Whirlpool of Imagination

Birthday Girl

Did you miss me? This weekend we've started our St. Patrick's Day celebrations early. Yesterday was a glorious day for a parade and we reveled in it. Meg marched with her step dancing school while I walked along with them. The crowds were enormous and vocal. Every time the girls stopped to dance they got a rousing cheer of approval when then finished - how cool is that for these girls? People waved to them and gave them high fives along the way. Then it was over to my in laws for a family meal. Great day and lots of fun.

Today I have the card I promised you a couple of days ago. I was shopping at Stamping Bella last month and when I saw this little card, I just had to buy her.

She is stamped with palette noir ink and colored with prismacolor and copic markers. The sentiment is stamped with night of navy SU ink and is from TAC.

I finally pulled out this CB embossing folder and really like it as a background. Now that I've finally used it once, I'm hoping I'll find more ideas for it.

Everything else is pretty much cardstock and layers. Most of my cardstock comes from California Paper Goods and the majority of the stock on this card is from there. I really like the Arcobalano line that they sell. It is not super strong for a stand alone card base but for layering, its fabulous.

It's shaping up to be another great day here again - hope yours will be lovely too!

The Herd

Another week, another long project. Last week the director of Meg's CCD program gave me a call. She was making these lambs for the kids who were making their first communion this year and she wanted a crafty way to cut them out. Long story short, there was no way to do anything cute with the lambs she was printing out so I decided to give something a go.

Meet my little communion lamb. He is composed entirely of punches. His body (front and back for neatness so you don't see the legs if you turn it over) is made from scallop circles. The head is half an oval punch. The legs came from the SU word window. The ears are half a circle punch. And the tuft of hair on the top of the face is two cloud punches pop dotted for a little dimension.

Thank goodness she wanted an abstract looking face for these which meant no face. Every time I tried to draw one, it looked like the lamb was smirking. Somehow I didn't think a smirking lamb would be appropriate for First Communion.

And here is the "herd" of 75 lambs that I've worked on ALL week long. This is not a hard project but it is time consuming so beware of committing to creating 75 punch lambs - make sure you have lots of time (and a capacity to endure repetition).

And now that these are done, I am working on the cutest card so stay tuned tomorrow. Have a great night!

Blue and Green

I am in the middle of a time comsuming project for church. I am desperately hoping to finish it tomorrow. If so, I'll have pictures. In the meantime, I took a break to do this weeks CAS challenge over at Splitcoast. This week is was a color challenge - we had to use green and blue and then we could use any neutrals.

When I first envisioned doing this challenge in my head, I was thinking light blues and greens. And then when I sat down to stamp, I absolutely HAD to use kraft cardstock. Then my entire color palette changed from light to dark.

The tree and the sentiment are both from Papertrey. I stamped the tree in wild wasabi (SU) and the sentiment in night of navy (also SU). You can pretty much figure out the rest from there.

It's only 7:15pm but I'm ready to call it a day. I dealt with the temper tantrums of all tantrums this afternoon and then a couple hours of remorseful crying and self recrimination. I am officially spent for the day. Things have once again righted themselves but the drama was worthy of an Academy award. And so, without further ado, I'm going to call it a night and will dream of sunshine and smiles for tomorrow. Have a great night!

Shamrocks and Polka Dots

Good thing all has been quiet between me and the kids' teachers this month. I had yet to make my monthly notecards. I made these just in time since I have notes that have to go in and now I have something seasonal AND pretty to write them on!

When I made my polka dotted card for the CAS challenge last week, someone had commented that the design would work good for stationery. This got me thinking about my notecards for the month.

So I cleaned the red off my polka dots from Papertrey and stamped them with Glorious Green (SU). The shamrock (Storage Units Ink) is also stamped with glorious green. The shamrock layer and the green circle layer both have mounting tape on them - I wanted to go for a bit of dimension with this one.

Some sets of notecards take longer than others but this month these are truly a 5 minute job. Within 30 minutes, you could easily have a whole set of these. What a wonderful gift to give to someone who likes to write little notes or for teachers who are always writing notes. A set of these with envelopes fit nicely into the Papertrey clear boxes and look so nice and neat when all packaged up. I think I'm onto the start of the year end teacher's gifts with this idea - its never too early to start thinking year end gifts!

Spring in the Mailbox

The weather outside today was the farthest thing from spring that you can imagine - cold, pouring rain, then sleet, then wet snow....spring may have not been outside but my mailbox is another matter altogether!

My pen pal group decided to do a secret sister spring swap. My goodies came in the mail today - thanks so much LISA!!! Here's a pix of the goods.....

