NEW TECHNIQUES TO TRY????

So many new techniques and idea to try. I keep skipping from one to another. I will have to settle down and figure out which one to try by tomorrow so I can play with it this week-end. I'm not sure how to settle on which one though as so many I have found sound very interesting. I may have to just put some of them on a slip of paper through them into a paper bag and draw one out. OR I could focus on ones that can be used for festive holiday items. Those techniques that add glitter and glitz to holiday projects.....decisions decisions.....so many ideas and so little time! Stay tuned for what I choose tomorrow! IF you have any suggestions to offer just post a comment with it. I will throw your idea into the hat (if it is a new technique for me and I can find directions on how to do it). If your idea is drawn I will send you some BLOG CANDY for your stampin' fun!

WHEW!

Well I am happy to say that the hard work of the past few weeks have paid off. I had the best show as far as sales ever! I also had a lot of fun talking with people and I met quite a few new folks. I think that we are thinking of making this craft fair an annual event. Now I do have moe work a head of me as almost all my cards sold! I was amazed. But I am giving myself a break for a while to catch my breath and do some thinking on some new designs. I also want to try some new techniques to use. So I will be on the look out for some to try. I did just purchase a mew book tonight using some free credits I had. It is a paper crafting book and looked like it had some very interesting new ideas including paper weaving. That looked like fun so hopefully some new projects will be forth coming.

OOPS!

Well I thought I wold be combining stampin' and kwiltin' in my last post but for some reason the kwiltin' photo didn't upload and when I tried to edit it and add it in thinks really went wonky with the layout of the post. So being totally HTML illiterate I'm taking the easy way out and just creating a new post!

This is a small Christmas wall hanging that I made for the fair. If it doesn't sell there it will head out to the Sandy Spring Museum gift shop. This little guy has an interesting history. Every once in a while I decide to clean my sewing room. (Okay everyone pick yourselves up off the floor! I do clean once in a while. FLY Baby friends pretend you didn't hear me say that! I clean and declutter everywhere BUT my sewing room. Really I do!)

Anyway back to the story. I decided several weeks ago that the sewing room (aka: basement) needed a little help before I dove in to making things for the craft fair. In giving it the help it needed I found this Bowl full of little, and I mean little, log cabin and court house square blocks. Obviously they had been destined for some Christmas project as they were mainly red and green with Christmas prints (well most of them were; there were a few pinky ones?????) I have no clue when I made them or what the project was, but there where lots of them. I can't bear to throw things like this away! So I tried to think what to turn them into. Well this is one of the things. A cute little Christmas Wreath complete with bow and bell. It's total size is about 12 inches square. I also made another wreath that is a different design. It's rectangular about 12x16 inches. I tried to photograph it as well, but there is a lot more red Christmas fabric in it. It's a green wreath on a red background. For some reason the red almost looks fluorescent in the picture (it's not I promise you!) and so it looks pretty funky! But only in the photo. It's real pretty in real life. Also I had enough blocks to use them as a row of blocks down the left side of a set of 4 placemats.

Oh the pinky ones. I closed my eyes, grit my teeth and did throw them away!

CHRISTMAS MAKES AN APPEARANCE!

It may still be October and not even Halloween yet, but for crafters it is time to begin thinking Christmas. And I have been! In this post I am combining projects from my love of both stamping and quilting. And yes they are both projects that I made for the craft fair. (Part of me will be happy when it is over. Another part will be sad though because I will no longer have an excuse for spend so much of my time making pretty things and I will have to get back to more mundane activities like housework.)

First here is a Christmas card. Like my Thanksgiving cards I have "mass produced these. (Actually 16 this time!) They are packaged in cute little plastic boxes with elastic silver cord Once again I water colored the tree with my WC crayons and aqua painter. Iadded yellow stickles to the star and placed two small colored brads for ornaments on the tree. I also FINALLY broke down and used some of my hodge podge hardware paces! I've only had them for two years! The doubles sided paper is some hat was leftover from the World Card making Day project which used the Winter Bright Simply Scrappin' Kit. Now I not only hoard small leftover fabric pieces but also paper pieces. MY life is being taken over by scraps! Good thing the ARE useful,

By the way has anyone noticed I kinda figured out how to do a watermark? I still need to work on it. I think it ended up too small to be really of use. But thanks to Kurtis's tutorial I did it! (Sorry Kurtis I didn't foloow the direction totally which is why it's too small. I though it would be to large. I should know better and should have listened to the pro! I'll do better next time I promise!)

