Thursday, January 31, 2008

Congratulations!


One last sample tonite & then I'm signing off until Sunday & will have lots more for you then. I have a million E.P. cupcake cards, a few more Cherish samples and a flying Moose to show you next week!

This sweet bird image from the brand new Crafty Secrets "Cherish" set was VERY easy to color. I used a Hero Arts distress background & then stamped the images over the top of it. The birds and ribbons are colored in using Copic Markers. The pastel floral paper is from Crafty's Pastel Paper pad.
If you check out the card to the left, you'll see some unique ribbon that I used on these cards. I scored some old gift packaging ribbon from my Mom at Christmas...she got a big cool box of it from my cousin Jessie & her hubby Dustin. They got a huge box of it off of Ebay, and gave it out to all the relatives. I immediately knew I needed some for my cardmaking, so I nabbed a few rolls from my Mom (with her permission, of course).


Check out the fun colors... I'm seeing SU Mint Melody, Caribbean blue, Pretty in Pink, Yo Yo Yellow, Lavender Lace!

This card was an experiment to see if I could use the bird image to create a floral oval around the sentiment. It's slightly off, but I think it worked okay.
Hope you all have a safe & happy weekend.
L.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

More cherish valentines!

I'm doubling up on cards this week since I'll be heading out on Friday to my stamping girls get-together. I can't wait to have a whole day off on Friday! It makes me giddy! Yesterday Kelly asked me what I do with all of the Valentine cards I make, & it dawned on me that you guys must think I'm dating 15 people over here, with all the love cards I've been making! Notsomuch! Actually, pretty much all of the samples I've made will be delivered to the Crafty Secrets & Hanna Stamps booths at CHA (Craft & Hobby Show), for display.


Here are a few more cards made with the newly released "Cherish" set by Crafty Secrets. The font on the word "Love" on the square card above is from a brand new alphabet set that will be released at CHA, and the white chipboard buckle is from a small package of chipboard elements that will also be released. In it were the 2 small chipboard hearts on my card from yesterday. Here I wanted to show how well the chipboard takes ink....I stamped right onto the white chipboard and colored in the flowers with copic markers. The card to the left is another tall card, made with Crafty's "Love and Romance" cotton scraps. They are cotton twill fabric that have full color images printed right on them. No coloring involved! I did use the beautiful flowery "Love" sentiment from the Cherish set on this card. The little flower edges on the top and bottom of the card are also from this set...I ran the little bouquet of flowers across the card & colored them in.

For CarolR - The papers on the tall card are from Crafty's "Radiant" paper pad. I took a strip of one of the harlequin papers and ran it down the edge of the card. (It is the same paper as my banner today).

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Crafty Secrets New Release Cherish Set

Hang with me, ladies, I'm taking a little detour tonite! The cupcake cards are on the back burner for the moment, as Sandy Redburns from Crafty Secrets just released a CHA stamp set tonite and made it available for Valentines day! The set is called "Cherish" and is meant to be an all-occasion anniversary, wedding, love set. I've been seeing VALENTINE in it with all the beautiful heart and love images!

There were requests for some card challenges over in the Crafty Secrets forum at Splitcoast Stampers, and so there will be weekly challenges for you to get your fingers inky with your vintage Crafty secrets sets! I did this card tonite for the challenge, based on the inspiration from BTExpress' card HERE. The challenge is to make a tall card with your Crafty Secrets sets...you can read about the challenge HERE.

I used my old glimmer-misted crepe-paper trick to do the ruffles on this valentine card. They were done using holly berry glimmer mist, but any red-colored glimmer mist will work. The tutorial I did on how to make the ruffles is HERE. So the heart itself has been stamped with black brilliance ink (heat set), and then colored in with copic markers. I masked off the heart and then stamped the music notes from Crafty's "Altered Art" set.

The great chipboard hearts are also from Crafty Secrets, and have been covered with pink paper, glimmer misted with sugar cookie color glimmer mist, and then distressed with Tim Holtz vintage photograph distress ink.The chipboard embellishments will be released at CHA & include great little frames, tags & heart shapes that you can cover with paper or stamp on.




I did the same procedure with the ruffles on the heart shaped candy box here. I want to eventually create a heart shaped photo album & insert it inside the box. Too many projects, not enough time!












Here's a close up of the beautiful details on this heart. The rose was colored in with a lipstick red copic marker.



