MORE FROM THE CRAFT ROOM and FIRST PROJECTS

 I finished up in the craft room today.  I needed to make a card today for a friend and so that gave me the impetus to finish it up.

The main thing I needed to work on was the ironing board which had become a gathering place for items that still needed a home.  I also had a box in the living room that needed to have a home found for its contents.  Homes were found for all and here now is a view of my sewing area.  I can't wait to do some sewing in it. I will do so before the weeks end!  Even if it is only one seam. I am so loving my new craft room.

Like I said in the beginning of this post I needed to make a card today.  One of the emails I got today told me of the death of  the husband of a friend of mine in Maryland.  I didn't have any sympathy card in my stock inventory so a card making session was in order.  I have a favorite set that I go to when I need sympathy cards.  It is Close as a Memory from Stampin' Up.  I have other stamps I use but this is my go to set when I just want to card to come.  I love it!  It probably sound a bit strange, but I think sympathy cards are about my favorite cards to make.  While making them I pray for and think a lot of the person or family I am making them for.  I find making sympathy cards more than just a creative endeavor.  It is a very personal and meaningful one.  I also love doing the flower image on watercolor paper using my Stampin' Write markers to color the stamp, then I spritz it with water using my mini mister.

I didn't want the only card I made today to be a sympathy card so I also made a Thank You card.  I have many Thank Yous to send out.  So many people were so generous with their support before I left Maryland and I do want to thank them all.  I made the first of my Thank You cards today as well.  It's fall and so I pulled out one of my favorite fall sets  Serene Sunflowers also from Stampin' Up. This card was going to a very special friend and I love the sentiment that comes with the set.  It reads: "True friends grow separately without growing apart".  I stamped this on the inside of the card. 

I used several techniques in  the making of this card.  One was thumping which I used on the center of the sunflower.  I inked up the center stamp with Close to Cocoa and then thumped the stamp with Chocolate Chip. I also added some bronze stickles to the center to give it a bit of dazzle and sparkle. The sunflower itself I inked in Mores Mustard and then using my Stampin' Write markers colored over the bases of the leaves with Bravo Burgundy and Pumpkin Pie.  I think this gave some depth to the flower.  In order to put on the stem and leave I used the masking technique. 

I was so happy to be back in the stamping and card making mode.  It's been a very long time.  I look forward to doing more soon. After all I need lots of more Thank You cards. 

A CARD AND LOTS OF WORK TO DO!

A quick card to show so that you all don't think I am slacking.....I embossed the Upsie Daisy large image from Stampin' Up on some designer paper. I don't like black embossing powder because no matter how hard I try I get tiny black specks so instead I use Stampin' Ups black craft ink and clear embossing powder when I want a black embossed image. I wanted the butterfly to fly across the flowers but didn't want to "fussy cut" it so instead I punched it out in a circle and popped it up on a dimensional.

So that is my card. I have to confess it is one I made some time ago. I have been so busy with the preparations for the craft show and now special orders that I haven't had the time to process any of my current photos to upload here. Success does come with a price....but don't get me wrong I am happy to pay the price of business creating. So far I have completed two sets of 8 Christmas cards each and 25 various special cards. I have orders for 6 altered composition notebook journals, 10 more cards and a fall themed table runner. Plus I need to finish 2 sets of place mats, 2 table runners and 4 sets of pot holders to be taken to the museum gift shop by the end of next week.

I asked God for a sign as to whether I should work toward formalizing my craft business and get serious about marketing my work.....I'm thinking I may have received an answer. What do you think?

TIME FOR A DIFFERENT STYLE

Once again I have need for sympathy cards. I think there must be something connected here with the age I and my peers have entered into...........So far at least most of the cards have been for parents of friends and not friends themselves. I guess that will be the next stage.

But enough of that talk. This card makes heavy use of white and gold with just a touch of black as the layer between the two brushed gold scalloped rectangles. I used my Scor Pal to emboss the lines a little over halfway down the front of the card stock. Using the ribbon helps hide the slightly uneven ends of the score lines.