I HAVE PICTURES!

Here are two of the Thanksgiving cards that I designed and have made for this weekends craft fair at my church. I actually mass produced (well for me 12 cards of one design IS mass production!). I will be selling them in a package of 8 with 4 cards of each design.

The Thanks card was fun to make. I love using clear embossing powder over craft inks. It's like having 48 colors of embossing powders! The leave was fun to do. Since I use the craft ink stamping spots I was able to dab on different fall colors and get what I though was a fairly accurate look of a fall leaf. It's hard to tell from the scanned image but the squares above the work Thanks each have a gold embossed letter spelling out G I V E. I also finally got to use my jumbo eyelets. They are a challenge to set but my crop-a-dile handled the job!

I've been doing a lot of water coloring lately. It's something I can do while sitting in living room with my husband. There are many methods of watercoloring. I have tried many of them including water color pencils, aqua painters and the classic inks that have been pressed to the ink pad lids and watercolor crayons used with the aqua painter or small paint brush. I prefer using the watercolor crayons that Stampin' Up sells and an aqua painter. I find this the most compact and less messy system to use. Plus there are so many wonderful colors to play with. For paper I prefer the SU watercolor paper but as wonderful as it is it is fairly pricey. I'm experimenting with other brands but so far haven't found one that colors as nicely. So I guess it is true that you do pay for what you get!

Now that Thanksgiving is taken care of it is on to Christmas!

TODAY I STAMPED!

I don't have any pictures yet. Camera is not working (I think it needs new stronger batteries) and I'm just too plain lazy to hook the laptop up to the scanner. But I have completed several stamping projects this week. I've been altering composition books and making them into various types of journals. And I've designed a few cards which I plan to mass produce (if you call 10 cards of one design mass production) ; then package in sets for next Saturday's craft fair. Then ones I have designed so far are Thanksgiving Cards. I also hope to do sets of Christmas cards and hope to find time to design them tomorrow. The designing process I think is the most time consuming, but it is the part I enjoy the most which I guess is why I don't usually mass produce things. Make it ince and move on is my motto be it stampin' or kwiltin'

I AM STILL KWILTIN'

I have not been getting much if any stamping done lately. Right now I am focusing on my quilting. It's really been quite a long time since I have done that and I am having fun. This flurry of quilting is partially precipitated by a request for some new items by the manager of a gift shop that I have items for sale on a consignment basis. I can't do stamped items there because of SU's angel policy stating you can not sell items using any of their product or images in permanent retail outlets or the internet. Soon I will have to get back to some stamping though because I am a vendor on our church craft fair on October 20 and since it is a temporary venue I can sell SU items there. When I get something finished I will post somemore pictures here but for now I just have words.

BUT STILL SEWING TOO!

I love it when I have days off from work! I really get to play and have fun! So after cleaning the master bedroom and putting dinner in the crock pot that's just what I did today. Not only did I get to stamp but I also sewed! Stamping was in morning then when it got too hot to be upstairs I went down stairs into the cool basement and sewed. Here is what I finished. I say finished cause the Pooh baby quilt was already pretty much done I just had to finish up the binding.

Now you may be wondering what the funny thing with the space capsule on it is. It's a "Wubbie" for babies and toddlers. It is their own little 14 inch square quilt that they can carry around. The name "wubbie" came from a friend who gave one to her 2 year old. When asked if he liked it he responded "I wub it" so it became his wubbie.

The back of this little quilt is a fleece fabric so it is very soft and cuddly. The stuff poking out at the sides are little loops of ribbons of various different textures and colors. Quite a few are satin ribbons as most toddlers love silky fabrics. (Ask any mother who has been embarrassed by having their child lift up their skirt so they can hold on to mom's silky slip.) These provide not only tactile interest, but visual interest and can be used to hank on to the quilt.

I've also made some with print designs for little girls. They are very quick and easy to make. Hopefully they will be a popular item at the fall craft fair as I think I've already made 6 of them and have enough materials for another 3 or 4.

BACK TO STAMPIN'

I have gotten back to doing some stamping. In this case altering composition books and making them into Prayer Journals. I have also done some Gratitude Journals. It's soon to be October and so I am working toward making items for a craft fair that I am a vendor in at the end of the month as well as beginning to think Christmas!

