Thinking Inking

Boy's Birthday Tool Card

About a week ago I was privileged to hold a workshop for a young man who is his family's resident stamper. In honor of the occasion, we made a little notebook and a boy's birthday card.  I thought that I would share those tonight to prove that it really can be simple and that I really don't have to sponge brown ink on everything--just half of the things!

This is a fairly quick card using Power Up and the Builder Bits wheel, the HB from the birthday greetings set, and Happy Everything on the inside. It is Ballet Blue and Real Red--clean primary colors. I used the ticket corner punch to make a place for my brads (which are supposed to resemble nails to a self-respecting boy). The HB is lifted slightly on a dimensional. On the inside we stamped happy in Real Red and birthday in Ballet Blue. I am happy to say that my six-year-old son made one of these successfully! He even punched his own holes for his mini brads and eyed it perfectly. . . Wow!

Our second project was a Give Thanks notebook. (My host preferred a generic fall theme to Christmas.) We used the Give Thanks set to stamp a cover for mini composition books and colored these with watercolor pencils and  blender pens.   The background is Cheesecloth--the most foolproof background in the book, in my opinion. I wasn't totally happy with the ribbon bisecting the design almost in the middle rather than 2/3 of the way down; but had I placed it under the sentiment, it would have been too low and might not have stayed attached as well.  So the rule of thirds flew out the window on this one. Benjamin was also able to do a great job on one of these; I stamped and colored one while he watched, then he did exactly as I told him to on shading. I was amazed that a little guy whose handwriting is admittedly challenged could shade so carefully. I'm pretty sure that stamping nicely mattered to him more than his handwriting does. . .   Must be genetic! After he finished and basked in the compliments from parents and grandparents alike, he asked, "Mom, can I stamp with you every time you stamp?"  Hmmmm. . .

Three Snowflakes inspired by Jeanne

While I was browsing the SCS galleries the other day, I came across this card by Jeanne Streiff. Now, the bling factor I had already tried, but I would never have thought of using brocade blue and Old Olive for snowflakes! It so worked for Jeanne that I had to play with this color scheme  too.  (Thanks, Jeanne!)

The card in the lower right corner was my starting point, and the one in the lower left corner was where I ended up. Besides Snowflake Spot, I also used Wishing You, which I embossed with detail white EP. The rhinestones are from an e-Bay store that sold A-Muse products, but you might have them locally. Base card stock is shimmery white--a perfect card stock for snowflakes. Believe it or not, I think that I'm about finished with snowflakes for a bit. . .  Time to move on.  Thanks for looking!

Memory Box

I decided to give you a break from more snowflake cards tonight and make something non-Christmas-y!Several years ago someone gave me a gift box that contained a bottle of perfume.  I saved that box through three moves because I wanted to cover it someday! Using my Recollections designer paper, Royal Coat Decoupage Medium, and Roses in Winter stamps, I  gave that little box a new lease on life.  The only glitch that I ran into was that the lid is quite tight after having been lined with designer paper as well.

For the Roses in Winter, I used Cranberry Crisp, Mellow Moss, and Always Artichoke inks.  I spritzed the roses liberally with water before I stamped. On the tag, I also used two yellow rhinestones from A-Must Arts stamps. Card stock is Ivory Naturals; the naturals hold up well from watercoloring or stamping with a misted, inked stamp.  I stacked a few layers to give the roses dimension--also called paper tole. This was a fun little project!  Thanks for looking.

Digiscrapping Today. . .

I just looked at the clock. Time flies when you're sorting, tweaking, cropping and scrapping digital photos!  I don't have my cards photographed yet tonight, and Sunday's are usually non-stop around here.  I'll try to post cards late tomorrow afternoon or evening.

The up-side is that I managed to digitally scrap an entire family vacation using one of the Shabby Princess quick kits--love those things! I'll share one page; sorry for the blur effect on the faces; but since this is a spur-of-the moment decision, I haven't asked permission to plaster my extended family's faces all over my blog.  I figured that I'd just play it safe. The journaling is lame. . . but good pictures make up for it--right? Have a blessed Sunday!

Joy and Peace

Still playing with Snowflake Spot. . . Are you bored with it yet?  I'm halfway waiting for the new mini catalog preorder period to get some new stamps. It's an experiment in self-control. Trust me: it's bound to fail quickly!

This was a simple card; the background is simply white embossed snowflakes on Bashful Blue card stock. For the foreground strip, I used Ballet Blue (which I have a hard time tweaking so that it actually looks Ballet Blue rather than Brilliant Blue), faux stitched and stamped with the dot stamp from Snowflake Spot. The letters joy are cut out with my Cricut using the Basecamp font. I inked the letters with Versamark, applied Heat and Stick powder, heated, and adhered Dazzling Diamonds glitter. The Pewter hardware was added as an afterthought because it still needed something.  (I think it helped.)  Ribbon is white narrow organdy. 