The ribbon is a piece from my stash. No idea where from??? All the card stock is Stampin' Up. I especially love their brushed gold card stock. The inks and Gold Embossing Powder is also from SU. The stamps used are from Papertrey. I can't right at the moment remember the name of the set.

For as easy as this card was to make I really like the way it turned out.

I just checked on Papertrey's site. The stamp set used is Everyday Blessings.

MORE SYMPATHY FOR PETS

It seems that there is a rash of sick and unfortunately dying pets once again; so I find my self making more pet sympathy cards. These are so sad to make because in most cases the pets lost truly were family members and even the children of the couples.

I am still so grateful to have my Pet Stack card stock pack from DCWV. IT is my first go to collection of papers for these cards.

I've made cards both for the loss of cats as well as the lose of dogs. At the moment I only need the dog ones, but I will be ready for future loses.

The cat and dog stamps are from Inkadinkadoo and the sentiment on the dog card is from Papertrey. They each have a specific stamped message about the loss of a pet on the inside.

I've always wondered how these cards are received. At least until Thursday night when I saw a good friend who just lost her beloved Westie, Sherlock, last week. He was her and her husbands "little boy". They had no human children of their own. She told me how touched she was that I took the time to make a person card for the lose of a pet. That it showed them I really did care and understand what Sherlock had meant to them both.

So I will continue making these cards. I thank the Lord that he has given me this small talent that can be shared with others and provide them some comfort.

I did get my Copic Colour Challenge card done today and it is waiting patiently to be photographed. Oh and a little side note.....my mouth feels much better today. I am thinking rather than a tooth problem it was stress reated pain in my jaw.....I'm working real hard to reduce the stress that seems to be pervasive in my life at the moment.

SYMPATHY

Once again I had the need for several sympathy cards. It seems that they never end. It's funny (I think I've written this before) but I don't like making sympathy cards and yet I do like making them very much. Both emotions at the same time.

Obviously I don't like making them because it means someone I know has died or someone I know has had someone close die. That's sad. On the other hand when I make a sympathy card I find myself thinking about the person who dies and also the loved ones they have left behind. I find myself praying for all involve. That I find very comforting and a blessing to be able to do. Even when I make these just a card to keep on hand for when it's needed I can pray that the ones receiving the card when ever they receive it and who ever they are are comforted by it and pointed toward God who can heal all sorrows.

Both of these cards were made primarily using Papertrey's stamp set Every Day Blessings. I love the two step cross image in this set. The papers for the rust card came from my Winter Craft Kit and the sentiment on the card is from Stampin' Up's set Refuge and Strength. I'm thinking as I look at this card that I shouldn't have put the two pieces of fluffy ribbon on the card. They actually look like two caterpillars crawling around the card.....NOT GOOD! I'm thinking they will be removed before the card is sent out.

The second card uses papers from SU's Designer paper package Green Tea; which I love. Both the paper and the tea! I made the little flowers using one of my SU punches. I think the sentiment on this card came from a GinaK set that had a variety of sentiments in it, but I'm not totally sure. The little leaf twig is from SU's Refuge and Strength and I used their new Wide Oval punch to punch it out.

I did make a couple of other cards using another favorite group of sets from Papertrey. Their quilt block and sentiment sets. It should not be surprising that I would love those sets seeing as my other passion in life is quilting. Tomorrow I will hopefully be back to show you those cards.

Thanks for stopping by......TaTa for now!

LOVELY TREES

Two more cards here using the Lovely As a Tree stamp set from SU. They sympathy card actually was one of my fair entries. It was judged worthy of a red, 2nd place, ribbon which made me very happy.

Once again both of these cards use papers and embellishments from the Summer craft kit. (Don't worry I'm almost done using up everything and will soon move on to something else.)

I used watercoloring and masking with both of these cards, but think it worked out much better in the sympathy card. The birthday card is okay, but I am not totally happy with how it turned out. I think my background sky ended up to dark. Oh well live and learn. Right?