I used my Xyron adhesive machine in to covering of these journals; so the papers are not going to go anywhere or peel off. I also this time place cardstock on the insides of the covers so that the school themed printed material would not be visible. The first set of journals I did not do that, primarily out of laziness I think and I don't like the way they look as much even though it is on the inside. I'm thinking that I may go back and ad the cardstock to them. It adds less than 50 cents to the cost of the materials.

I have also made Quilting and Knitting Journals and may do a few more of them as well as general diary type journals. I have some more composition books that I can alter and they are fun to do. Sometimes I just get bored with making cards!

My Life Is......

Here is the wall quilt I finished this week. It was a result of a quilting group challenge (the same group that did the Faces challenge). For this challenge we were all given the pattern for the bowl and had to create a wall quilt that had the bowl filled with something that was meaningful to me. I was working on the design for my quilt last spring when my husband and I were making plans for our summer vacation and I spent a lot of time thinking of just how much I love to travel. So my bowl is filled with "travel dreams". I actually have quilted into the light blue background, which is a cloud fabric "My life is a bowl of travel dreams". It was a fun challenge. I chose to place my bowl floating in the clouds and it is surrounded by grapes and patches showing Italian and French wine bottles. To help with the dreamy quality if the quilt is is quilted with a shimmery thread and has a sparkle in the blue binding fabric. Everything was done on the sewing machine.

A wonderful side note to this project is that I now actually have something completed for our guilds 2008 show next April!

Time Continues To Fly

Wow! We are already over half way through September. I have been busy with both stamping and quilting this month. In fact I have been so busy that I haven't had time to scan or take photos of anything I have worked on since I finished the cake. Which, by the way, everyone did love. I have also been busy traveling the past two weekends and extremely busy with work. This weekend is again VERY BUSY, but after that I should get some time to get pictures up here. For now I will just say I have finished a wall quilt and a Winnie the Pooh baby quilt. As for stamping projects I have done a number of altered composition books. Its fall which means we are approaching the holiday gift buying season and I am getting ready for a craft show at which I hope to sell both stamped and quilted items. So I need to be busy doing both!

LABOR DAY PROJECT

This was my big Labor Day Project. I had other smaller ones and some I wanted to get done but didn't, but this is the big one. And it was so much fun! It did take a lot of time and a lot of sticky strip, but it turned out even better then I had hoped.

I made it for a Women's Tea Party that we are having at our church on Saturday. In case you haven't guessed it is a paper cake! Each of the slices is a party favor box. I think it would be wonderful for a Bridal Shower as well.

The idea for the cake and the pattern came from SU's Stampin' Success magazine that is published for SU Demonstrators. They used all paper flowers to decorate theirs, but quickly decided I did not have the time to do all that cutting, especially of the greenery, so I literally tore apart some silk flowers that I had leftover from a quilting project. (Yes, I did say quilting project! If I ever finish it I will post and explain it, but don't hold your breath I started it 2 years ago and it is currently in UFO status.) I have decided that I really like the silk flowers better and if I ever do another one I will probably use them again.

I have all sorts of ideas for other cakes, such as a chocolate one made with Chocolate Chip card stock. It could be for a birthday party. Or a really fun one decorated for a baby shower or a child's birthday party. Really one's imagination is as usual in crafts the only limit on what can be done with a paper cake.

One really good thing about them is that they are calorie free. Unless your party favor is chocolate that is! I hope you have enjoyed seeing this as much as I enjoyed making it. And I do hope the women Saturday enjoy their slice.

CHRISTMAS CARD FROM CONVENTION

This was a Christmas card from Convention. It is actually one of my favorites. I've not particularly been a fan of glitter, but love the way it is used on this card as a border between the red and green. What you can't see from this picture is that the green back layer is just a background, not the main card. This is a top fold card the fold being on the white. If you look to the bottom of the card you would open it by lifting up the white layer that has the torn edge inked in green. Another thing I like on this card is the use of the tag "Mix & Mingle & Be Merry!" as the sentiment. Also notice how the layered design was offset to the left rather than centered. This adds an additional element of interest because most people would have centered it.

I wish I could take credit for designing this card but I can't it was designed by Tricia D of WA.

