To putz or not to putz, that is the question.

I love going on vacation, don't get me wrong. But I also love coming home and jumping back into real life again. I was in Grand Cayman for a week laying on the beach, and I have to tell you, after 3 or 4 days of doing nothing but watching the ocean waves, I started to get antsy to be productive again. I think we all need a little nothingness & down time to recharge and re-energize. Even if you have to lock yourself in the bathroom and turn on the bathtub water for the sound of waves, you should do this for yourself. It is necessary, in my opinion. Tonite I came home and started playing with my Clearartstamp sets from Crafty Secrets. The "Journaling" set is such an overlooked stamp set from the newer line Crafty released at CHA, but it packs a big punch. It retails for $7.75, and is a bargain for the script stamp in this set alone. If you are into vintage and never bought the "french script" background from Stampin Up ( Retailed for $16.95), you should seriously invest in this little set. Tomorrow night I'm going to show you how to make vintage looking scripty paper with glimmer mist and the journaling stamp set. Tonite I got putzy so there's too much to show in one post. My big putz for the night was making faux metal anchor-turns with the metal anchor turn stamp from the Crafty Secrets "Card Sentiments" set. I started with a silver metallic scrap of cardstock that I had in my scrap bin (I was on a metallic cardstock kick for a while!). I stamped the little metal turn with Versamark (clear pigment) ink, and then sprinkled silver embossing powder over the top of the ink. Shake off the excess powder and then run your heat gun over the top to melt the embossing powder. Don't worry if you get embossing powder on the rest of your paper, because you'll cut around it anyway. When you do a process like this, make sure to make a ton of multiples for use later. I've found that it works better for me to do a ton at once, cut them all out and then store them in my embellishments case for future use, as I'm highly unlikely to repeat this process every time I go to make a card. Most of the time I'm not a putzer, I'm a GIT R DONE kind of girl and want the instant gratification of an embellishment at my fingertips. Go so far as to punch the hole for the brad in all of them to save yourself time later! The patterned paper is from the "Earthy" Paper pad, which was sprayed with "Sugar cookie" glimmer mist prior to attaching. I also glimmer misted the white cardstock that I stamped the cherub on, and stamped the script words over the top in Tim Holtz "Linen" Distress ink. The "Happy Birthday" sentiment was punched out with a Spellbinders Nestability Circle punch. Because it has an embossed edge to it, it's easy to take your glue pen and run glitter around the indented edge of the circle. There is sugar-cookie misted crepe paper around the edge of the sentiment also...to see how to add crepe paper, see my post HERE. Ok. I think that's it for tonite. Tomorrow night, distressed script paper!