Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Dahlia Flower, Part 2


While browsing through the newly uploaded images on Splitcoast today, I ran across Jenn's card which used a series of punches to create the greeting. I loved it, so I thought I'd try it for my Dahlia card. Which one do you like better - with or without the greeting?

Dahlia Flower

Yesterday I was home with both of my sick girls. Luckily it was a teacher prep day, the day between semesters, so I wouldn't need a sub. In between grading papers and finishing up first semester grades, I saw this beautiful Dahlia flower which was the Technique Lover's Challenge for Monday on Splitcoaststampers and I just had to try one myself. Today, one of the girls is back at school, and the other is still pretty sick. While she was sleeping, I grabbed my 1 - 3/8 inch circle punch, a scrap of my favorite but now retired Petal Patch designer series paper, and got to work. It looked like the flower would come together just fine as I was laying it out on my desk, but when I assembled and adhered it to a scrap of Certainly Celery, there was a gap when I was done. I thought the flower would go well with a card I had made for a stamp camp last year, so I found an extra one in my 'Extra Stamp Camp Cards' shoebox and got to work. I made a couple of leaves from the celery scraps to fill in the gap, traced in some veins with my celery marker, and topped it all off with a celery ice rhinestone brad. Thanks for looking!

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Closeups of 'Let it Snow' Mantle Garland





Here are closeup views of the panels that comprise my 'Let it Snow' mantle garland that I finished back in December.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Closeups of Springtime Garland




Here are closeups of a few panels at a time of the garland so you can see the detail...

Springtime Mantle Garland


This weekend I gave you a sneak peak at the new mantle garland I've been working on. I was able to finish it Monday night - yay! I shared it with a few of my stamper coworkers today and they all seemed to like it. I love the bright and fresh look to it, and I LOVE the felt flowers. I hope Stampin' Up! decides to offer them in more colors in the future. The Bali Breeze designer series paper is my current favorite, and I love how it coordinated with the felt flowers. I guess that's just one of the many reasons I love Stampin' Up!'s stuff! Have a great week!

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Sneak Peak


With a long weekend, I'm finding some time to do some stamping. Well, ok, so I should be cleaning the house, but then again, it will always need cleaning, right? I only have until next weekend to get my stamping projects finished! Last night after returning home from our astronomy club meeting, I decided to work on my team meeting swaps, as the meeting is a short week away. I made eight more of the sliding popup cards that I posted below - boy, did that take a while! After church this morning, I pulled out my newest garland that I'm working on - 'Springtime'. My order arrived with the coordinating buttons and the new Flower Fusion felt flower pieces that I thought would go great with my garland. I have the letters all decorated, now to find the time to do each panel. I still have papers to grade this weekend, after all! I thought you might like a sneak peak of what I've completed so far on the garland.

Oh, at the end of our guest speaker's talk last night at our astronomy club meeting, he shared with us a cute video he found on YouTube explaining the calculation of percent. I was nearly on the floor laughing so hard by the time it ended, that I knew I had to share it with the math teachers I work with. I went hunting for it today and found it. I thought you might get a kick out of it, too. Just click on the blue YouTube link and enjoy!

Friday, January 18, 2008

Milk Carton Box


Wednesday's tutorial on Splitcoast was a cute milk carton box. Author Beate used the cute new Spring Solitude bundle stamp set/wheel to create hers. It made me think of the now retired Spring Showers designer series paper, so tonight I grabbed my stampin' stuff and got busy to make one of these cute boxes. I used Chocolate Chip ink and wheeled the background image on the Chocolate Chip cardstock. The band around the box is 1 3/4 inches wide by 11 1/2 inches long, with the bottom 1/4 inch turned up to show the blue from the back side of the paper. I stamped the flower image in Basic Brown on watercolor paper and colored in one flower with a Bashful Blue marker, another with an Apricot Appeal marker (flower centers colored with a Close to Cocoa marker). After cutting out the flower image, I finished off the project with a piece of Bashful Blue grosgrain ribbon tied up through the largest flower. I stamped the sentiment with Basic Brown on watercolor paper and punched it out with my Word Window punch. I'm really pleased with the way it turned out!