  Lisa's only clue for my wish list was anything embellishment. Well, she did a great job and NONE of this is a repeat of items I already have! I cannot wait to try using the fun ribbon and all the sparkly bits. The weather today chased away my mojo - tomorrow I'm lining this all up in the studio and let it inspire me!

Have a great night!

One Stamp, Two Ways

I had great plans to blog and blurf last night but the allure of a glass of red wine, some chocolate and the black hole known as VH1 countdowns beckoned. And I gave in. Mo and I had a great time with the Top 100 Hard Rock Songs countdown. I'm an 80's hard rock/hair band/heavy metal kind of girl.....if that describes you too, watch this countdown - lots of fun!

And back to blogging on this beautiful Sunday morning. Today's entries actually came about by mistake. I had the first card designed and you know me, I never just make one, I always make several cards to add to my inventory as well as to send to pen pals. Here's the first one.....

During the last Stamping Bella sale, I picked up this little girl stamp. She reminds me of Meghan, especially with the hair off to the side so I had to buy her.

She's colored with copic markers and the flower has a little stickle center. I thought she was cute so I went about making the sections to make several more. When I repeat designs, I work assembly line fashion, making each separate part in multiplies and then putting them all together at the end.

So I went to add the image section to the green section when I had realized that I had cut the green blocks all too SMALL. Yep, didn't look good at all. So those green blocks went into the use at another time pile and then I had to do something with these already colored girl images.

Here is what a came up with the second time. The girl is colored in the same way. I just decided to change the paper and ribbon and go with another size card.

Having made the mistake, I now like the idea of taking a stamp and creating two different designs with it in one session. Now granted, if I had purposely started out to make two different designs, I would have colored her differently but that will be for next time. I have a list of monthly blog ideas I try to work in and this one stamp two ways is definitely going on the list.

Hope you have a fabulous day!

The Beauty of Order

I collect clutter. I don't know how it happens but I am just not one of those people where everything has a place and is IN that place. I strive to be and maybe one day, after lots of work (LOTS!), I may get there. Hence, my continual quest for organization in my studio. This month I tackled marker storage. Since finding alcohol markers, I've been collecting them. As a result, finding the one I wanted was never easy. At one point, I saw someone used the Quickutz Magpie Storage System for their markers. What a brillant idea. I then went on a quest to buy some. What stopped me for the longest time was shipping. Those things are heavy and most places charge you an arm and a leg to ship them. To my delight, www.overstock.com has them! Wooohooo - $2.95 shipping for whatever my order........before I knew it, I had two magpies on their way to me. They just arrived this week and like a kid in a candy store, I had to take them out and use them right away.

Every time I look at these, I just smile. It's amazing how things in an orderly place make me happy. Not surprising since I like rules too, but I digress.....

The magpie on the left holds all my Prismacolor Markers separated by basic color scheme.

The magpie on the right holds all my Copic Original Markers separated by basic color scheme. If I do add to my colors by buying any Sketches, they will just get mixed in with the Originals. On the lower right corner, I have an area for my Dee Greunig markers. When I color right onto the stamp, these are my go to markers - love them. Mind you, I have never tried the SU markers so I can't compare.

Now my markers are nice and neat, how do I tell what each one will look like on paper? I've got an answer for that too, never fear.

Along with order and rules, I love lists. Yes, I would never be a good rebel. Here is my copic chart. This was printed over at www.copicmarker.com It shows all the available markers of all styles. I printed my lists on Papertrey white cardstock as that is the cardstock I use when coloring with these markers. This way I know how each color will show up on my paper. Once I get a marker, I color in a line and I can see at a glance what I may want.

I could not find any lists for Prismacolor markers, so I made my own. This too is printed on PTI paper and all the colors marked off.

Now, at a glance, I can decide what colors I want to use and can easily pull them off their shelves.

Next, I want to tackle my ink pads. Please show me pictures and offer suggestions. A warning though, I have a lot of them too!

What was keeping me busy...

I am always amazed when bloggers/crafters can complete projects on a daily basis. Sometimes I can carve enough time to get a few things done but then other times, like last week, I spend the time on one big project. A friend of mine is hosting a wedding shower and asked if I would make the invitations. This was how I spent last week....

Here is a quick look at the finished invite, with personal information blocked out for privacy's sake.

My friend chose the color to match the wedding colors and look, its my favorite again, Rose Red. I first stamped a mock invite to get the measurements for the printing. Then I spent a good chunk of time with Word getting the document sized just right. I printed the info and then went back and stamped all the flowers in Rose Red (flowers are from Stampin' Up). Finish up with the twill ribbon (love it from Taylored Expressions) and mount on the final layer of rose red.

