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There is a card contest going on at the PaperCrafts blog right now, and you will see some amazing eye-candy from stampers whom you probably know there. Go vote! (I was bummed when I realized that we could vote for only one. For some reason, I assumed that you could vote for 15 of them since they were selecting 15 out of 20. . . Duh, right? I've never watched one of those American Idol shows, so I had no clue.
I will get a card posted later tonight. Thanks!
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My seven-year old came running into the house one day this week just about to burst with happiness. He had helped rake a yard and had earned $2 from the lady for his efforts. He immediately asked his grandparents to take him to the dollar store so that he'd have enough to buy both himself and his mom a present! The two items were a white teddy bear and a cinnamon-apple candle. I am blessed with a real sweetheart of a son--he must get that from his dad!
So, tonight I needed a boy thank you card, preferably with no frills or ribbons. I used Brocade Blue with the Aida Cloth background, and Chocolate Chip that I dry-embossed with a Fiskars texture plate. The "Thank you" is Paper Tray by PaperTrey Ink. The teddy bear is from SU's Bundle of Joy in the current Spring Mini catalog. I used Prismacolor pencils to color him on Kraft card stock, and a Sakura white gelly roll pen to add highlights and stitching in a couple of places. I used the black gelly roll pen to dot on his eyes and nose, making them shiny. The large brad is a Making Memories large antique copper round 4. I thought that it might be more acceptably boy-ish than would a length of Chocolate Chip ribbon. I can't wait to give it to him! Thanks for visiting.
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It's getting close to Mother's Day. Do you have your cards made? I received my preview pad of designer paper that will be available as a promotion item next month from Stampin' Up, and I wanted to use a piece of it. The only problem was deciding which piece I could part with! (Sadly, many of you know exactly what I mean. . .) In the end, I sacrificed a dotted piece, even though I usually hoard the dots! (Breathe in, breathe out. . .)
I used a current level two hostess set, Both Way Blossoms, for the main image. I stamped the large end and the small end of the flowers, then stamped one more stem which I fitted with blossoms later to balance my composition. I used the SU slot punch at the top and bottom of the main image to thread the ribbon through. The story behind that is that I tried sewing the two papers together and had a bobbin malfunction which messed up the tension--both mine and my sewing machine's. I had to cover it somehow, hence the eggplant grosgrain over the offending seam. Had I not had that mishap, I would probably have threaded my ribbon through the bright gold bookplate that I got from StarLitStudio. Overall, I was pleased with how it turned out; it just didn't follow my initial plan. Isn't half of stamping figuring out how to work yourself out of a jam?
Materials: SU markers in Lovely Lilac, Elegant Eggplant, and Old Olive, Almost Amethyst patterned paper from prints sampler, Whisper White and Elegant Eggplant card stock, non-SU gold bookplate and brads, eggplant grosgrain, SU Slot Punch; dimensionals.
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After seeing what Nichole did by wrapping her acrylic ribbons around punched circles and ovals, I had to play with this Faux Ribbon set again! The words "hello friend" are from Paper Tray.
I used Tempting Turquoise, Cool Caribbean, and Real Red classic inks, along with Whisper White card stock and a coordinating envelope. The small scallop is cut with a Cricut using the Mini Monograms cartridge; I have not been able to find a scalloped punch that small. (Mini Monograms will cut both scalloped circles and scalloped squares.) I think if I were doing this again, I might try the sentiment and faux ribbon nearer the bottom than the top, just to see if it worked better there.
In other news, I've been tagged on the "seven things" tag twice now, so I'd better play before it happens again! I don't think that I will pass this tag on, however. If you want to be tagged, consider yourself tagged and tell the world whatever it is that you're wanting to tell! Here's some random babbling for you if you wish to keep reading.
1. I make good chocolate chip cookies. I wish it weren't so, because we'd all be healthier if I were a bad cook.
2. I am a night owl: I work on my cards when everyone else is asleep, except for myAustralian stamping friends and perhaps Joan. [Hi, Joan!]
3. I play the piano and keyboard at church--that's my Sunday job. Let this be a lesson to you, kids: if your parents make you take piano, don't goof off. You may end up having to fill niches that you never intended to as an adult!
4. I adore stained glass. I was privileged to have a wonderful class in stained glass after over twenty-five years of wishing that I could. Now all I need is time to play with my glass, which has taken a back seat to my papercrafting.
