More Penny Black

Use it up! I'm finding inspiration using old embellishments that I haven't touched in months. My mantra this week is USE IT UP! There are so many new products that will be coming onto the market soon....while we're waiting for new goodies, why not use up some of the stuff in your embellishment stash!?

I pulled out these little sparkly Hero Arts flower sequins that I bought a year ago, and am trying to use up a ton of them. The dog images are by Penny Black, from Joy and Daisy at Eclectic Paperie.

I love playing with stamped off images...I get to use stuff that I normally wouldn't venture into or think to use! The paper is new Basic Grey "Infuse Season".

I watercolored the dogs using Stamping Up markers and an aquapainter.

Lovin' Elsie!

How cute is this Elsie "Betty Flowery" paper? It's so bright and cheery, I thought it was perfect with these little chicks from Penny Black. I have to admit, the 2 cards I made with it did not come easily tonite. I putzed around so long with them I started getting frustrated and wanted to chuck them in the circular file.I think it was the pressure of trying to come up with a card when my mojo is at ground zero, and I've done nothing but lay on a lawnchair on the beach all weekend! The large flower is from the sizzix "Large Daisy" die cut, covered in a pink polka dot paper from Eclectic Paperie. The cute little chick images were given to me by Joy and Daisy from Eclectic Paperie also.
I got the idea to punch holes in the scalloped edges from a scrapbook magazine. I think it makes your scallops look cute and lacy! The corners were done with a cuttlebug embossing folder and then sprayed with the Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist (Terra Cotta) that I got from Wendy at CHA.

Cheers to you!

My mojo is pretty shot this week, so one last post before I'm off for the cabin this weekend. I actually thought today was WEDNESDAY when I got into work! I missed a day somewhere! Oh well, one day closer to Friday! Check out the stinkin cute little Penny Black "Cheers" cow image that Joy and Daisy from Eclectic Paperie stamped off for us for CHA last weekend! I love her little bikini & the foo-foo drink in her hand! I tried to make her look a little sunburned by watercoloring her tummy with blush blossom ink, and then went a little pinker on top with rose romance ink.

The "Cheers to You" sentiment is from the Crafty Secrets/ClearArtStamps "Wine Lovers" set. This green polka dot ribbon from Starlit Studio's Ebay store is my favorite. (I bought a whole spool of it, so now I can use it guilt-free.) The flowers have been glittered up with Stickles "Waterfall" colored glitter glue. The centers are some shimmery hero arts sequins that fit perfectly inside the centers.

Hope everyone has a relaxing weekend! Stay cool!

CHA '07

Ok, you'll have to bear with me on the pics... Vicki Chrisman has much better photos, so you'll have to check out her blog for a better view. Keep in mind, photography is not one of my talents.

This is a shot of the Crafty Secrets booth where I was demoing the new release ClearArt Stamp sets at CHA this weekend. There's Sandy in the background talking to a customer. I knew I liked her when she ended up wearing her flip flops with that cute cute little skirt! I ended up wearing mine for most of the show too, for sheer comfort. Both of us noted that our feet weren't sore at all! It's either the flip-flops or the faux hardwood floor we were on. It looked like hardwood floors, but then you stepped onto it and realized it was CUSHY! I kept telling visitors they could come back and hang out if they wanted, to give their feet a break! See the gaggle of women at the Ranger booth behind us? I had to be TOLD that Tim Holtz & Robin were demoing stuff right behind us. DOH. NOT SO CLEAR ON MY SURROUNDINGS. I was pretty much in a stupor the whole time I was there!

Here's Wendy, Sandy's sister. She's the math whiz of the group. She came equipped with GINORMOUS calculators. She kept Sandy and I in line, and took care of orders & setup. She worked SO hard the entire show!

Sandy had all of these cute little fence displays for us to hang all the samples on. Check out the Vicki Chrisman eye candy in the middle. I freak when I see the stuff on her blog, but in person, OH MAN, get the paddles out. Serious heart failure here.

Here's the Halloween fence. That harlequin paper is my FAVORITE and is SO SO SO vintage Halloween!

This cute little dress form was SO adorable with samples hanging from it.

