Sympathy Card

Sadly, from time to time a sympathy card is needed. I made this one this afternoon, using bits and pieces from my stash of Japanese paper and embellishments.  The card base is kraft, stamped with a sprig (Memory Box) in Soft Sand (Hero Arts Shadow Ink) and Brushed Corduroy (Distress ink). The sympathy sentiment is from Cornish Heritage Farms.

On a different note, I'd like to say a big thank you to the ladies who came out to my class at Heather's yesterday.  I had a great time and it was a lot of fun to see all your projects - beautiful work!

Copic Poppies

Hello! It's been a while since I've posted - I've been busy cleaning out the stamp room, and the computer has been in use during blogging hours. But this week the stamp room got clean enough to stamp this poppy image (Hero Arts), and colour it while watching tv. I tried out some new things I learned at the Intermediate Copic class, things like shading and shadows and different colour families. I am still no expert on shadows and shading, but will claim that my main source of light comes from some direction, and then random other sources of light and shadow may also come into play depending on the backstory of my image. So, for example, here, the sun is coming from more or less above, except for the parts where there was a child playing with a flashlight, and another part where another child was casting shadows. You see, if you can imagine a light source, you can imagine all sorts of things. (You are beginning to see why I have not yet been plucked from Copic obscurity and brought to design team fame and glory.)

Anyway, coloured up the poppies while watching Strike Back and seeing Sgts Scott and Stonebridge shoot their way out of this week's (seemingly) certain death. Not normally my sort of tv, but Sgt Stonebridge is extremely easy on the eyes and they do a cliffhanger every week that brings me back. We are on Story Arc #51 of Plot #3 and it's only 5 episodes in. I tell you, not much time to dither between YR31 and R02 or you will lose the thread completely. Oh yeah, it's the hunk shooting his way out of a sticky situation. So far the main difference between episodes seems to be which country he is shooting his way out of and which babe his sidekick is tomcatting around with. So far it's been India, South Africa, the Sudan, and Kosovo (or brainbox, blondie, Irish exhibitionist, doctor, journalist).

Oops - got a bit side tracked there. Back to the card. I masked off the poppies (just the flowers) and stamped the background music (Cornish Heritage Farms scrapblock) in Antique Linen distress ink. I also sponged in some Linen and Vintage Photo around the edges to soften the white paper (too stark). Decided a poppy should be popped up and coloured up another one. It's trimmed to 4"x5.5" so I could have a strip of red fleck down the side (I believe the paper is called poppy fleck - meant to be!). The sentiment (Papertrey Ink) is heat embossed in black, and the accents are Cello Glitter Ritz (Art Institute). Clearly I am a philistine since when I ordered it, I thought it might be clear glitter, as in cellophane. It's a lovely rich brown, as in cello the instrument. Edited to add: Copics used for poppies: YR31, YR02, R22, R08, E19; used for stems: BG93, YG93, YG97.

In non-stamping related news, my five-year-old washed the dishes tonight. She loves being helpful, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. She did a great job. I did the sharp knives and really grubby/heavy things, but she did all the little lunch containers and things like that. I was so proud of her!

Thanks for stopping by.

Thank you card

Here's a card I made for the girls' bus driver this year. He was particularly punctual and particularly patient when we weren't. Two excellent qualities in a bus driver. Bus drivers...they have the perfect job....all their problems are behind them! ar ar ar. Not my joke, but my favourite bus driver joke of all time.

I used the Hero Arts foliage stamp, inked with various shades of distress ink, misted and then stamped onto putty coloured linen paper. Then over stamped with a Cornish Heritage Farms text stamp (scrap block) in pumice stone. Sponged on some old paper and walnut stain around the edge and matted on brown. Dithered endlessly about layout, and eventually settled on this. I used a precious chunk of some paper a friend brought me from her summer holiday and one of her stamp store pilgrimages. It's beautifully textured, think of the seaweed you wrap sushi in. (If I weren't such a hick, I would know what that's called. If I weren't so lazy, I would look it up!) The bottom is card base stamped with the same foliage and tinted Rusty Hinge. I wrapped some linen thread and used one of my hoarded Asian coins. We must really hold this guy in high esteem - using up hoarded paper AND hoarded embellishments, all at once.

NSR. An emotional day at work. It was my farewell lunch, and some goodbyes to special people. It's not a big town and we may cross paths again. Indeed I hope so. Still, it's hard to say goodbye to somewhere I've worked for over ten years and step into the unknown. Wish me luck!

Floral Wedding Card - YES!