I wanted to show you this trick....in order to get the glitter to POP and come at you with VIBRANT color, I first edged the image with my red copic marker to get the edge color. Then I went over the copic marker line with the red glitter. Check out the close up to see the difference between the markered edge and the plain edge. Whew! I'll post more with this set tomorrow & Thursday! I'm typed out tonite!!!!!! L.

Monday, January 28, 2008

Eclectic Paperie Cupcakes!


Lucky me got my fun Eclectic Paperie order last Thursday, just in time for my stamping get-together with my Archivers girls! I knew as soon as I saw Joy & Daisy's newsletter announcing their exclusive cupcake set, that I would fall in love with it(and it's only $13.99... gasp)!! I played with this set almost all night..I hope you love cupcakes, because you'll be seeing quite a lot of them!



It was perfect timing, because I'm running low on birthday cards. So I started cranking out cupcakes. I did this set of cards on Sunday at home...I decided to play in the featured stamper challenge over at Splitcoast. This week's featured stamper was "stampingpam", and the challenge is to pick one of her cards and copy it using your own style and elements. Pam's card that I modeled these after is HERE. I love the sparkly candle image...I used my Sakura Gelly Roll glitter pen to make the sparkles glisten, and there is a Hero Arts jewel in the center. SO many possibilities with this set! LOVE IT~!













Paper Patterns: My Minds Eye Out & About #2 Stripe & Tiny Dots Paper from Eclectic Paperie, and Cosmo Cricket "Little Girls" Biography Collection.

Stamp Set: Stampendous Hey There Cupcake, an E.P. Exclusive



Sunday, January 27, 2008

Wet wipes in the house!

Here's what I did this weekend. I exchanged the glass cleaner wipes for WET WIPES from the Target dollar spot and got busy cranking out these little stamping sets for my girlfriend weekend in St. Cloud, MN next weekend.

The local scrapbook store in town, "Scrapbooks Plus", is allowing us to camp out in their workroom for 3 days! It will be like a mini-retreat, only VERY cheap! We paid for 2 days worth of crops and will be able to leave all of our supplies set up overnight & come & go as we please. I love having weekends like this, as I'm WAY more productive when I'm away from my house.

I dug into my piles of papers this weekend and pulled out patterns that matched the towel colors. It's great to be able to use up paper that's been in my paper bin for forever! Feels like I accomplished something!
Happy Sunday!

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Domestic Goddess Shaker Card


One last sample of the newest Hanna Stamp set, "Domestic Goddess" that will be released next Friday, February 1st. My first thought on this was to create a gel-shaker card with blue hair gel, then I thought better of it and decided on blue glass beads instead. They look kind of cute and when you move the card there's all this great motion with the beads. They look like little bubbles!


For this card, I stamped the image, then cut out the bottle part with an exacto knife & glued a transparency sheet to the back of the image. There is a great shaker card tutorial on Splitcoast Stampers HERE. The star up in the corner was a die-cut, copper metallic star...it didn't match, but never fear....my red Copic marker came to its rescue, because the copics will stick to metallic surfaces!


Happy Saturday!

Friday, January 25, 2008

Sparkly glass cleaner!



In honor of my little glass-cleaner boo-boo, I decided to go all-windex on you and play with the spray bottle from this set. So many options with this bottle! I guess I have one more sample to post tomorrow, too. I'm heading out tonite to get together with a group of girlfriends that I used to work with at Archivers. We're having a play date at a new scrapbooking store in town because Archiver's was full. I sort of feel like I'm cheating on Archivers! GASP! Wish me luck on that, I'm trying to keep my spending down!

So on this one, I took a transparency sheet & stamped the spray bottle on it with black stazon ink, and then cut it out. I turned the transparency over, put glue on the back of it, and dumped on blue glitter so that the windex is sparkly. Sparkly clean, of course. I left the glitter off of the "clean" label so that you can still read the saying on the bottle. The scrub brush & dish soap is colored in with Copic Markers. The paper is unidentifiable scraps from my scrap bin...if I had to guess, I'd say the blue polka dots are from My Mind's Eye, the stripe is probably Basic Grey, and well, I know the red dots are my fave Daisy D's cherry dot tomato polka dot. Stamp set, Hanna Stamps "Domestic Goddess" set, which will be available on February 1st. Have a snuggly Friday night! L.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

And so, are the days of our lives.

