I Finally Finished It!!

Last month I started on my Carousel Notes Purse, inspired by Jan Tink. Our team meeting today was canceled (sniff, sniff) with our team leader sick, another team member sick, and one with a last-minute conflict, sooo... we decided to do our technique swap and stamp camp another time when everyone can be there. I was bummed, so I decided to do some crafting anyway. I decided to finish up my Carousel Notes Purse, and I'm really happy how it turned out. I absolutely LOVE the Afternoon Tea designer Series Paper and and happy that Stampin' Up! has extended the purchase deadline from their Occasions Mini Collection from May 31 to June 30 - more time to buy more of this gorgeous paper! Thanks for looking, and have a great week!

Second Technique Card

Finally had some time to finish my second card for our technique swap on Sunday. I wanted something a little more masculine for this one, and decided on the Baroque background stamp to use for the Joseph's Coat technique. I used my Desert Heat Kaleidacolor pad and brayered it onto the glossy cardstock. After wiping the cardstock with my embossing buddy, I stamped the Baroque stamp with VersaMark onto the glossy cardstock. I added clear embossing powder and heat set it. Now, if I could just learn to not be so impatient and for once let the brayered ink dry before doing that, I'd have a better image without so much extra scattered embossing powder sticking to the wet ink! With a second brayer I use for dark inks, I put black classic ink over the image, and rubbed off the ink from the embossed areas with a kleenex. The sentiment is from All Holidays. Don't think I like this one as much as I like the Dazzling Diamond Dust card, but in case I don't have time before Sunday to come up with anything else, at least I have something! Thanks for looking.

Dazzling Diamond Dust Card

I finally had some time tonight to create one of the two cards for my contribution to this weekend's team meeting. This one features the Dazzling Diamond Dust technique. I didn't want to use a retired stamp set for my card like I did for the technique sheet, so I decided to finally put some ink on my Wild Rose set. I also wanted to use some Porcelain Prints designer series paper with the card. On the glossy white, I used Blue Bayou, stamped off once for the main flower, and Wild Wasabi, stamped off once, for the leaves. The accent overstamps are done without stamping off. Before embossing, I stamped with the Linen background stamp over the top with River Rock. It turned out a little darker than I wanted, so next time I'll stamp off the Linen stamp first. I then inked up the image with a VersaMark pad, added some Iridescent Ice embossing powder, then heat set it. I hope the ladies enjoy making one on Sunday!

Stamping... Well, Kinda...

My daughter's sixth grade class has to enlarge an item approximately 10 times for their upcoming art show. We weren't sure what she should do, and having her tell us a week before it was due didn't help much. One of my math teacher coworkers suggested a Rubik's cube enlargement. I set off to Walgreens as I'd remembered seeing them there around Christmas time, and I was fortunate to find both the classic version and the new Rubrik's Revolution, both in full and micro-sized editions. After some measuring, I decided to get the micro-sized cube. I went over to the UPS Store to find a cardboard box that would work, and scored when I found one exactly ten times as large as the cube! We cut squares of Whisper White cardstock (48 of them!) and then got busy embossing. I coated them with my VersaMark pad, added embossing powder, and then handed the square off to my daughter who had fun with my heat tool. I used several opaque tinsel embossing powders that I had purchased long ago at Michaels, along with one I had picked up at a stamping convention. To give it the look and feel of our micro cube, my daughter painted the box, then went through several rolls of adhesive to add the embossed squares onto cutouts I had cut for her from black poster board. She added the huge pop dots that I'd found at Michaels, and I placed the panels on the box while she gave me feedback for their placement. For the cube centers, we had found some red cellophane wrapping paper at Michaels which we wrapped over a square of black poster board before adding it to another to mat it. My husband and I were really pleased with the way it turned out, and I hope her art teacher likes it, too!

Busy, Busy, Busy...

Boy, it's been one thing after another, and no time to stamp! I was hoping to have some time to make the cards that will go with my technique pages that we'll be stamping at my upline's team meeting at the end of the month, but I'm wondering if I'm going to find the time to do them! Grades were due after spring break, and I have a stack of stuff I brought home from the new quarter to grade. Saturday will be a busy day for us, too. My girls' Girl Scout troop is taking their trip for selling all of those cookies, and we're going to Sea World in San Diego to swim with the dolphins! It's a 2 hour program where they'll learn about dolphin anatomy and physiology, talk with a veterinarian, learn some hand signals the trainers use with the dolphins, and then 20 minutes of time in the water with the dolphins! A very cool opportunity, if you ask me. Their cookie sales will take care of the $160 fee per girl for the DIP or Dolphin Interaction Program, a snack, lunch, dinner, and all but $25 of the entrance fee to the park. Not too bad a reward for selling all those cookies! Last year they got to go to the LA Museum of Natural History for some classes and then a sleepover in the museum! Our troop got to sleep in the hall of African animals, and then visit the butterfly exhibit the next morning. Then when Sunday arrives, my oldest has an enlargement project to do for art (which of course she waited to the last minute to tell me about). She has to take an object and enlarge it approximately 10 times, so we picked something simple and got a key chain version of a Rubrik's cube that she'll be enlarging. It's the newer version with shiny sides, so instead of spending a ton on metallic paper, we're going to try embossing 5 inch squares with glittery embossing powder... so I guess I will be stamping this weekend afterall! We'll try a test tonight to see how it's going to look. If she gets her act together and finishes it up, I'll try to fit in the time to make my Joseph's Coat and Dazzling Diamond Dust technique cards so they'll be ready to go for next weekend's team meeting! Have a great weekend, and I'll post anything I manage to get done. :)

