Faux Batik butterflies

Hi!  Here's a card we'll be making at Heather's Stamping Haven in August for her anniversary celebration make and takes.  I'll be running this class on August 25th, but it may run during the week as well.  Keep an eye on Heather's calendar for the schedule.  The stamp I used is a butterfly image from Impression Obsession (copyright Hannah Davies/Impression Obsession Inc) and I did a number of these in different colours over the past few days.  It was fun!  I like how this looks like faux batik.  So colourful!  The colours in the top card are: spiced marmalade, seedless preserves, salty ocean, peacock feathers (card base More Mustard).  The middle card: mowed grass, shaded lilac, salty ocean (card base Cool Caribbean).  The bottom card: peacock feathers, mustard seed, spiced marmalade, ripe persimmon (card base Bermuda Bay).    Thanks for stopping by!

Darkroom Door ATC Swap July 2012

Thanks to all the ladies who came out to my class yesterday!  I had a great time and it was fun to see all the beautiful cards people made.  Last night I had a bit of stamping time after the kids were in bed and I made some ATCs for the July swap at Darkroom Door in Australia.  I always enjoy those swaps when I get a chance to participate and it's fun to get ATCs back from all over the world.

The cupcake ATC is the one I made to swap and I made nine other ones similar to that one using the Sweet Treats filmstrips and companion wordstrips.  The theme for the swap is "For the Ladies", and all the ladies I know have a sweet tooth, so that's how I'm interpreting this theme, complemented by a very feminine colour scheme.  I started with some manila tags trimmed down for ATC size, then covered them with Spun Sugar Distress Stains.  Next, I sponged on some Salty Ocean and Dusty Concord Distress Ink, and stamped on some words in Dried Marigold Distress Ink.  I felt the backgrounds were still a little bare under the other elements, so I sponged on some Soft Lilac shadow ink through a Crafter's Workshop swirly template.  The trimmed down photo strips are distressed lightly around the edges and the word strips are tinted with Dusty Concord ink.  A little tab of ribbon (stitched grosgrain in Groovy Guava) and a black mat completed these.  For the black base I used Heather's new matte black, which is absolutely gorgeous.  International swap participants can choose to send two extra ATCs in exchange for return postage.  I made two extras using some scrap paper I had on hand from blotting up excess Dylusions spray from another project.  The tulip and bird are embossed in black.  The tulip is coloured with Copics and the bird is bleached out.  I added a bit of ground with a gray Copic marker for the bird and clipped out the words, ransom note style and inked the edges.  (Why can't I have such obsessive attention to detail in other areas of my life?  Like balancing the cheque book or making grocery lists?)  For the tulip ATC, I added a flourish stamped in white paint (hard to see - Sauron the Scanner is being uncooperative today) and a doodled border.  Now to get these in the mail and hope they get there in time!

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Two classes on Saturday

Hi! Here are the two classes I'm doing on Saturday at Heather's Stamping Haven. The Distress Marker class runs from 10-12:30 and the Inktense Stamping class runs from 2-5.

Click here for all the details and call or email the store to register.

Keep Calm....

Tee hee!  I fell in love with this stamp the moment I saw it, and it didn't take long to succumb to its charms.  It's one from Fred B Mullett and I've stamped it here on red cardstock and embossed it with white embossing powder for that (almost) iconic look.  I trimmed it closely then popped it up on a piece of white shimmer cardstock, then layered on matching (but textured) red cardstock.  This was then taped to a card base in pastel aqua.

I love this message, both the original sentiment, and the lovely pun.  My friend tries to tell me that puns are the lowest form of humour, maybe she's right, but I just can't believe that.  Puns are just too funny!

Thanks for stopping by!  I hope you are enjoying your summer.

Non-stamping related.  We had a great long weekend last weekend (Canada Day was on Sunday, so Monday was a holiday).  The family went camping to Murphy's Point Provincial Park, which is on Big Rideau Lake.  We had a great camp site, which had a nice place for a hammock.  We took the kids to see the fireworks in Perth on Sunday night and they loved it.  (We all did!)  It was their first time seeing the fireworks and the volunteer fire department in Perth put on a spectacular show.  It was lovely to see their rapt faces.  This weekend is shaping up to be  a good one too, with a stamp class at Heather's this morning and then my brother's family over for a barbecue this afternoon.

Another Fish Card

Here's another fish card using a lovely Lil' Florida Jack image from Fred B Mullet's line of Nature Print stamps.  I used Fred's spritzing technique to get the field of diffuse images and my stamp positioner to add detail and intensity to one of the fish.  A few finishing touches with some white paint on the eye, some pencil crayon, and an ink frame and I had my focal image.  I used Tombow markers (027 and 528) and spritzed water for the fish.  The focal image is mounted on some khaki linen cardstock, and the card base is Not Quite Navy (Stampin' Up), stamped with a coral image from Fred B Mullet.  The lace paper is from my package of Japanese paper scraps and is so gorgeous I can't believe I used it.

