Season's Tweetings, round 2

Never one to leave things alone after the first try, here is version 2 of last week's card. I used a falling snow embossing folder on the blue background piece and also on the center blue panel. Then I used my new white pen to make a faux stitched line around the outside edge and to highlight the "snow" on the central panel. I really didn't like the music notes on the background of the original.

It is a lot easier to tie a bow with actual ribbon than it is with stretchy silver twine.

Once again, the birds are from Lawn Fawn's Winter Sparrows, and the tree line is their forest border die. The panels are cut with dies from Mama Elephant.

What a difference a juicy pen makes.

Chief Craftypants Says I'm thankful for you

This weekend wasn't a total loss, I did finish 3 cards so far.

I used the stamp set called Jive Turkey from Paper Smooches.

Now, here's what's happening behind the scenes, so to speak. I am trying to organize my stamps and dies so I can remember what I have.  I am mounting magnetic sheets to cardstock and slipping them into 5x8 pockets that I got at Office Depot.

I have finally found a use for the magnetic advertisements that come glued to the front of the free yellow pages we get several times a year. I stick those things on cardstock, black side up, and away we go!  I love putting tape runner glue on the lawyer's faces.

Experimenting is fun, not necessarily productive.

So, I experimented with a bunch of stuff yesterday, and I only have this one card to show for it. And it wasn't even the product of most of my experiments!

One thing I did play with was rubbing Distress ink over an embossed background, and that worked out nicely. Then I decided the butterfly (The Alley Way Stamps, Fly By) needed a flight trail. Well you can't stamp the trail after you've embossed, so I tried to "wing it" (lol, I can't help myself). So I hand drew the flight trail. Hmmm.

Most of the rest of the experiments involved texture paint. Since I want to stain them later, they are all over the surfaces where I put them to dry yesterday. It may be a while before I get back to them.

Today I experimented with different backdrops for  the card photo.

How's this? Not so good? I thought so too.

It's another card for Operation Write Home, which is winding down a little. I still have this box I have been working on all year. Yes, I'm slow!

Buggy thanks!

I made 2 more thank-you cards over the weekend. I wanted to use up the critters from The Alley Way Stamps set called Fly By that I had colored up and cut a couple of weeks ago.

This was one of those times I tried to follow a sketch and it fought me the whole way. The dragonfly and butterfly are so interesting and colorful that the rest of the card needed to be simple. It wasn't until they were done that I noticed a grungy area at the top right of the dragonfly card. It is part of the patterned paper design, honestly I wasn't handling them with filthy paws.

Also, I dropped the "thanks" as I was trying to glue it down and glue seeped out around some of the edges. I tried to get it off with an eraser but I was only partially successful. I'm going to blame my summer cold. Yup, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

The "thanks" is cut from a die from Lawn Fawn.

Getting my pink on.

Sure, I just felt like doing some more pink cards. No excuses, I just wanted to.

The pony is from The Alley Way Stamps, as are the Happy Birthday and Hey You greetings. The dino, quote bubbles and You're dino-mite greetings are from Lawn fawn.

Big new toy, big new learning curve.

Last week my niece graduated from high school, and I made a banner for her celebration. Piece of cake, right?

Well, my Slice Elite fought me tooth and nail through all the letters I wanted to cut. This electronic cutting machine is supposed to be easy, and I guess it is when it works. Don't look too closely because the starting points were not the same as the ending points and somebody had to go back in with scissors and fix them.

The other thing that is limiting is the 4" maximum cut size. It kind of reminds me of my old embroidery machine. But not as flexible.

So when I was watching a video on Youtube showing a stamp company with really great stamps but no dies to cut the stamped image. But what they DO offer now is cut files, so the images can be pre-cut, then stamped and colored. Very nice. I watched a few more videos, and a few more, and more still, and convinced myself I need a Silhouette Cameo so I can do lots of cuts and bigger cuts.

Did I mention that cutting around stamped images leaves the image slightly bent? Or in my case, more than slightly.

Here are the first few images I printed and cut. Yes, I already own the stamps, I just didn't stamp these.

