Fredly Feather

Hello!  I had a few stolen moments this evening and a few minutes' quiet time at my stamp table seemed the perfect way to decompress after a long day and tiring commute.  I thought I might sift through my stash of pre-cut card projects from my days as a Stampin' Up demonstrator.  I have a few of these around, leftover from classes or workshops.  Well, the intended project is lost to the mists of time, but it's fun to think of something else.  Actually, I think this project was from a Father's Day card workshop from years ago and I think this one was some sort of sunset safari scene.  I no longer have those stamps, but I was inspired by this piece of glossy cardstock to get out my brayer and a multicolour ink pad (Winter Sky - Adirondack ink pad from Ranger) and add some colour.  The colours have run together somewhat, so I added some extra green in the way of Oregano (Adirondack from Ranger) at the bottom.  Because these are all dye inks, they were dry in no time and ready to be stamped on.  I wanted a solid image I could emboss and what better place to turn than my drawer of Fred B. Mullett's stamps from nature prints.  I chose this beautiful feather and embossed it with Hematite, Liquid Platinum and a bit of Antique Gold at the top.  It's on a True Thyme card base with a scrap of some sort of patterned paper that happened to be on my stamp desk at my finger tips (despite a massive tidy last week).  It was meant to be on this card I guess!  The card base is stamped with a script background stamp from Stampers Anonymous, also stamped in Oregano ink.  I edged the pieces of cardstock with that same Oregano ink.  I thought this card might be suitable for a masculine birthday or a sympathy card so I have left it unglittered (if you don't count the little bit of white gold glitter in my gold embossing powder - a great tip from Heather Hayley).

This went together so quickly I think I might see what else is in that drawer of "ripening" projects.  I'm sure there are some treasures waiting to be stamped.  Why don't you have a rummage in your scraps and make a quick card.  It can be fun to see what you can make with just a few things you might have on hand.

Happy stamping!

Chirpy Thank You

Hello!  Here's one of a number of "the same only different" cards I made for my daughter to use as thank you cards for her recent birthday.  All stamps are from the Stampin' Up set "Friends 24-7".  The bird is stamped with sepia brown Versafine ink on Very Vanilla paper and the flower is stamped in Baja Breeze.  The image is matted on chocolate chip and arranged with some scraps of designer paper and Baja Breeze on a Crumb Cake card base.  The damask stamp on the card base is also stamped in Baja Breeze.  A few accents of Dark Chocolate liquid pearls finish off the card. These were quite quick to put together and using the designer paper scraps made it easy to pull the colours together, plus it felt good to use some of the scraps for a quick project.  The layouts are all very similar, but vary a little depending on the shape of the scraps.  Some have torn edges, some are vertical.  It all depends on what the scraps are.  I'll use this "formula" again - find some coordinating stamps, designer paper scraps, and coordinating cardstocks and have a happy stamping afternoon!

I hope your December is going well.  Ours is - November birthday has been wrapped up, December birthday is taking shape.  Hubby wants us to have a party so I am planning that - the fun part is going through the cookbooks deciding on the signature drink and appetizers.  Maybe I should also be auditioning the signature drinks too!  We've been doing our shopping and everyone is busy hiding packages and being mysterious about errands.  There's a cookie exchange planned at work and I think this weekend will see us putting up the Christmas tree.  The Advent activities are preparing us for the feast of Christmas, which is now only weeks away.  This past weekend we went out to the Living Nativity, which is well worth a visit next year if you are in the Ottawa area.  On a more secular note, the Jacquie Lawson Advent calendar this year has an Edwardian theme, which is lots of fun for all fans of Downton Abbey.  I hope you are enjoying your preparations for Christmas, and taking time to enjoy the moments of preparation.

Best wishes and happy stamping!

October Stamping Challenge #10

Hello!  Here is the latest installment of my October Stamping Challenge.  This one was made from a left over class kit and has been sitting out, waiting for a spare moment to be coloured up.  The stamp is Sunshine Designs (Flower Cluster) and stamped on shimmer cardstock and embossed in gold.  I coloured it with Tombow markers and blended it with a paintbrush.  I added some liquid pearl accents in Avocado (vines) and Lemon Yellow (round flowers) and stickles (Fruit Punch and Yellow) to finish it off.  The accent panel was embossed with a pretty spiral using a folder from a set of two called Twirl.  It has been my go-to set lately - very versatile.

