Whirlpool of Imagination

Sore hands!!

I got my TAC demo kit in the mail this week and I have been cutting and mounting stamps!

This is the stash of new stamps I'm trying to mount. My Kai scissors is getting quite a workout and my hands are a bit sore. I'm taking a break today from mounting and am working on a couple of projects.

Here's some great paper I also got from TAC. I haven't cut into it yet but I am dying to give some of these papers a try - I am loving the designs!

So any new stamps on your end? Show me - I love to see what you're buying. And tomorrow is the monthly Papertrey release - are you ready, I see some stamps that I just HAVE to have!

Trying out River Rock

This card started out in going in a few directions, none of which panned out. But lately that seems to be the way for me - what is in my head gets translated to something very different when transferred to paper.

I originally stamped the flowers in white because I was going to try the chalkboard technique shown on Splitcoast. After I had stamped them though I realized that I liked them the way they were.

Then I was going to do the black, white and river rock color combo challenge. I started out with that and actually made a card with a white layer. But somehow it just didn't work for me so I switched the white to a light grey. I am definitely happier with the grey instead of the white. All stamps are from Cornish Heritage Farms. I love this backgrounder stamp. I forget what its called but it stamps up beautifully. I can tell that I'm going to reach for that one over and over.

I am exhausted so its off to bed for me - night!

Sprucing Up a Gift

This weekend Mo and I went to a cocktail party (and it was so nice to get out and have some adult conversation!). The hostess gave the old "just bring yourselves" response so we brought our go to hostess item, a bottle of wine. So we picked out what we were giving and Mo said the magic words "do you have a bag to put this in?" Now he's thinking those shiny cellophane bags you get at the liquor store. I have a lot in my stash but definitely none of those. So I decide I need to pretty up this bottle.

I put together a quick wine tag. Since I wanted to match the Ravenswood colors, the tag ended up being black, ivory and gold.

Start with a piece of cardstock 7 x 3 inches long. I scored the long side at 2.5 inches. Punch a hole in the shorter end so the tag will slide over the top of the bottle.

From there, decorate as you want. I used the party girl from Beeswax and prettied her up with prismacolor markers and a gold spica glitter pen. I stamped the sentiment from TAC onto vellum and layered.

All in all, a quick way to pretty up a bottle of wine when presenting to your hostess.

A Ribbon Mess No More

I have to start off by saying I love ribbon. Even though I have a ton of it, I just can't stop myself from buying more when I see something cute. Having said that you can imagine the huge mess I had. Many times the ribbon I order doesn't come in spools or even if it does, once it's open it starts to unravel and consequently you end up with one big blob of ribbon. After reading about Nichole's storage system, I knew I wanted to give that a try, everything just looked so neat!

I first got a few hundred clothespins from Wal-Mart and over a period of a couple of weeks, started wrapping all my ribbon around the clothes pins. I already had the straight pins to secure the ribbon for another project so no worries there. I ended up wrapping all my 1/4" and 3/8" ribbon on the pins. In the end, I rolled 5 yards at the most on the clothes pin. If I had more than that, I just put it away for when I ran out of a certain color. I then bought "penny jars" to organize the ribbon by colors. I found the jars at both Wal-Mart and Target for the same price.

Here's all the jars on a cute little shelf that I had Mo (and Conor!) make for me.

I ended up going with six jars which separated the colors nicely.

Do you like the kid's pics on the board above???

I originally tried rolling the thicker width's of ribbon but just didn't like how bulky it got so for 1/2" and higher widths, I went to plan B. In my naive days, I had bought a couple of these drawers made by Cropper Hopper for all my ribbon. I quickly realized that I had too much ribbon for this system but it ended up working perfectly for my wider ribbon. So any wider ribbon gets wrapped around one of the little cards (again max amount is 5 yards) and then into the little drawer. I think I may need to get a couple more drawers but that should about cover it.

Here's a picture of some of my stripes.

