I'M GETTING TO OLD FOR ALL THIS!

This picture is in honor of our guild quilt show this weekend. I have spent all of today gathering things from home to take to it and helping set it up. The show opens tomorrow and will run through 5pm Sunday. I really enjoy working with it and being at it all weekend, but boy I can sure tell that I'm not as young as I used to be. This is at least the 15th show I've been involved with.

The stamp I used to watercolor for this framed picture is another of my ones from Impression Obsession. I have used it to make note cards but Diane suggested it was so pretty it should be a framed picture. I decided I agreed with her and here it is. Thank you for the suggestion Diane I love this picture.

This is probably all I will be posting until Monday unless I perk up one of the other evenings when I get home from the show. So since there probably won't be anything new here if you have never visited Diane's Designs take this opportunity to do so. She does marvelous work!

FINAL STAINED GLASS CARD & A SURPRISE FIND!

Here is my final, for now anyway, stained glass card. This is the image colored with Twinkling H2O watercolors. The shimmer doesn't really photograph well at all but is very pretty in real life. I cut out the image and mounted it with dimensionals on a piece of So Saffron Designer Paper. I then places Brilliant blue brads in the corners and mounted this all on a piece of Brilliant Blue leaving only a sliver of it showing for a very thin boarder. The card itself is So Saffron. I really like this one though I am still not sure which is my favorite from this series of cards.

Now on to my surprise find. I was in Michael's the other day looking for who knows what. I think maybe a CuttleBug embossing folder and I decided to check out the Clearance section. I rarely do this anymore because our Michael's only puts the real junky stuff on clearance (unless its holiday stuff) and then it's not usually marked down all that much anyway. This day though I hit the jackpot. I found a Martha Stewart kit for making paper table favors and decorations for a tea party or some such thing. It was marked down from $19.00 to $3.00. The kit was all card stock weight paper embossed and punched out to look like white eyelet. There are several different styles some scalloped and embossed on both edges others flat on one edge and scalloped and embossed along the other. There are also various widths and lengths. I don't know how much total there was in the package but it was enough to make 8 each of napkin rings, votive candle holder covers. name cards and various other items. I snatched up one of the kits and when I got home and opened it up and sorted through everything I loved it. Here is my first card I've made with some of it. This is the narrowest double edged paper eyelet.

What do you think? I placed a strip of Purely Pomegranate satin ribbon behind the center of it. I didn't have time to do any coloring on this eyelet piece but I think I want to give that a try on another card. I think lightly running an ink pad over the eyelet so only the raised embossing picked it up.

The quilt block stamp is from Impression Obsession and the sentiment is from a Stamping Up! sentiment set. I forget the name at the moment and am too lazy to run upstairs and check. (My 5 am wake up time is catching up with me!!!)

Who knows tomorrow I may even go back and see if they have anymore of the kits left. This will be great fun to play with.

DEALING WITH THE IMPORTANT THINGS!

I finally cut and worked with my What's In Your Tin stamp sets that I purchased from GinaK at the end of last month. These were so fun to make.

I altered some old Altoid tins using cards stock, designer papers, ribbons and various other embellishments. This was a project for which I was very happy that I have a Xyron machine to coat the entire back of the paper with adhesive so things would stick down well. No curled edges at all. I used sticky strip to adhere the ribbons to the sides of the tins. At the last moment I decided to also cover the bottom of the tins to cover up the nutritional and ingredient labeling for the Altoids.

I am very pleased with how these turned out. Of course the best part, the "essential" part is on the inside. Five lovely little Hershey Special Dark Nuggets with Almonds! Yummy!!!!! I placed the nuggets in a small cellophane bag, folded the edge to the back and placed a small piece of sticky strip on the bottom of the tin to hold things in place. I thought this made for a more finished presentation then just loose nuggets.

I've used up all my nuggets so now I think I want to alter some more tins this time as "Tooth Fairy" tins. I'd like to do some mini sewing kit tins, but I don't have any supplies to put in them so that project will wait for next year. Or maybe the Christmas boutique.

Thanks for stopping by.

STAINED GLASS

No I am not getting into another craft craze. I have enough of them already, thank you very much! But I did find this wonderful rubber stamp from The Artful Stamper in London, Ontario, Canada. It reminds me of a Tiffany stain glass work.

When I first found it I though of the Faux Cloisonne technique. Alas it was not a good stamp for that. I think the open spaces are too big. A smaller and more detailed stamp works better for that technique. Giving up on Faux Cloisonne I moved on to finding other ways to use this stamp.

It is a rather large stamp so I haven't come up with many different layouts for it. It pretty much takes up the whole 5 1/2 x 4 1/4 card front all on its own. So I've had to focus in on coloring and backgrounds for it. This has been fun in and of itself. Some of the techniques I have come up with don't show up will in my scans. I will try and describe those as best I can.

The first one is stamped on a piece of polished stone background paper that I made when I was playing around with that technique. I never came up with something I wanted to stamp on is so I just set it aside. I think this stamps works wonderfully with it. To give it some dimension like the stained glass has I stamped it in Black Craft ink and embossed it with clear embossing powder. I then cut the image out and mounted it on white mulberry paper. I don't like how the glue dots show through the mulberry paper so I used crystal effect and glued a rhinestone over them. I thought of using rhinestone brads to hold the paper down, but I don't like the brads showing on the inside of the card either. This is the least bold of the cards and I think I will make some more polished stone backgrounds and play with this more.