PREPARATION FOR WORLD CARD MAKING DAY

October 6 is WORLD CARD MAKING DAY. In celebration of this event my SU upline and I are holding a card making workshop. Our goal is to have those attending make 16 cards, 15 of our designs and 1 of their own, in 2 hours! This would be almost an impossible task except that the cards will all be made using card stock, papers and card stock stickers from the Winter Bright Simply Scrapin' kit from Stampin' Up. This means there is very little stamping to be done and even less embellishment though they will get to use some ribbon and brads, will use a few punches, and will do a little embossing.

Here are three of the 15 card fronts that we designed last night. They are all based on samples we saw at convention this year. But we made a few changes or additions to each of the cards. These cards are all 3x6 inches. That way each person can get 4 cards out of each piece of their 12x12 inch card stock. Besides the two colors shown here they will get a sheet of Real Red and Bashful Blue. These are Pretty in Pink and Wild Wasabi.

I have absolutely fallen in love with SU's new texturized card stock. It is wonderful and very nice looking. The only complaint I have about it is that it is harder to stamp on because of the texture to it. I am hoping with practice it gets a little easier.

To see some more samples for the class you can check out my Splitcoast Gallery and my Demonstrator Web Site.

COUNTY FAIR PLAYING!

I've been trying to learn PhotoShop Elements for some time now and knew that I could make photo layouts for scrapbook pages. This was my first attempt. Not very exciting, but I think I have finally figured out layers and how to combine photos and backgrounds.

Last week was our county fair and as usual I spent quite a few hours there judging and volunteering for 4-H. One night Jerry and I decided that we really needed to at least walk through the carnival area. Not our favorite place, but there are lots of bright lights and there always is a lot of action. Other than the rides I think the most popular thing to do on the midway is eat. Every type of unhealthy but yummy food exists there. Rather than eat it I took pictures of all the different food stands. These are only a few of them. Taken all together you would get one major case of heartburn AND empty wallet I'm sure! We just enjoyed the lights, sights and sounds. This is definitely the low cal was to enjoy these taste treats!

What would have been my favorite had I eaten something---funnel cakes of course!

THE THIRD QUILT TO SHOW!

This quilt I call "A Gallery of Friends". It is the one which will be hanging at the Quilter's Heritage Celebration in Lancaster, PA next spring. I can hardly believe that I have another one that will be out for all to see. This quilt was also a product of a group challenge. Unlike the other two however this one was a challenge of the mini group I am in. Ten of us in the group made a portrait of ourselves out of fabric for each of the others. It could be as realistic or as whimsical as you choose to make it. There were some of each as you can see. It was to be how you thought of yourself. Can you find me? This quilt actually has one of the two ways I portrayed myself.

After receiving each persons face block we could set it into a quilt however we wanted. I choose to turn my friends portraits into a gallery setting over a fireplace mantle, complete with a wall papered background. This turned into a rather large wall quilt its 38" x 63" .

Have you found me yet? I'm in the upper left corner. This was my wild and crazy portrait. The way I picture myself in my dreams. My other portrait was much more matronly. The way I see myself in my nightmares!

This quilt will be on display at the Pennsylvania Quilt Expo in a few weeks. I made it for a guild challenge in 2006. The challenge was to take five pieces of Jane Sassaman's fabric and turn it into something. They were very challenging fabrics to work with. Looking at the quilt they are the fabric the basket is made out of, the background fabric, the birds were cut out of the fourth fabric and the flowers and greenery out of the fifth. The flowers and greenery are actually 3-D and padded. There is beading as well in the centers of the flowers. The piece was all done on the sewing machine except for the beading. That I did by hand.

I am very excited about this quilt being at a national show and look forward to going to Harrisburg, PA to visit it. I hope others enjoy viewing it as much as I enjoyed making it.

There will be others from this same challenge hanging with it in a special display that focuses on group challenges. This is the second quilt I've had in a national show. Last year there was one hung in Nashville at the AQS show. AND......I've just learned that another quilt of mine will be hanging in a show next spring! Wow, three years in a row and all tree quilts were made in 2006. That must have been a very good year for me. This year on the other hand....NOTHING has come out of the sewing room that has been particularly creative.

New Technique For Me

This is a card that I made for my Father-in-laws birthday. I CASED the idea from SCS stamper "gadget19". I love the Natural Beauty stamp set and was very sad when SU decided to retire it. I can't demo it anymore, but I can still use it. In creating this card I tried a technique that I had read about on SCS and have wanted to try. It is a Tile technique. I really like it. What I did was create a 3x4.5inch collage background. I used stampin' spots in a direct to paper technique and then stamped the dogwood and butterfly stamp from Natural Beauty. Then I cut the piece into 1.5 inch squares. This is where the fun begins. "smushed" each square image side down onto a versamark pad making sure it was well inked, then covered it with clear embossing powder, and heated. This gave the paper squares a ceramic look to them. "Gadget19" on her card placed the squares on the dark background in a random order. For mine I kept everything the way it was originally stamped. The spaces between the squares are about 1/8".