This is Krista Schneider's technique, and she will be in Ottawa to teach her Tombow, Copic, multimedia, Inktense and Distress classes starting Oct 24.  Call Heather at Heather's Stamping Haven to register.  These are fantastic classes!

Thanks for stopping by!

October Stamping Challenge #9

Hello! Here's my next quick little card.  The tree image is one from Memory Box (first time inked), and I stamped it in a slate grey pigment ink on a scrap of paper that was nearby, edged it in the same grey ink and added some shading with pencil crayons.  I layered it on a soft grey scrap, and used a metallic grey accent strip from the scrap pile.  The little sentiment is from Stampin' Up and stamped in Wet Cement Hero Arts Shadow Ink.  The little dots are Gunmetal stickles.  The card base is a naturals white cardstock with a light fleck in it. 

I would like to play with this stamp a little more and explore the ideas on this card a little further.  I like how it came out and think it could be improved if I had a little more time to play and experiment.  Last night wasn't that night though, since we were out to see the Indigo Girls in concert.  It was a great show. Their opening act was a folk singer called Jeremy Fisher and he was really good too. 

Thanks for reading!

Another Birthday Card

Hello!  Here's a super-quick card I made for my nephew's birthday.  I used a Darkroom Door robot photo strip that I had on hand and paired it with a Darkroom Door word strip.  The background is a seafoam glimmer paper, run through a Tim Holtz cogged wheel embossing folder.  I coloured in some of the depressions with an avocado marker to give it a bit of interest, and added some black liquid accents (Ranger) here and there for a finishing touch.  The card base is Dusty Durango (SU).  Speaking of SU, have they retired Bordering Blue?  I couldn't find it on their website.  I use this colour all the time, and frankly find it quite astonishing that they discontinued it without consulting me, their largest volume purchaser of that colour.  Now my remaining stock will have to go into perma-hoard status, never to be used again since it's the last I have (along with Purely Pomegranate and Soft Sky) until Future Karen no longer likes those colours and wishes she'd used them when she loved them.  Too bad Future Karen isn't here to give Present Karen a swat upside the head for that!  I'm sure if Future Karen were to come back in time to today, she would have better things to admonish me for, like spending more time stamping and less time doing laundry, etc. And bring me winning lottery numbers for next week and things like that.  I would put up a with a few swats in the head for that!

Thanks for stopping by!

Scrap Sunday 13 - on Monday

Here's a card I made this evening from some scraps. I'm calling it a Scrap Sunday card since today is a holiday (Thanksgiving), so it's still the weekend. I had a piece of green flecked paper that I'd made from some spray I think (guessing lettuce and mushroom Adirondack color wash). I stamped it with this lovely calligraphy stamp from Quietfire Designs and matted it on a scrap of cork, then over a scrap of lovely handmade olive paper, and the card base is a cream coloured linen. Very quick and easy! (If I don't count all the false starts and the dead ends along the way.) I love cards like this that count as "cleaning off the stamp desk". Also, it's my reward for working hard on my holiday to get all the laundry done. Today and yesterday were gorgeous, so I was a laundry dervish, washing and hanging out to dry about 8 loads. All three clotheslines were pressed into service, and nearly all the clothespins. And even better - all the laundry is put away, and I even ironed! Pretty soon my husband is going to say, "Where is Karen? What have you done with her? Unless this imposter can cook, I want my real wife back!"

Happy Thanksgiving! So much to be thankful for.