This next card is colored with a combination of Copic and Prisma markers. The image was stamped on plain white card stock with the Black Craft ink and also embossed. I found the raised edge of the embossing really helped me stay within the lines. I used my Canvas background stamp on the ruby red card stock with ruby red classic ink. Once again I cut out the oval image and mounted it. This tile though not totally centering the image so I had room for the sentiment.

The third and fourth cards are also colored with the markers. The difference being that on the third card the spaces that look white are actually cut out. There is an additional oval layer underneath the stamped image that is coated in Dazzling Diamonds for some added "bling" that shows through the cut out areas. The colored image is attached to the glitter layer using dimensionals so it appears to float over the backing. On this card I did use rhinestone brads in the corners since I had the additional layer of patterned paper they could go into and not show on the inside of the card itself.

The only thing unique about the forth card is that I laid out the card in a portrait rather than landscape fashion. Also the background is stamped using the direct ink pad to card stock method. You can't tell but there are actually about three different colors of ink used here.

I have one other image I am working with but haven't actually put it to a card yet. As in all the others I used Black craft ink and clear embossing powder so I would have the slightly raised edge. For this last one in the series though I have painted the image in with Twinkling H2O's. I like how it turned out with the little bit of shimmer. But I don't think the shimmer will show up in a scan. I have several other techniques I want to try, but they will have to wait a bit. I am now busily working on items to sell in out guild boutique so I can earn some fun money to get a few more toys......All of the cards are headed to the boutique.

A BLOOMIN' CHALLENGE IS DONE!

I have been piecing, ironing and quilting for a day and a half straight to get all my projects completed for next weekend's quilt show. With only 4 and a half hours sleep last night I am now more than very tired and think a nap will be in my future today. But staying up half the night was well worth it and all three of my quilts are finished and delivered to the quilt show committee. I even managed to get them there 2 and a half hours before the deadline!

As of yesterday morning I had one quilt done, but missing a label. One top finished but still needing to be basted together with batting and back, machine quilted, bound and labeled. And this quilt that I'm posting a picture of here was only a half pieced together top still needing all the basting, quilting etcetera as well. To say I knew it was going to be a long day and night is a major understatement.

But as I said with only 4 1/2 hours sleep between 6:30 am Friday and 12:30 pm Saturday I did get them all done and delivered.

This quilt was part of our guilds annual "Bloomin' Challenge" in which we are given 3 pieces of very bizarre and challenging fabrics and told to make a quilt or other quilted item out of them. I added the black fabric to the mix and this is what I came up with. I felt the black toned down what were otherwise all very bright bold fabrics. The corner appliqués are made up of flowers I cut out of one of the pieces of the fabric given to us. All in all I am very happy with how this quilt turned out and hope others enjoy viewing it also.

I'm not posting pictures of the other two quilts I am entering in the show since I have already featured them in other posts. If you would like to see them once again you can click on their names and you will be transported back to the original posts. Bucket Inspired Stars and A Bowl Full of Traveling Dreams.

I love quilting and am constantly amazed at the energy I get from it. The marathon quilting session was great fun. I wish live had more time available for such things, and for marathon stamping. Unfortunately there is a reality called work and life which now I must get back to. After my nap that is............

REDUCING AND ORGANIZING

I am running out of space! Or more accurately I have run out of space!!!! So I decided it was time to take drastic steps. No, I am not going to stop purchasing stamps. That's just not realistic is it? (I am assume those reading this post are fellow stampers and not my DH!) Christine had a segment on ScrapTime that dealt with "unmounting" Stampin' Up stamps. That is taking them off the wood.

Now don't anyone get me wrong I love my wood. It is so silky smooth to the touch. It's soft, well at least softer than acrylic. And I think it smells nice. But it takes up so much room having every stamp mounted on a 1 inch thick piece of it. If I had a 20 x 24 foot stamping room or some such thing I could manage, but in my little bedroom turned stamp room space just plain ran out!

I've actually been thinking of doing this for a year or so. That's when I first read a thread about it on SCS. The folks talking about it there loved doing it. (Well most did.) But they made it sound very time consuming and very expensive. They were talking about removing the rubber not only from the block but also the foam padding and remounting it on E-Z Mount which at over $5 a 8-1/2 x 11 sheet was more than I wanted to spend. Also there was much talk about storing the newly unmounted sets in binders verses plastic CD jewel cases. I was over whelm with the prospect and kept putting making a decision about it off even as free space dwindled more.

Then Christine showed how quick and easy it was to do this and also that there was no need to purchase new foam. I saw the light and I have begun. Thank you Christine! Here is a photo showing the stacks of stamp sets that when unmounted will fit into the wire CD basket sitting next to them. Unbelievable!!!! What once took up a 10inch deep x 12 inch wide and 24 inch tall stack now fits into a 11inch deep x 5-1/2 inch wide and 6 inch tall space. I LOVE IT!!!!!!