Blogger's out of its bad mood and let me upload the card today. Thanks for the tips. I don't know what was wrong, maybe just general flakiness. I would click on "Browse" to access the file directory and it would just blink at me, with a dull-witted, vacant look. Now it's working again, see Exhibit A (at left).

A colleague at work asked for a wedding card, in the couple's wedding colours (baby blue and purple). I mulled it over, custom cards are always a little anxiety-inducing as they need to be "just right", without any definition as to what "just right" actually is. I started with some white linen paper and stamped various botanical silhouettes on it (Darkroom Door, Cornish Heritage Farms) in shades of blue (Palette) and purple (Nick Bantock, Damson Plum). I tried all sorts of ghastly things, embossing, paint, this and that. Eventually decided that less is more (yes, you heard me say that) and went with plain ink. I did trace over the word (Stampin' Up) with glitter pen and dot the purple flowers with stardust stickles. I matted it on some purple metallic cardstock, and then that went on a light blue card base. I remembered to add some ribbon before it was stuck down. I was hoping to use my prestamped blue card base that's in my scrapbox, but it really didn't work on this one. The stamping on the card base took away from the clean lines I felt. I did a matching inside and envelope and called 'er done!

NSR: Thank you for the well wishes about the birthday party. It went really well and the kiddies had a great time. We played games and sang songs and generally had a good old-fashioned birthday party. I'll see if there are any good pictures on the camera and try to post them.

Inkurable Stampers April Challenge

Here's my card at literally the eleventh hour for the April challenge at Inkurable Stampers. This was a tough challenge: 3 stamps, 3 colours (including neutrals), and the number 3 somewhere on the card. I thought I would go with a vintage typewriter theme, since I have a Stampers Anonymous stamp (Going Somewhere set) with letters and numerals on it, satisfying that condition. I stamped the typewriter (Cornish Heritage Farms) on vanilla paper and embossed in a lovely green (Topiary) and trimmed out. The "missing you" is from the same Cornish Heritage Farms set (On the Desk), and embossed in white, tinted with Copics, which was probably a mistake since it seemed like it rubbed off a bit on the tip. I just don't have vanilla embossing powder (must be the one colour I'm missing!). These bits and pieces were layered up and matted on black and put on a dark green card base (Pinefeather, by PTI), on which I stamped the same letters/numerals in Memories Pine Tree ink. The typewriter is popped up on dimensional tape. This was a tricky challenge and took all month to percolate in my mind. I like how this turned out, crisp and clean and beautiful colours. Tricky challenges are always the most fun!

NSR (RWR): Not Stamping Related (Royal Wedding Related)

How about that wedding!!!! I got up at 5:15 to see the arrivals at the Abbey, and got the girls up at 5:30 to see the families arriving. It was so exciting. What a beautiful service. I found it very moving. You will get all the fashion commentary elsewhere, but I will say that I agree with millions of others that the Duchess of Cambridge looked incredibly beautiful. I will also note that someone at work observed that a certain royal cousin looked like she was wearing moose antlers. Probably her head gear was intended to be appreciated on a different level, perhaps like jazz music or Booker Prize novels. The girls and I had a great time watching the ceremony and processions, etc., and breakfasted on English muffins, crumpets and tea. I thought the Bishop of London's address was very inspirational, and the music was incredible. That said, I do love to hear bagpipes and I did miss them today. The trumpet fanfare was lovely, and the orchestra was too, but still, it doesn't seem like a proper "big do" without bagpipes. But I would hate to criticize an otherwise spectacular celebration of marriage.

Serene Birthday Card (or How to Hide Mistakes)

Hello! I made this card for the January challenge at Inkredible Stampers, which was to make a "golden birthday" card. Your golden birthday is the one where you turn the same age as the date. I passed mine a while ago, so I just used a birthday theme with gold elements.

I started off with the black panel, stamping it in Memories Soft Gold using the Cornish Heritage Farms Spanish Script backgrounder. Then, I added that beautiful leaf stamp (Wild Raspberry, Fred B Mullett) and embossed it in gold. Fred B Mullett has beautiful stamps from nature prints, lots of botanicals and vegetables, as well as fish and other sea creatures. They're gorgeous. Anyway, back to the card. I stamped the happy birthday (A Muse) and embossed it too, and mounted all on a gold mat. I thought this mossy tsumugi card base was nice, but when I folded it, it cracked, so I covered it up with some tissue tape (Tim Holtz). I stamped the card base in versamark with the same wild raspberry leaves, and added a strip of plum textured paper. I like to keep strips like this for accents, and not just because I can't bear to part with the smallest pieces of my favourite paper. Now, having introduced purple, I felt compelled to follow the rule of threes, so I added some eggplant dimensional pearls. Have you spotted them? No? Well, that's because they really blobbed out into enormous blobs in the top left corner, so I applied a Tim Holtz metal corner. (Two actually, another on the bottom left, but it was too much so I pried if off, with some difficulty I might add). During all this, the other smaller dots of eggplant dimensional pearls under the happy birthday got smudged, so I scraped them off too and covered up the damage with mushroom dimensional pearls instead. Take that rule of three! Take that.