CARD AND PAGES

The 2008 Montgomery County Fair is now history! That means there is once again time to get back into my stamp room and play. My playing involves finishing up the use of the papers and embellishments in my Summer Craft Kit. The papers are almost gone. Only scraps remain, but since I mainly used this kit to make pages for my nephews baseball album I have quite a few embellishments left, especially the flowers. Somehow they just didn't seem appropriate to the baseball theme. Don't worry though they will not go to waste! They will be used on other projects in the future.

So here are two more pages for the album. I now have February and April
pages complete. All the pages I have completed so far have been fun though challenging. There are not many photos like you see in a lot of albums. Mainly the memories are of newspaper clippings and programs. Lots of print. Of course this does mean I don't have to do much if any writing which I do like.

One thing I have discovered is that rubbery (sticker) embellishments though really neat do not make sliding the pages they are on into page protectors very easy. They want to stick to the protector. So you have to be real careful with them. I do like the way they look however as they are thick and give a 3 D look. Also the ones I found are great colors. The strip of baseballs down they right side of the first page are these type of stickers as is the baseball bat and ball on the first page here. Come to think of it so is the "varsity" pennant. This page was a real bugger to get into the page protector, but I did it!

I didn't want to stop with the two pages so I also made another sympathy card. I used my new Stampin' Up scalloped border punch to make the scallop fringe that peaks out from the right side of the patterned paper strip. I then used the tip of my finger to "fluff" the scallops up a bit so they didn't lie totally flat against the card. I love this punch and know that it will get a lot of use.

I once again used the Lovely As a Tree stamp set from SU. I don't know why I waited so long to get this set. It is quickly becoming a favorite. I really like how the pine tree turned out here. The paper I stamped it on is a plain side of one of the double sided papers that came in the kit. It had a texture to it. Normally I don't like to stamp on textured paper because you get a texture showing on the image, but I like it with this pine tree stamp. I think it gives the feeling of the pine needles.

I hope you've enjoyed these and hope to be back to a more regular posting schedule. If you are interested in my week at the county fair I am posting about that on my companion BLOG Life Out My Window. Feel free to stop by.

ANOTHER SYMPATHY CARD

I think in the past two years I have made more sympathy cards than any other genre of cards. And today I made another. This one goes to a family at our church. The matriarch of the family passed away last Friday. Ellen was 100 years old. Almost 101! She lived with her daughter and son in law who have taken care of her for years. It was not an unexpected death, but one that will still be mourned.

I used one of my favorite stamps from the set A Measure of Life. IT is a retired SU set, but it will not be retired from my collection. I love all the stamps in this set, but this one of the dragonfly with the verse from Ecclesiastes inscribed around it is the one I use the most. For a while it was a stamp that frustrated me as the verse was almost illegible. Then I discovered the black VersaFine ink pad and WOW what a difference in clarity.

The card stock and ribbon I used for this card are from my Spring Craft kit that is a Stampin' FLYBabies challenge. So is the ribbon. I used Stickles on the wings of the dragonfly to give them some irredentist glimmer. I tried to use Pearl-Ex and gave up. I've seen wonderful things done with Pearl-Ex but I can't get the stuff to work for me. Also to make the body of the dragonfly stand out a bit more I outlines it with colored pencil. The background of the card is my retired background stamp from SU French Script. This one will not be retiring from my use either. Since I don't yet have nestabilities I used my Mary punches for the oval and scalloped oval.

FAUX CLOISONNES

I forget exactly when it was but several weeks ago I think the Splitcoast Techniques Challenge was Faux Cloisonnes. I have been intrigued with this technique ever since I first heard of ot, but had never tried it. I think part of my problem was I was never exactly sure what type of stamp to use.