I use my microwave to soften the glue enough so I can gently peel the stamp off the block with the foam still intact. I experimented and found that it does take 20 seconds. For the small stamps it takes about 15 seconds. The picture labels also peel off nicely, though as Christine said they come off cloudy. Doesn't bother me though. The labels I place on the outside top of the CD holder. I had started putting them on the inside of the top cover till I realize that meant when I looked at the CD holder the image was reversed which made it very difficult to read the sentiments. They stick nicely. Here you can see what a set looks like in its new home. This was a set that I hadn't actually mounted yet so the label is not cloudy.

With sets that haven't been previously mounted this is very easy, but you do have to tape the stick foam on a fabric service more than the others to cover up some of the stick. I found this tedious to do, but certainly not hard. Some of the stamps I unmounted did not have much adhesive left on them at all, but I think enough that they will hold on the acrylic block to stamp with them. If not I will try adding some Scotch Double stick tape.

I did find that I needed to tape the label down on the spine of the container. I used clear packing tape cut in a strip wide enough it would wrap around the edges. Here is a picture of the CD box with the individual cases in it. That was this morning. Now I have only 3 or 4 more jewel cases to fill. Then I need to head back to The Container Store and get a few more of the metal boxes. I like these because they have handles, they stack and they are relatively inexpensive. I think they are $6.99 each. I also got the jewel cases at the Container Store. They were $6.99 for 10. But thanks to Christine I have found a much less expensive source on line. It's called Effectuality Inc. Even with shipping they are much less expensive so I think I Will be placing an order with them.

I do have one problem now though.....what do I do with all these empty blocks????? They are stacking up. Yikes! Clutter!!!! I might try and sell them on E-Bay in a large batch. Who knows? First I need to get up the courage to post items on E-Bay. And I do need to do this since in doing this I can no longer ignore the number of sets I have.....I've done over 25 sets and I haven't even scratched the surface. Some must go! The question is which ones??????????? Well, it's too late now to think of that. Such a vexing question will have to wait till tomorrow.....or the next day....

TOTALLY NOT STAMPING RELATED!

This is totally not stamping or quilting related but I have to shout it to the mountain tops.....Carolyn won!!!!!!!

Now you are all probably wondering what this is all about. I have a good friend from our church who I have known for years. She is the sweetest lady. The most calm, quiet and soft spoken person I know.

AND I JUST LEARNED SHE WON THE PILLSBURY BAKE OFF!!!

I am so happy for her and her husband (Dennis is a sweetie also). When she told us she was one of the 100 finalist in the Bake Off and would be going to Dallas for the grand prize we were all so thrilled for her especially when we learned this had been a life long dream of hers.

DREAMS DO COME TRUE!

Way to go Carolyn. We all at Covenant can't wait till you and Dennis return. You had better wear a lot of padding 'cause me thinks you are going to get a lot of hugs!!!!!! And we all hope you will bake us some more of those yummy prize winning cookies!!!!!!!!! They are soooooo good.

If you would like to try out her recipe you can find it here..........

SPRING & SHEETLOAD

A card celebrating spring.

This is another card made using a template for cutting found on SheetLoad of Cards. Is was the January issue of the e-zine.

I had to make cards for a Spring Floral swap in SCS with my FLYBaby stamping friends. I really had fun making these. Since the basic layout and sizes to cut were all planned out for me it left me free to use my time coming up with techniques and other design elements to use. I came up with a lot to use.

I embossed the purple card stock using my cuttlebug. I rolled the green cardstock with my rough edges jumbo wheel, dug out my retired Botanicals set for the flower stamp that I then colored using my watercolor pencils and embossed around the colored image. and I used ribbon with the wonderful little ribbon slides.

I had planned to place the set of five layers (first layer being the purple floral DP) on a ivory 6x5 inch card base. When I laid it out I didn't really like the starkness of the ivory background so I sponged it with Perfect Plum classic ink. That was better, but know I felt that there was not enough definition between the DP layer and the sponged card. With 5 layers on the card already I really didn't want to add another so I tried outlining the glued down layer using the perfect plum marker. I simply ran the brush end of the marker right along the edge of the DP. I thought it worked pretty well.

The finishing touch on the card was stamping "happy birthday" on the DP in Elegant Eggplant craft ink and then embossing with clear embossing powder. I used the birthay sentiment from Brithday Whimsy. This was the final technique and element on the card. Now I need to get them to the PO tomorrow.

Card Recipe:
Stamp Sets--Botanicals, Birthday Whimsy (both SU retired)
Papers--Perfect Plum, Certainly Celery, and Ivory CS, Retired SU DSDP Carte Postale coordinate?
Inks--Perfect Plum and Certainly Celery Classic, Elegant Eggplant Craft, Black Stazon
Accessories--Mellow Moss Gingham Checked Ribbon, Silver Ribbon Slide, Cuttlebug and embossing Folders, Perfect Plum Marker, Sponge, Ivory card and Envelope, Clear Detail Embossing Powder

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.

CARDS FOR OUR HEROES/SHEET LOAD OF CARDS

Here are two of the cards that we made last Saturday for the Cards for Heroes. They are the ones that I used the Sheet Loads of Cards templates for. The Love You card is from the April issue of their ezine.

