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Saturday, December 31, 2011

A Very Happy New Year to all!

If you party, please party safely.  If you don't enjoy a quiet evening!  Happy New Year all!!

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Finally- a Tim Holtz 2011 tag- Tag #1!

I actually managed to get this in while it was 2011- I was beginning to think it wasn't going to happen.  The first tag he posted was probably my fav so I've started there (there will be a few that I won't even consider making... sorry Tim.)

Generally, I like the way it turned out though I missed the "rub off quite a bit of the embossing powder" step so the whole tag is more white than I'd like- it makes it a bit hard to read "SNOW" in glitter.  Oh well.  First try, I'm ok with that.

I hand cut the pinecone spiral since I don't have the die- one turned out better than the other but pinecones can look darn scruffy.  I almost went and got 2 real pinecones for this- I have a bag FULL of these types that's been sitting around for years waiting for the right use.  I decided to stick to paper though.  The banner was hand cut too.  The pearls, crystal and bells have been in my stash for YEARS (the bells probably go back into the early 90's) and I just put them on headpins and made dangles of them.  The ribbon was baby blue and I dirtied it up a bit with the Denim and Walnut inks.

I'll try to get back on here later to document the exact items I used to make it:
Ink: Faded Jeans, Walnut: Tim Holtz, Basic Brown: Stampin Up
Paper: Manilla folder, music paper from a song book
Punches: Fern: ?, Holly: ?
Embossing folder/dies: Snowflakes?:?, Flourish?:?, Happy Hauntings: Cricut (letters)
Misc: Embossing Powder: Joanns, ?:Stickles, Ribbon: ?, Mini bells, pearls, beads, Glass glitter:?

Challenges:
Shopping Our Stash #32: Use ribbon
Top Tip Tuesday #66: Anything Goes
Simon Says: Tim Holtz Tag
Whimsical Wednesday: Tag

Favorite project of the past year?

First, let me say a belated "Merry Christmas to all!"  I hope your holidays were cheerful and generally uneventful (we spent 5hrs in the ER the night after Christmas because a 4yr old doofus refuses to keep his butt in his chair at dinner.  In the end, no stitches in the split lip.  I'm hoping no one else ended up in the same boat.)

Second, Whimsical Designs is having a "Happy New Year or favorite project from the year" challenge.  I think my fav might be the ATCs I made back in Sept:

   
There may be a few other cards and layouts I like more but I'd never made an ATC, really wanted to and REALLY liked the way these turned out so overall, they've got to be at the top section of my list.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Final Christmas Cards

You may remember a while back (the beginning of OCT?!  Are you KIDDING me?!) I was trying to figure out my Christmas cards.  In the end, the vellum seemed to be my and a majority of your preferences.  However, after I got into the card and I reconstructed my Christmas card list (remember I dropped my computer and shattered the hard drive back in May?  Well, buh-bye card list!), I realized I was going to need ~50 of the music paper rosettes.  Ummmmm.... no!  1 or 2, sure.  50?  No!  So, I cooked up an alternative.  I used my snowflake die to pop out a bunch of musical paper snowflakes that I then dingied up with walnut ink.  The final cards have different sizes of snowflakes but they're all pretty cute.  I got lucky when I ran out of buttons and couldn't find more to match- the director at my son's preschool offered to let me dig through a MASSIVE button box they have for crafts.  In less that 2min I had about 15 buttons.  Thank you Renee!!!

Sorry for the miserable photos- our kitchen has lousy lighting and the flash really picked up the shimmer from the vellum.
 
Ingredients:

Paper: Garden Green, Kraft Cardstock, Old Olive Vellum (SU)
Stamp: Silhouette Song Bird (Unity)
Ink: Cranberry (SU), Walnut Stain (Ranger)
Misc: Embossing folder (Tim Holtz), Snowflake die (Stampin' Up), Music paper (Chopin Waltzes for the Piano), Button, Linen Thread (Stampin' Up)

Challenges:
Crop Stop: 49: Music
Crafty Hazelnut: 50: Traditional Christmas
Playing in Paradise: 45: Include a tree

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Clorox Christmas Card

Tatertots & Jello is working with Clorox to sponsor a giveaway to someone recalling a messy moment or a craft project they did with Clorox.  I'm in the 2nd group in this case though we use a LOT of Clorox wipes in a normal week (we have a 4yr old boy.  What do you expect?)

A while back I tried using a Clorox Bleach Pen on kraft paper and LOVED the results.  Anything snow-related on the card was done with a bleach pen.  I just used it like a marker - VERY easy to do and highly recommended though you might want to do it with a light fan nearby to help reduce the bleach smell that hangs around until everything is done.  In case you're wondering, it does dry quickly.