I knew it needed to be a line stamp with a fair amount of detail, but also enough open space so that you could see the paper that was stamped on. I also felt it needed to be a fairly "classic" stamp, meaning not very contemporary like the "doodle" stamps. Because of these perceived, if not real, stamp guidelines I never could find the right stamp to use. Finally one day while in our local stamp store I thought I had found it.....I tried it out and it was all wrong. The design itself was great but the open spaces were too open. You will see this stamp in a later post as I have come up with what I think will be the perfect projects for it, but Faux Cloisonnes did not work.

The next time I was in the store I looked again and again I thought I found the correct stamp. This time it was the right one.......it was the perfect butterfly! Here are some of the images I did.

Faux Cloisonnes is when you stamp with metallic ink, I prefer gold as that is traditional, and emboss with the same metallic powder an image onto a glossy picture that has a variety of colors or textures. It can be a dramatic or a subtle variety of color. As you can see some of the images I cut out with my paper snips. This is what you most often will see, but one I punched out with a circle punch and mounted on a scalloped circle punched out of Brushed Gold card stock. I found that old calendars that have glossy pictures works really well. You can also use pictures out of magazines but the paper they are on is of a much lighter weight. The calendars is more of a card stock weight.

So what did I make using the images. Well, once again I have had the need for Sympathy cards and I thought these images would be perfect. So I created a series of sympathy cards from the 8 or so Butteflies I made while playing with different backgrounds to stamp on. For right now I'm just showing you two of the cards as this post is already getting long enough and I know you are probably ready to move on.

I always find Sympathy cards a challenge to do. I want to get the right balance of simplicity and beauty to honor the one who has passed on with a cheerfulness and message that can bring comfort and hope to the person who has lost a loved one. Frivolity just doesn't work on a sympathy card, at least not in my opinion. Butterflies in my mind symbolize new life and in my belief system death is a passage into a wonderful new life. A life that will be spent in the presence of our Creator, so they are very appropriate to sympathy cards.

BIRTHDAY PARTY REPORT AND CARDS

The party was a great success! All the girls had a ball. The parents were amazed at how intent they were on making their projects and how quiet they were. Best of all my stamps are not to big of a mess. Fortunately I am not one that gets too upset over staining on the wood after all they are stamps. I did control color contamination by only putting out one color stamp pad at a time. The first projects used black pads and they added color with markers (not my SU markers however I have BIC markers for kids use). The second set of projects used red pads. Also each set of projects had their own exclusive stamps to be used so I didn't have to worry about cleaning them between projects.

The girls were quite creative. They looked at my samples and then pretty much did there own thing. They did a lot of just drawing with the markers also. The card stock was pretty well covered on each of the projects. I don't think I would do this with a group any younger than 7 however. The good news is it now sounds as if the mom's want to get together and do something!

Now, at to what I've been up to today. I have a friend who is a therapist and she asked me to make her some cards for people who have lost beloved pets; specifically cats and dogs. I was stumped at first what to do then I found some marvelous stamps from Cornish Heritage Farms. I immediately ordered them and they arrived very quickly. I got to sentiment stamps and a wonderful cat stamp. I am still looking for a nice dog stamp, but haven't found one I like yet. I did however fine a pet themed mat pack from DCWV that I was able to use for a dog card. I'm still on the prowl t find a nice not comic dog stamp.

For the cat card I used my SU craft ink spots in More Mustard, Pumpkin Pie and Chocolate Chip to color the cat fur and then used q-tips to put some Old Olive on the eyes. I stamped the image on So Saffron card stock and then embossed with clear embossing powder. I then used a q-tip again to lightly rub Blue Bayou ink around the outside of the image and used the tearing edge to get a ragged edge around the image. The DSDP is Blue Bayou layered on more So Saffron and the ribbon is Cream Grosgrain with a ribbon belt from my hodge podge set. After I did this I like how it looked somewhat like a collar.

In side the card is a sentiment that says " Always remember the quiet dignity, the sophisticated air, and the warm comfort. Your beloved cat may have gone, but your memories remain. Sorry for your loss."