I really like this technique. Not only does it look like a piece of ceramic tile, but I think it could be done in a way that it would look like stained glass. I hope to use it again on another card.

Fun Evening Playing With New Techniques!

My first card since returning from convention. It was a fun one to make. I used some of the techniques that I learned more about there. I should clarify that I already knew of the ones I used here I was just nervous about trying them. But I decided they made it sound and look so easy I'd just jump right in. First the whole of the stamped images are on water color paper and use the watercolor technique of spritzing the stamp with a fine mist of water after inking it up. That I have done before and really like the look, but you do need to use water color paper for it to work correctly. I've tried regular card stock and do not like the looks as much. Then new for me techniques I used are on the sunflower and it's center. For the sunflower I first inked up the stamp in summer sun and then went over the inside portion of the petals with the pumpkin pie marker using the brush end. Then spritzed and stamped. The center of the flower I first inked the stamp with creamy carmel ink and then lightly tapped it on really rust pad. I really liked the look I got doing both or these and am trusting that I have not hurt either my pads or markers since I went from lighter ink to darker. I also did use some stickles glitter in the center of the flower to give a little extra kick.

One thing I learned from this card is that I really don't like plain backgrounds on everything. When I first laid out the card I had nothing on the green layer. It just looked blah to me so I decided to add some background that would surround the watercolor paper. I took the stamp used for the center of the flower and using a slightly darker green than the card stock I stamped around the edge. I had to be careful not to go off the edge since I had already taped the green to the gold, but this was a good thing as I like the look of scallops I ended up with. All in all I am very happy with this card.

I also played around with dyeing flowers from the pretties set and coloring and embossing both the flat pearls from the same set as well as embossing the large pop up glue dots. I don't have them on cards yet though and this post is getting long so I will explain about them in another entry when I have them on cards or at least have scanned pictures of the pieces to show with explaination. Let me just tantelize you with ....it was fun!

Here I am at convention with some of my new friends. Next to me (I'm in the turquoises) is Denise from CA. We simply met her while walking to the convention center one morning. Had a nice chat along the way. It was her first convention also. Next to Denise are Roxanne and Vernell. They were my two roomies for the week. We were in a very small room, but managed just fine. We didn't really spend too much time in the room. Too much other stuff to do.

One workshop we took was on knowing all about the products we sell. The presenter focused on the Many Marvelous Marker sets. She said in preparing for the workshop she set out to find out everything about the markers sold by SU that she could. If you want the whole set they are quite expensive and she wanted to be able to convince people that these weren't items you would just purchase and let sit on the shelf. She came up with 20 different ways they could be used. They were quite amazing and ranged from simply using them to color in stamped images to using them to put high-lites in your hair! Yes you read that correctly. She used them to put red high-lites into her daughters hair. She said it worked great and washed out with no problem at all. Now that's what I call getting creative. I hope I can find a list either on SU demo site or Splitcoast as to what all the 20 uses were. I'd really like to do a class showing all those techniques.

CONVENTION IDEAS!

Here are only four of the hundreds of sample projects I saw at convention. Two are cards. The other two items are gift ideas. 3-D items and all sorts of embellishments are really HOT!

There are so many new ideas and techniques that I want to try. I have several of the lunch box tins and really like this recipe box. What a cute gift item for Holiday or Birthday giving. The little calendar and note pad set uses bar coasters. How cool is that!!!! I can't wait till I have time to spend in my stamping room. First however I'm thinking I have lots of cleaning to do!

CONVENTION IS OVER

Convention was such fun! I really enjoyed myself and as you can see everyone was wanting to get in to the Convention Center! It was the place to be in Denver that week.

I met so many wonderful people, learned lots of new and exciting stamping techniques and made many cards. The swaps were amazing and I have so many new ideas for projects I barely know where to begin.

The thing I am most excited about however is that I came back really wanting to grow my business as a Stampin' Up! demonstrator. Stamping is such fun and it can be used for so much more than just making greeting cards. I love to teach and look forward to setting up classes to do just that. I need to head to work now but please check back as this evening I plan to post some of the wonderful projects from convention and tell you a bitg more about it.