The small tin is another Maya Road tin with a snowflake and shaker clear glass microbeads. I love those little tins!  I think that I will hang them on a small Christmas tree in our breakfast area. . .

I was downloading all of my digital pix today so that I could access the baby pictures that I took last weekend, and I ran across a cute picture that I took this Summer when Benjamin found a robin's nest tucked in a pile of lumber. We did not touch the nest--just took a picture of the first hatchling and left them alone.  It was so sweet to see!  Thanks for reading. Ü

Another Wishing You trio

One of tonight's workshop projects was a card using the Christmas designer paper and the Wishing You stamp set from the Holiday Mini catalog. I had posted a Wishing You trio several weeks ago, but this one is different--a larger format (4-1/4" x 4-1/4" rather than 3" x 3").  Last time my color goal was to use all of the stitched ribbons. This time it was to incorporate the designer paper.  Each of these cards uses a 4" x4" swatch of designer paper, cut into two uneven parts and flip-flopped to use both sides. Of course, I had to sneak in some dazzling diamonds glitter to give those images some bling!  The only accessories were stitched ribbon and mini brads--quick cards for the last-minute cards after you are tired of making the time-consuming ones. . . or am I the only person who starts with too complicated a design and has to redesign at the last minute?  Thanks for looking!

Merry and Bright

I played with my new Snowflake Spot for a bit last night and this afternoon. A couple of weeks ago, both Amy Rysavy and Sarah Vrolyk had posted brown snowflakes cards because of a challenge on SplitCoastStampers.  And they both did a great job--great enough to overcome my initial "ewwwwwww" reaction when I first heard of the challenge!  Then page 11 of the PaperCrafts Holiday Cards issue had a pink and brown snowflake card. What's with brown snowflakes?  I finally had to try them for myself. Without further ado, here is my similar version of that PaperCrafts card by Eva Costogan--and it's a very simple card.

I began with a tall card format, about 9-1/4" x 4" finished size. On the  top two-thirds of the Pretty in Pink layer, I stamped snowflakes in Close to cocoa ink, stamping off to create depth. On the lower third, I inked my Linen background with Creamy Caramel and stamped it. From the All Year Cheer I set, I used the Merry & Bright stamp, along with my handy-dandy stamp positioner, to align the words on narrow twill.

For the hanging tag snowflake, I stamped a snowflake on a vellum tag in brown craft ink, them embossed with clear embossing powder. I used a cool double-sided ribbon from Really Reasonable Ribbon, attaching it with a mini brad and a glue dot underneath the twill. Finally, I used my Gelly Roll Stardust pen to highlight the dots on the snowflakes here and there; you can't see that on a photo, but it definitely added in real life.  I layered the Pretty in Pink to Chocolate Chip, then to a Kraft base. I have to tell you, though: my typically taciturn husband saw this card and said, "I don't like pink and brown--especially on snowflakes!"  I probably won't try it again, but at least I got it out of my system, right?  Thanks for reading!

Poinsettia with bling

Hi, everyone! We're back home--saw two perfectly lovely babies! Sorry that it took me a bit longer than I had anticipated to get a post ready again. I had invited company before we left unexpectedly for our long weekend, so this day was full of cleaning and cooking in order to get ready after we finished B's schoolwork.

I wanted to try making a poinsettia out of one of the flowers in Flower Fest today. I first inked my stamp in Cranberry crisp ink, then misted it with water before stamping it on ivory naturals card stock. I then misted and stamped a second layer without reinking. I decided to use my lighter layer as the background and added old olive leaves (also misted) to the background layer.  Using a coluzzle circle template, I cut out my base layer and inked the edged in gold paint marker. I carefully trimmed the top layer of the poinsettia and added yellow micro and mini A-Muse dot stickers (rhinestones) as the center of the poinsettia. I cut a larger round mat layer from Always Artichoke card stock and edged it in gold as well.  From the SU Christmas designer paper, I cut my background and matted it in Always Artichoke. I used some non-SU grosgrain that was slightly wider than my SU gold ribbon, and I tied gold cord around the gold ribbon because it ties more easily than the gold ribbon does. Finally I used a second Christmas stamp set's greeting to emboss the "Merry Christmas" sentiment for the front. I rounded its corners to get the word window punch look. (The word window punch was too small for these particular words, but I liked that look anyway.)  This card is 4 1/4" x 4 1/4".  I will need to either make an envelope or use JulieHRR's cool cheat method for using a regular A-2 envelope and making it fit. (If you check her blog, it was in her October 20 post.) 

Thanks for your patience while I was away!

Snow Joyful!

Snowflake Spot is back in the house!  I am really glad that my sister needed my older Snowflake set;
it allowed me to buy this new one totally guilt-free...