5. When my son recently dared me to touch my toes to my nose, I did it. Of course, I had to go visit my chiropractor afterward.
6. I'm a very private person--no doubt you won't believe this since I babble incessantly online. . .
7. I can't think of another single thing to say. Since it's 4:30am, I think I'll sleep on number 7. Goodnight!
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More of my Cosmo Cricket Dutch Girl paper from Jacksonbelle--what can I say? It's gorgeous paper! I took Emily's suggestion and used Sage Shadow instead Mellow Moss for the green tonight. I think that with the cool tones in the paper--yes, even the red leans toward violet--the Sage Shadow worked better than the Mellow Moss would have. Thanks, Emily!
This was the card that I started last night for the side tab tutorial, but I found that my artwork was too narrow to use the slit punch. I couldn't get the base of the punch far enough in, so I had to pull out my Basic Grey Notch and Die Tool.
I don't use this tool very often, but it certainly comes in handy when you need a longer reach! It is well-made and sturdy, though it takes a bit more careful positioning than a slit punch.
After deciding where I wanted my layers, I laid them in place and penciled my guidelines in on either side of the the artwork. See the pencil lines? I needed the notch to be slightly outside the marks so that I could easily insert my artwork. I aligned my notching tool around 1/16" to 1/8" beyond my marks, then pressed down firmly. I don't know if you are supposed to do this, but I usually slightly rock it from side to side to be sure than I have cut through my card stock, always making sure that it is on a self-healing mat first.
After cutting notches into both sides, I was ready to slide my artwork into place and embellish. I decided to do something a little different tonight--use cord instead of ribbon. I like to spread cord so that it V's from the artwork, so I added Bordering Blue eyelets and ran silver metallic cord through them. 
To keep them from sliding out of place, I used my 1/16" hole punch to nip a semi-circle in the edge of the card stock, forming a track for the cord to stay in. Finally, I taped the cord on the back, stamped "Bonjour" from Carte Postale on the bottom of the flower, and and mounted the card front on a Confetti White base. That's all there is to getting a slit in the place you want it--marking and cutting carefully. As my husband says when he's building, "Measure twice, cut once!"
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Tonight I wanted to show you how to get a slit punch even on both sides on your artwork. A couple of you had asked questions about this, and it was simpler to show you with pictures than to try to explain it. This was my second tab card tonight. (I'll try to post the other one tomorrow night.) This one uses the SU slit punch, which many of you would have, and the next one uses the Basic Grey Notch and Die Tool because it reaches farther in than the slit punch.
I have had this cool Lockhart Party Shoe stamp for a couple of weeks and wanted to try Ellen's paper piecing technique with it. I knew that I wanted to use my Crate Avenue Collection of paper, but all of the patterns were too large for the shoe. As I stared at the package, however, I noticed that the cover sheet had thumbnails of all of the papers--voila! They were the perfect size to use for the pump! 
I stamped the pump image three times on the thumbnail sheet--once for the body of the shoe, once for its heel, and once for the inside--and trimmed and glued the pieces together carefully.
After stamping the Ivory Naturals oval with Autumn Leaves swirls stamps in Sahara Sand, I then mounted the shoe with foam tape onto the ivory oval (Coluzzle) and a black scalloped oval (Marvy Giga Scalloped Punch). 
I carefully penciled in the outline of the outer scallop on both sides of the shoe so that I'd have a guide to use for punching. (Do you see all of the markings on the back of my slit punch? I added these with a black fine point Sharpie to help me judge spacing for slits when I don't want to take time to 
pencil the lines in.) Using my pencil marks as a guideline, I cut my tabs, making sure not to come quite to the edge of the pencil mark so that I could slip my artwork underneath the tab easily.
After inserting and adhering the artwork, I punched holes for black eyelets through which to thread the ivory narrow organdy ribbon. 
Finally I stamped the sentiment from the PaperTrey Green Thumb set, rounded its inside edges, and sponged it in Sahara Sand to help it stand out a bit; and I added a Swarovski crystal to the shoe. Here's hoping that you have the right shoes with which to conquer the day!
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I am officially in love with the Cosmo Cricket Dutch Girl paper! I have seen several people use it, and I liked it enough to order some from Lindsey last weekend. But I was totally unprepared for just how much I would love this paper. (Yes, I would have gotten more than five sheets if I had only known. . .) Tonight I finally had time to play with it for a bit. Tomorrow I'm buying stock in the company. (Just kidding--no money left for stock!)