Don't we look cute posing with Ripley, our dolphin for the Dolphin Interaction Program???

Technique Pages

My upline's team is having our monthly meeting at the end of April. We always have a swap for those who want to participate (I'm the swap coordinator). For this month, Jeanne and I were thinking alike as we wanted to feature various techniques in our swaps. She asked for us to do a 6x6 swap that included the name of the technique, the directions for it, and a small sample of the technique. I asked those who wanted to participate to pick two of their favorite techniques for their swaps, and we have seven of us participating - yay! Jeanne stepped it up a notch by asking those of us participating in the swap and attending the team meeting to create a card that uses our techniques, and then to bring a shoebox with all of the supplies for our fellow swappers to make one of the cards for each of our techniques at our team meeting. If all of us can make it, that'll mean making 14 cards at our meeting - whoo hoo!

For my Dazzling Diamond Dust swap, I chose to use one of my favorite stamp sets, Serene Sunflower (I'm still mad that they retired it!). I used Summer Sun for the smaller sunflower image, then stamped over it with the larger image using More Mustard (stamped off once). The leaves are in Always Artichoke, the flower centers in Chocolate Chip. I finished off the image using Itty Bitty Backgrounds in Close to Cocoa. I made the mistake of leaving my Iridescent Ice embossing powder container open while trying to blow off my desk a little of the powder that fell on my grid paper, and I got it EVERYWHERE! Note to self: CLOSE the container first! Hee, hee!

I have always liked the Joseph's Coat technique so I decided to use my now-retired Pumpkin Patch Spectrum pad and Autumn Fest stamp set (another stamp set that I'm bummed they retired). My fingers are still numb from using the brayer - I need to remember to not hold it so hard, as every time I do a lot with a brayer, I cause some nerve damage and it takes weeks before my fingers feel back to normal! Note to self...

When we have our meeting, we're going to trade our swaps and put them into a 6x6 album to use when we hold workshops. We've had hostesses in the past request a workshop/stamp camp using a particular technique, so it will be nice to have an album with some samples to help with potential bookings down the road.

Thanks for visiting my blog today!

Another Color Blocking Example

I remembered that I had another color blocking example from my Splitcoast gallery! This one is a card I had created for my oldest daughter's birthday party at Color Me Mine. It was fashioned after another post I had seen on Splitcoast, but it demonstrates another use of color blocking nicely, this time leaving the black gutter in between the color blocks. For the main image, I stamped the perfume bottles from It's a Girl Thing, watercolored the image (although for some reason my classic black decided to run, when it should have been permanent after I let it dry before watercoloring). I then cut out a piece of a Terrifically Tacky Tape sheet, and added microbeads. Thanks for looking, and have a great rest of your weekend!

Stamp Simply Challenge #29

I was checking out some of my favorite stamping blogs today and on Sharon Johnson's No Time to Stamp blog, she featured her Stamp Simply Challenge #29 - Color Blocking. Like Sharon, I love the neat and orderly look color blocking gives to a card, but I don't use it often. I remembered an early card I had made when I first started stamping. One of the very first SU! sets I got was Nature's Wonders. I didn't have any SU! paper at that time, but had loads of other scrapbooking paper, so I used my Creative Memories square punch and two shades of teal paper to create the color blocking background. I had found this beautiful blue-green glitter that worked well with the teal paper I'd chosen, so I experimented with making my own embossing powder by taking a small sample of the glitter and adding clear embossing powder to it. It worked pretty well! I stamped my main image of the sand dollar on vellum with my VersaMark pad, sprinkled on my homemade EP, and heat set it. I trimmed the vellum around my image, added some non-SU! teal brads I had to attach it to the card, and then added the sentiment with a non-SU! stamp I had, which I believe was embossed with black detail embossing powder (I no longer have the card to check it for sure). The card was originally posted to my Splitcoast Gallery back in August of 2005. I did another version of the card using orange tones, but the teal one is my favorite! Thanks for looking!