This is the cooking section. I pretty much stayed away from it because it was sort of unfamiliar territory for me. I didn't see a roadkill recipe in any of the books so I felt out of my comfort zone. If they make a recipe book with lean cuisine ingredients, I'd be interested in that. If a customer asked what to do with any of the products in this section, I shrugged and said I wasn't sure. ;)

Tomorrow:

More Joy & Daisy goodies.

Aye caramba! Overload!!

I'm back from CHA in Chicago! I'll have photos for you tomorrow night; the camera batteries are charging as we speak. They went on strike in the middle of uploading pics to the computer. I don't have many product photos for you; I didn't wander the show much, as I was working in the Crafty Booth most of the time. When I did wander out, I didn't think to bring a camera! DUH! But I'll have some pics for you of the great displays Sandy had in her booth.

For tonite, here's a Penny Black image to check out. Joy and Daisy brought us all some fun stamped images from Eclectic Paperie, so I played a little bit with these little "Let's Celebrate" mice. The paper is Basic Grey "Blush" Devotion for the background, and the circle is cut out of their new "Infuse" Season line. Sandy and I stopped by the Tattered Angels booth and they gave us some sample bottles of their Glimmer mist to try out. I used their "Golden Terra Cotta" to spray a fine mist of glimmer on top of the background paper. Its the coolest stuff, it totally changes the look of the paper. I tried to get a close-up of it so that you can see the shimmer on the card. I think it makes this paper look very victorian-wallpaperish! Cool stuff! I feel a large order coming on! :)

Packin' it up

Alrighty then. I'm heading to bed so I can be up at the crack of dawn for my flight to Chicago tomorrow! Samples packed? Check. Underwear? Check. Makeup? OH YEAH, CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT THAT. Although chalk ink might do in a pinch if I can scrounge some up at the show.

One last wine sample (you are sighing with relief, right?) I went bolder with the colors on these, forest green and a deep plum. I can't wait to get home and have more time to play with these grape images. I put samples together quickly and didn't have time to putz with a lot of the coloring.

The corkscrews were embossed onto the plum paper with white embossing powder and white pigment ink. I used watercolor paper for the main images, and an aquapainter with SU reinkers. The wine bottle was stamped on that famous "corkish" paper I've been using.

Hope you guys have a fabulous weekend & I hope to see some of you in Chicago at the show!

Wine Magnets & Card Samples

Samples! I'm still making samples to bring with to Crafty's booth at CHA. I still think this brown paper looks like cork. I had some magnets in my cupboard from Target's dollar spot so I decided to put some together to match the cards. All patterned paper is from Crafty's "Earthy" paper pad. The cardstock is garden green & baroque burgundy from SU. These are colors I don't use a lot, but seemed perfect with wine-related stamps. One more set of wine cards tomorrow night and then I promise I'll switch gears when I get back home! I have some fun new dollar stamps from Michaels that I want to play with when I get back.

Crafty Secrets Wine set is soon to be released after CHA. Ribbon by May Arts from Starlitstudio's Ebay store.

Crafty Secrets Wine Ensemble

Thank you, Bevie & Beth for your great suggestions for the wine journal! Recording your wine tasting weekend adventures & your favorite wines/occasions are AWESOME ideas.

I was even thinking it would be a great travel journal, because you can add photos in between your notes. I wish I would have known about wine journals a long time ago, I would have taken photos with friends drinking wine on the various trips we've taken to France & Italy (wine central!). My sister and I went to Rome with 2 other friends a few years ago. The day we arrived, we ended up in this little restaurant that had their own brand of house red wine. We were jetlagged, tired, and grateful to be on the ground instead of an airplane, so one bottle of wine turned into another, and before we realized what we had done, we drank 2 bottles of wine between the 2 of us. Lets just say it was not pretty. We decided it was time to leave when I took a drink of wine and spilled it down the front of my shirt. That would have been a PERFECT photo for my wine journal! Thankfully, I had taken off the WHITE PASHMINA scarf that I had just purchased from one of the street vendors, so it was spared from the bright purple disaster. For some reason, neither of us had hangovers the next day! I'm told that it has something to do with the lack of preservatives? Anyone know? The worst part was, we ended up back there a week later, and I was sporting a cast and a sprained pinky finger.

