Teacher Gifts

Hello! Long-time-no-blog! I've been a busy little stamper though, but no time for blogging. I wanted to make a little something for my daughter's teachers, and as usual, the end of the school year snuck up on me. I googled around the internet and found a great pattern for a stationery box by Jackie Topa and thought it would be just the ticket. My kind husband took some pictures and they turned out not too bad considering it was night and we are not set up for fancy photo shoots. I did two sets, one using a Stampin' Up Simply Scrapbooking kit and some Sale-a-bration rub-ons (the brown box), and another set using the retired Muirfield paper. Each kit has 4 greeting cards and coordinating envelopes, 4 mini notecards (3x3), and 5 or 6 tags, a pen, an "address book" and a book of postage stamps. I love how these fold up into a self-contained box! By my daughter's accounts, the teachers liked them too, which was the whole purpose!

I am having a terrible time trying to put all the pictures in one post, so I will do six posts and try it that way. (Picture my gnashing my teeth and cursing at the computer, frothing at the mouth with glinting red eyes. Perhaps not those last two things.)

Tilda with Ladybug and a Surprise

Here's a project I'll be teaching soon at Heather's Stamping Haven. It's called "Ladybugs Popping Up Everywhere" and it will run July 24th from 2-4. Call Heather if you're interested in signing up. (I can't link directly here as I'm still on the books with Stampin' Up.)

I had so much fun designing this one. It's quite a ways out of my comfort zone. It's cute, uses bright colours, Magnolias, lines and ledgers. Not the smudged or distress element to be found (well, not too smudgy anyway!). It was fun coming up with the little extras for this one. I can't give away the details as this a class project, but I will credit the stamps: Tilda with Ladybug (Magnolia), Ledger stamp and dot trail (Hero Arts), Sentiments (Heather's Stamping Haven), grass and ladybug on branch (Sunshine Designs, The Stamp Barn). I'll also be doing another Magnolia card in September. Good times!

Now for the surprise! It's a pop-up card with a ladybug inside. The wings even move! (That was a trick I learned from one of Krista Schneider's classes, and I thought it was so fantastic that I use it every time I make a project with this image.)

Hope you can join me for the class!

PS Apologies to all purist Magnolia stampers out there - I am one of those people that needs a face on kids. So, if you are a purist, picture Tilda in her natural, noseless, mouthless, lashless, creaseless form.

One of a kind

I needed a card for a lovely lady, who really is one of a kind. She's going through a difficult time so I thought sending this her way might be a little bit of a boost, or at least let her know I'm thinking about her.

The pretty row of shoes is a Sunshine Designs image (Stamp Barn), stamped in India Ink and coloured with Tombows. I've accented the shoes with smooch, stickles and dimensional pearls, whatever each shoe called for! The tabs are punched out, with faux brads, which are really just little dots of espresso dimensional pearls (Ranger). A handy trick when you realize you want tiny brads, but your stash [astonishingly] is missing this accessory. The message is typed out in Dymo label maker - very handy for situations like this. The patterned and tab paper is BasicGrey (Lime Rickey, I think) and the card base is Tempting Turquoise (Stampin' Up). It's a fairly big card, the size that fits in a business envelope, like you'd get a bank statement in.

Well, dear readers, my blog has hit The Big Time! I have received a spam comment on my most frequently viewed page (the dinosaur pop-up scene). That page must have reached some critical level of views to trigger the spammer to express, "I really liked your blog and would like to know more about the topic" (i.e., dinosaur pop-up cards), with a web link to a purveyor of little blue pills, where presumably I would inform them of my own secrets to guarantee a pop-up.....

Also, NSR, I just read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and what a wonderful book! (You know by now that I am a late adopter, so this is not exactly the hottest new summer read.) If you are late to trends like me, give it a try. It's really good. I tried to savour it and eke it out, but I couldn't and I just raced through it, trying to figure out how I could wangle a summer vacation in the Channel Islands this year. Now I'm reading the new Elizabeth George and so close to the end that I can't believe I'm blogging and not finishing it! Actually, it's because I've told myself that I have to clean the house once I've finished the book, so that's why I'm blogging now, guilt-free as this is not housecleaning time, it's book reading time. Well, time for a coffee refill and to get to my to-do list, starting with finishing another great Inspector Lynley mystery! Then house tidying, change the oil in the car, and menu plan/grocery shop for the week. Somewhere in there I will sneak a trip to Heather's Stamping Haven and get her to show me how to use the Sizzix pop-up die - the instructions are totally baffling and spatial-folding skills are very low on my list of abilities. (DH has banned me from refolding maps...)

