Baby Mobile

Isn't this a darling image! I fell in love with it when I saw it at my LSS, and there was a beautiful sample with it too. Our neighbours had a baby boy recently and I made this card to take over to them along with some muffins and stew that I made. (I'm home with DD2 who has an earache, hence the domestic flurry. The winter coats are even on the line drying! Lest you think I'm some sort of spring cleaning domestic goddess, the winter boots are still languishing in the hall closet.)

The mobile image was stamped with Palette noir and coloured with Prismacolor pencil crayons. I added a line to frame with a certainly celery marker. The image is mounted on celery, then a charming piece of patterned paper (Urban Prairie) in turquoise and celery. I found the perfect match in textured matting paper in a DCVW pad. A few buttons (from stash) and some Stampin Up rick rack finish it off. The rick rack is one of those embellishments (as in all ribbon) that I often get out, but usually put back because I can't figure out what to do with it. I'm pleased with myself for actually using it here, especially since it's from my stash of hoarded Cool Caribbean accessories. The background papers and card base were edged in French blue fluid chalk ink for some interest, and because I am seemingly incapable of making a card these days without some form of chalk ink on it somewhere. The brad on the mobile is bashful blue, and I'd rather it was celery, but I used all my celery brads on a class I think so blue was left. I tried it with a dewdrop, but I liked the brad better, just wish it was green. Rats, it now occurs to me that I could have embossed it with celery ink and turned it green. Oh well, that wasn't really on the schedule for a quickie card between running upstairs to hang out laundry, make lunch and soothe fitful child with earache. Hope they don't read this blog to discover the fatal flaw in their card! Yikes! Heaven forbid!

So has anyone else been watching Lost in Austen on TVO? It was so good! I loved it. That pond scene was the most marvellous nod to the Pride and Prejudice miniseries. I had to rewind the pond scene several times to appreciate fully the richness of its cinematic merit. I've also gotten hooked on In Treatment. I think I might be developing a crush on Gabriel Byrne. It must be the Irish accent, because I don't really watch the, I just listen as I feverishly cut and sort projects for 24 stampers this Sunday (3 cards x 4 styles x 24 stampers = lots of cutting and sorting). Also, 99% of the scenes are in his apartment/treatment room and there is only so much brown I can watch at a time. Maybe that's why his eyes look so blue - it's the backdrop of a thousand shades of Forest Floor.... Anyway, 15 episodes of In Treatment and one teensy crush later (well two if you count Mr Darcy dans l'eau), I am finished cutting, sorting and bagging all 2652,69922,32q0q projects and am looking forward to a great big Stamping Extravaganza on Sunday!

Thanks for stopping by.







Anyway, back to the card. It's a

Song Bird Sympathy

Sadly, I needed a sympathy card for a colleague this week. I wanted to make one that would be big enough for lots of people to sign when it goes around the office. (The finished card is 7 3/4" x 5 1/4 , which is 1/2" smaller length and width than the envelope.)

I started with a nice big piece of Papertrey Ink white, and stamped Cornish Heritage Farms Picotage Print Backgrounder in Top Boss watermark ink. I've read that this watermark ink doesn't make your stamps sticky like another brand does, so I thought I'd give it a try. I embossed with detail clear e.p. and brayered over with Ice Blue fluid chalk ink. Then I sponged in several shades of blue and purple (French Blue, Wisteria, Prussian Blue, Warm Violet, Blue Iris) chalk inks, leaving the centre nice and light. Then I removed the embossing with a dry iron, and sponged some Charcoal chalk around the edges to soften the white areas where the resist was. Then I stamped the song bird image with Dragonfly Black pigment ink and embossed with black e.p. This image panel is mounted on a black mat, which is mounted on a piece of dark blue Bazzill textured cardstock, with a torn edge. The sentiment is Cornish H.F. (Silhouette Blooms I), stamped in Onyx Versafine, which is ideal for capturing the fine detail of the lettering. The sentiment is punched with the large Stampin' Up oval punch mounted on a dark blue scalloped oval, punched with a must-have from the Occasions Mini. I edged the scallops with Brilliance platinum, just to define the edges a bit, especially where it overhangs the same colour.