I am working on using up some old patterned papers that have been hanging around way to long so I have no idea whose they are ore where or when I obtained them. I do know they are not Stampin' Up as they do predate my SU days.....
The card stock is SU's Elegant Eggplant and Lovely Lilac. And the Sentiment is from the retired set A Light Heart. This is the set SU had for the American Heart Association a while back. The rhinestone brads are from Oriental Trading Co which for bulk card production are much more affordable than SU's. I do love Stampin' Up but sometimes their embellishments can be a bit pricey....After layering all the various pieces I then mounted them on some large card blanks I had that also have been hanging around too long. These are the value packs of cards and envelopes that you can get from craft stores like Michael's or Hobby Lobby.

The second card is from the November issue of the ezine. It's a bit harder to find on the BLOG to download as they started a new BLOG in December of last year. You can go here and scroll all the way down to the bottom of the post. Or you can go to their front page of the BLOG and on the left there is a link to their archives of past magazines. Look for November and down load.

Once again I am using up old patterned paper....got to make room for new you know....The stamp I used is one I picked up at the going out of business sale of our local Stamp store...so sad...I don't know what company it is from as it was a demo stamp of the stores and has been used so much the marking on the wood are worn off. But I love the scrolls on it. The ribbon is a $1 roll from Michaels. Once a gain I love SU's ribbon, but some times you just find a nice one else where. This has a wonderful gold edge to it.

Sorry the scan here is a bit crocked. The card itself is straight. The card stock I used is SU and it is Certainly Celery and Lavender Lace with the sentiment stamped with Lavender Lace on Whisper White. Everything is places on a Whisper White 5 1/2 x 4 1/4 top fold card.

So there you have it. We also made two other card designs which were my own designs. For some reason I don't think I scanned them. I guess I was so excited about showing how I used Sheet Loads of Cards and also in a hurry to get them mailed out in time for them to make it overseas to be used for Mother's Day. Trust me though these were the better of the four......

SHOUT OUT TO SHEET LOAD

I love this site. If you have never been to it you need to go and check it out. It's called Sheet Load of Cards and if you ever need to make a quantity of one card you will find it invaluable.

I used two of their design sheets this weekend when I needed to have patterns made and kits cut out for a bulk card making session during a Women's Health Day at our church. Of course I put this project off until the last minute. (My parents didn't give me a middle name at birth but it should have been "Last Minute"). I began at 8pm the night before and I needed to be ready by 7:30am the next day.

With the help of this site I did it. By midnight I was finished and had kits prepared and packaged with a sample of each design to make 45 Mothers Day cards for Cards For Heroes.

Using Sheet Loads of Cards allowed me to get some sleep that night and the women most of who had never made cards before loved putting them together!

So don't forget click here and go explore Sheet Loads of Cards.

QUICK POST BEFORE WORK

This is the card that I made for the "metal" swap at last Sunday's stamp club.

I wasn't sure what to do. I am not a big "metal user except for brads and eyelets and I wanted to use a bit more metal than that. So I remembered these sweet little double heart charms I found at Michael's in the bridal section. Still not a lot of metal on this card but better than what I normally use. I think the reason I don't normally use much is I am always worried that the card will be too bulky to mail for just 41 cents.

The rest of the items used for this card other than the Prima flowers were from scraps lying around on my stamp table from the preparing of card kits I needed for Saturday. There is only one stamp used on this card. It is the Happy Birthday sentiment from SU's Birthday Whimsy sell-a-bration set. The diagonal strips look like ribbon bust are actually scraps of Elegant Eggplant card stock.

A very quick and easy card.

A NEW TECHNIQUE AT LEAST FOR ME

Yesterday I went to a Stamp Club meeting at our LSS, that sadly is closing sometime this month. Besides working on another new project for me, using old CD's, we had a card swap. Each month there is a different theme for the swap cards and this month it was "metal". We could do what ever we wanted as long as we used some sort of metal on the card front. This is the card I received. When I first got it I thought that the center strip that is embossed was aluminum foil or some sort of foil paper. WRONG! It is a foil tape used by either electricians or plumbers. I forget which she said. (It's a senior brain thing!). The woman that made the card said it is really neat stuff and is self adhesive with a paper covering that needs to be removed to expose the adhesive. So she embosses it, colors it with Ranger Alcohol Inks and lets it dry before mounting it. The piece under it is also a tape like a cloth duct tape that she also colored using the Alcohol inks. I love how you can see the texture of the tape under the colors. Then she simply taped both pieces to here card stock. The card is quite striking in real life.

So now I need to find me a hardware store or maybe check out Wal-Mart. I want to give this technique a try.....my list to try seems to be getting longer by the day. If and when I find these items used in this card I will report them to you immediately. If you happen to already know what they might be, please leave a comment.

A RARE MORNING POST

Good Monday morning! For those viewers in my age bracket this is one of those mornings that brings back memories of The Carpenter's. So I have really dated my self with that comment! If you don't know about or remember the Carpenters Click on their name and you can learn more about them than you probably wanted to know. Unfortunately their musical
career was tragically cut short when Karen Carpenter died of the effects of Anorexia Nervosa. She really was the one who brought this terrible eating disorder into public awareness. More later on why these memories come back on days like this if you haven't already guessed.

Back to my morning post. A couple of weeks ago I tool up a challenge issued my my SCS FlyBaby friend Misty to organize our coloring tools so that they were more readily accessible and used more. I wanted to show you what I came up with. Another friend of mine who is the world's best bargain shopper found a bunch of planter sets made up of three little buckets on a tray. (To s how you what a shopper she is they normally retailed at $9.99 and she purchased them for $ .25!!!! Why can't I ever find those bargains???) She graciously gave me two of the sets. One of them you can see here. I have in them my Prisma pencils, Prisma markers and Copic markers. Aren't they cute? There was enough room between the pails on the tray for me to place my SU pencil sharpener.