Anyway, I'm off on a tangent here. The photos are of a gift ensemble I created around the wine journal (see yesterday's post). All in all, it would be a pretty cheap gift. The Crafty Secrets Wood File Folder Album sells for $6.95, the wine charms are the cost of 2 pieces of cardstock, and depending on what type of wine you choose, you can have a pretty cute gift for under $20.00. The paper for the wine charms is by Stampin Up, it's their new Pomegranite colored paper. Here I also used the Hero Arts Distress background to give it an aged look.

I decided to pair the ensemble with both an invitation and a birthday card, so if you were throwing a party for someone, everything could coordinate. I should have mentioned yesterday that paper was adhered to the wood file folder with mod podge, my favorite adhesive for working with wood. The purple paisley paper is from the Crafty Secrets "Radiant" paper pad. The grapes on the invitation were stamped on watercolor paper, and watercolored with SU old olive ink and baroque burgundy. (I don't have pomegranite ink yet!)

Wine Journal.

**First off, I have to call attention to a GASP worthy creation by Michelle Kovack. She has the fairy stamps from Crafty Secrets, and GEEZ ALMIGHTY, she's rockin' them. You can see her card HERE.

I wanted to make a wine journal with the Crafty Secrets Wood File folder album & the new wine set that is coming out after CHA (see yesterday's post). It has great little file tab sections so you can get organized. My thoughts were that you could have recipes in one section. What is a wine journal really? I'm curious as to what you record in it. If I kept a wine journal I probably wouldn't need all the tabs for it. Mine would probably just read:

Hi.

I had too much wine last night.

I have a large headache today.

Excuse me while I go nap a while.

Anyway, my version of them has the file tabbies so you can have separate sections. I took a photo of the album before I put it together, so you could see all the sections in one shot (see top photo). All of the paper is from the Crafty Secrets "Earthy" paper pad, and the scallop circle was done with Stampin Up's new Pomegranite paper. To color in the grapes and vines, I used prismacolor pencils, but they would be just as great watercolored or markered in. I like the prismacolors because you can get color to pop on darker paper. I chose the darker brown paper because it looked sort of 'corkish' to me. The rectangular distressed background on each of the file tabs is by Hero Arts, H3307 "Aged Background Block". The dark brown ink is Tim Holtz "Vintage Photo" Distress ink, and the lighter brown ink for the background is his "Antique Linen" color.

Tomorrow night: THE ENSEMBLE.

You had me at Merlot...

Ok guys, I'm gonna get all winey on you this week.

I promised a sneak peek of one of the new sets Crafty Secrets is coming out with at CHA next weekend! I just have to say, Sandy Redburn (Owner of Crafty Secrets) has THE most fun sense of humor. I love all the fun sayings she comes up with! I'm sad to say that her favorite expression did not fit on the sheet of stamps....she was also going to add "Squeeze me, stomp me, make me wine" but didn't have room! DANG!

I also just have to say, if you liked the Coffee & Tea Chickies, there will soon be MEN to match them! I feel faint! I have the vapors, as my Grammie would say. The stamps will be available after CHA...I'll post dates on my blog once they are up and available at the Crafty website. ;)

So I thought I'd give you a peek at one of the things I'll be demoing at the Crafty Booth. Notice the fun little circular wreath of grapevines? It's for the bottom of your wine glass! (Wine charms!) Sandy is a genious! The stamp fits PERFECTLY in the Marvy 2 1/2" circle punch. Here's how to make them:
You'll need the following:
Marvy Giga Scallop Punch
Marvy 2 1/2 Inch Mega Circle punch
5/8" circle punch
Scissors & Exacto Knife
Crafty Secrets Wine Stamp Set/acrylic block
A bleed-free ink, such as Ranger Jet Black
Something to color with.

(If you don't have scallop punches yet, see Ellen Hutson...she's got a great new product from Spellbinder.)



Take your 2 1/2 inch circle punch and punch out a piece of white cardstock. Hint: Turn the punch over so you can see where you're punching...








Punch a scallop out of colored paper with the Giga Scallop Punch.







Take a 5/8" small circle punch and punch it directly in the center of the white circle.



Ink up the stamp and stamp the grapevine wreath in the center of the white cardstock, taking care to leave room underneath the bottom leaves. Color it in with colored pencils, or a watercolor pen & inks, whatever you're used to using. Attach the white cardstock to the colored scalloped mat.