I received information about Clorox’s Bleach It Away campaign and am sharing my messy moment/craft fail/bleach project for the chance to win prizes from Tatertots & Jello and Clorox. You can find out more information about this campaign – www.BleachItAway.com. If you share YOUR messy moment story, you can enter to win $25,000 and daily prizes, and you can get a coupon for Clorox® Regular Bleach.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Christmas Banner

Hey!  Remember me!  Long time, no post!  I'd love to say I've been swamped under crafting but not so much.  I've been working on Christmas cards but that's about it.  It's been more like crazed Christmas shopping, decorating, cleaning, subbing at Beast's preschool, dealing with the utter shock that it's Dec. (I'm SURE it must be April!), blah blah blah.

One thing I did manage to do was finish our Christmas banner for the mantel.  It's a bit plainer than I envisioned but I like it this way- definitely clean and simple.  I was having a hard time coming up with the right font for this one.  I thought of doing Cricut letters but wanted to simplify my life with stickers.  I found some really ornate gold ones that probably would have worked beautifully but then I saw these.  It's a bit hard to see but they're raised and clear but have a silver backer so they have a rather glassy-like shine to them.





Ingredients:
Cardstock: Stampin' Up
DSP Little Yellow Bicycle
Stickers: Martha Stewart
Misc: Burlap, Stickles, Red Hemp, White eyelets

Challenges:
Scrappin' Chics: Home for the Holidays
Sarah Hurley Challenges: Christmas
Crafts Unleashed: Christmas
Craft Your Passion: Anything Goes with Glitter (Hopefully Stickles count towards glitter- I Stickled the edges of all of the circles)
Desert Island Crafters: #21 (Not a card, Christmas theme, Glitter (see my Stickles comment above if you will please!)
Whimsical Designs: Layer it
Somewhat Simple: 12/7 projects
Tip Junkie: 12/6 projects
Tip Junkie handmade projects 
Tatertots & Jello: 12/9 projects

Friday, November 11, 2011

What would YOU charge?

Hey all- I have a question for you.  Someone would like to buy some Christmas cards from me this year and I'm trying to figure out what to charge.

Card 1:

Stampin Up Papers- 3 layers.  1 stamped sentiment.  Multiple stamped off trees. 
The most tedious part of this one is simply the white gel pen inked on branch and ground top for accent.
Card 2:
Stampin Up Papers- 4 layers. 2 stamps to be lined up w/ the Stamp-a-ma-jig.  Copics colored image (colored to look as much like his dog as possible).  Heat embossed snowflakes in the snowglobe.  1 layer is Big Shot folder-embossed.  1 brad. 
Overall it's simple and fairly easy- just quite a few steps.

 I was thinking #1: $3 and #2: $4.  Thoughts?

I'm also entering the 2nd card into the

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Digital bird card for Tip Top Tuesday Guest Designer post

I was invited to be a Guest Designer by the lovely ladies over at Tip Top Tuesday and boy was it an experience!  Initially the challenge was to use an image from Robyn's Fetish and to make a card where EVERYTHING on the card was the same shape as the card- all stars, all squares, etc.  Since I'd never made anything but rectangular and the very occasional square card AND I'd only used a digi once, needless to say it was interesting.  In the end, the challenge was scaled down to anything as long as it was Christmas since everyone seemed to be struggling with the the shape limitations.  I somewhat stuck with my original plan of scalloped circles though the outer shape is a circle- I couldn't get a scallop that big.  As it was, I used this as my excuse to finally buy myself a set of nested scalloped circles from Spellbinders... just don't tell my husband.  ;)  I tried to add crinkled scallop flowers and then scalloped medallion flowers but everything was just too cluttered so I simply embossed the scallop layer with 2 more Spellbinders dies.  It's almost impossible to see in the pix but the scalloped paper is Shimmer White from SU and I used a pearl shimmer paint on top of all of the yellow/gold coloring.

Ingredients:
Paper: (Real Red, Whisper White, Shimmer White) Stampin' Up
Other: (Nested Scallop Dies) Spellbinders, Copics, (Pearl Pen) Viva, (Frost White All Purpose Ink)Tsukineko

Monday, November 7, 2011

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Black and White wedding card

We were recently invited to a wedding that had a black and white invite so I thought I'd make a somewhat-matching card that we'll put a gift card into (it's a wedding gotten to by airplane- we're not taking a big gift!)

It's a bit hard to see in the flat photo but the flower petals are all curled... though by the time the card gets to the wedding... well, at least I know they started that way.


