Whirlpool of Imagination

Floral Limb

It's amazing what sleep, or the lack of, can do to you. In the first part of the week, I slept lousy. I'm not sure why but just didn't get the kind of sleep I needed. And it showed. During the day on Tuesday, I was moving very slow and my brain just wouldn't work. I tried to jump start myself in the studio, but everything I tried looked blah......But, last night I got some decent sleep so I'm on my way back to myself. I got a simple card created today. Nothing too fancy but it was nice not to say yuck as soon as I finished the card!

All the stamps for this one came from one of my new Papertrey Ink sets.

In regards to color, I have a question for all the SU demos out there. I stamped the flowers in Regal Rose. But when I tried to match it with the Regal Rose cardstock for the mat, it looked horrible. But then I held it up to the Cameo Coral cardstock (say that 10 times fast!), and it was a perfect match. Did I get a Regal Rose dud of an inkpad or does the rose actually match the coral?

The next several weeks bring Valentine's projects to the forefront. You may be seeing a lot of candy in the near future!

Going 3-D

I find it quite interesting to explore the kinds of card making and crafts that are popular in other areas of the world. I'm so focused on stamping that sometimes I just feel the need to wander away from that. One place that is great for ideas is the message boards over at Circle of Crafters. This was where I originally learned about iris folding and tea bag folding. I hadn't given 3-D cards a go before this but some of the pyramid sheets are so pretty that I thought I'd try one.

Here's my first go at it so be gentle!

The flower image is from a pyramid sheet created by the generous crafters at CoC. I couldn't completely give up the stamping so the background stamp is from Cornish Heritage Farms and the small sentiment is from a recent set from Papertrey Ink.

I'm really glad I gave this a try. I'm sure I'll be back for more.

Deck the Halls and all that

Every year I say that I'm going to start Christmas designs early and work on stock all year round. And every year I wait until November and go crazy working on holiday cards. This year I've made myself a list of themes/ideas to mix things up on a monthly basis. And one thing I haven't done this month was come up with a Christmas design. Now I can check that one off my list too.

I didn't get a chance to use this fun tree stamp from Stamping Bella last year so in the spirit of the new year I went with a new holiday stamp! The tree is colored with prismacolor markers, a sakura glitter pen for the star and a sakura glaze pen for the ornaments. The sentiment is from Papertrey Ink.

My organization kick has stalled a bit. But after seeing this post on Nichole Heady's blog, I've been inspired to tackle my ribbon. I have two baskets full of unraveled and tangled ribbon so it really needs some work. I think that's the organizational plan for the week. If I do a little each day, I may not burn myself out!

Forgotten Stamp Day

Yet another monthly blog theme I'd like to try to add in is a forgotten stamp day. I have all these stamps and they fall into a few categories. They are: 1)I use them all the time, reach for them over and over, 2)new and I either want to use them right away or new and just haven't mounted them yet so the poor things don't get inked or 3)older stamps that I've forgotten about. Many that fall into the 3rd category would be my mounted stamps. I seem to reach for the unmounted right away that I forget about all the stamps I acquired before I went unmounted.

This was a quick little card I made using an old Hero Arts stamps that I had. Do you know, I'm not sure I ever used this stamp at all. And I embarrassed to tell you how long I've had it!!

The stamp was colored with prismacolor markers and I used chalk for the two words. Other than that, some slab paper and ribbon and there ya go.

Are mornings as crazy in your house as they are in mine? I think negotiating outfits for the day has to be almost as difficult as fixing the economy! My children, especially Meghan, would wear summer clothes all year if I let them. The problem is we have winter. So this morning went as usual....

Me: Are you dressed?

Meg: Yep. How's this?  (Now its 15 degrees out and she's got a skirt, short sleeve top and if she could slide them by me, flip flops).

Me: Are you nuts???

Please tell me I'm not the only one going through this. The upside is, come summer, we'll be in complete agreement!

The Paint Challenge

I took another challenge over at Splitcoast. Two challenges in a month - must be a record! The Ways to Use It Challenge for today was paint. You know I love using acrylic paint on my cards, especially for backgrounds so I jumped on this challenge today.

I was in the mood to use blue so I went with it. I used blue acrylic paint for the background. Very simply, take a dry brush and swipe it in every direction all over the cardstock. I also used the brush to make the edgings on the balloon panel as well. I find it easier to use a paintbrush rather than an ink pad. I get the look I'm going for much better with the paint.