Serene Card

Here's a card I made quite a while ago, while the computer wasn't working so I couldn't post it. The image is Wasabi Ketto (Stamping Bella) and I coloured it with artist pencil crayons and blended with odourless mineral spirits. I accented the sash and hair pins with a black glaze pen, and added some stickles to her hair ornaments. The flower is one from my stash, and I think I stamped it at some point. Since the computer was broken, I had time to make "faux thread" for the buttons with thin, thin pieces of cardstock. The big button has a knot of silver cord. There is some velvet ribbon (Stampin' Up) for accent too. The patterned paper is Kioshi (BasicGrey).

This card is more embellished than I usually make, but I like it. It would be bulky for mailing, but I usually slip in a piece of bubble wrap and hope for the best when mailing cards like these.

Speaking of mailing, I've been reading up on mail art and it sounds very interesting. I also got a mail art stamp set from Dark Room Door with lots of neat mailing images. This evening I'm cleaning off my stamp desk (had to post this card before I put it away, so technically this post is part of my cleaning up!), but when I'm done, I think I will do up a mail art project and send it off somewhere.

We had a gorgeous day here - biked over to soccer practice as a family and I also went for another bike ride this afternoon. I explored some trails in the woods in a nearby park - fun! Hope you had a good day too.

Happy stamping!

Zombie Thursday

What a great day today - I took the day off work and spent it at Heather's Stamping Haven for Krista Schneider's amazing workshops. Today we did two classes on Copic markers and one class on Bruynzeel pencil crayons. I learned so much and such a good time. What a wonderful bunch of ladies to spend the day with!

In one of the Copic classes, we were colouring Magnolias and Krista had a handout with some tips for adding faces for those of us who feel those little cuties need a facial expression. Conversation could tend to get a little silly (who me???) and one thing led to another and the next thing we knew, Krista was giving us instructions for a zombie Magnolia. I couldn't resist, not even a little bit. Here's my zombie! And I have to say that I am delighted to now have an "out" for all my cards where I mess up the colouring - I will zombify them. (Won't dwell on dearth of zombie-loving recipients.....) I love her greenish pallor

Having discovered Krista's pash for zombies, I thought it would be a hoot to make her a zombie thank you card with one of her stamps (the bunny from the Easter cube, Sunshine Designs).

I think zombie cards are a bit like collage - way more fun to make than to look at! (And I am definitely the sort of stamper that gravitates to projects that are supposed to be smudged and grubby.....) This card is all about the grunge and the distressing and the creepy crawlies. I stamped the bunny in Memento black and coloured it with Bruynzeel pencil crayons, blending with odorless mineral spirits. I added in some signature zombie features like the patch and the stitches, flies and stink lines. The main card base is some tsumugi paper in soft green, with strips of torn linen paper for accent (I was going for a mummy-bandage effect). I distressed them with some Old Paper, Antique Linen and Peeled Paint distress ink too) and glued them down with some very nice Italian glue that smells of almonds. What a treat! (I got it at Stamping Bella and it's in a tin with a tiny brush.) The accent panel is Soft Suede (Stampin' Up), embossed with the diamond pattern Cuttlebug folder. I wished I had one of Tim's new folders for this, but I don't (yet!). The "thank you" is an Impression Obsession stamp that my mother gave me years ago. I stamped it with Versafine ink (Olympia Green) and drew patch stitches around the edges of it. I finished off the card with some zombie doodling using my Copic Multiliner - creepy crawlies, a worm, patches, and a millipede (could only bring myself to draw one - those things freak me out!).

So there you have it - a totally unconventional thank you card, but tailor-made for the recipient. I have a feeling she's going to like it.

Thanks for stopping by!