I wanted to use the ribbon collar idea on the dog card as well. This is what I came up for that. The sentiment on the inside of it reads
"The sadness of a dog lost can be tempered by the memories left behind: Walks in the park, games with a ball, and even muddy paws on a clean floor. Sorry to hear of your loss."

I wish I had found these stamps sooner. Over the past few years I have had many friends loose a pet, including our loss of our own Mr Snuggles a wonderful and crazy beagle. I am glad I have them now. If any one has any help for were to find a nice not too small dog stamp I would very much appreciate a comment. Thanks.

FLY BABY WEEKEND OF STAMPING FUN!

This weekend there were some SCS FLYBaby friends that had a get together in McFarland, WI. You might ask why McFarland? Well for stampers that's an easy question to answer....it's because that is where Gina K's store is located! They had such fun meeting Gina K. and inviting her to become a FLYBaby; which she did! They stamped and laughed together all weekend. Alas, many of us FLYBabies who lived further away from McFarland did not make it there, but we did stamp together using a set of challenges we issued to each other on line. Here are the cards I made for these fun challenges.

The first challenge was a sketch challenge posted by Diane. I had several cards I needed to be making this weekend to be sent out on Monday and I used this challenge to make a baby card for a special little girl named Aimee and her parents of course. It was a pretty straight forward card to make. I colored the image of the baby basket using my SU Stampin' Pastels and a blender pen. The stamp set used is a retired set called Baby Talk.

The next challenge was given by Beth. It was a lonely unloved challenge. We were to use a color card stock, stamp set and embellishment that we didn't really like and hadn't used in a long time.......The card stock was easy for me. I went right for my Bold Bright selections. They are my least favorite to use. Their name says it all. They are just too bold and too bright for my tastes. I chose Orchid Opulence for my card stock. It's really bright! The stamp set I chose was Botanicals. A very old SU set. It is a set I like a lot, but I don't think it has been off the shelf in two years. Which says a lot since I've only been stamping two and a half years. It is a set I purchased on E-Bay. The embellishments I choose where the old silver SU brads that are shaped like diamonds. I've just never found a way to use them. I'm stuck on thinking brad = round. I also used a piece of wide organdy ribbon I found languishing on the bottom of my ribbon box. I did add some Going Grey and Basic Grey card stock and Stamped the main image on water color paper coloring it in using SU watercolor crayons and an aqua painter. Guess what....when I got done I discovered I had a card I liked very very much. I only wish is didn't have to be a sympathy card that will sent to a friend who lost her young college student daughter in a car accident this weekend.

I issued the third challenge. It was simply to use one or multiple tags on the front of your card. I did two for samples. I will only show one here. On it I used a pre-made tag from SU. It was from their tag sheet sets that they don't make any more. I guess it doesn't really both me that they don't carry them any more because I have more than I will ever use and I got them in my demonstrator kit when I began as an SU independent demonstrator August 2005! Obviously not one of my favorite items to use. They are actually why I issued this challenge. I wanted to challenge myself to finally use one! I colored my image here with a compination of Copic, Prisma and SU markers. I'm still not sure which I like the best. They all have their strengths and weaknesses.

The last challenge card I will show in this post was given by Jennifer. We were to make a Criss Cross card. I made my first card of this type in last weekends SCS January VSN weekend. They are such fun and I was glad for the opportunity to make another so soon. Maybe this will help set into my mind that this is a type of card to make more often. With February coming I'm finding myself making lots of hearts, love, and Valentine themed cards. I did make three of them this weekend. This is the second one here. I also used one of the hat-pins From my SU Pretties Kit. I really don't like using these. I find them very difficult as a design element. In fact the one used here with it's ribbon was one I put together to use last weekend and I just couldn't get it to look right. I am happy with how it worked on this card. BUT it will have to be a card that I hand deliver to someone. Cards with these would definitely take extra postage and probably would need to go into a padded envelope.

So those are the first four challenges. I will post the rest of my challenge cards in another post later this evening. Right now my fingers are getting tired! And I'm going to go visit some other BLOGS to see what others have been up to this weekend!