Thanks for stopping by!

Starry Lady

I made this card for the challenge at the Stampotique Design Challenge blog, where the challenge was to use one punch and one diecut in your design. It's the challenge where you can use stamps other than just Stampotique images.

I started off with Ms Starry (Stampotique), embossed in gold on watercolour paper, and added in a bunch of stars (Papertrey Ink), also gold embossed. Then I punched out some stars using a Fiskars hand punch and coloured the image using Tombow markers and a paintbrush. I embellished with some stickles (see second image for more sparkle than the scanner could pick up) and added smaller stars with stickles, a gold leaf pen, and a glitter pen. I had left a gap for the sentiment (see third picture), but it was too big, so I put it on the inside. This left a large gap, and DH suggested that the card needed the Milky Way. He was absolutely right and I forgive him for all his comments about crooked stamping, excessive (i.e., any) ribbon, and corny content. The Milky Way was a stroke of genius, and I boldly and bravely set to with my gold and glitter pens to create a starry path for my lady here.

The die cut portion of the card is at the bottom, and it's more of the card base (dark purple), die cut with a Tim Holtz edger and sponged with Champagne shimmer paint. The panel behind it is amethyst stamped with the Gemstone cube (Stampendous) in amethyst and gold ink. The card base itself is stamped in Versamark dazzle using the Star map scrapblock by Cornish Heritage Farms. I also gave the card base a light spritz with gold Smooch spray. The focal image is mounted on foam tape over a gold mat, so that the punched stars have some dimension over the gold behind.

I've had this sentiment for a long time - I really like it. So when I saw this image of Ms Starry on the Stampotique website, I thought it would be the perfect complement to this sentiment. The words are embossed in eggplant on ice blue linen paper, matted on more dark purple and edged with gold leaf pen. The tiny stars are accented with gold stickles.

Now that I'm done, I have only one problem - choosing who to send it to since there are so many wonderful people in my life that make me smile like that. Not a bad kind of problem to have!

Thanks for looking.

Arch #23 Signs of the Zodiac

This is Arch #23 for the Inkurable Stampers Gothic Arch challenge, theme "Signs of the Zodiac". I have had this image of the woman with the bowl of stars (Ms Starry, Stampotique) for a while and have been itching to use it. I stamped her on watercolour paper and coloured her with Tombows and cut her out. I stamped the arch with the star map (Cornish Heritage Farms), which has signs of the zodiac constellations on it, also embossed in gold, and also coloured with Tombows. I added a few other stars (Papertrey Ink). The stars are stickled and some are popped up, like the lady.

I like this lady who is flinging stars into the sky, and she is a much more satisfactory theory for the origin of stars than some sort of cosmic collision of gases or whatever it is now that the physicists think stars come from.

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!

Moonlit willow

I made this card for a class at Heather's on April 11th so I won't be giving the details here. (You'll need to sign up for the class for that!)

I used a palette of my favourite colours of fluid chalk ink and a willow tree silhouette stamp (Cornish Heritage Farms). The swirl is by Sunshine Designs. I love the peaceful look of this card! I wound up adding a shimmery sheer ribbon to the left side, but not till after this was scanned in. You'll have to take my word for it that it looked better with the ribbon :-)

This afternoon I got to play with some stamps. I was experimenting with Polished Pigments. They're a lovely pigment powder, but boy-oh-boy, does that powder get everywhere. I will need to do a big clean up because my next experimenting was with watercolouring and misting and all the little flecks of pigment powder were dissolving in the water and spoiling my projects. The flecks are too small to see until you mist them with water. I usually avoid cleaning up my stamping area too thoroughly because (1) it never stays clean and (2) it cuts into my free stamping time. It's probably time for a big tidy up since my working space is getting smaller and smaller, and we want to swap the craft area and the tv area in the basement.

Tomorrow DD1 and I are going to see the Wizard of Oz at the National Arts Centre. We've been madly reading the novel in advance. I remember loving that book as a little girl. DD1 has been enjoying it, but she has also frequently let me know that she prefers non-fiction, because it's about real things and she learns something. It's funny because in so many other ways she's a lot like me, but not in this one. I really love a good story and don't often read non-fiction. (Unless you count stamping magazines!!!!! lol)

Have a great weekend.

Thanks for stopping by.