Whirlpool of Imagination

Sweet Day Notecards

It's another month, so that means new notecards for teacher's notes.

  Since I've been using those cute cupcake stamps from Taylored Expressions, I figured I'd pull them out for this project too.

I first inked up the cupcake with palette noir ink. Since I didn't want the lipstick on the cheek to be black, I gently wiped the black off and used a red Dee Gruenig marker to color the lips. Then stamp the cupcake and color in (I used copics). The cherry on top has a bit of CTMH liquid glass. I love that stuff - lately, can't get enough of it.

I knew what I wanted for the sentiment but went through all 10,000 stamps (slight exageration) that I own and didn't have that saying. I wanted to say "Have a sweet day". So then I thought I would build the saying from existing stamps. Still wasn't working. I finally lit upon these stamps from TAC. I stamped them in palette noir and the "sweet" is from Taylored Expressions and stamped in SU red.

I've already had to send in notes this month and these notecards just make me smile. I'm really enjoying making the special notes. Makes it that more fun to talk to the teachers.

We endured a bitter cold day here today but there is hope. The weekend may reach mid-40's. Woohoo - can't wait! I'm finished shopping (the craft part at least, not the food) for Meg's party on Sunday. Tomorrow I need to spray paint. Now won't that be a sight! Have a great night!

 

Oops, forgot to show the full set. This picture is a little brighter so I think it shows them off better.

Okay, now I'm really going.

Kissing Cupcakes

Happy Groundhog Day!! So, he saw his shadow......I don't think I ever thought that spring was right around the corner, not with the winter we've been having so far!

Now that it is February, I am starting to get myself into the Valentine's groove. With my last order of ribbon at Taylored Expressions, I had to pick up the Love is Sweet stamp set. I haven't gotten any of Taylor's cupcakes yet, but I decided that it was time.

I adore these stamps! They are nicely etched red rubber and are a joy to stamp. You may be saying, Laura, you've been saying that a lot about your stamps lately. How can we trust you are not gushing about every stamp company you use? All I can say is trust me. I have no affiliation with any of these companies, nobody is giving me free product (darn!) and I believe in calling it like it is. If I am using a stamp that does not work as easily or as well, you will be the first to hear it from me.

This layout is not mine AT ALL. This is actually Taylor's sketch from last week (TECC53). It was such a great sketch that I jumped on it right away. The cupcakes and sentiment are stamped with palette noir ink. They are then colored with copic markers. The tops of the cupcakes have a layer of CTMH liquid glass on them for some shine and the top heart between the two of them is a brad.

The paper is from Reminisce and I used one of my Cuttlebug border embossers to add that little with love sentiment on the pink layer. There was more to the border that I didn't want and it's conviently covered with the lower block. I finished the card off with some Doodlebug rhinestones and am really pleased with the final result. Yes, I am still stuck in the red, pink and brown rut. I will emerge from it eventually.

I'm thinking I will use this for Mo's valentine card. He never reads my blog so there's no danger of him seeing it ahead of time. He asked me today what I wanted for Valentines.  I told him I have that all covered. The 15th is Papertrey's second anniversary and the next monthly release. I will be happy to buy my own present and have officially let him off the hook. How about you? Are you getting anything good for Valentine's?

Penguins for the Teacher

I had grand plans tonight to post, comment on blogs and even do some crafting. And then I completely ruined all those plans. While steaming vegetables for dinner, I managed to give myself a doozy of a steam burn. All my fingers on my left hand are in agony. So I'm going to do a quick post and everything else will have to wait until tomorrow when my hand doesn't feel as if its on fire!

I have a very quick notecard project tonight. Conor is having some focus issues at school so it seems as if notes are going into the teacher VERY often this month. As a result, I needed more notecards as I'm flying through my tangerine snowflake ones.

I didn't have a good single picture so here is some of the notecards in the set. This little penguin is in the same TAC set as the penguin in the glitter background card. It's colored in with prismacolor markers and I used a spica glitter pen in a few places to add a bit of sparkle.

And with that, I'm calling it a night. I'm going to get into my pj's and try to ignore the throbbing in my hand. Have a good night!

Glitter Background

The technique challenge last week at Splitcoast was to create a glitter background. As soon as I saw the challenge, I wanted to give it a try. When it comes to challenges, I work at a snail's pace. Finishing the challenge a week later is about par for the course for me. I think the stumbling block was how I was going to use the background. Once I started in on it, things got a bit clearer.

 I have to say, I really like this little card. The glitter background actually started out as a 5.25 x 4 inch piece. After adding all those glitter lines, I decided I wanted a smaller piece. When I use blue in January, I think snow so that's where the penguin idea come in.

I stamped the penguin from TAC in palette noir and colored him with copic markers. I then sponged a Brillance blue ink all around him although the picture didn't really pick that up.

He is pop-dotted over the glitter layer. I am finding myself using mounting tape on almost every card I make. I really like the dimension it adds.

The blue layer has red line tape which was then covered with Martha Stewart glitter. I then stamped the words (Papertrey Ink Stamps) in navy (SU). This is layered on a cuttlebugged snowflake layer and a final navy layer. And there is my completed challenge. I may even get it uploaded to Splitcoast if I'm really efficient!

Snowman Trio

Good morning! A little black ice has left us with some extra time this morning since the kids have a 90 minute delay. I realized that its a good thing I don't make New Year's resolutions, including one to blog every day. That would have been broken immediately!! I actually stepped away from the computer for a few days. On Saturday, I don't think we even turned the computer on. And I have to say I enjoyed not being compelled to check emails or Splitcoast or any of the other sites I like to go to. I may have to keep the 'puter turned off more often!

But I am here today with a card. Mind you, the picture is no good but since I've already mailed them all out, its what we are stuck with.