Take a scissors and cut a slit from the top of the cardstock down to the bottom of the inside circle.








Take your exacto knife and cut a slit crosswise the other way, so the center looks like a criss cross.







Presto! You're done! Attach the wine charm to the bottom of your guest's wine glasses!


And then have a big glass of wine!


Tomorrow: Wine Journal

More feathered friends!

I'm back!(I thought it would be wise not to post last night after I slurped down a cinnamon appletini at my sister's house!)

Here's more cards from the "Feathered Friends" retired stamp set from Stampin Up. I had done a bunch of cards using this set a while back when I felt like coloring one night. This paper by Daisy D's is one of my faves of the Boston Garden line. I think it's pretty versatile; you can use it for fall cards or summer cards, depending on what you pair it up with. Here I used Stampin Up Artichoke paper to pull out the greens in the paper.

I'll be heading out to Chicago next week to work in the Crafty Secrets booth for CHA, so tomorrow I'll have a sneak preview of a new stamp set that Crafty is introducing! Sandy has been working so hard to get all the fun new stamp sets finished, and I CANNOT wait to get my grubby little inky fingers on them!

One more thing....there's a tag going around right now to name 7 random things about yourself. My sweet friends Vicki Chrisman and Bev Girard (Tex) both tagged me! So you already know I'm a junker and antiquer, so hmmm, what else is sharable, knowing that my family reads my blog?!! (Kiddin, Mom)

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1. I cannot cook to save my life. In fact, I've been told NEVER EVER to cook for anyone, EVER, by a trusted authority. I do ROCK at making one thing: ROADKILL. The fact that it's called ROADKILL should be enough to dissuade you from ever eating anything I make. You've been warned. :)

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2. My cat hates my voice. When I talk on the phone he freaks out and attacks me. Now that I think of it, my family hates my voice too. My sister calls me a chihuahua on speed.

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3. I am a breast cancer survivor of 13 years...was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer when I was 28. But on a brighter note, I got a great new pair of TA TA's! :) A Minneapolis news station filmed me throughout my whole treatment (chemo, radiation, stem-cell transplant), including my mastectomy surgery. If I find it on a pay-per-view internet site, I'll know it was one of you guys, so keep it to yourselves, ok? ;)

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4. I have a tattoo, and own a pair of chaps, but dont' ride a motorcycle. The tattoo was for my 40th birthday. I figured what the hell, I'm 40, who do I have left to impress at this point? I did sell my "BORN to RIDE" stamp set last year though. I may be almost over my midlife crisis.

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5. I've been to lots of cool places in my travels. Bali, Indonesia was the most incredible. I saw a witch doctor practicing healing on a patient. (No, he did not give me the new ta-tas)

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6. My fave group is the Black Eyed Peas & Fergie. Gwen Stefani comes in 2nd.

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7. Weight watchers makes a key lime pie dessert that's only 4 points. Wait, that's not a random fact. I just thought you guys would want to know that in general. It's KEY LIME PIE! YUM!

Ok, so now, I must tag 7 people. Instead, I'm tagging all of my readers out there that have blogs! TAG YOU'RE IT EVERYONE! IS THAT LEGAL? :)

GNITE EVERYONE! :)

New Paper Line by Olive Oyle

Ok, you may pee your pants laughing at me, but I figure if the queen of stamping herself, Julie Ebersole can do this, it's acceptable.

At my office, there's a file cabinet where people can dump junk off that they don't want anymore. (They are moving some offices so people are cleaning house!) We call it the FREE GARAGE SALE. So I walk past the garage sale file yesterday, and here's Olive Oyle staring out at me with this happy face. Isn't she cute? What the heck is it, I'm thinking. I walk over, and lo and behold, she's a BINGO DAUBER. My next question would be, why did someone have a bingo dauber in their desk...shouldn't they be working??!!! Anyway, it hit me that a bingo dauber is ink. Being the good little stamper- junker that I am, Olive Oyle came home and spent the night at my house.

So I have to give credit to the Queen Mum of Pencil Erasers herself, Julie Ebersole. I just took her polka dots, and with Olive Oyle's help, made 'em bigger. :)

Cavallini Stamps...