Another Hanna Stamps "Domestic Goddess" sample tonite. This set will go on sale on February 1st, but tomorrow night, you have a chance to win it over at Splitcoast at the Hanna Stamps Forum. Kristi is giving away lots of goodies, including Riley & the new domestic goddess set! This one was inspired by the fun, sparkly-looking paper that I bought at Archivers. It was actually Cloud 9 "Jingle Dots" Christmas paper that I got on clearance after the holidays. It struck me because first off, it was green (like most cleaning products), and it had cartooney little sparkles around the edge that makes me think "squeaky clean". I found these great chipboard coaster sayings at Archiver's "Hot Spot", which is their version of the dollar section; everything's $1.99 or under.

Look at the fun sayings on these mini-coasters! I can get at least 5 cute Hanna goddess cards out of this coaster pack...many of these are perfect with our cleaning goddess here!



Hannas slippers and the towel in her cleaning bucket have been fun-flocked with white fun flock, so they are fuzzy!
One more sample coming up tomorrow night. Happy Thursday, everyone!




L.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

I'm a dork.

I swear, sometimes I just need to SLOW DOWN. I bought the matchy hand towel and wet wipes container at the Target dollar spot a few weeks ago, and decided to alter them with the new Hanna Stamps "Domestic Goddess" cleaning set. I brought everything to my Aunt's stamping get together, and putzed and messed around with it for the longest time! It turned out kind of cute, and it was 0h-so-handy to have the wet wipes right there at my stamp station! I cleaned up a storm with these wet wipes! I cleaned my stamps, my space at the table, my hands (MULTIPLE TIMES!) I loved the idea SO much that I went back and bought *5* more sets of them in different colors to make for some girlfriends that are meeting next week for a stamping get-together! WOWZER, THEY'RE GONNA LOVE 'EM, I thought. And then it happened. I actually looked at the wet-wipes container closely. Hmph. These are not wet wipes, they are GLASS CLEANER WIPES. As in WINDEX! So here's the moral of the story. Use actual WET WIPES if you try to duplicate my idea! Geez Louise.
Paper: Crate "Carnival" Snowcone & Roller Coaster.
Ribbon: May Arts
Markers: Copic
**************
That puts me over my cleaning allowance this month, so I'm off to lay on the couch to reverse some of the good that I've done. :)

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Altered Clippie - Chore Chart Holder

I'm such a list maker that I thought it would be fun to have a cute clippie to stick post it notes or a list to. The clipboard is recycled from work..they were going to throw them away, so I confiscated them for my project stash. The soon-to-be-released "Domestic Goddess" Hanna stamp set is PERFECT for clipboards...wouldn't it be a fun kid's chore chart, too?

The super-bright striped paper is from "Piggy-Tales", Ba-Ba black sheep collection. I paired it with my fave polka dot daisy d's cherry tomato paper. The chipboard letters were actually a knock-off brand from Wal-Mart.... I was in a pinch and wanted some fun glitter letters, but they only had plain chipboard ones. So I compromised, bought the green letters & then glittered them up with a glue pen and dazzling diamonds glitter.





I took misc. images from the stamp set and stamped them in a line going down the paper to make it look like the cleaning tools are part of the paper.The flower is a K & Company 3-d sticker from Michaels. The striped paper was mod-podged onto the clipboard.
Here's a close-up of the glitterfied letters!

L.

Monday, January 21, 2008

Domestic Goddess & a birthday celebration!


It's time again for another new Hanna stamp set to be unveiled! This Friday (Jan 25), Kristi Ferro of Hanna Stamps is holding a big birthday bash at Splitcoaststampers in her member forum! She'll be giving away lots of goodies and new release stamp sets! You can win 'em before you can buy 'em....YIPPIE!!!!
In celebration, I'll be posting 5 days worth of sneak peeks with the soon-to-be-released "Domestic Goddess" set! I've been dying to show you guys all the fun stuff I've been doing with this set... it's SO STINKING FUN TO PLAY WITH!
For this card, I stamped our girlie & her housecleaning scene on white cardstock. Then I stamped the soap bubbles and the sentiment "A clean house is a sign of a lazy stamper" on top of a transparency sheet. I turned over the transparency and glittered up the bubbles with blue glitter. Stickles would work great also! Hanna's out fit is blue gingham making memories paper. Her cleaning tools and the image are all colored in with copic markers. More to come tomorrow night!

