Bellarific Friday card

I made this card for Bellarific Friday, and since Penelope with Prezzies arrived this week, it seemed like a good time to play with this stamp. I also need a birthday card for my niece who turns 6 in a couple of weeks. This week's Bellarific challenge is on this post, and you can see the inspiration picture below the card.

I went with the colour scheme, and the white pattern. It immediately occurred to me that my freebie Sale-a-bration patterned paper would be great for this.

I stamped Penelope on watercolour paper with stazon, and coloured her with Tombows, sticking to a yellow and green and gray colour scheme. I added some sparkle pen and stickles here and there, and a green crystal in the centre of the flower in her hair. It's a smidge too big, but I don't care. The image is mounted on some nice gray linen textured paper from my LSS. I spotted a saffron button in the chaos, and added it to a custom tinted Pretty flower, and a punched 5-petal flower, with a bit of gold thread to finish it. The background, as I said, is paper from the SAB brochure, in gray and saffron, edged with Memento ink in gray and yellow. I went with a mustard card base, because mustard is the perfect colour for a card for a 6-year-old girl. Well, not really, it's the perfect colour for this card. The poor dear girl will just have to suffer for my art.

As a post script to my tale of spray can woe from the other day, the projects turned out fine. In fact, they were presents for my stamp club ladies, as it was our last stamp club meeting this week. (I will be asking again if people are interested in another round of clubs.) Anyway, they had a laugh when they realized their bookmarks were the project in question. I used the chipboard scalloped squares, and made bookmarks with Pirouette Pink double-stripe ribbon. Very pretty. I also wrapped them in pop-top cans, decorated with Parisian Summer paper from the last catalogue, and Parisian Summer paper bows. I made those at work and forgot to bring my punch and brads for sticking them together. This is an important step! Snail will not hold! You will spend all week sticking un-sproinged bows back together!!!! Those *!&# bows are out of my hair now, and they did look really cute en masse.

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies: Stamps: Penelope - Stamping Bella, sentiment - Stampin' Up; Paper: watercolour, gray linen, Delicate Dots, so saffron & more mustard - SU; Ink: jet black Stazon, Memento in London Fog and Dandelion; Other: 5-petal punch, so saffron button, Pretties kit flower, embroidery floss, stickles (yellow and crystal), swarovski crystal, sakura green glitter pen, Tombow markers.

Public Service Announcement

Me: Do you know where my spray sealer is?
DH: What's spray sealer?
Me: Sealer that you spray on. It's in a spray can.
DH: No, I haven't seen it. (Translation: I still have no idea what you're looking for.)
Me: Well I need it right now. My craft ink is smudging and I need to fix it right this minute! (No translation required as hysterical tone and waving arms tell it all.)
DH: I'm getting the children ready for swimming. Can't it wait? (Translation, dinner isn't ready, we have swimming in less than an hour and can't your "stamping emergency" wait?)
Me: Well can you look for it when you go downstairs to round up the suits and towels?
DH: sigh

...few minutes later

DH: I found your Krylon sealer.
Me: Did it have a silver lid?
DH: Yes
Me: I found that already but I thought it was paint.
DH: No, it says krylon on it. It's your sealer.
Me: (contritely) Thank you sweetie. I'm sorry I freaked out.
DH: (tetchily) Are the meatballs ready?

....later, after swimming lessons, spraying my projects with sealer
Me: *&%!

It was silver spray paint. Turns out Krylon makes paint too. Now my project has a silver mist on it. Fortunately, it actually looks kind of cool, and it will tie in with another silver embellishment. I am somewhat concerned that the project will be too sparkly, or is that stamping heresy??? Still no idea where the sealer is, and am wondering if I even ever had any and am hoping that the light coating of spray paint will seal in the craft ink.

Moral of the story: always check what's in the spray can before you spray....

PSPSA* It pays to be organized: on sad story, DH returned to basement, rummaged for a minute and unearthed Krylon sealer. It was in a bin in the office, where I hadn't looked. Will store them together from now on, labelled, to avoid confusion.

