Happy World Cardmaking Day!

Hello!  Happy World Cardmaking Day!  The "holiday" may be a bit contrived, but I fully support any and every excuse to spend some time stamping. In honour of this very special day, I wanted to use my new stamp set that I won from Darkroom Door. It's their 100th stamp set and with all sorts of stamping-related messages and images.  It's wonderful!

I use sponging and masking, inspired by a card by various ones I've seen on-line by stampers like these ones by Godelieve Tijskens and Heather Telford.

For this card, I masked off a rectangle using sticky notes and sponged in some distress ink (from left to right: Mustard Seed, Crushed Olive, Spiced Marmalade, Seedless Preserves).  Next I stamped on this botanical silhouette (Darkroom Door) using Memories Soft Gold.  I re-stamped it after removing the mask using black archival ink (Ranger), masking off some of the stems.  Then I added the sentiment (Darkroom Door), matted it on black and mounted it on my card.

Hope you get some stamping time today!

It's also Thanksgiving Weekend here in Canada, so I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving too!

Almond Blossom Fairy and Weekly Menu Link

Hello!  Here's what I've been busy at in my stamp room for the past few days.  Not that this particular card took days, but arriving at this card did.  Heather got in some more flower fairy stamp sets. These are the famous Cicely Mary Barker flower fairies that I have always loved, and I have several now in my collection.  Heather asked me to do a class with them in March, so this will be one of the class projects for my class on Saturday, March 24th, in the afternoon (time to be confirmed).   The scanner hasn't quite done justice to the colours, unfortunately.  But then Sauron the Scanner and I have never been on particularly good terms. 

Thanks for stopping by!  I'm back to tidying up my stamp room and trying to figure out what to make for dinner.  Last night's effort was suffered in polite silence by my crew.  I found a recipe on line for salmon casserole with canned salmon, peas, peppers and eggs, sort of a crustless quiche idea.  This recipe was ideal because I had all the ingredients on hand and the exact amount of preparation time before dinner.  With this auspicious start, I knew that I had used up all my luck before dinner even started.  It was ok, they ate it (heavily bribed with the other half of their piece of cheese toast), remarking only that it was a dinner that didn't require chewing, only squishing through their teeth.  I don't have an exact quote as the daughter in question's memory is failing now that this is Going On The Blog.  Tonight I have less in the pantry than yesterday, and even less inspiration. Maybe we will have Pancake Day early!  Speaking of dinner, I did find a great website that does menu planning.  It's free, it includes recipes and it's nutritious, and the whole works.  It's put on by the government of Ontario and I would highly recommend it.  Had I been out shopping today, I would have the ingredients for numerous tasty meals.  Here's the link: Eat Right Ontario.  It's a bit wordy with a lot of links to get to a 40 page download (did I mention this was a government site? she said snidely), but it's top quality, full of great resources, and worth it in the end (did I mention I am a public servant? she said smugly). 

Thanks again for stopping by!

One layer card

Hello! Thanks for stopping by. It's getting to be that time of year when I need a bunch of cards to donate to the church bazaar. Clean and simple options are always quick to do, and can be striking. I had a card base handy, so I masked off an L-shape with sticky notes and sponged on some distress ink (Victorian Velvet and Stormy Sky). It seemed to need a horizontal silhouette vignette. Since I didn't have the perfect stamp for that (gasp!), I had to improvise. I found this lovely shorebird (Old Island Stamp Company) and stamped it on in black and added some extra ripple lines with my Micron. I found a suitable sentiment for underneath (A Muse) and added some birds in flight, again with the pen. The all-seeing eye of Sauron the Scanner has revealed my sponging shortcomings, but I'm hoping the hurly burly of the Christmas bazaar will mask (ha ha! who says puns are the lowest form of humour? I refuse to believe it) any imperfections.

NSR: We're getting into Hallowe'en here - costumes have been chosen, pumpkins purchased and ready for carving, candy bought for trick-or-treaters. We had a party at work yesterday and I had the dubious honour of winning the Thematic Costume category. I wore a buttoned dress shirt with my husband's tie, a brown fedora and a glued-on mustache, and toted my iron. Can you guess what I was? (Hint - I foreshadowed my love of puns in the previous paragraph.) Yes, you guessed it - I went as Iron Man. My friend at work said I looked like Everyman on a New York subway. At least that's what she said when she stopped hooting with laughter long enough to come up for air. Then she insisted I refer to women as "dames" for the rest of the day and pretend I worked for Barney Miller down at the precinct. I think it was the mustache. It was quite realistic (ca. 1978). My kids just couldn't stop looking at it, and touching it. I think it really freaked them out. I would post a picture except this is the internet and people from work might see it. Oh yeah. They saw it in person. I'm still not going to post it. It was one of those magical moments that had to be experienced in person.

Silhouette Meets Masking

I've been seeing the most amazing cards in this vein on lots of blogs, and they referenced an article in a recent Craft Stamper magazine. I thought I would give it a try - it's really easy. Basically, you take your white card, mask off the edges of the card (I used sticky notes) and sponge in colour (I used Distress Inks). Then I stamped this Memory Box dandelion image in black pigment ink and embossed it. (I did heat set the Distress Ink first, which is why I don't have a black rectangle!). The "for you" is Stampin' Up and the little dots are Ranger black accents. I also added Diamond stickles to the dandelion seeds, so in real life there is some lovely gold sparkle. I found the whole thing looked better on a black mat, so I added that in and I was done. It's a great way to get a huge wow factor in very little time. It looks fantastic with the Penny Black brushstroke stamps, but I gave away the card before I could scan it in. That's about all the stamping chit chat needed for this one other than to say, if you want something super quick and easy, in any colour scheme, just get out your sticky notes and get masking!

NSR. My 4 1/2 year old (who pestered us endlessly - is it my half birthday yet? Am I 4 1/2 yet??? Finally that magic day came!) often uses the biggest number she can think of to express the notion of enormity. As in, "It's a million, hundred, thousand, thirty, twenty, eleventy-one days until my birthday." Some days I just want to eat her up.