Sunday, January 20, 2008

You're one hot tamale - Gable window box

I'm getting right down to business today because I've got a lot of photos to show you! I am obsessed with boxes right now, and putzed in my stamp room yesterday with the fun die cut boxes that I got from Creative Cuts & More. I thought it would be fun to modify one of their $1 gable boxes . Remember that if you are going to stamp on your boxes, make sure to order the smooth, not the textured cardstock, or your stamping won't be even because of the bumpiness of the textured paper. This box comes without a window in it, but I thought it would be fun to modify it and add a transparency window. It's pretty easy to do if you have the Nestability dies. I chose a circle for the window but you can choose any shape you have...heart, oval, whatever you own! I own the sizzix machine, and will show you with my sizzix how it's done.




Choose the nestability die that fits the box best, leaving ample room on either side of the scored edges of the box. Fold the edges of the box up on the scored lines. We will be folding them down on top of the box when we insert this into the machine.




Take a 4" coaster and lay it on top of the nestability die. It will separate the smooth box from the top of the die so that you won't get an impression on the top of the box. Fold both sides of the box down on top of the coaster.








Take 2 more coasters and lay them on top of the folded cardstock edges. I am using them as a shim to create pressure between my sizzix clamp and the die. Fold all edges of the box in so that the box will slide in easily to the sizzix machine.

Clamp down on the coasters so that the machine cuts your cardstock.




Pull the die out, and you will have a perfect circle in the middle of your gable box. Keep the red circle, we will use it for a mat for our Hanna image later.










Repeat this on the other side of the box. If you just want the window on one side of the box, that's fine too! I wanted it so that you could see all the way through the box.









Cut 2 pieces of a transparency sheet so that they fit the entire side of the box (this box measures 4" x 3 1/4", so I cut it to fit the entire side of the box.











Stamp lip prints all over the front of the box randomly, and then adhere the transparencies to the inside of the box. I used Hermafix/dotto permanent adhesive to adhere.








For the edges of the box, make sure to use a really strong tape, like wonder-tape or a tape thatis super sticky. Put the box together.














I wanted to fill this one with hot tamales, because I thought it would be cute with the new Hanna Stamps "Sweet Celebrations" Valentines Set.





I had a slight problem, in that I may have eaten a few too many hot tamales while I was putzing. So I figured out a trick so that you don't have to add huge amounts of candy in the box. Its a good trick to know, just in case some gets eaten (by mistake of course). I cut a piece of red cardstock that is the same size as the bottom of the box, with 3/4" wings on either side.





Insert this piece into the bottom of the box. It will create a faux-bottom.











Fill your box up with the rest of the tamales! (Whatever's left)












Create the tag and mat it with the red piece of paper that came out of the center of the box. I typed the sentiment on my computer & then stamped Hanna in the center. She's colored in with Copic markers.


She's one hot tamale!






Saturday, January 19, 2008

Back on track!

I am back on track today and getting organized. I'm finally home for a full 2 days and am raring to get into my stamp room and start creating again!! I have stamps screaming my name & need to start gathering my samples to bring with me to the CHA show (Craft & Hobby Assn.) next month. The month before CHA is usually a flurry of activity for the stamp companies as well as the design team members. Since the stamp company owners are busy choosing the new designs that will debut at CHA & getting the product into production, it's the design team's job to create samples that can be shown in the owner's booths at the show.
Little Riley Moose here is one of those new debuts, so the boxes that I'm making with him will travel with me to Anaheim and land in Kristi Ferro's Hanna Stamps booth. Ok. So the box is from Creative Cuts and More and is called an "Oval Window Box". It looks like a small kleenex box to me! I decided to add some Basic Grey Blush Striped paper to the front. I cut a piece of paper the same size as the top of the box, laid it on top of the box, flipped it over and then traced the opening on the opposite side. Cut out the oval on the traced line with your scissors, and adhere the striped paper to the box top.The next step was to fold the box together on the scored lines, and use eyelets to adhere the edges of the box top. For the box bottom I used a super tacky tape to close the bottom flaps (wonder tape).
Here's the cool part. The 2 largest oval nestabilities dies fit perfectly over the top of the box opening. So I punched out a scallop oval in ruby red paper, and a regular oval in white cardstock (Georgia Pacific from Wal-Mart).



I stamped my image on the front of the white paper & colored in riley moose with copics. I scored the left edge of the image, folded it over, and then attached it over the box opening so that it opens up like a flap. The metal anchor turn holds the flap shut.
Voila! Fill box with yummy candy, or whatever your heart desires! I'm pretty sure we'll be digging into these junior mints after the show is over. They're yummy and gooey.