So in all my stamping and blogging and submitting & designing for Crafty Secrets, I've been neglecting something that I've tried to do every week for my Grandma...send her a card. It seems like such a DUH thing to do for a cardmaker, but it's really easy to let distractions pull you away from those important people in your life. Tonite I finally sat down and made a card for my Grammie! I bought the set of Cavallini bird stamps 2 weeks ago on my shopping trip with HB, and really need to sit down and play with them some more! These were easy to color, the stamps were very detailed so they just needed a splash of color. The background of the K & Company floral paper is sort of a weird vanilla/cream color. To make the background shading behind the bird, I used my aquapainter to outline in Barely Banana ink, and then I went back over it with diluted "More Mustard Ink, and then finally with creamy caramel, to give it an aged look. I've been finding more and more that I'm experimenting with colors, layering different colors until I like the effect. I *WILL* get this in the mail to Grammie tomorrow. Someone remind me, OK? Kiddin. :)

Paisley Thanks....

This poor, lonely, neglected Inkadinkadoo stamp has been in my stamp bin hanging around for more than a month and did not see ink until today! GEEZ!

Remember I was digging in the penny button bin at Bargain Bill's in Rice Lake, WI a while back? Well according to my stamp math, because I saved so much on buttons, I splurged on this image stamp. I thought it was going to be putzy to color, but it really wasn't...I started filling in the greenery with old olive ink, diluted with water from my aquapainter so that it was very very light. Then I went back over the tops of the leaves in spots with darker, full strength old olive, also with the aquapainter but not diluted.

The little paisley at the bottom is from the reverse side of this K & Company paper, which came from a huge pad of Classic K Bailey paper (1/2 off at Michaels). Since the image was so large, it didn't need a lot of other junk on the card to finish it off. I did have a stitching boo boo on this one... I somehow threaded the bobbin wrong and ended up with a reverse stitch. So the zigzag looks perfect underneath the paper. Oh well. It's country-shabby looking. That's my story & I'm sticking to it.

Aaack! The weekend's over! Where did it go? I swear, it was just Friday & I was leaving work, and here it is, Sunday night already!

I did get some stamping in this weekend at the cabin. Much of it I can't post yet, just on the off chance that Papercrafts picks up any of my shabby samples for their Valentine issue. If not, you'll be seeing them here, anyway, so no worries! It's not wrong to post 4th of July, Halloween & Valentine cards all in the same week, right?

I'm kidding. I won't do that to you guys. (Unless I get desperate for blog posts.) I needed some generic cards for when I send thank-you's to my sweet card making/stamping friends. I had bought this Anna Griffin stamp a while ago on clearance at Michael's, for $2.50. I stamped off a bunch of images and threw them in with my patterned paper bin. I finally found them this weekend, buried in the piles! This flower basket seemed perfect with the shabby rose paper from the K & Company Classic K Bailey paper pad.

I love the sentiment on this card..it's from the Crafty Secrets "Card Sentiment" set. The sentiments from this set just go PERFECTLY with anything shabby or vintage.

The little metal turn/anchor thingy is from Oriental Trading. The jeweled brads are from the Target Dollar spot, from WAY back in the day. Stampin Up and Making Memories also sell the jeweled brads, so they're pretty easy to find. All of the cards have been distressed with Stampin Up's Creamy Caramel Ink.

I'm off to unpack and settle in for the week! Gnite!

L.

These 2 stamps are from the Stampin' Up "Feathered Friends" set and are ANCIENT! It's one of the first few sets I got when I became a demonstrator, in fact. I dug it out because the country images seemed to match the sunflower & gingham paper more than any of my newer stamp sets did.

I bought the paper at Archivers in their hotspot clearance bin, 6 for 1.99. It's by Bo Bunny Shabby Princess collection, "Sunflower Stitched Stripe".

I love papers like this that already have the patterns pieced together... it makes layouts simple! There's even stitching on the paper pattern! I can't believe how new paper gives old sets new life...I paired these up with some Prima Bubble Flowers, to give them a summery look.

The floral lace at the bottom of the barrel card is vintage. I got a huge spool of it and am trying to use it up... although I'm not really even making a dent in it! It will definitely be included in future blog candy giveaways!

Hope you have a sunny weekend!

Lisa