I cut one of the hippos without printing it first, to see how difficult it would be to stamp. It was easy to stamp it, and tricky to color. The snakes were colored between printing them and cutting them. They were much easier.

I'll report back after I upgrade my software to the designer edition. As soon as my "code" comes in the mail.

More birds!

Seriously, making this card was the only productive thing I did all day, unless you count throwing away the rotten veggies out of the crisper drawer.

It's another bird from the Birds of a Feather set. I got the idea from the stamp company's web site. They DO expect us to copy them, right? Right?

Happy bird-day cards

Yes, I have birds on the brain. I am loving this set from The Alley Way Stamps called Birds of a Feather.  What's not to love?

I make cards for Operation Write Home, but I am so slow I won't fill a box until September at this rate. I guess it is a good thing I did all those Christmas cards in January, because they might just get in under the deadline!

Enchanted!

I used home-made enamel dots on this one. They are oven-melted perler beads. Don't they look like little starlite mints? Yum.

I got 4 packages of stamps in the mail on Wednesday, and I couldn't play with any of them until Friday. Arrgggg!

Anyway, this is Enchanted, from The Alley Way Stamps, and includes this adorable pony dressed up like a unicorn, an innocent-looking dragon, and a frog prince, complete with a crown.

I clearly need to practice more with my coloring, but I am really loving these images.

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.

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?

Move over Christmas, it's time for Valentines!

So I finally stopped with the Christmas stuff and made a Valentine. It really doesn't matter that I don't send or give them, I just want to make them!

Paper crafting is an adventure, and one that almost always sends me scurrying off to Michael's or Amazon or someplace for the one thing I don't have that I need.

I enjoyed coloring in those cute little elephants from Lawn Fawn, but I'm no darn good at it, and I don't really have enough gray markers. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Look at these guys:

This was my first effort with the warm gray Copic markers. Not so great, but I am still a beginner. Anyway, I did order a whole lot of gray Spectrum Noir markers in both warm and cool. I went back over these with my Bic markers (cool gray and darker) and it really improved them.

My status update on Facebook yesterday was that I should start a support group for creative people who have no artistic vision or talent, but who love to buy the tools and play with them. I had 3 people ready to sign up by the end of the day.

Now that I have completed a Valentine, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, it is TIME to take down the Christmas tree. Really.

Cardmaking in paradise

Florida IS paradise, just still a very hot one!

Anyway, I've been making some cards and playing with my new toys, err, tools. I've been putting little dogs on everything!

Disclaimer: I copy other people's card designs both with and without my own consciousness of it. Pretty much everything I do I've seen on other websites. I just don't always remember where.

So, thank you, card designers everywhere for your inspiration, especially Lawn Fawn design team members.

I have this fiber from 2004 that I cannot seem to use, but I don't want to part with it either. This is my next project, I think. Do something that uses up a lot of this decorative, but out of date fiber.

(The inside reads: "I'm here for you". This idea and sentiment came from one of the Lawn Fawn design team members. That's Elena at justmeprints.blogspot.com. I distinctly remember this one!

You can't tell in the photo, but the red card is embossed with rough bricks.

The dogs are Lawn Fawn's Critters at the Dog Park, except for the "warm fuzzies" dog which is from a Paper Smooches set. The koala, crocodiles and kangaroos are from Lawn Fawn's Critters Down under.  The trees embossing folders are from Darice.

Please don't ask what I'm going to do with these cards, those of you who know me know I am not big on sending stuff via US Mail. I know this should be my next new year's resolution, right?

Christmas cards

Ok, I seriously can't seem to let go of the holidays.

I recently got a die cutting machine (Making Memories Slice) and a bunch of memory cards for it. I have spent a bunch of time, and I'll not admit how much, cutting and pasting, and gettin' merry like Christmas. Making cards that is.

The plan is to make a bunch of these for sale in our church bazaar next fall. No, the real plan is to use up this patterned green paper which has been in my paper stash since 2004 when I started scrap booking.  Come to think of it, the paper may have even looked dated then.

My dining room table is as cluttered as ever. No, I'm not getting ahead of it. It is a good thing I live alone, because no one could ever eat.