The balloon stamp is from River City Rubber and the sentiment is from Spunky Stamps.

This was it for me today. Meg stayed home sick so my studio time was limited. See you tomorrow!

Giving you the Boot

A Victorian one, that is.....The pattern of the month over at Circle of Crafters was a great looking boot. After going through my awfully large stack of papers, I came up with the following combination.

The picture is not the best as I picked the wrong time of day to snap it.

Along with the folding, I used another punch out from the template section over at The Stamp Shack. This one is for Mother's Day. Add a prima, a cute little brad and some peel off stickers and we're all set.

This has been a bit of a frustrating day for me. I've been spoiled. Over the weekend, through the holiday yesterday, the kids behaved like a dream. It all came crashing to a halt today and it was back to reality for me. Ah well, tomorrow is another day.

A Little Brown and Ivory

This week, my blogging sisters challenge was to make a card using brown and ivory. What started out in my head and what ended up on paper are vastly different but here you go....

It's a pretty straight forward card really. I cuttlebugged the cream and layer and painted it with a dry brush and acrylic paint. The stamp is from Stampin' Up and I ended up brushing some paint on that layer too because it looked a little plain otherwise. And that is about it really.

If you check out some of the other SBS friends of mine, you'll see some more great brown and ivory cards. Night!

Just a Little Brownie Project

My creative spark completely abandoned me today. I fooled around a bit in the studio but it was pretty obvious that I should quit while I was ahead! I went with a quick and easy project that I'd had in my mind this week. I thought it would be nice for Meg to thank those who have ordered Girl Scout cookies from her. This is what we came up with.

I have the cutest stamp from a Girl Scout set I got from Close to My Heart a few years back. I'm not sure why I originally ordered it, but it's coming in handy now that Meg is a Brownie.

We used the computer to print up the words and stamped the Girl Scout in burnt umber to go with the Brownie theme. I left room at the bottom for Meg to print her name and she is going to color in all the Brownie girls on these postcards.

We'll attach these to the boxes of cookies when we eventually deliver them.

That's my big project for today. I do have some ideas milling around for tomorrow. Since its a day off from school, we'll see what I get done but since its also supposed to be VERY cold, I have a feeling we'll be inside most of the day! Night.

Faux Silk Fern

Ever since I saw the tutorial for faux silk at Splitcoast, I wanted to give it a try. I have lots of colors of tissue paper but only a little white. I have some ideas for the other colors but wanted to give it a whirl on the white first. So I scrounged and eventually came up with a piece. I have a theory in that I've accumulated so much stuff, if I look long enough I'll find what I want!

I struggled a lot with the layout. In fact, I'm still not completely happy but I'm throwing it out there to you anyway. I may do the second layer a full layer instead of pieces and see how that looks.

I cannot give stamp credits because I went through a period where I mounted my stamps but neglected to mark where they came from. Silly me, maybe I had some notion I'd remember automatically. If you saw how many unmounted stamps I have, you'd know THAT was a pipe dream! The little "enjoy your day" circle is from a punch out download from The Stamp Shack. One of the perks of membership (a mere $10/year) is access to the download section. I haven't utilized it enough although there are several I want to try. Recently, Sherry added these great punch outs. I don't have a punch that fits that size but the second circle on the coluzzle works quite nicely. A little more work, but for now it does the trick. This picture doesn't do justice to the main image block. This easy technique gives the images a nice worn look and some cool texture to your card. I definitely want to do this one again.

I hope you enjoy your weekend. I know its cold in so many places and we are no exception. So bundle up and stay warm!

Bella Hearts

Brrrr ~ it's mighty cold here so I'm staying in as much as possible. Today I have a bella for you.

As usually happens, I was inspired but my blog hopping but for the life of my cannot remember who (although I think it was one of my blogging "sisters"). I saw a bella card with the cuttlebugged heart block and loved it. Right away I thought about this cute bella.

I searched for good background paper and I found 1 sheet of this great heart paper from Reminisce. By the way, what's up with only having one sheet of paper??? I never buy just one sheet! Now I'm on the prowl for more of this.

Anyway, Miss Bella is colored with prismacolor markers and the heart is colored with a spica glitter pen. And I finally found a good use for these cute little brads from Queen & Co.

And that my friends is all for today. The week has finally caught up with me so I'm getting ready to head off to bed.