I used the Blue Frost spectrum pad to ink my largest snowflake, then stamped it on Whisper White. Next I pierced many of its dots with my piercing tool. The background is Bashful Blue ink on Bashful Blue card stock; I used a small glue pen to selectively add glitter to the background snowflakes.  The Joy tag is punched from the small and large oval punches and edged in silver paint pen. Pewter hardware, along with one more of my little rhinestones finishes it off.

Please Note: If you are in the habit of checking my blog daily, I just wanted to let you know that I will be offline for a few days--computerless-arrrgghgh!  I will try to post again late Monday night or Tuesday, okay?  Thanks for looking!

Happy Together Revisted

If you know me, you know that I haven't had much time to scrapbook since I started stamping. . .  I will have to quit SU in order to ever have time to scrapbook again--unless it's digital scrapping, but we won't go there right now!  I had taken a break for a couple of months on contests, but I had the urge to try again this month. Nothing may come of it, but I entered this little 6" x  6" spread. You saw its forerunner a couple of weeks ago as a file folder. Well, the file folder idea morphed into a spread using the Friends and Flowers Simply Scrappin' kit.  I was pleased with the overall look; the picture is a bit distorted since I was holding the camera at arm's length and shooting blindly on wide angle. . . Long arms come in quite handy! (Don't laugh: you know it's the only way that you ever get into a picture, right?)

These Simply Scrappin' kits are great fun!  I don't consider myself a sticker person, but I love using these; they are thick enough to be substantial, and they are generally repositionable as well.  Other than the scrappin' kit, I used the small rotary cutter to get a curved cut, and I used a Coluzzle file folder template as well. Stamp of Authenticity and Happy Everything were the stamp sets that I used. **Please note that today's picture does not have a pop-up window; my bandwidth is seriously over for the month already--almost 500%!**  Thanks for looking!

Edited to add: I guess it's still popping up, even though I told it not to--not sure what's up with that. . .

Shaker Snowman

Don't you just love to hear the little swooshing sound that glass microbeads make when they move around in a shaker card?   (Okay, maybe I'm easily amused. . . but I love to hear shaking beads!) This is a small note card that I wheeled snowflakes on using Versamark ink, then embossed with Iridescent Ice embossing powder on a Bashful Blue mat.  The shaker mechanism required a bit of fiddling, but you could simplify if you wish. I stamped my snowman image in Bashful Blue ink on Whisper White card stock. I stamped it again in Staz-On Jet Black.  The blue layer became my background, and the black layer my foreground. From the foreground, I carefully cut the snowy area surrounding the snowman away with a sharp e-exacto knife to make a window for the shaker after coloring my snowman. I matted the cut-away part in Bashful Blue--not necessary, but it adds.  Next I added a window sheet/transparency behind the black snowman image to form the window. I then used 3-m foam tape cut into very narrow strips and adhered to the underside of the window sheet.  I peeled the protective strips up, added glass microbeads, and very carefully laid my bashful blue layer on top. For me, it's easiest to hold the bead part above my head with my right hand, then lower the background onto it with my left hand, watching it as it comes down.  (I don't know if that makes sense; you just have to figure out some way to align your two images so that the blue snowflake layer is in the right place.)  I added a real red mat layer, then I added a strip of Real red across the Bashful Blue card mat and finished it with a blue stitched ribbon from the Seaside Ribbon originals collection.  Shakers are such fun!  For me, the foam tape is the key; I like the 3-M or Scotch brand best.  (I tried an off-brand once because it was less expensive. Big mistake!  It was so super-sticky that I simply made a huge mess with it, gooped up my scissors, and got very annoyed. . . It wasn't worth the 50 cents that I saved.)  If I were re-doing this card, I might try wheeling the snowflake background in white craft ink rather than embossing it. Other than that, it pleased me.  Thanks for reading!

Clean, Simple City of David

Remember when I posted my first City of David card and said that I had meant to try a cleaner, simpler (aka A-Muse) style, but it had gotten a bit more involved?  Well tonight I managed to keep the simpler feel that I think this stamp image needs.

The card format is a 4-1/4" x 4-1/4" square. I used a Marvy-Uchida Giga Scalloped Circle punch to get the Night of Navy mat, and I cut an inner circle with my Cricut (though I could have done so with my Coluzzle if I weren't missing one of my circle templates. . .) The image is stamped in Night of Navy and selectively coated with Dazzling Diamonds glitter on the stars and rooftops. I used Versamark on my Twinkle wheel to put stars in the background. (I have a star wheel as well, but Twinkle seemed to fit this set better.) The large bottom scalloped edge is cut with the small corner rounder, sans its base.  (By the way, if you take a base off of a corner punch, do so very carefully.  I've already broken one base!)   The last bit of bling is an EK Success sticky rhinestone. (I really need a source for these if you have a good one. The pack that I have was a gift, and no one around here carries them.) On the inside of the card, I stamped the verses as well as the Mary and Joseph image. This card is simple, and it's a departure from my typical style; nevertheless, I think it works.  Thanks for reading!