I pulled colors from the patterned paper--Real Red, Bordering Blue, and Certainly Celery/Mellow Moss. (Mellow Moss is a better match, but it was too dark after I melted Glassy Glaze on it. Certainly Celery is a bit too intense to match, but it worked acceptably.) I stamped the flowers in craft inks and embossed with SU Glassy Glaze (clear UTEE). I then cut a scalloped circle (Marvy Giga Scalloped circle punch) and pierced its scallops. The inner layer was stamped with a TAC whirly gigs stamp in Mellow Moss classic ink. I mounted the flowers with dimensionals and added a button and a tag, stamped with the Paper Tray set on a Sizzix die-cut from chipboard.
A couple of you asked this weekend about a tutorial on getting the tabs aligned evenly when using the slit punch. I will try to get that done in the next few days. Have a wonderful week!
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I was playing with the Bundle of Joy giraffe tonight and decided to make a child's birthday card with it; when I need to reach for the card stash, I am generally lacking in men's cards and children's cards. I used the Petals and Paisleys designer paper for the strip of trim, and I used the PapertreyFaux Ribbon set for the sentiment. The SU Bundle of Joy giraffe is colored in Prismacolors. (There now, some of you who bought them on sale a year or more ago need to find them and use them; these are seriously sweet pencils!)
I used the SU small oval and large oval punches for the sentiment, then I used some Fiskars small scalloping scissors to trim around the oval, mostly because it seemed a little large and overwhelming before it was trimmed.
Background is the SU Aida Cloth background, stamped in So Saffron on So Saffron card stock. (If you prefer a darker backrgound tint, you could use More Mustard ink.) Sentiment is stamped in Old Olive.
I will try to list some more blogs in the near future; it's late tonight, so I'll give you a break. Thanks for visiting!
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Tonight I played with another quilted card. Stampin' Up has really come out with some lovely designer papers lately, and this one, Petals and Paisleys, is no exception. For the inside of the label holder, I used a sentiment from the Faux Ribbon set by PaperTrey. I love having all of these sentiments that fit into my punches!
For the quilt, I cut nine pieces of various designer papers into 1-1/2" squares. It works well to use four different patterns. If you begin in the top left corner, you will need three of that one pattern and two of the other three patterns. I cut a white base that was 4-1/2" x 4-1/2" to adhere the 1-1/2" squares to, cutting carefully so that they would fit nicely. After attaching my squares in order (1-2-3, 4-1-2, 3-4-1), I ran two lines of zig-zag stitching over the blocks from top and one side. Next I matted this quilted layer onto a layer of Cool Caribbean that was 4-5/8" x 4-5/8" and stitched around the entire square. I added my label holder and ribbon next and mounted the card front onto a base that was 4-3/4" x 4-3/4" folded.
Now I know that I listed five blogs last night, but there are so many others that I love to peek in on as well! If you haven't seen any of these, you should. . .
Emily Giovanni, who is super talented and designs for GinaK, and Emily's sister Kimberly Geswein, who is an incredible digital scrapper and writes the most meaningful journaling that I've ever read
Asela Hopkins, who is one mean watercolorist (and I mean that in the good way!)
Denise Foxworthy, who always has something well worth thinking about posted on her blog
Dawn Griffith, who maintains a positive attitude and radiates joy and enthusiasm in whatever she says
Beate Johns, who must have at least 48 hours in every day to accomplish all that she does, as well as Jenn Balcer, who can use bright colors more beautifully than anybody else
And of course, Julie Ebersole, who I am sure has been tagged a hundred times! I know that Julie's wasn't the first stamping blog--that would be Michelle's claim to fame-- but it was the one that first intrigued me with blogging, followed soon after by Lisa Johnson's and then Amy Rysavy's, one month before I started. (I guess that means that Amy pushed me over the edge!)
I'm not finished yet, but I'll stop for tonight and intersperse more in future posts. Thanks for visiting, and thank you, Susanna, for a tag tonight!
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I was tagged in the last two days, so I figured it was time to play along. Many thanks to Sue Berker, Trish D and Susan, who tagged me! I am supposed to list my top five favorite blogs. That's a hard one--as evidenced by having probably over 100 blog links down the side of my blog. Time for true confessions: I don't get to surf blogs very often. I'm still on dial-up, which makes blog surfing take for-EVAH, especially when people have more than about one week's worth of posts as the default. (Does anyone else out there remember the days of being glad to get even a 28.8 connection? Sheesh!)
