Be more tea?

I'm loving the new commercial with Kermit and many "Animal"s. He's all calm and sipping a cup of Lipton tea, while the frantic Animal clones are behaving like stereotypical New Yorkers.

I've been invited to the Friends of the Library tea party today, and it has stirred up some emotions and stories in me.

My sister and I each inherited a set of china from our grandmother (we call Nanny). But the china was not Nanny's originally. I thought it was my great grandmother's, who lived with Nanny, but my sister is convinced it couldn't be her, because she was such a prude. That's the word my sister used. And she never even met her!

The family legend is that our ancestor (whoever it was) used to go to Monte Carlo on gambling vacations, and stopped in France to order china. My set is Haviland, from Limoges, and my sisters is marked Limoges.

Of course, my sister doesn't remember where she heard this legend. If it came from our natural mother it could have been fanciful thinking. There's not many around to ask anymore.

I think I need to send a letter to my uncle, asap.

Social nerdy birds, part 2

I just can't get enough of these birds! When I wanted to participate in a color challenge, I new exactly how I wanted to do it. Naturally I cased my own card, why not?

The challenge was for yellow and purple, over at  Operation Write Home.

Nerdy birds go social!

Not much to say except I still love the nerdy birds from Lawn Fawn's Science of Love set. I also used the new set Awesome, also from LF, and a stitched journaling card. It was quick and fun.

Other than finding out which hair dye color doesn't work for me, it was not a very productive day.

Pigs fly!

It was just a quick card yesterday, except for fussy cutting the skyline from the printed paper. The cute pig is from The Alley Way Stamps Bacon Bits set. If I were keeping the card I'd add glitter to the wings, but I will be sending it to Operation Write Home, and for them, glitter is a no-go.

I don't think the scale is right so I have to make some more pigs flying cards to get it right.

Later!

Fun with plastic, and happy trails, BTW

Over the weekend I experimented with making "enamel" dots by melting Perler beads. I remember these from when my daughter did them as a kid. They are tiny tubes, somewhat smaller than your average ditalini pasta. 

I stood these up on parchment paper (trickier than you think it would be) and baked them at 325 degrees for about 30 minutes. The darker ones could have stayed in longer.

Why bother? Well, my local store only has black and white enamel dots and they are outrageously overpriced for what they are.

The downside of making my own is that when you buy Perler beads, you usually buy a lot of them. And I don't tend to use up that much of any one thing because, let's face it, I work very slowly.

TA DA! Here is the first card with the "enamel" dots. I used the Happy Trails stamp set from Lawn Fawn, and paper from Studio Calico's Here + There.

You know, it would have been easier and cheaper for me to stick with brads, but I love to jump on a trend now and then, and a lot of "gals" over at the Two Peas In a Bucket forums are melting beads. So, here I am.

Pretty pink weekend.

Well, it was a wonderful weekend of me copy-catting all over the place. Both cats are from the Alley Way Stamps set Sitting Pretty. In the purple card, I used the "enamel" dots that I made from children's perler beads. Yes, just melt them in the oven until they sag into pretty dots! It's hard to tell, but the little pink dot was made from a stripped bead and it looks like a little starlight mint. But pink instead of red.

In my second card, I stole the design directly from the Lawn Fawn website, right down to the white dashed lines and the polka dot background. I used the new speech bubble border die and 2 different alphabet sets for the sentiment.

I've never seen a pink kitty, but I'm thinking someone will send this to their little girl, who is still into Barbie colors.

These cards will go to Operation Write Home as soon as I have enough to fill a box. At the rate I'm making them I might just meet the Halloween deadline.

It was epic, sort of.

So, I continued to try to use up an entire package of Curious George stickers that I bought in 2005.  I decided not to play with my new stamps until I had used up the entire package.

Here he is, card after card.

That's it, I'm done with George. Now I can play with my new stamps. Of course I have 2 more packages of Curious George reading, but at least I used up some of them!

Really? 9 years old?

So, I was thinking about card kits to make up for Karen's beginner's class, and my mind went to stickers. I started looking at my stickers and realized that I have a bunch from 2005.

I challenged myself to use some of them on cards, and here is the first one. Yes, it is 6 layers deep under the tags. Layers are good, right?

Happy Caturday, you're pawfect.

I sat around the whole weekend and avoided housework again by stamping, coloring, cutting and pasting. Since you didn't ask, I'll tell you: I have 4 whole cards to show for my weekend! And a ginormous mess on my craft table. And the floor next to the desk, and the shelves immediately to the right and left of the desk, and every other horizontal surface in there. I probably should put up the ironing board so I don't use it for another surface.

I got a new set of stamps with cat images, called Sittin' Pretty by The Alley Way Stamps. These cats are a little bigger than most Lawn Fawn critters, so they look more "important" on the card front.

My coloring isn't that great, in spite of the fact that I keep buying more markers. So I decided to paper piece the cats instead of coloring them. But in the end I liked the colored ones better than the pieced ones. Now I have quite a few stamped and cut out cats and it bugs me to toss them, but at some point I can't use all the images I make as experiments. What's a crafty type to do?

By the way I spent WAY too much time with the backgrounds here. I have really got to start using sketches and stick to them.

I think the way I colored the cat's tail here could be safely called a fail. I'm using it anyway.

Oh darn, I forgot to put the shiny stuff on their noses before I took the pictures. Oh well. Happy Caturday!