Ingredients:
Cardstock: (Whisper White) Stampin' Up, (Black) Michaels
Stamps: (En Francais, Antique Background) Stampin' Up
Ink: (Whisper White, Basic Black) Stampin' Up
Misc: (Brads) Making Memories, (Cloth Brad) Bazzill Basics Paper, (Tattered Flowers Die) Tim Holtz/Sizzix


Challenges:
The Sweet Stop #132:
Top Tip Tuesday #58: Make your own backgrounds
Stamp, Scrap & Doodle Saturday #15: Monochromatic
Sweet Stampin' Challenge 10/29: Anything Goes

Quick post: Halloween at our place

We had trick-or-treating

A very cool mantle (if I do say so myself)

And a very upset little boy after he wasn't allowed to hand out the last few pieces of candy (we had more kids than candy at the door so mommy had to do a bit of tap-dancing to take care of it.)  Yeah, he's sobbing through an Oreo.  We couldn't help but laugh.  :)

Monday, October 31, 2011

Happy Halloween!!

I haven't fallen off of the planet, just haven't been crafting much in the past 2wks.  I had a wee bit o' surgery the other week and while it wasn't major and recovery is pretty easy, I still haven't felt fantabulous and I picked up Beast's cold on top of it.  I've sat down at my craft table a few times but just haven't felt any inspiration beyond cleaning up the table and room a bit... which it desperately needed so maybe it wasn't a bad thing.  :)  However, I've got a GD project to do for Top Tip Tuesday so I need to get back on the ball this week. 

Anywho, enough about all of that.  If you're up north, I hope you're with power.  If you're without power, I hope you get it back quickly.  And to all that Halloween, hope it's a great one full of fun and yummies!! 

Happy Halloween all!!

Monday, October 17, 2011

"What you can't live without" LO

The 1st challenge of Oct. over at Better Living Through Scrapbooking is "what you can't live without."  Took me a while to think about that.  Junky candy?  I'm in the process of proving to myself that I can live without it (or at least without as much as I usually have.)  Hubby and Boy?  Yeah.  Definitely but I wanted something else other than them (sorry boys.)  Crafting?  Yeah but I wanted something more tangible.  Then I realized I've always had cats in my life, always will and the few years I was without, I visited cats of my friends.  Some cats are friendly.  Some aren't.  Some like to be held and cuddled.  Others, not so much.  However, I always like having cats around.  When the world's just not fair, sometimes you don't want to go to a person to grunch but a cat.  Cats don't tell you where you're wrong (or occasionally right).  They don't judge.  They're great listeners (until they get bored, irritated or hungry) and usually petting them makes both parties happy.  So.  I decided I couldn't live without cats.  And no.  I DON'T want to be the crazy cat lady in another 10-40years, thanks for asking!


I found the sketch over at Sketchy Thursday and loved it so I had to squeeze it in this week.

Ingredients:
Paper: (Kraft- Haunted) My Mind's Eye, (White, Aqua & Turquoise) Stampin' Up,
Misc: (Sticky Borders) Close to My Heart, (Calico White, Heirloom Blue, Bonny Blue Mr. Huey's) Studio Calico, (Masks) Tim Holtz

Challenges:
Better Living Through Scrapbooking: What you can't live without + 2 of the following 4:
1. Use a small picture (no bigger than 3×5) as the main picture on the layout   Almost but I used 3 pictures
2. Use misting (glimmer sprays, ink sprays, etc)
3. Journal around the edges of your page
4. Use only paper embellishments, no fabric, metal, plastic, etc.

Sketchy Thursday: 10/13 Sketch:

Sunday, October 16, 2011

GD Kiddie Kicker LO for GHWI

In English, that's Guest Designer Kiddie Kicker layout for Getting Hippity with Ippity.

Aletha sent me a sketch for this project and I needed to use the set I picked out from my previous win - I chose The Best.

Sketch:                                                   My Take:
 

Now you'll notice that there's NOTHING on that sketch that indicates it's a layout and not a card.  It was actually intended to be a card but for some reason, I saw LO and never even considered card.  I didn't figure it out until I saw it publically posted with some inspiration pieces.  Well DUH Jen!!!  Luckily, Aletha was happy to have something different so it was all good.