SU Convention

I am totally exhausted, but the excitement is mounting. Only 2 days till I leave for Convention in Denver. I can hardly wait to meet and share with others who share my love of crafting and stamping in particular. Sometimes I feel out on a limb by myself. I have friends that who share in my love of quilting, but not really any that share in my passion for stamping and paper crafts. So I pretty much work on my own. I have lots if internet friends to share with, but that's just not the same as sitting down and getting excited with someone over a new technique learned or a new design put together. So I really am looking forward to Denver. I know that the energy will return when I get there. Call it a STAMPING HIGH in the mile high city. It doesn't hurt either that I love Denver and the mountains.

Stamping and Recycling

Did you know that stamping can be a great way to recycle and alter something so it can be used again. Two of my items in my previous post are recycled items.

The gift bag is one that I received when I purchased some chocolates about a year ago. It is a wonderfully sturdy bag and I could stand the thought of just throwing it away so I popped it into a drawer. I never could come up with a use for it though since it had the store logo in both sides and a list of store locations on the bottom of each side. It is now reincarnated into a usable gift bag with the logos covered up with stamped images and designer paper and the locations covered with strips of coordinating designer paper.

The bottle is a Starbucks Frappichino bottle. It will be filled with some sort of goodies, probably Hershey Kisses, and given as a special gift.

I'm sure there are many many other items out there that could be wonderfully recycled into altered stamp art and gifts. So stampers can help keep the land fills a little less full!

Here are the final three items I altered with the June craft kit. I also made 3 12x12 scrapbook page layouts which will e used in my Family Cruise album and a total of 15 cards. This has been such fun and such a challenge. I have learned quite a bit about myself during this challenge. When I first received the kit there were many things in it I did not really like. First off these are not colors I would naturally chose to work with. Also I don't particularly like working with stripes ( I don't like striped fabric either!), Then there was this ribbon, all I can say is YUK! (That was one part of the kit I never did work with well. I only used it on one card). Also I wasn't sure about the alpa stickers and had never used giant paper clips on anything.

So what did I learn? I learned that with some perseverance and an open mind, I can create with items I am not originally fond of and for the most part I can be very happy with the results. (I did create a few items I am not particularly happy with, but I also learned that is okay.) I also discovered you can do A LOT with a relatively small set of supplies that do coordinate. During this challenge because I was working with the same papers and embellishments so much I tried several new techniques to try and spice things up a bit when I got tired of looking at the same stuff over and over again. So that was good. I covered my first chip board pieces, I created a glittered background, I finally used my punch for spiral notebook holes (I forget it's real name) and much more. Most importantly I learned that my hyper-focusing addictive personality trait is still alive and well. This is not necessarily a good thing....I kept working in these even when I knew I should be doing other things. But it was so much fun and I now declare this project officially done! Now maybe I can finish the card for our niece's wedding.......

JUNE CRAFT KIT CHALLENGE, Part Two

Continuing on with the June Craft Kit Challenge I've made these two altered items that will be used on our upcoming vacation. The travel journal is a school composition book that I've covered with some of the designer paper from the craft kit. I added some "bling" with the rhinestone brad and the

glitzy alphabet stickers. The back of the journal is covered in paper patterned with a map. I had it in my stash and thought it appropriate for a travel journal.

The photo album was a plain chipboard album that I got in a scrapbook kit. More paper and glitzy alphabet stickers with some ribbon thrown in here and there. The flowers are punched out of the patterned paper that had dots and I positioned a different colored dot in the center of each of the flowers. These were both fun and easy to make.

Busy Morning in Stamp Room

A morning spent in my stamping room; partly out of necessity of needing graduation cards and partly as part of SCS Flybaby June Craft Challenge.

The craft challenge is to use a kit of paper craft items and create as many things out of it as possible. The kit included 2 12x12 card stock sheets, about 6 double sided designer paper sheets and a variety of embellishments. The embellishment pack included ribbons, brads, buttons and ordinary office paper clips.

So far I have created 5 cards (of which these are three), covered a chip board 6x6 inch photo album, decorated a Starbucks Frappachino bottle and put together 2 12x12 scrapbook photo page layouts. Oh, I also altered a photo frame which came in the kit.

