Explosion Card

What a cute card! So many fun things you can do.

Initially, I saw this done by TreasureOiler on SCS. She referred to a video tutorial by Dawn, from whom she got the idea. Don't want to take credit for what's not mine!

I made this for a shoebox swap coming up tomorrow. I also typed up this recipe (.pdf file), for those interested. Enjoy!

Enjoy Every Moment

This week's Featured Stamper, {Teneale}, is definitely a favorite of mine. Way back in January, when I got serious about needing a diversion from what was happening in my life, I happened upon a late-night posting of hers. Immediately, I CASEd her for a sympathy card I needed. Now, I get to CASE her again! I'm pretty happy with that. She's great.

I chose to CASE her Baroque Butterflys, which is such a nice use of neutrals. I was drawn to the Sahara Sand, one of my favorite colors.

My 4.25 x 5.5 inch card, Enjoy Every Moment - Anniversary Edition, keeps the primary use of Sahara Sand, but throws in some brown distressed patterned paper (Basic Grey Archaic) as well as some Blue Bayou. In place of the ribbon, I chose to use half-pearls from my Pretties set. I will say that they were too small for my smallest Glue Dots, so I had to use some Tacky Glue. I think they look great. I kept the theme of the card a happy one, and still used Baroque Motifs and a butterfly.

I used Versa Mark on the background, resembling {Teneale}'s card. I gave my large, horizontal panel more layers, but kept the white-embossed Baroque Motifs pattern. At thins point I used a mixture of stamps. Enjoy (stamped in Sahara Sand)and every moment (stamped in Buckaroo Blue) are, oddly enough, from SU!'s Enjoy Every Moment set. The blue heart (stamped in Buckaroo Blue) is from SU!'s Little Pieces. The butterfly (embossed on Sahara Sand and raised on Dimensionals) is from SU!'s Garden Whimsy. I am not a butterfly gal, but that Garden Whimsy set has been a popular one with me this weekend (see the Inspiration card I made this week).

The inside (also shown) uses American Crafts Mini Marks, Elegant Book Two. At the moment, I have no stamp that says "Happy Anniversary," so this set of rub-ons has been used twice for that purpose. I think one of the sets I ordered this week has that sentiment. I cut part of a longer rub-on to make the two side pieces for the sentiment.

The Time to Be Happy

When I saw this sentiment, I knew I had to have the Garden Whimsy set. It speaks volumes without saying much at all. It is imperative, and 100% true.

This card fulfills SCS Inspiration Challenge 135. We were asked to be inspired by Mackintosh Enamels. I looked simply at the patterns, and I kept coming up with the same technique... bleaching. So, I went to work.

I decided to try bleaching on some patterned paper (Basic Grey Archaic), but it did not work. I still ended up using the sheet as my mat. I stamped on a piece of Wild Wasabi, using bleach as my ink. I used the butterfly from SU!'s Garden Whimsy, then used the flowers from SU!'s Best Kind of Friend. I will be honest and say that I needed the Stamp-a-Majig for the sentiment, as I wanted it to resemble the butterfly's path. I used Basic Black ink at first on a sample... too harsh! Then I used Garden Green. Perfect, I think.

The design was begging for a third part to complete its balance (I had the butterfly and the flowers). So, after fidgeting with some ribbon that just would not stop taking over as the focal point, I used three green Cloud Nine Dew Drops. There you have it. Fairly simple and most definitely inspired.

Size: 4.25 x 5.5 inches
Ink: Bleach and SU! Garden Green
Stamps: SU! Garden Whimsy and SU! best Kind of Friend
Embellishments: Cloud Nine Dew Drops
Paper: Basic Grey Archaic, Papertrey white, and SU! Wild Wasabi

When Organization Goes Overboard

For about a year now, I have been working on perfecting the organization in my craft room. It is humbling, after reading books and looking at magazines, to see how gorgeous the rooms of some crafters are. However, I am over myself.

I have a room in my house, which is something I didn't have for a long time, and something that others do not have room to do. Also, I have many, many things that allow me to stay organized if I am willing to make the effort. {If you didn't have a chance to see my craft room post, click here.}

But tonight, I almost cried. Instead, I laughed, thank God. I was attempting to organize my ribbon drawer. It contained all those pieces of ribbon that were too large to throw away, yet too small to be on a spool. I realized that it was great to keep these scraps, but if I really didn't want to rummage through and find anything, it was a waste.

On a walk through Michaels the other day, I found these lovely DMC floss bobbins. They have a hole punched in them and come with a 2.5" metal ring. I fell in love and bought 3 (they were also cheap... even better!). It is on these bobbins that I began to put my scraps. While going through my scrap drawer, I round a spool of green grosgrain, which was great as I had just run out of that on the previous spool.

The previous spool was in a lovely plastic, transluscent ribbon box I purchased from Oriental Trading. The empty spool was, of course, in the middle of the row. The photo shows what happened when I tried to get the empty spool out. They just kept unrolling and unrolling. It was nuts.

So, I decided that these ribbon boxes needed a little help from me, the McGyver of crafting (now I am getting full of myself). I took double- sided tape and slid a row of it onto the outsides of the box. My intention was to have it hold the ends of the ribbons that came out of the box.

For right now, it looks great. It is much better than before. I took inventory of what was on a spool but almost at its end, and I wrapped those on floss bobbins. The metal rings ended up in the drawer with the scraps, but they are, at least, something I can (and probably will) pick up at one time and look through.

Off to do some laundry. Then, I shall come back to finally work on the Saturday inspiration card. Wish me luck!