And finally, I can't throw scraps away so I bought this cute basket from Michael's at 50% off for anything 1 yard and less. Who knew I'd already have it filled to the top??

The whole project took me a couple of weeks from start to finish but I'm really happy with the final results. The ribbon is now neat and easy to find and the jars do look pretty on their shelf - so colorful!

New Cuttlebug Folders

You know I had to get a few of the new cuttlebug folders when they came out. I've had a lot of fun with the swiss dots. Well, here's another.....

When I sat down at my table, my original plan was to work on a five minute card. I had some ideas in mind and I ended up shooting down every single one. In the process of making a mess of all those other ideas, this card design started to emerge. I ended up using my cuttlebugged images for my main blocks for a change of pace, rather than something stamped. While there's minimal stamping (the sentiment is from TAC), there are a lot more layers than I usually make. So the time commitment on this one is getting all the layers ready and building from the bottom up. The scallop edge is from a Fiskars scissors (sunflower) and the patterned paper is some old Chatterbox that I pulled out of my paper pile. I have a LOT of paper in that pile so I'd like to start trying to use it up before I go crazy buying more paper!

Bella gets a makeover

I was going through my stock of cards to see what's low and what I need to make more of. I needed to make some new bellas but I decided to redo the card just a bit...freshen up miss bella.

Here you've got the two cards side by side.

I used the same color scheme but instead of coloring bella with pencils, I used my prismacolor markers, although the flowers and bow are still colored with a sakura gelly roll pen. Beyond that, just a few changes in placement and some flowers to match the patterned paper and here's the new, updated version of bella.

The stamps are from Stamping Bella and Spunky Stamps.

We are getting just a taste of spring today. The kids were actually able to play in the playground after school without freezing any extremities! I love spring so I'm anxiously awaiting the change of seasons. Please send some warm sunshine my way!

Jumping to TAC

For about 8 years now, I've been a CTMH consultant. I don't do a lot of advertising about it as at this point in time, I was purely a hobby demo. While I've always liked CTMH products, in the past year, I've found myself using them less and less. In that same time, I've been buying a lot of TAC products. After thinking it over the last couple of months, I've officially resigned as a CTMH consultant and have sent in my TAC demo papers. I still see myself as more of a hobby demo because my main focus is selling my cards and crafts but they have such fun stuff and a stupendous angel policy. They really can't be beat when allowing you to use their items for resale. So that's my big change for the week! Now off to stamp.

Playing with some new Papertrey stamps

This weekend Mo needed me to make a sympathy card. I had yet to try one of my new Papertrey stamps so I decided to ink these puppies up and since what I could make. I also bought some of the new PTI patterned paper and the colors appealed to me so you're seeing some of that too.

The cross and the sentiment are from Papertrey, along with the paper. The print pattern backgrounder is from Cornish Heritage Farms. I'm really pleased with how this turned out. I find sympathy cards difficult to do and most often, the designs all look the same. I like this new PTI set and have a feeling I will get lots of use out of it.

I got the confirmation email that I am receiving the special PTI anniversary set (yes, I ordered a LOT from PTI last year!). Can't wait to see it!

March is Roaring In

So March is coming in like a lion. I'm sitting here this morning watching the snow come down in big fluffy snowflakes. I think this is the first storm this winter that might be all snow. We've been plagued with sleet, ice and rain this year.

I meant to upload this last night but Mo shut down the computer before I could get to it. I designed this card as a birthday card for my step-dad who has a leap year birthday. The frog is because of the whole "leap" thing.

I went with a pretty simple design since I'm still working on the shower invites.

The frog is from Inkadinkado and the sentiment is from Papertrey. The frog is colored in with prismacolor markers. I tried layering some different greens and I like how it looks.

Everything from this card is from my scrap bin. I love being able to use up my old scraps before digging into new paper (or ribbon). Makes me feel like I'm not wasteful!

Hope you have a great day! I guess this means March will go out like a lamb, right??