The lighting was off on this so its looking much more washed out and not nearly as sparkly in real life.

I really like this little trio of snowmen from The Angel Company. I think it's in with its tag set but it makes for a perfect image block.

I colored the snowmen with prismacolor and copic markers and used spica pens to add sparkle to the tiny snowflakes and to the block outlining the snowmen.

The snowflake is from a Shimmer Snowflake pack from Creative Impressions. I did have a picture of one with a silver snowflake but that picture was useless altogether. I had the card laid out but couldn't decide what to do with the bottom area. I made a bunch of these for Christmas thank you's for the kids and used a silver paint pen for the sentiment. I decided to do the same thing with these and just to add a little sentiment by hand rather than fooling around with stamping something.

And now I'm off to hound Conor to get dressed. He's using this school delay to his full advantage. Have a great day!

Pumpkin Notecards

With the start of the school year, my day to day correspondence has increased. There always seems to be some reason to be writing quick notes to the teachers. Every year I've said I would make pretty notecards to write on and has it happened before this? Nope. I've been inspired by some great examples over at Splitcoast to follow through with this goal this year.

I've also decided that not only will I make cute little notecards, I will make them completely seasonal and each month I will make different designs. Here is the first design.

The pumpkin I used here is from TAC and I colored it with prismacolor markers. This is also a great way to use up scraps. I am forever keeping thin strips of patterned paper, saying I just might use it. Such was the case with the paper I used for these notecards. The strips were just the perfect width for my needs.

These are quick and easy so that several of the same design can be made at the same time, giving me enough notecards to get through any given month.

Here is the first set of notecards made up. Which is completely timely because I need to send in a note to Conor's teacher tomorrow! Are you making up notecard sets? If so, I would love to see what you come up with. Drop me a link so I can see what you're doing with these too.

Slurp!

This is an early morning post because I have a super busy day ahead of me. Meg's birthday is coming up in a few weeks and she's been hounding me to get her birthday invites done. I finally finished them this week. The theme of the party is Hannah Montana (big surprise for a 7 year old, right?). I had some trouble deciding on how to do the invites. I didn't want to just pop dot a HM sticker and of all the bellas I own, wouldn't you know I don't have rock star bella. So since its a summer party, we went a different route.

I don't know who on Splitcoast originally designed these popsicle cards. If you check the gallery there are lots of them now.

The circle stamp is from TAC (one of their brand new sets that matches the punches), the candles are from Stampin' Up and for the life of me, I can't figure out where that sentiment came from. The candles have stickles on their flame for a bit of sparkle.

For the "bite" out of the popsicle, I couldn't get my scallop punches to cut through both layers of cardstock so I improvised. I used my SU word window punch and did a series of punches along the cardstock. I did each layer separately but even so, they came out pretty even. So if your scallop punch won't do the trick, try your word window punch instead.

I did the inside info in Word and pop-dotted the layer to cover the popsicle stick. All in all, they came out really cute! And Meg was happy with them, which is the most important thing.

Now I'm off to get ready for Mo's party. His 40th birthday party is finally here so I have a lot to do to get ready. Have a great day!

Dirty Dare Masculine

If you are a member over at Splitcoasters, you may know about the week of Dirty Dares. As a thank you to fan club members, the Dirty Girls post various challenges for the week. One such challenge was to make a masculine card.

I had to make a birthday card for my brother so this fit in nicely with the challenge. Now most masculine stamps are fishing or hunting and the like. He's not into any of that but he does have a red car. I took what I could get on subject matter!

The car is from TAC and is stamped with SU's real red ink. The striped paper is from Doodlebug and the black layer is actually black glossy cardstock so in real life, it has a bit of a shine.

The rain did a number on my arthritis last night so I'm sleepy and fading fast. Hope you all have a great night!

Teamwork

As some of you know, I design cards for people. What's really interesting to me is that some clients give me free rein to do whatever I want, others have some ideas and yet still others have very specific criteria. I like working with all three types for various reasons and find the variety makes the job more interesting. One repeat client that I have has very specific ideas that I translate into cards for her. Normally, we do this over the computer and pass along a LOT of emails back and forth. This time I thought it would be neat to have her come over and to work as a team, in the moment, to create the card she was envisioning. Not only did it make the process a lot easier, it was a lot of fun!

These cards were designed for a little girl who is turning four and loves horses. My client would tell me what she wanted and then and there I tried out ideas for her. Then she got to play with the placement of the various elements until we both agreed on the final design that you see here to the left.

The horse was embossed with a brass stencil in my wizard. I then cut it out and sanded out the white core. It was then placed with pop dots onto a layer that had been stamped with a flourish stamp from TAC. The flowers and rhinestones were requested by the client and what was neat about doing this in person was she got to play with the embellishments until what she saw in her mind came to life on paper.

What I love about this type of work is the interaction I get with others. To take a blank sheet of paper and create what they see in their mind can be a challenge but is also a lot of fun. As the kids are older now, I really look forward to getting the chance to do this on a regular basis and having a job that I love.

Bikini Bella

I was in a summer card making mood so I pulled out my bikini bella. Aaah, at one point in my life, I could wear one of those......

I tried vainly to add more layers to this card but to be honest, it just looked like I was adding just to add so I scaled it back down to my style.

The bella is from Stamping Bella, the flip flops are from TAC and the circle is from Papertrey. The blue mat that the bella is one is actually pop dotted for a bit of dimension but the camera didn't pick up on that.

I dry brushed some acrylic paint onto the bella layer just to dirty it up a bit.

The patterened paper is from my new favorite, Tutti Frutti from TAC. I think the bright colors have been matching my summery mood.

Until tomorrow...