I still had the problem of what to do with all my watercolor pencils????? I am trying to become more creative with recycling items, both to save money and our environment so I rummaged around in the box of containers I've saved from the trash can and found an International Coffee container. I wanted something tall enough to hold the pencils without their falling out but short enough that I could still find the pencils as they get shorter from sharpening after all the use the hopefully will now get. This is a closer view of what I came up with. They do lean, but don't fall out. I also keep my water coloring paint brushes in with them. (I keep my Aqua Painters in another container nearby.)

I used my Xyron to completed cover the back side of the designer paper I used with adhesive and then wrapped it around the can. The 12" length of paper was not long enough to go all around so you have to to cut a patch or add a sticker or flower to cover the gap. I didn't take a picture of my back, but I used a coordinating paper and placed a Prima flower on it for decoration. I checked and rechecked my measurements which were straight and even, but the can wasn't so there were a few gaps along the bottom. I added a band of ribbon along the top and bottom to cover those up. Finally I found a sticker from one of my many SU Simply Scrappin' kits that said create on it which I though t was appropriate and fortunately was a coordinating color. (don't know which it was, but know it is retired). After stamping Water Color Pencils on the sticker I was done. Very simple and easy.

In the first picture you can see that the boxes of SU watercolor crayons and Stampin' Pastels are still in their original containers stacked with my Twinkling H2O's which have been placed in a SU plastic container that has the dividers in it. It works perfect for the little jars I have. These will probably stay like this as they are accessible and I like their containers.

So their you have the organization for my coloring products. A big THANK YOU to Misty for this wonderful challenge. The scary thing about doing this was discovering just how many coloring products I have!!!! Now I really do hope that I use them more as I have discovered that I really like bringing out my inner child through coloring just like I use to in all the coloring books I grew up with. Hopefully my techniques have improved a bit since kindergarten, though sometimes I wonder.

Now back to The Carpenter's and today. If you haven't already guessed the connection. Or if you have and just would like a short walk down memory lane with me check this out..........Have a great Monday and hopefully I will be back tonight with another project post.

I needed a quick birthday card and decided that it was time to break out one of my Stampin' Up SAB sets. This is the card that I came up with. It's hard to tell in the scan, but I wanted the chocolate frosting to be nice and shiny like real yummy frosting is so I used Chocolate chip craft ink and embossed it with clear embossing powder. I also embossed the happy birthday sentiment. Using taken With Teal craft ink.

When Stampin' Up discontinued most of their colored embossing powders I was very unhappy, but I have come to learn that it really is much better to use my craft inks with the clear powder. I get a much truer color and since I have all 48 craft inks in the stampin' spots I can emboss with any color I want and only need to have one jar of embossing powder. Now I Just wish they sold the clear embossing powder in much larger containers as I use a lot of it.

I recently discovered the CPS website. This is where I found the inspiration for the layout I used here. It was their Layout #58. This layout was sponsored by GinaK stamps, but I didn't have a GinaK set that matched what I wanted to do.

Card Recipe:
Stamp Set--SU Birthday Whimsy
Papers--Pretty In Pink, Cool Caribbean, Whisper White,Cool Carribean Designer Paper
Inks--Chocolate Chip and Taken with Teal Craft Inks, Basic Gray Classic,
Other--Clear Embossing Powder, Yellow Stickles, Paper Flowers, Yellow Brads, Corner Punch, Pink Copic Marker

STAMPING AGAIN!

I am back to stamping and loving it. This is one of two cards I did today. (I'm saving the other for tomorrow since I know I won't have time to stamp then.)

I was inspired to get back to stamping after my sessions of sewing by a request for Birthday cards to be sent to a friend of a friend who is serving in Iraq. Also the SCS Sketch Challenge #170 was one I liked and decided to try. This is the result.

I love the images in this set from SU called For Father. I is in the Occasions Mini catalog which in effect now. I satmped the image using Timber Brown Stazon and before I colored it in using my watercolor pencils I sponged the background around it with Old Olive Ink. The "celebrate " sentiment was embossed with gold powder over Encore gold ink.

Other than I now notice in the scan that the strip with the image on it is a bit crocked I am happy with how the card turned out. I think my eyes are crocked and it takes a scanner or a camera to show up that flaw. I just don't see it when I look with just my eyes........

Card Recipe:
ALL SU STAMP SETS--For Father, Print Pattern, Wonderful Words
INK--Old Olive, Stazon Timber Brown, Encore Gold
PAPER--Old Olive, Lovely Lilac, Whisper White
OTHER--Gold Embossing Powder, Brads, Zig-Zag Edge Scissors

Thank you to Susan for giving me a VERY amazing award!!!

It is given to bloggers who share their art and creativity making their contribution to the blogging world. Wow.

Here are the rules:

1. You pick five blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also contribute to the blogging community, no matter what language.
2. Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.
3. Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and the link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.
4. Award-winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of Arte y Pico blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.