Good thing for me I had a massage scheduled for last Friday. Between the fine motor work of pulling the tape and tying all the ribbons, everything in my elbow and wrist was all knotted up! My therapist reminded me to take breaks often and stretch those muscles well so I would pass that advice on to you as well. Don't want to get carpal tunnel from what is supposed to be fun!

    

Here is the finished group of 60 invites. Now can you see why my muscles were all knotted? I enjoyed the project but am glad its over and done with!

Today I didn't stamp. I did work on organizing my markers. I'll have some pictures for you tomorrow. All my markers look so pretty now that they have a home. Have a good night!

Dotty Friends

When I looked at this week's clean and simple challenge at Splitcoast, I had no ideas at all. I thought it over last night and at 1am, a glimmer of an idea came to me. It's not the same as what I ended up with but then my ideas never seem the same when put to paper. The challenge was to use dots in some way. It was stipulated that those dots could not be cuttlebugged or come from patterned paper. You could paper pierce or use markers. I chose to stamp and use ink.

           

Here is what I finally came up with. All stamps are from Papertrey. My initial idea was to use a polka dot stamp. I tried different polka dots and different placements but went with this one in the end.

I stamped the dots with SU rose red ink. It is probably one of my all time favorite Stampin' Up colors. I then stamped the sentiment in PTI chocolate ink and cut out the two layers with my nestibilities. Pop dot the sentiment over the dots and a true 5 minute card.

One note on card size......the length of the dot stamp is smaller than the length of an A2 horizontal card.. Rather than trying to line up the dots and stamp twice, I made the card slightly smaller than A2. Final size on this card is 4.5 x 4.25 inches.

Someone on SCS gave me an idea when she commented. She made the observation that this design would look good for stationary. I haven't made my March notecards yet so I may just consider doing the same sort of design on those. I'll do a little playing tomorrow in the studio. Have a great night!

March is Roaring In.....

so hopefully that means it will go out like a lamb. All our snow had melted here and I thought we might have been out of the (snowy) woods. No such luck. The kids and I are home today and before I go out and shovel, I thought I'd post a little something.

I was really intrigued with the super cute stamps of The Greeting Farm so yes, I placed an order. I have a couple of the little Anya's that haven't seen ink but these older Anya's screamed for ink so they got used first. I have stamped a bunch of images and this is the first to get colored. She is colored with a mix of prismacolor and copic markers and her hair is colored with a pc colored pencil and blended with baby oil. I thought her boots needed a little something more so I added a couple of Amuse teeny twinkle stones just to make them sparkle. When I run out of those, I'm thinking stickles with look cute too.

Last week I was asked about my baby oil and pencil technique. It's super simple so I thought I'd show you a few pictures. Feel free to skip the next part if you are not interested.

First off, I just use regular old baby oil from CVS. Below that is my blending stump. I'm very lucky that I have a Jerry's Artarama by me so I picked up some there. If you google, you will find online sources. And I know if you search older threads at Splitcoast, you will find a wealth of information on them. I have a few different sizes that I use depending on the size of the area that I want to blend.

  I stamped up Anya and colored her with my markers first. I don't know why I do the markers first and hair last but that works for me. You may have your own routine on that one.

Here she is, ready except for her hair.

  For this next picture, I lightly colored her hair with my prismacolor colored pencil. This one I kept fairly light uniformly. Sometimes I will add areas that are darker with more color put down.

And finally, she's ready for blending. I dip the end of my stump into the baby oil. I do so sparingly. If you have too much, it may make your paper oily. If I get too enthusiastic with the oil, I wipe a bit off on a scrap piece of paper before touching it down to my image. I can always go back over it again with more if need be so I try to go light if possible.

As the baby oil touches the pencil, it will smooth it out and move it around. I'm done when I'm satisfied with the look.

A note on paper....since I am using my alcohol markers, I did stamp on Papertrey white cardstock and I used my palette noir inkpad. I do not have any Gina K or SU white so I don't know how those compare. I do have other white cardstock which I will use when not using my alcohol markers but I have definitely found the palette noir ink to be the best for me, even when just using the baby oil.

Then just finish your card. I have found the colors to be much more subdued with the pencils than with the markers and it is a bit more work as it is two steps. I like to mix and match techniques which is why you see the combo of marker and pencil, a combo you will see often in my stamping, especially when it comes to people.

Now I have to go shovel! Have a great day!