*Post script Public Service Announcement

Birthday Robot

I remembered at the 11th hour that we need a birthday card for a 6-year-old boy for tomorrow at noon. Church doesn't end till 11:30, so it was now or never. I was browsing through my stamp sets, looking for something suitable. Princesses, flowers, castles, flowers, Christmas, flowers, pears, Christmas, flowers.... Dinosaurs and trucks were the closest I could come, but I wasn't feeling the love there. My eye lit upon some felt shapes I'd picked up last year when DD1 was in her dino-mania. They're in boy colours and shapes, so I rooted through and found this cute little robot. He came in two colours, so I swapped eyes and mouth so he didn't such a vacant, slack-jawed expression. I googled robot birthday expressions for a sentiment, and nada. Either I'm a bad googler or no one else can think of funny robot birthday wishes. I toyed with the idea of printing the message in some sort of robot font, but I forgot to do it when I was printing the speech bubble and I was too lazy/paper-thrifty to do it again. I think that "happy birthday" is the only stamp I really use from Amazing to Zany, but I use it a lot. I got the set free with my starter kit, so I don't mind only using one of the stamps.

Anyway, I added some rivet details with a Micron pen to the robot to give it a bit of pep and closed the visual triangle (look at me getting all artsy-technical!) with some dewdrops.

I think DD1's little friend will like it. Actually, kids never look at cards. Who am I kidding!?! He'll be more interested in the present. I got him this neat bamboo shape game called Kombolino. I got DD1 for Christmas and she and DD2 enjoy playing with it. It's got lots of options for how to play, not including using the shapes as cookies for dolly snack time!

Thanks for looking!

Supplies: Stamps: Amazing to Zany, Polka Dot Punches - Stampin' Up; Ink: Cranberry Crisp & Not Quite Navy - SU, Potters Clay - Mementor; Paper: Recess- BasicGrey, Cranberry Crisp & Not Quite Navy - SU; Other: Felt robot - Rough & Tough Shapes by Fancypants, Robin's Nest dew drops in Hyacinth.

Cherish my Valentine

Well, I'm a little late for Valentine's Day, but this will be for my DH. He was under the weather and we didn't really do much on Valentine's Day itself. I did make heart-shaped toast for the kids, which they thought was the bee's knees. If I were to do it again, though, I would apply the raspberry jam after cutting hearts out of the toast with scissors. Still, jam does wash off scissors and the kids thought it was great. Once in a while I'm a fun mummy :-)

I made this card for Bellarific Friday, which was to use the orchid and red colour scheme. I strayed a bit into pink too, and decided to make this a Valentine card. The centre heart has a Swarovski crystal in the flower centre, and out of deference to DH, this card is ribbon- and stickle-free. (It must be love!) My apologies for the scan - this would look much better photographed, ideally in one of those fancy light boxes. But if I were to wait to get that set-up in place, I might as well give up the blog. So, we will all have to make do with scanned cards, and just picture them looking uber-fabulous in real life.

This is also an early foray for me into CAS (clean and simple). I'm definitely an "add another layer" kind of gal. This kind of no-layer card is a big risk! Especially when you have everything stuck down and then stamp the "cherish" without a stamp-a-majig. Do I like to live on the wild side or what! Staid government drone by day, wild stampin' mama by night!

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies: heart trio - Stamping Bella, cherish - Stampin' Up; Paper: watercolour (hearts), PTI white; ink: black stazon; other: Tombow markers, Swarovski crystal.

Fabric flower

Here's a card we made at Stamp Club last week. I wanted to show the Big Shot in action and thought it would be fun to use it on something besides paper. I went to the local fabric store and got some pretty floral fabric and Heat & Bond and we used that. You apply the Heat & Bond to the fabric according to manufacturer's directions, and then run the whole thing through the Big Shot. You could also apply it to chipboard before you cut it out, if you wanted some extra dimension. The leaves are cut similarly, with a green fabric from the same line as the floral. You could use fabric from your stash if you have suitable scraps. I only had Christmas fabrics after my pre-move purge, so I had to go get some. (If only all 'chores' were as much fun as a trip to the fabric store!)

The backdrop is Sahara Sand and Elegant Eggplant, and the card is mounted on Lavender Lace. The floral fabric had a gold flower very similar to the single flower in Eastern Blooms, so that flower got stamped in Encore gold on the card base. I also showed the ladies the trick of heat setting the Encore with the iron, to avoid smearing. The sentiment is stamped in eggplant and mounted on ovals (punched). The flower centre is one of the flower punches from Boho Blooms, punched in brushed gold cardstock.

This card was quick to put together, and the shimmer and texture add a lot of interest. I'm looking forward to trying other shapes and textures as my collection of dies expands.

Thanks for stopping by!

All supplies Stampin' Up: Stamps: Eastern Blooms, All Holidays; Ink: Encore gold, Elegant Eggplant; Paper: Sahara Sand, Lavender Lace, Elegant Eggplant; Other: Bigz die (Flower Layers with Leaf), punches - Boho Blooms, Large Oval, Small Oval, fabric (Kimono Prints by Wilmington Prints), Heat & Bond.