Susan.......who's blog Susan's Saga is wonderful. Though we are literally a world apart we have become BLOGing Buddies and I seriously hope one day somehow our lives will truly cross paths and we can meet face to face. You made my day today! So first........Susan you are OF COURSE tagged back with this!

It's hard to come up with just 5 to tag for this award, but that is what the rules say I must and so I will.

1: Diane's a wonderful woman with wonderful inspiration that she offers to all.
2:Etha's BLOG is a new one for me. Her work is amazing and not to be missed.
3:Stampinkub is a constant source of inspiration to me. If you haven't discovered him yet it's time.
4:Erika is another one of the BLOGs that I get excited about when I see she has a new post. Wonderful ideas and work.
5:Michele's BLOG has wonderful inspiration, but when you visit her be sure and scroll down to see pictures of what I consider the perfect stamp room!

I hope that those who stop by here will drop in on these award winning BLOGs and don't forget to visit Susan also.

FACE QUILTS

I thought if you can bare with one more post on quilts that I would show you the FACES quilts that I went to Lancaster to see. They were made by members of my Thursday mini group of quilters. There are 12 of us in the group and 10 of us took part in this self imposed challenge.

This is how it worked. We were each to make 10 quilt squares (1 for each member of the group participating in the challenge). The squares were to represent how we either saw our selves, wanted to see ourselves, or maybe feared we looked like. All 10 could be the same or each could be different. They could be realistic or whimsical. After we had all our individual blocks finished we got together and traded them around so each person had a block from each person in the group. That was the easy part....

Next we had to on our own come up with a way to set our blocks into a quilted wall hanging. I found some fabric in my stash that reminded me of old wall paper; so my faces where all framed with fabric and placed over a mantel in a turn of the century parlor scene. Everything was machine appliquéd down and I actually did stamp the clock face. I machine quilted it and voila I had completed my "Gallery of Friends"

Here are a few of the other quilts made by other members of the group. They were also in the Lancaster Show though only three of us went to actually see them. this next one was made by a good friend who actually went with me on this adventure in Lancaster. She asked that all the faces that would be made for her be made with small floral print backgrounds. Then she set them in what reminded her of a garden path. Can you pick me out in her quilt. I've taken on a different personality in her's than I had in mine.

The name of our mini group is "Fabrications" and so this person actually titled her quilt by that name. I think she made a dramatic use of black as her background color. Here I've taken on my wild and crazy persona once again.

This last one that I have a good picture of has a more traditional setting of the blocks, but I love the use of color around the individual blocks. Also this one and the one before it have in the corners color photographs of our group on various outings added to the front of the quilt. This was a nice touch as it allows the viewers to see what we really do look like.

This was a fun project. I will be a wonderful memory of our time together as a group of women who have formed friendships that began with our shared love of quilting and grew around shared joys and sorrows that life brought our ways.

Though most who find their way to this blog are paper rather than fabric artists I hope you still found something to enjoy in this post. Thanks for stopping by and please leave a comment if you enjoyed visiting.

CARVED WOODEN STAMPS!

Now that I found my camera (YEA!) I was able to take a picture of the hand carved stamps I purchased while in Lancaster. I haven't had a chance to use them yet, but hope to soon.

I laid a couple of the stamps on their side so you can see how they are carved right into the top of a beautiful piece of hard wood. The piece of wood they are carved onto is the shape of the stamp image. I don't know which came first in the process. The image designed for the shape of the piece of wood used or the design is carved and then the piece of wood shaped down to fit it. Anyway because they are all different shapes and sizes I find them fun to just look at.

I have also uploaded a close up picture of the owl stamp so you can see the detail with which the stamps are carved. The carving is very delicate. I am amazed with the workmanship. I wish I could better describe how beautiful the stamps themselves are. I guess you will just have to take my word for it.

BACK FROM LANCASTER!

I am back from Lancaster and had so many wonderful images to share with you, but alas somewhere on the return trip my camera was lost so the only things I can share are verbal which is not nearly so much fun. The quilts were wonderful and it was great fun seeing my FACES quilt hanging with the others made by my mini group of quilting friends. I love driving through the country side up in Lancaster County. The Amish farms are amazing. I can't say the air is fresh, since they were plowing the fields and putting down manure for fertilizer. It was very interesting though seeing the farmers on their plows being pulled by a team of six mules. No tractors here!

At the quilt show I found some items that I really wanted to share with you all. I had planned on taking a photo of them this evening, but obviously that will not happen. I will try and describe them for now. One of the vendors was a lady from just out side of NYC. She was born in India and though she came to the USA with her family when she was 3years old she was sent back to India every summer after she turned 8 to learn the family trade of making batik fabrics and now whe is in charge of running the business. One of the items used in making batiks, at least by her family is hand carved wooden stamps. She had some for sale. They are beautifully intricate. I purchased 5 of the smaller ones that I thought would go together on making designs for cards; a butterfly, an owl, and three with various flowers. They range in size from about an inch to and inch and a half and the design is carved onto the flat top of a two inch tall piece of beautiful wood. I don't know what kind of wood, but it is a gorgeous medium brown with a wonderful grain along the sides. I can't wait to use them. The women I purchased them from said they can be used with any type of ink.

So I don't have a camera to show you the stamps, but I will try and soon create something with them to show you. I haven't lost my scanner that I know of........