The whole card is on PTI white because I wanted a nice heavy cardstock to hold up all that paper. I wanted the inside of the card white, but the front coloured, so I just custom-coloured it myself with my handy mini brayer (Ranger) and a pretty leaf stamp (Heather's Stamping Haven, 185CU). I brayered over with Wiseria, then a bit of French Blue, then stamped the leaf in threes and singles, and wanded in more French Blue around them. I brayered over in Alabaster (Cathie Allan's filtering technique), and heat set with the iron. I added a vertical row of Smokey Grey and Onyx (versafine) leaves, topped with Brilliance Platinum leaves. I felt it needed some more leaves out towards the edge, so I added some more, stamped in first- and second-impressions with Blue Iris. Some marker lines (Tombow) added some definition. Then I remembered I wanted to add some ribbon so I peeled off the bird panel, slid in some ribbon and stuck it back down. (This step is optional - you can remember to add the ribbon before you stick it down.) Then I carefully heat set the afterthought leaves, ironing around the panels. (Ditto for optional step - you can remember to heat set the leaves before you stick everything down. They don't have to be heat set, they just feel better to the touch when they are. And they dry faster, which reduces smudging, caused by not washing your hands after you sponge using the last clean side of an old sponge.... Now I have the world's grubbiest hands, or the best Colorbox manicure. It's all in how you look at it. Considering I have to meet with a very senior person at work tomorrow (who is extremely unlikely to be a stamping sort of person), it's looking as if grubby it is....))

I'll stop torturing you with convoluted sentences and diabolical punctuation now and upload the picture! The people who work with me that get my heavily edited for grammar and punctuation would never believe my haphazard, stream-of-consciousness blogs, with the most atrocious/imaginative (again, it's in the eye of the beholder) punctuation. That, my friends is the difference between scientific writing and the Interweb, where any sort of ink-fume-inhaling lunatic can hold forth interminably!

Thanks for stopping by!

Seahorse Splash

Edited to add:

I'll be teaching this as a class at Heather's Stamping Haven on Saturday, May 9th. Call Heather to register if you're interested in making one of your own. (It won't take two days - I promise!)

Woohoo! New rubber! I've been eyeing this stamp at my LSS lately and resisted for a while. However, this Saturday I taught a class so I had some new stamping funds burning a hole in my pocket so I picked this up. Am I ever glad I did! It's so cute! I really like Outlines stamps in general - they lend themselves to a variety of techniques and styles, from quick and easy cards to more complex ones. This tends towards the latter (took me about two days). It took a couple of hours to emboss and colour in the three layers, and put them together. I used Tombows and blended with a moist brush. The sea grass is accented with Green Apple Smooch (also picked up this Saturday). It's wonderful! I'll definitely be getting a few more colours. It's shimmery like twinklings, but more opaque, and very easy to apply in small or large amounts. The fine applicator can really allow for precision application. I also accented with some stickles, crystal effects, swarovksi crystal, and some acrylic paint. Go big or go home, eh!

I had this wonderful, colourful piece, and then (as usual) didn't know what to do with it. This is what took the second day, was building the card around it. I'm still not 100% satisfied, but I like it well enough. The yellow strips I wound up tinting myself, using Tombows and watercolour paper to get a similar yellow-orange to what's in the main image. I also sponged and edged with chalk ink. The citrine panel has the Sunshine Designs grass stamped in olive pastel chalk ink (from the cherry blossom cube).

So, are you going to try your hand at an Outlines stamp? They come in all sorts of styles and images and they're a lot of fun.

Thanks for stopping by.

Supplies: Stamps: Outlines & Sunshine Designs; Ink: brilliance platinum with silver embossing powder, olive pastel, amber clay chalk inks; paper: watercolour, navy lava paper, citrine (green); Other: Tombow markers (approx 1 doz colours), stickles (crystal, black, orange, night sky, cinnamon), swarovski crystal, crystal effects, seagull edged decorative scissors, denim acrylic paint (Ranger), black Micron pen.