NSR. It's been a good weekend. Friday started out with a meet and greet at work, with the big head honcho (many, many levels above me). When I met her she knew my project and said kind things about it. That was neat - she has a lot of people working for her, doing a lot of things, so the fact that she knew what I'm doing was kind of neat. And unusual for me since I usually prefer to fly under the radar. Then Friday night we all went to the rector's house for a wine and cheese for the stewardship committee and their families. (Well kiddies got movies and snacks, not wine and cheese). Hubby is chairing the committee so it's a busy fall around here. It was a very nice evening, just a shame that I'm always totally worn out by Friday night. Then Saturday morning was a wonderful stamping class at Heather's Stamping Haven and we made some gorgeous projects with Caran d'Ache crayons. Then home to make pear salad and do some whirlwind cleaning while hubby took the kids to the park for a family fun day with the cousins. Then off to my brother's place for a huge turkey feast, thanks to my sister-in-law. Such a wonderful meal! The kids had a sleepover so the grown ups got to stay up late (i.e., past 8 pm) visiting. Sunday morning was church, hubby was duty warden so gone bright and early to let in the 8 o'clockers, so I got to sleep in and have my coffee in the comfy chair overlooking the woods, reading a good book, enjoying the sunny morning. Didn't have my watch on so enjoyed this solitary scenario for far too long, and rushed pell-mell to church, arriving just in the nick of time. The church looked so lovely with all the Thanksgiving decorations everywhere! In the afternoon we raked some leaves and played outside, then went for a drive to Lanark County and the Mill of Kintail just outside Almonte. There's a museum there in the old mill and some lovely walking trails, which we enjoyed. The kids' favourite part was playing Pooh Sticks on the bridge over the Indian River. Some notable surgeon-sculptor-scholar type person (R. Tait Mackenzie) converted the mill in the 1930s and lived there with his wife, a published poet. Wouldn't that be great? I would love to stumble on a ruined mill in the woods, see the potential, rebuild it fit for habitation and move in the next year. Today was a bit of a quieter day, playing outside in the leaves, picnic outside, bike ride and playground, and Addition Bingo after supper (do we party it up, or what?!). Also a fair bit of bustling and things around the house, inside and out so we can face with a minimum of dread the Sisphean task of getting the family through the week. That brings me to now, and a few minutes for stamping and blogging! Yay!

Summer Card Camp Week 4

According to the descriptions, this week's colours include a soft denim-y blue, so I chose this cardbase (Memory Box) and punched out a large number of small flowers from white linen paper. I glued them down into a rectangular area and popped up the top layer of flowers. To bring in the other colours of the colour scheme, I added centres using stickles and dimensional pearls in lime green, blue and teal. The sentiment (A Muse) finishes off the card. Simple!

Cheap and Cheerful Thank Yous

At last! I did a "clean and simple" card! And it was simple! And most of them were clean! (They are going, by and large, to 7-year-olds, so I am not too worried about the couple that got smudged.)

My daughter's birthday was last weekend, so I needed a batch of thank you cards (13!) for friends and family. I hemmed and hawed for a bit about what to do. I was tempted to try to use up stuff from my scraps stash, but that always takes a long time. Instead, I went to designer paper and coordinating cardstock and ink, for guaranteed wow and speed. I love how it all came together.

The "thank you" image is one I picked up at a beautiful stationery shop here in town (along with too much (????) Japanese paper). I told myself it would be handy to have a circular thank you stamp, and lo! I was correct. I love it when that happens. (I'm still waiting for the ideal moment to trot out my scrimshaw stamp, and appropriate occasions may be less frequent than birthdays and thank yous. Still, it was a gap in my stamp collection....)

This was a very punchy card, and very quick to come together. If you want to recreate it at home, and why wouldn't you, here are the dimensions: standard card base (I used a sturdy white cardstock, 5 1/2"x 8 1/2"), the patterned paper (Razzleberry Lemonade) is 4 1/4" x 2 1/2", the "thank you " is punched on 1 1/4" circle, and matted on a 1 3/8" circle (Rich Razzleberry). The scallop circle is a 2" scalloped circle, punched from coordinating patterned paper (also Razz Lemonade). The ribbon (crushed curry grosgrain) is about 4 3/4" long, trimmed with a notch to overhang the card (I love that!).

I also whipped up matching envelopes, feeling very pleased with myself. I have a nice funky flourish that I stamped with a very big and squelchy (juicy?) multicolour inkpad in the same bright yellows, pinks and oranges. I just love how those turned out. It's sometimes hard to get a nice matching envelope with a card that relies so heavily on patterned paper. I can't (a) bring myself to "waste" patterned paper like that lining an envelope and (b) be bothered to do it. In this case, the perfect stamp again presented itself as did the ink. There was a tricky moment when I wondered if I could find that ink pad since it's so big it doesn't fit any of the places I keep my normal inks. But I just said to myself, where is the first place you would have stowed it, and lo! there it was, cozily snuggled between my watercolour wonder crayons and my wood veneer. I must have filed it with the "W's" for "Wow-these colours match perfectly".

Well, thank you for stopping by and bearing with the horrors of my organizational skills and my overzealous use of interjections.

NSR: I went to see the Group of Seven Nutcracker with my SIL, niece and daughters on the weekend. It was fabulous! It was Ballet Jorgen, and their Canadian interpretation of the story was wonderful. The toys that came to life were woodland creatures and the dance of the loons was particularly magnificent. They are touring various places, so if they are coming to a stage near you, I would recommend them. I am no connoisseur of The Ballet, but they seemed quite good.