Belated... yet again

Well, here we have another birthday on the second of the month. And again, I am cursed by the turning of the calendar. Sadly, one of my sons was born on the third of March, so I hope I am better with him than I have been with other relatives.

This card is for my nephew. I needed to keep it a bit manly.

This was a fun and easy card, and I like the results. It fulfills today's SCS challenge: She Scores! This challenge asked us to use scoring in our card. No one has to ask me twice to use my Scor-Pal. What follows is my process.

I had some Cranberry Crisp cardstock laying around from the color challenge, cut for a 4.25 x 5.5 inch card. I also had some SEI linen paper that I had cut up for the color challenge, but ended up not using. I thought, "Hmm... will linen paper score well?" Answer: If you want an extremely subtle texture-atop-texture feel, it was fine... like buttah.

From there, I used my Cuttlebug for the vanilla paper embossing. Putting these two together looked great, especially on a dark base.

I just got the SU! Enjoy Every Moment set, and I was itching to use it. Since my circle sentiments were not quite right for the card, I ended up using the center of SU!'s Riveting (Enjoy Your Day), very carefully coloring in Close to Cocoa, as there was another circle that would have been a wee too big. Thank goodness for the Stamp-a-majig. To add some balance, I added the half ellipse and a square copper brad at the top. I decided this was enough... I didn't want to lose the textures beneath a lot of "stuff."

Now I am off to make some goodies for a friend. She is hosting a bridal shower for her daughter, and I am all over the crafty part of it. Big shocker, right?

Challenge after challenge

For today's sketch challenge, I used a few techniques. First, I used this week's technique challenge, chalk pouncing, for the flowers and the stems. I also used an older technique called a Joy Fold card. Thus starts my "Ode to Technique Tuesdays." {prose, not verse}

Karen, my dealer, I mean, supplier, I mean, DEMONSTRATOR, used to host "Technique Tuesdays" (before we knew of the company). These stamp camp Tuesdays involved learning a new technique. I loved them, as I appreciated that she would look this information up, and I never seemed to make the time back then. She gave us each a cute metal ring. Each Technique Tuesday, we would get a new card to put on our ring. Sometimes, we would even glue a sample of what we did to the card. Typically, a photo was on the card.

What does this have to do with the Joy Fold card, you ask? Well, that was one of the Technique Tuesday techniques. I still had the sample, but had little idea of what the card was called. Then, suddenly, I found my ring of techniques. I was thrilled to find the name and the recipe. So Karen, if you are reading this, I still have mine, and I was very grateful for it tonight. AND I miss Technique Tuesdays!

OK, back to today's card. When I saw the sketch, I could not get the Joy Fold card (Beate's tutorial linked) out of my head. I kept arguing with myself that it didn't really fit the sketch. But, now that I can stand back and take a good look, I really think it does (rotate the sketch for a vertical orientation)!

I needed an anniversary card for my brother and sister-in-law's 30th wedding anniversary. I wanted to use Blue Bayou, but wasn't really sure what else I wanted to use. I tinkered with some SEI linen paper, but just couldn't get it rockin' with this card. I finally looked back at the color challenges list and decided upon Wild Wasabi and Barely Banana as the coordinating colors (CC148). I also decided that, since my SIL recently started obsessing with potted plants, I would use my new SU! Best Kind of Friend set. Gotta love that set.

After that, I got pretty crazy with my paper distressor, and I think the rest is obvious (at least from my pics and the tutorial link). Feel free to click on any photo for a larger image.

Size: 5 1/2 x 4 1/4 inches

Paper: SU! Blue Bayou, Barely Banana, and Wild Wasabi

Ink: Versa Mark marker, Stampin' Up pastels in Garden Green and Not Quite Navy, SU! Blue Bayou

Stamps: SU! Best Kind of Friend and Blooming with Happiness

Sheer white ribbon, cotton balls

'Wat' up, Homie?

That has been a catch phrase of mine for the longest time. Probably since the "Homie don't play dat," days of In Living Color (you can probably guess my age now, right?)

So, when I saw these stamps from Memory Box at Scrapbook Friend'z yesterday, after I laughed out loud, I had to buy them. So, so funny. Memory Box is having a contest for cards using their penguins, too. So, I considered this my "starter card" for the contest. It's also my "starter" Nestabilities card. Yup, I caved in finally and bought a set of oval shapes and a set of oval scallops (ellipses, if you want to be mathematically-correct; ovals if you want people to know what you are talking about).

Today's color challenge (Wild Wasabi, Purely Pomegranate, and Certainly Celery) was my victim. I must say that this turned out so much better than I had anticipated, and I think it is due to the patterned paper (Tuscany by Provo Craft) It gives a richer feel than the colors can naturally give to each other.

I did some paper piecing with his coat and hat, and some paper piercing on the sides of the ovals and at the opposite corners. You may have to click for the larger image to see that. I used a Dew Drop for his magnifying glass... worked perfectly and I didn't have to wait for it to dry like you do with Crystal Effects.

So, in all, I love the layout and most of the colors (I think Certainly Celery was a stretch). I will definitely paper piece my contest card, but I think I will skip the piercing. It was not enough bang for my buck. The Pomegranate was just enough of the red hue for me... deep enough for my typical color scheme. In all, not so shabby. What you think, G?

Size: 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 inches
Paper: Provo Craft Tuscany, SU! Purely Pomegranate, Certainly Celery, and Wild Wasabi, Papertrey white
Stamps: Memory Box Detective Penguin and What's Up Holmes?
Tools: Spellbinders Nestabilities, paper piercing, SU! Dimensionals