Having said that, when I do get a chance to sit down an check blogs, these are some of the first ones that I check, in no particular order:
Nichole Heady--NOT because I'm on the PaperTrey design team, but just because she consistently has innovative ideas and clean, fresh, why-didn't-I-think-of-that? designs
Tracy Durcan--again, clean, often simple, but amazingly right designs.
Taylor VanBruggen--Taylor is the cat's meow! That girl is going places--mark my words!
Ellen Hutson--love her work, and value her opinions on new toys and her handy-dandy store where I can find fun stamps and cool embellishments, not to mention that Ellen is truly a genuinely kind person.
Joan Bardee--because Joan is, well, Joan! I love to read her intelligent, witty opinions. One rarely has to wonder what Joan is really thinking, and I like that!
There now. I did it. It was sheer agony, but I stopped at five. I have at least another twenty that I would like to have included for various reasons though. For those of you who have sent me links to browse, and for those of you who come here to visit, I express my gratitude. I have gleaned beauty from so many of you! Tomorrow I'll try to have a card to post. Thanks so much for inviting me to play, Sue, Trish and Susan!
Edited to add: How would you like to be involved in a worthy cause? A few week ago Debbi Dresser, whose only son is scheduled to be deployed in Iraq, had contacted me about sending extra cards or card fronts for the troops, and I gathered a batch. Now Kyla Maestas is sponsoring a contest to help with Debbi's cause. See Kyla's bottom post for Wednesday, April 18 for details. (I couldn't figure out how to permalink to a single post in Blogger.) If you are being overrun by cards, these could certainly be used to bless someone else. Thank you!
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I should preface this post with a disclaimer: I am not adept at using silk or paper flowers! I adore Primas and Heidi Swapps and Bety's flowers as well (who is the undisputed queen of knowing just how to use them), but when I pull them out of their little packages, they just look at me. . . and I look at them. We do this for quite a while, then I carefully place them back in their bags so we can go through the same ritual another time.
Tonight, however, I actually used one--technically two, since I layered them! I needed a simple wedding shower card and wanted to try out my package of Autumn Leaves Rhonna Swirls stamps. I pulled out a couple of sheets of textured card stock from a slab that someone gave me a couple of years ago, and I stamped swirls in white craft ink. Unfortunately, it was on the dry side, and you could barely see the swirls. Undaunted, I pulled out my detail white embossing powder and proceeded to make them show up.I layered a couple of daisies and still needed a center. (Perhaps not having a center is one of the reasons that I don't try to use these often.) I pulled out one of Nichole's Faux Ribbon sentiments and embossed it on a slightly darker shade of pink textured card stock. It made an acceptable center, but it still needed something. Ribbon and brads to the rescue! The brads were a nasty gray-mauve color, so I used my new pink pastel embossing powder to fix that problem. (I learned this trick on JulieHRR's blog several months ago: using your heat tool, heat the top of the brad, holding it with tweezers. While it is still very hot, dunk it into the embossing powder. Add a second coat if needed, and hit it with the heat gun once more to finish melting the EP if necessary. You do not need to coat the brad in Versamark--just heat it. The EP seems to bond better to the naked brad than to a slippery one.) As simple as this card is, I don't think I'll tell you how long I fiddled with it. . .
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Can you handle one more Office Accoutrement card? I really like these fresh colors; they make me think that Spring is coming!
I used the Notations Designer paper, Certainly Celery, and Whisper White card stocks; and Barely Banana, Cool Caribbean, and Certainly Celery inks. I used a Marvy Giga Scalloped punch for the celery layer, and my Coluzzle to cut the inner circle. I used the SU word window punch for the "important message" tab. Aqua organdy is non-SU, but everything else is SU.
When I was taking pictures of cards today, I took a picture of my messy desk. . . but I'm still debating whether to show it or not. It's a serious disaster since I have been trying to churn out some work in the past few weeks. Are you a disaster area stamper, or are you a habitual organizer? I really do like organization; I just hate to stop working for long enough to pick everything up! Maybe I'll try to tidy up tomorrow. . . or maybe I'll get new toys in the mail and get distracted. Who knows? Have a lovely day!
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