Ingredients:
Stamps: (The Best) Unity
Cardstock (Ballet Blue, Bashful Blue, Whisper White) Stampin' Up, (Jet Stream) Core-dinations
DSP (Soccer paper) Karen Foster Designs, (Hostess sampler pack) Stampin' Up
Ink: (Black) StazOn, (Faded Jeans, Walnut Stain Distress Inks) Tim Holtz, (Ballet Blue) Stampin' Up
Misc: Transparency sheet, (Jack & Jill alpha stickers) Doodlebug Designs, (Crochet thread) DMC

Friday, October 14, 2011

Pancakes with Santa

PageMaps had a great sketch up last week.  I generally don't have a lot with only 3 or 4 photos but there are a few and our Santa Breakfast the other year was one so it worked nicely.  I've been wanting to get into my LYB Christmas Magic materials- they've been around for close to a year and I've only used a smidge of them.

Man.  I GOTTA find a better way to get photos of layouts.  They look curved, the photos get light-marks on them... blech!  Suggestions? 
Ingredients:
Rub-on letters: October Afternoon
Everything else from Little Yellow Bicycles' Christmas Magic 12x12 Tablet and 8x8 Paper and Punch-Out Tablet.

Challenge:
PageMaps: Studio Purge Sketch Contest
Top Tip Tuesday #55: DSPs and Handmade Flowers

Monday, October 10, 2011

Glowing Hours Halloween card

Another stamp I LOVED and HAD to get when I saw it at CKC the other month.

Ingredients:
Cardstock White, Kraft, Purple?: SU
DSP: Haunted: My Mind's Eye
Stamps: Glowing Hours: Unity
Ink: Basic Black, Concord Crush, Eggplant Envy: SU
Misc: Bling, Ribbon, both unknown, Y15 Copic

Challenges:
Unity: WCMD #2: Halloween
Sweet Stamps Challenge #35: Anything Goes
CREATE: Halloween card
Simon Says Stamp: Things with wings (the bats may be small but they're there and I love 'em!)

Sunday, October 2, 2011

I'm thinkin' Christmas

I've been wanting to give some Christmas cards a test run for this year so I gave one a try today.  I first made it with vellum but didn't have much luck distressing it.  Sanding it just left it icky and unevenly scratched.  Trying to rough the edge really didn't do anything.  I still liked the overall look but wanted to try to see it distressed so I made it with CS.  I sanded the CS and it just looked paler and when I added some walnut distress ink, it lost the sanded look. Unsurprisingly, the edge roughed very nicely.  In the end though, I like the vellum more- the crisp edges of the trees and the shade of the kraft paper coming through look better to me- a lot more depth.


Vellum                   Cardstock 
Ingredients:
Paper: Garden Green, Kraft Cardstock, Old Olive Vellum (SU)
Stamp: Silhouette Song Bird (Unity)
Ink: Cranberry (SU), Walnut Stain (Ranger)
Misc: Embossing folder (Tim Holtz), Music paper (Chopin Waltzes for the Piano), Button, Hemp Twine

Challenges:
Scrapbookers' Paradise #35: Distressing
Paper Players #66: Something musical 
Stampendous Oct: CAS 

Saturday, October 1, 2011

A new way of working

This sounds silly but I've always wanted to try making a simple card.  My cards tend to always include hand coloring or fussy cutting or, more frequently, both.  I've been wanting to try something nice and simple, quite possibly with a felt accent on it.  Within the past week, I've gotten a few great kicks in the butt to do so. 
1. I received a FABU goodie box from my Write.Click.Scrapbook birthday party win this summer, many thanks to the talented Lisa Kisch.  There were some great felt pieces in that package.
2. A few weeks ago I won a SRM sticker package from a Scrapbooking News and Review giveaway and I really wanted to try to use some of them- I've never used stickers except a few rare alphas.
3. I saw some really fantastic simple cards from Piradee Talvanna in an American Crafts Studio blog post.

I definitely CASed Piradee's 2nd card- these didn't come naturally to me but I want to make a stash of these for birthdays and such.  I like the ice cream cone card more than the flower but I'm just happy that I made these two.  :)
Ingredients:
Cardstock (Stampin' Up)
DSP: ?  These were from a stack of random cut 6x6's I received from someone
Stickers: SRM
Felts: Flower (Pebbles?), Ice Cream Cone (Joann's)

Challenges:
SRM: World Card Making Day

Glitter Dragonfly Card

I picked up this ENORMOUS dragonfly stamp at CKC.  I saw it, liked it, saw it was $5, yeah, $5 (and there are a few other stamps on the sheet), and it was mine.  I wasn't sure how exactly I'd use it but this is pretty close:
I wasn't quite sure how I was going to finish up the card until I saw the CropStop challenge for including "friend" or "friendship" on a card for World Cardmaking Day.  I tried stamping the F/Friends in blue on blue w/ and w/o Crytal Effects and/or glitter "friends", blue on white, blue on silver and finally silver on blue.  Silver on blue seemed to work the best.  The card still seems to want a little something but I haven't figured out what yet.  I tried a bit of ribbon and cord but they didn't get it done.