STILL IN QUILTING MODE

Here is another block that I have completed. This is the March Block of the Month from the Carol Doak Yahoo group that I am a member of.
Carol is a wonderful designer, teacher and author of all things Paper Pieced (a very accurate manner of piecing quilt blocks).

There will be 12 blocks is this series. I am making the blocks in a 6 inch size and they will all be in Black, White and Red. So it is one down and eleven to go.

Up until a week or so ago I had really let my quilting fall by the way side. But I am back on the quilting wagon and my machine has been humming away. I am currently working on my third project which you will get a peak at soon. Unfortunately I can't seem to sew and stamp at the same time. (Probably something to do with the fact that my sewing machine is sitting on my stamping table and bits of fabric are lying all over my stamping supplies.)

There are only so many hours in a day. Oh why didn't God create a 48 hour day, only 8 of which needed to be devoted to work, 8 to care and feeding of family, and 8 to sleep. That would leave 24 hours in each day available for craft pursuits! Definitely my idea of heaven.

In keeping with my focus on quilting at the moment I will be gone for two days to a quilt show in Lancaster, PA. Once again I have the joy of visiting one of my quilts that is hanging in the show. Here is information on the exhibit my quilt is hanging with. It is the Fabricated Faces.
I will try and get a picture of the quilt as it is displayed. So I will be gone until Friday night. Until then have fun with your crafting what ever form it takes.

FRIENDSHIP START CHALLENGE QUILT

Here it is. I have finished piecing the Challenge quilt for our 2008 quilt show. I am very happy how it turned out. Now I have to quilt it. I have until April 19 to finish it completely.

I have one more quilt to design and finish before the show. It is what we call the Bloomin' Challenge. IT got it's name from the fact that the fabric we are give to work with is by most peoples standards bloomin' difficult to work with. I have no idea yet what I will be doing with it. I actually like the fabric, but don't have a clue hoe to use it effectively. I will keep looking at it and hopefully soon something fun will enter my brain. That too needs to be completed by April 19.

In the mean time since my sewing machine is out and usable I made a few fabric hot pads today (after finishing this quilt top) that I will have for sale in the boutique during the show.

I love sewing again, but am anxious to finish these projects so I can get back to stamping. I have so many ideas of things to do running through my head and I'd like to work with them before I forget them. So many ideas and so little time! The story of my creative life......but what fun!

A LITTLE QUILTING TEASE

Here is a little tease as to the quilting project I am working on. This is one block of the design. Now I need to go and work and the last two I need to make and then put it all together. Stay tuned!

FROM QUILT IMAGES TO QUILTS

I have changed projects for the moment here at home. I have a quilt show coming up the end of April and I am so behind on getting ready for it that the stamp stuff for now has gone away and the sewing machine has come out.

Currently I am working on a quilted wall hanging that is part of our guild challenge. This was called the Paint Bucket challenge. We were given a piece of black and white base fabric and then 4 paint chips. The challenge was to use the base fabric and then find fabrics that were the color of our paint chips and make a quilt not less than 30x30 inches or more than 48 x 48 inches. My colors were two grays and two yellows. I have one block of four completed and after I finish this will go up and finish the other three. The design I am using is based on a Carol Doak paper pieced block that she made up for a Yahoo on line group that I am part of.

It's been a long time since I have sewn at home and it feels real good!

QUILTING IMAGES

Another card from Impression Obsession. I am so excited to have found this company as it is the only one that I have found that has quilting related stamps.

These images are yet more of my NC colored images. I am currently, among other things working on items that will be in my quilt guilds boutique at our Quilt Show in April. We have a program in the guild called Secret Sisters and am making cards that can be used for that. This is one.

The Secret Sister stamp is from the very first stamp set I purchased. It is a retired set from long ago that I got on E-bay.

SWITCHING GEARS TO SCRAPBOOKING

Its been a long time since I have done a scrapbook page. I probably wouldn't have gotten this one done if Erica Martin hadn't issued a sketch challenge at GinaK's recent release party. I've needed to get going on a scrapbook I am doing for my nephew and so I took the challenge as the opportunity to get started. (I've been been gathering paper, stamps and other supplies for some time and also been thinking, but not actually doing.) Having a layout to work from really made the process go much faster than I anticipated it would. AND it was fun doing it. THANK YOU ERICA! I needed that push.

Erica is on GinaK's design team, but she has a wonderful BLOG herself. Lots of great ideas and projects as well as her own store. Check it out. And while you are checking out BLOGS if you have never been to GinaK's you are really missing out. And both Gina and Erica often have wonderful drawings for BLOG CANDY. and who doesn't like candy???? Check them out.

ANOTHER IN THE COLORED IMAGE SERIES

Here is another card from my North Caroline set of colored images.

This was a very simple card to put together, but not so simple to color. It's an image from Impression Obsession Rubber Stamps. Being a quilter when I found this stamp while surfing on line stores I knew I had to have it. I am fairly happy with my first attempt at some serious water color painting. I still need some work on getting the shading and light sources correct, but I think that will take quite a bit of experimenting and practice.

I stamped the image with stazon black and colored it with Stampin' Up markers. Then I went over it with a damp watercoloring paint brush. Blending and removing colors as I went. I've done a few others also using slightly different color schemes in the quilt, but this is my favorite so far.

