sewing and sanding. Buttons are Autumn Leaves Foof-a-La. I used buttons instead of ribbon on this card, because I wanted to make it gender-neutral and appropriate for a serious situation.

You might notice that two letters on my block are missing; I used enough repeating letters that I was two letters short. I simply left a space for those two letters, then peeled then off and stamped them separately after I stamped the whole image. I've heard the "Courage is fear that has said its prayers" quotation enough for it to stick in my head, but I had to look up the author: it seems to be originally attributed to Dorothy Bernard, though others have used it since then.  I think I might need to start a list of encouraging quotations now that I can easily align and stamp my own sentiments!

Bee Happy. Bee Silly. Bee Mine.

Since I've managed to get a few good pictures during our bike riding jaunts in the last week,  I thought that tonight I'd use some of my cool new Cosmo Cricket Jack's World paper to cover a blank canvas frame for one of my favorite snapshots. (No cheesy grin--he must have slipped up!)

This piece is pretty much self-explanatory; it is covered with  Jack's World papers,  sewn onto a base piece and with a few cut-out additions. I made myself leave the ribbon off. . . He can't object to stitching, can he? Finished size of the frame is 8-1/2" x 10", and photo is a 4" x 6".

The toughest part? Deciding which of the word strips to use! Thanks for visiting.