Ingredients:
Stamps: Dragonfly (Tattered Angels), Friends (Stampin' Up)
Ink: Black (Staz-on) Silver (?)
DSP: Little Yellow Bicycle
Cardstock: Stampin' Up
Misc: Glitter (Martha Stewart), Plastic sheet (packaging from who knows what), Sharpie Pens

Challenges:
CropStop: Stamp your sentiment + Friend/Friendship
Whimsical Wednesday: Anything Goes
Frosted Designs: Fussy Cutting

Monday, September 26, 2011

Another CKC project finished

I wrapped up my Prima "Get Your Grunge On: A Boy Album" project the other day.  Forgive the photos but they're very quick and dirty.






This whole project was foreign to me.  I've never really done a mini album, I scrap events- not photos, I don't do individual books about anything - just pages for the overall book, I journal everything since pretty much everything is event-based and therefore has something to be said about it, and as I'll say again, I really don't use flowers- ESPECIALLY for things about my son. 

Since this wasn't going to be a normal album, coming up with a theme was tough but I wanted to do it otherwise it would be another unfinished project sitting around collecting dust.  Flipping through photos, I realized that there were about 15 or so that I REALLY like and this would be a great place to collect those.  The colors that Prima gave us for the book worked really well with the photos and the flowers definitely grunged up nicely.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Alice in Wonderland ATCs

So these are new to me.  I've seen ATCs but I've never made any.  I love the look but collaging isn't really something that comes naturally to me (I was a yearbook editor in college and I beat it into my staff that we WEREN'T doing collage pages- EVERY photo needed to be on a grid and captioned.  Now you know why I scrap like I do and seem to be allergic to tilting photos.)  Also, I don't know what you do with the cards once you've made them.  I know people trade and collect them but do you trade something that someone gave you?  If not, WHAT do you do with it?  I would think they just start to really accumulate and I'm trying desperately NOT to accumulate more. 

All of that said, Simon Says Stamp and Show's challenge right now is to create ATCs and I thought if not now, when?

  • White Rabbit: LOVE this image and I've also been wanting to do something steampunkish so again, here was my chance.  I added pearlescent shimmer paint to his fur.
  • Mad Hatter: I've always associated him with the price on his hat (In this style, 10/6) so I went with numbers and prices, and the word "DIVA" because it just seems to fit his personality.  The hat (not the label) has the pearlescent shimmer paint.
  • Cheshire Cat: Definitely my fav character in Alice and not just because I'm a cat person.  I added a lot of shimmer to the card that only shows if you tilt it the right way.  The shimmer paint is on his stripes and the background was sprayed with a Pearl-ex mist- green/gold.  The elements are travel related since he's always popping in and out and floating where ever his whims take him.  I also put an odd little doll in because Chessie is odd and maybe a bit creepy taken the wrong way.  Her dress is also shimmery.

Ingredients:
  • Stamps: AiW characters (Lost Coast Designs), Doll (Kraftin' Kimmie), DIVA (Stamping Bella), Letters on WR's ATC (Studio G)
  • Paper: Manilla folders (Staples), Halloween in Wonderland (Graphic45), Green (SU)
  • Inks/Colorants: Very Vanilla (SU), Walnut Stain (Ranger), Pearl Shimmer Paint (Tsukineko), Copics, Green "Stickles" (Studio G), Mist (Green Pearl-Ex)
  • Misc: Postage Stickers (Sticko), Gears (Tim Holtz, Watch parts), Numbered flower (October Afternoon), Watch accent (Graphic45), Glitter (Martha Stewart), Adhesive strips (I glittered- Close to My Heart), Crown stencil (Tim Holtz), Black acrylic paint

Challenges:
  • Simon Says Stamp and Show: ATCs
  • Stamp, Scrap & Doodle Saturday: Favorite color/s:  I really like blue and tend to work with it a lot- almost too much (Boy is 4- enough said).  However, with fall and Halloween coming, I'm loving green and purple, particularly when added to Halloween projects. 
  • Sweet Stampin' Challenge: Anything Goes
  • Scrapbooker's Paradise Ponderings: #34: Quote from favorite book.  The only catch is I'm not sure that I got it right.  I THOUGHT the rabbit said, "Oh my ears and whiskers!" (I've been known to mutter that when I'm running late) but when I went back to the book tonight after I finished, I found, "Oh my fur and whiskers!"  Gotta do a little more research into that one!!
  • Sarah Hurley Challenge Blog: #50: Vintage