MORE OF OUTLINES STAMPS

Here are two more cards I made with images colored in while I was in NC. They both are stamps from Outlines Rubber Stamps. So far I have only used my images from them to color. IN the future I hope to shoe you some other ways to use them.

I'm sorry that my little snail looks crooked. In real life she is straight; I promise. I just didn't do a very good job of scanning and cropping. I used a combination of Copic and Prisma markers on both of these images.

I've never been very happy with the stamps that have a solid back with writing etched in (like the Happy Birthday tag on the snail card). The writing never seems to show up well. What I tried here was stamping the image with craft ink and then embossing it with clear embossing powder. I really like the way it turned out. I think it is much clearer.

I'm really liking having all these images colored in advance and then just waiting to be made into cards. I need to remember this trick.

Ah, life is good! BLOGGER is behaving again.
Before I show you another card I made from my images that I colored I thought I would show you the project my mom and I worked on while I was in NC. It was a quilting project and a challenge.

What we started with was some oddly shaped pieces of fabric with machine embroidered designs of trains. There were 8 of them to be exact. From the shape of each of the pieces it looked like someone had plans to make a lot of baby clothes with the embroidered image as the center piece of the yoke on top of something. (The yoke for those who don't sew clothing would be a fitted or shaped piece at the top of the shoulder of a garment.) The woman in my mothers quilting group at church found them in with some other fabric that was donated and was going to through them away. My mother being ever the frugal one said, "Don't throw them away, give them to me. Suzanne is coming to visit and she will make something out of them." Ha! This is the third time she has done that to me!!!!!! She has great confidence in her daughter's ability to turn nothing into something. But she does know I love a challenge! So this is what we started with, after trimming them into a usable shape. Any ideas what they will be made into?

They are about 2 1/2" x 5" in size. As I said earlier there are 8 of them and and in order to be useful they need to be turned into something measuring at least 36" x 45". That would be a small baby quilt. Hmmmmm? What to do? First thing is to pull out my trusty computer, yes the computer is now a quilting supply! Then I open up my quilting program, Quilt-Pro, and begin to play. After a bit of playing I came up with a design I though would work and ran it by my mom. She approved so I printed off yardage charts and we headed to a fabric store in search of the perfect fabrics. This is the fun part of quilting. Looking at all the luscious fabric that are available. Seeing as we already had determined the color scheme picking the right fabrics didn't take that long at all and soon we were back home.

Now the not so fun part had to be done. My dear mother oversaw this part of the project. All the fabrics had to be washed, dried and ironed. Then Everything needed to be cut out. This is what we had when that process was completed. Any idea yet what is coming????

Now the real fun began. I sewed and my mom pressed. We shared in the trimming and a great time was had by all! We had 8 blocks to make and a design to follow. Well I thought we were following the original design, but of course being a SHE I didn't go back and re-look at my computer design to be sure I knew what I was doing. I just jumped right in and made the blocks. And I made them all the same. Ooops! I should have made half of them one way and half another. Oh, well we'll just change the design a bit. No one else will see the original computer design and frankly we decided the new design showed off the embroidered trains better anyway. So this is what we ended up with. It is a good side for a toddler a bit big for a baby. The quilt block I came up with is a variant on a log cabin block. The only difference being is that my block is rectangular rather than the traditional square.

So what do you think? Was the challenge met???
Thanks for looking and listening to me ramble about this quilting adventure. Next post I will return to card making. But for now its bed time. Good night!

YEA!!!!!

So I finally got one image uploaded. I guess persistence does pay off. I love this line of stamps. I have acquired quite a few of them and you will be seeing others in the future. The company is Outlines Rubber Stamps. Not only are they wonderful to color, but you can do wonderful things with cutting and layering them.

For this card I stamped the image with Brilliance Graphite Black ink and colored in using a combination of Copic and Prisma Markers. I've decided that I like them both. They behave the same and each have their benifits. For really small narrow spaces I like the fine point that the Prismas have. For broader sweeps of color I like the brush the Copics have. I do like the lighter colors I have been able to find with the Copics. The Prismas seem bolder. One thing I have discovered with both, but especially the Prismas is that you need to give them time to "cure". I have several images that I didn't really like how they turned out as soon as I have finished them, but if I come back sometime later they are softer and much nicer. (Once again I am faced with that patience stuff!).

This card is a Z-Fold card. It is very easy to do. Simply make your normal 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 side fold card and then fold back the front of the card on top of it self. Yea BLOGGER has cooperated and allowed me to up load another image! (Thank you Lee for the suggestion to do one at a time!). On this second image of the card you cand get a better idea how I mounted the image acrossed the fold and how I stamped the sentiment inside. I didn't like the blank space on the left side so that is where I stamped the Happy Birthday. I placed it under the image because when you open the card the image does flatten out and I didn't want the sentiment covered. On the right side of the card I stamped a Birthday wish.

Just a few more details the Card stock is Old Olive and so is the Designer Paper.

I AM GETTING VERY FRUSTRATED!

Still can not upload photos. I am getting very frustrated here. If anyone has any ideas on what to do besides being patient please let me know. Are others having this problem. I thought maybe the problem was the weekend. NOPE! I've tried rebooting my computer NO HELP! I've checked that my files aren't too big. NOPE! I am not a patient person. I guess for now I will just upload them to my SCS gallery. I hope that works for me as I know people have been having problems there as well.