This has been fun and interesting. When I began the project I found that I was having a hard time using the items in the kit effectively and was relying heavily on my stamp sets and card stock to make the cards. The "Memories" card is an example of this. The items from the kit are the ribbon and the rhinestone brad in the middle of the flower. My second attempt was the aqua graduation card. Here I used three buttons and some of the designer paper. As I work longer with the kit I got better at focusing on the items in the kit and not my own card stock. The baby card is an example of this. Here I used the designer paper as the card front background along with ribbon and a button from the kit.

I am really having fun with this. It really does stretch your comfort zone when you have to use items chosen by someone else to make projects. In another post I will show some of the non-card items I've made.

Thank You and Goodbye

Our minister is leaving us after being at our church for 7 years. He is also my boss as I work at the church. The staff got together and had a good bye lunch for him several weeks ago. Though we had a gift at the last minute we realized we didn't have a card so I quickly made this one up.
I find it fairly easy to come up with a quick design for women. There are alway flower stamps, but I find it much more challenging to come up with something that is masculine. From what I read this seems to be a common problem for many stampers and card makers. I am going to make this a challenge for my self. Coming up with attractive designs for masculine cards. I like this one but it seems to be missing that extra spark that takes it out of the "homemade card" category.

Carol Doak's 2000 Member Block

Just a little break from stamping over the Memorial Day weekend. I was issued a challenge by a quilting friend to complete this block before midnight on May 28. If either of us didn't get the block completed we would take the other out to lunch. If we both completed the block on time next time we got together we would go out to lunch "dutch treat". We both completed our blocks and my block grew into this wall quilt as well. The block is one that created by Carol Doak for a yahoo paper piecing group that she hosts. It was in honor of the group gaining its 2000th member. Some day I will get the wall quilt actually quilted. When...who knows. Hopefully before August and the county fair.

Final Swap Card

This is what I ended up with for the design for my swap card. Though I really like the original using the "kiss" technique on the U stamp it was going to be much to time consuming for this swap as I needed to clean off the U between each use and I had 50 of the card fronts to make. I still embossed the U with clear embossing powder over the Old Olive craft ink and cut them out. This took long enough. The U is raised to give added dimension. I have two 3-D swap sets to make and one set of card fronts that focus on the Heated Pearls technique. When they are done I will post them here as well. I probably won't work on them for a while though as I am waiting for some of my items from the preview catalog which I won't receive for two weeks or so and then we will be busily getting ready for vacation.

Artist Trading Cards

I have discovered a new love; ATC's (Artist Trading Cards). They are small cards. That are not made to be sold, but only traded. By definition they must be 3 1/2 inches by 2 1/2 inches. They are fun and very addicting to make. These are the first three designs that I came up with to be swapped in Denver at the SU convention. Because they are small in size they do not use as much raw material also they are relatively quick to make. Also it is easy to try out a new technique because the technique itself becomes the card.

The first ATC here used the Serene Sunflower stamp set, one of the few sets that I own that SU is NOT retiring. I stamped the sunflower on Natural White card stock and then layered a piece of vellum over it on which I stamped the sentiment. I really like the muted effect this gives the sunflower. Also I created the center of the sunflower by stamping it three times with three different colored inks.

My goal on the second card was to create something very glitzy and play with Dazzling Diamonds, a glitter type product from SU. First I stamped the word "happy" using elegant eggplant ink. Then I covered the entire front of that card with versamark ink, poured dazzling diamonds powder on it and then heat set the top. This made the "happy" sentiment quite faint so I went over it with a elegant eggplant marker. The flower from Heartfelt Thanks was stamped on Natural White card stock and is raised using stampin' dimensionals. I used markers to color the flower stamp not ink pads.

Finally, my third card was purely for fun. "Ahoy, Matey" and it's corresponding jumbo wheel is another of my sets that is not retiring. (So is "Heartfelt Thanks" used above). I think this is a cute set, but is pretty child oreinted and so I tried to come up with an idea using it that was more adult oriented. So I used the treasure chest and the words "celebrate and hope" to indicate that hope is important and the hope is in what might be found in the treasure chest. The treasure map at the top of the card is from the wheel. I made 20 of these cards to swap and the challenge was to get the same part of the wheel at the top of each. With care it can be done. I simply colored it in with markers and the sand under the chest was done using a sponge and ink pad. The chest is raised.

One thing I learned making these cards is that they look much better with some dimension and/or embellishment. Simply stamping them makes them rather boring.