I don't have time for chit chat today - must dash off to DD2's dance recital.  Have a great weekend!

Birthday Card

Hello!  It's a gorgeous morning here, all sunny and fresh.  I needed a quick card for a birthday party this morning for a birthday party for my daughter's friend.

I surveyed the options, spent a lot of time dithering and mining out various things for various projects, then decided I didn't have time anymore to do any of those. (The master plan for the morning was to go to the Wallack's Art Store Warehouse sale at 9:00 and hope they had some great deals, and get a birthday present for the friend too, who likes to draw.  And the reason I ran out of time was I had to experiment with an artist's panel and Tombows/Copics in case they had them at a good price and I wanted more. So I had to do a quick bit of stamping and colouring and experimentation before breakfast, and ran out of time for an extensive card before it was time to leave.)

I stamped the tree image (Stampotique) in Memento on Heather's ivory 130 lb cardstock and coloured it in with Copics.  Can't remember the exact colours, but it was B0000, B00, B12 for the sky, and YG11, YG93, G95 and G99 for the leaves and grass and a few browns for the trunk.  I accented the grass with some pencil crayons for texture.  The smudges you may see are not on the card (for once) but on the scanner, which I keep forgetting to clean.  (If you saw my house, you would realize just how far down the list the scanner is in terms of cleaning priority.)  I accented the image with some Avocado Liquid Pearls and Crystal Stickles, and set it aside to dry while I took my daughter to the warehouse sale.

Now that was a hoot and a half.  It was in a part of town I haven't been to, so that was a bit of a fun exploration.  We discovered it's in the same place as the Art-is-In Bakery, and noted for future reference.  We headed in to the sale, found some great deals, but were dismayed by the 400 people (rough estimate) in line ahead of us to pay.  We didn't have time to wait in line in a warehouse, so abandoned the effort and went in search of Suzy Q doughnuts, which came highly recommended.  It's a new little place on Wellington with homemade gourmet doughnuts.  We bought one of each plus a few to make a dozen and brought them home, after a quick stop at the local Wallack's for a sketch book and pencil crayons for the birthday present. The doughnuts were delicious (sampled the dirty chocolate, raspberry-cassis with white chocolate drizzle, maple bacon and sugar-cardamom), the card is made and the presents are wrapped and it's not even noon!  Still lots of time for the party, laundry, groceries, stamping, etc. that fill a Saturday.  And a quick jaunt out to the Sportsplex for soccer team pictures.

Must dash off to a birthday party!  Have a lovely Saturday!

Sympathy Card

Hello!

Here's a card I made for someone at work who has recently been bereaved.  I wanted to use a technique that I learned at the classes I took a couple of weeks ago from Fred B Mullett.  This was a spritzing technique using Tombow markers and a botanical leaf image from Fred's nature print line of stamps.  The sentiment is from Quietfire Designs, as is the waxed twine around the edge.  The sentiment is embossed with Rust Antiquities embossing powder, so it's multi-toned and matches nicely with the varied shadings of the rest of the card.  The panels are all edged in Memories Art Print Brown, and the card base is a lovely vanilla bean Memory Box note card.  I like the Memory Box note cards because they are white on the inside - saves having to make a liner.  

This technique is from the Spritz me baby ... mo' betta class.  There are some basic instructions on Fred's website, but if you can take the class in person, it's waaay better.  I got to learn all kinds of things, like how to use TP (technical paper, on the same sort of perforated roll around a central cardboard cylinder as regular old tp) to blot up excess water, and how to avoid the Zone of Preciousness around the main image.  (I struggle with this.  The Zone refers to the urge to stamp your main image and then leave a nice perimeter around it, carefully avoiding stamping over this lovely image, so carefully positioned.  Someone who has fabric scissors and paper scissors, a cutting board just for fruit, and an extra pot of her favourite twinkling h20 is destined to have entire shrines set up to preserve zones of preciousness on cards.  Many thanks to Fred for urging me to overcome this tendency and stamp right on over that zone, and he is sooo right to do so.  But, as is the case with all good advice, it's nearly impossible to follow.  I am proud to say that in this card, I was successful in my struggle to overcome the urge to leave a Z of P, and there is only the slightest Nook of Preciousness under the main leaf.)

In other stamping news, I was out all day today, and last night, and will be out tomorrow at the wonderful classes run by Krista Schneider.  We are making wonderful things and it is just such a pleasure to be doing all that creative activity in the company of such delightful people.