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Sliding Pop-Up Card



While cruising around the gallery at Splitcoast earlier today, I ran across a tutorial by Diane Zechman (aka cookiestamper) for a sliding pop-up card. I'd seen this type of card posted before, but had never tried one myself - that is, until tonight! I had just finished the trifold card in the post below, and since I was looking for ideas for my Valentine's swap that's coming up, I kept Happy Heart Day out and played with that cute elephant. I stamped him in Jet Black StazOn ink first, then again on a post-it so I could create a mask. I grabbed my handy-dandy cloud template and some Brocade Blue ink (actually, it's a Bashful Blue pad that I accidentally reinked with Brocade Blue - oops!) and I sponged in some clouds. I then covered up the sky and sponged in the grass with Garden Green. Being too lazy to watercolor, I used the other part of the post-it that I had cut out my elephant mask from, and sponged in the elephant using Going Gray. I used my Going Gray marker to darken his toenails, as well as Garden Green and Rose Red markers for the heart flowers. The heart on the end of his trunk was stamped on Rose Red, cut out, and glued into place. I took the Happy Heart Day sentiment off of the cute mouse stamp for this set and punched it out using my Word Window punch. For the pull tab, I tried several things, finally settling on Craft White and Detail White embossing powder on Rose Red, punching it out with the round tab punch. I stamped the cute heart flower in Craft White all over the Rose Red card base, topping it off with some Rose ribbon. I really like how this one turned out (so did my hubby), so this one will probably be the one I make more of for our swap (usually only about seven of us participate, so it shouldn't be too bad to make that many). The color balance is off a bit in my images, but I hope you get the idea! Thanks for looking!

Trifold Card



I've wanted to make one of these cute trifolds ever since seeing Beate Johns' tutorial for them on Splitcoast Stampers. Tonight I finally had the chance to do one myself. For some reason, I was thinking they were much larger than it ended up being, but then again, you can always size it up.

I chose to use Happy Heart Day as I hadn't yet played with it, and since our stamping group is doing a Valentine's card swap at the end of the month, I thought I'd better get to work on creating my swaps! This was my first idea for my swaps, but I ended up doing two cards tonight, and I like the second one better. More on that one in a bit...

I used Rose Red cardstock for the base, accented by Regal Rose and the new Bali Breezes Designer Series Paper. I had some Rose ribbon, which worked perfectly with my color scheme. I stamped the images with Jet Black StazOn, then watercolored with an AquaPainter by squeezing a little ink onto the lid of my Rose Red, Regal Rose, and Basic Gray classic stamp pads. Boy, am I out of practice! To finish off the image, I grabbed my Spring Bouquet Punch and a small pink ice brad. A fun little project, and I imagine I'll be making more in the future.

Let it Snow Mantle Garland


In October, my upline, Jeanne, offered a very cute Halloween mantle garland as one of her workshops. It inspired a good friend of ours, Erin, to design one for Christmas, which I was able to make at Erin's monthly stamp camp that Jeanne runs. I loved the garland so much that I immediately began thinking of others I could do myself. I already had a set of Lower Simon chipboard I hadn't used yet, and the garland I made at Erin's came with another Lower Simon chipboard set, so I had enough letters. I also had the Onboard Garland Greetings chipboard, which I thought would work well on this project. I love the Holiday Thyme designer series paper Stampin' Up! had for holiday 2006, and finally got to use it on the Let it Snow mantle garland I made. I had the garland backing and background papers cut out last month, and the Lower Simon chipboard had been painted with Night of Navy craft ink. I decorated the snowflake chipboard by using a Whisper White craft pad and some Irridescent Ice embossing powder. I only had the Earth Elements buttons at the time, so on my last SU! order, I got a few more color families of buttons. My order arrived January 2, so I spent the evening tonight designing then building each frame of the garland. I'm really pleased with the way it turned out. I already have an idea for a Spring garland, using the Bali Breezes designer series paper from the new catalog. Once I have that one together, I'll offer that as a workshop to my customers.

Vacation is coming all too quickly to an end, so I hope I have the chance to share a few more stamping projects with you all before I go back to my classroom on January 7. We're getting towards the end of first semester, so I won't have a lot of time to stamp once I go back to work - I'll too busy grading and then entering grades onto the computer!

Thanks for looking!

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Happy New Year Stamping!





On New Year's Eve we visited my folks. My mom isn't much of a crafter, but I did bring a project for us to do. I had seen Nancy's version of the A-frame calendar that Linda originally posted on Splitcoast, and immediately thought of the Four Seasons designer series paper with matching Perennial Favorites stamp set. Based on Nancy's horizontal design, my mom and I each made this version of the A-frame calendar. They are fun to make, and this simpler design took far less time to put together than the first one I made!