What's Cookin'

Wow - there's nothing like a scanner to pick up all the flaws in a watercoloured image! My watercolouring usually passes the "can you see it from the highway?" test, but clearly doesn't pass muster for the scanner. My excuse (and I will stick to it) is that all the nicest versions of the card went off to 8 little girls as this batch of cards was invitations to my daughter's birthday party. We're having a make-your-own pizza party at a local grocery store that does these sorts of things. It's our first "outside" party, and I am really looking forward to it.


I love this stove stamp, and I must confess that when I saw this post, I was smitten! We used to have an avocado stove, but I don't recall that it was quite as jaunty as this one. But perhaps that's only because it didn't have funky chunky radishes to back it up. I love those Offbeat little veggies - the perfect retro touch to my stove.


I got this stamp originally to go with the sentiment "I hear there's a bun in the oven", but the guy's wife just had the baby so I have missed the boat on that one. Must now make baby card, instead, maybe will try another lambie effort.


Anyway, this card was fun to pull together and I used an apple stamp with this neat ink I have that is gold interference ink. It's very cool. I used it to stamp "yum!" inside too, along with all the details for the party.


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Lamb baby card

A friend of mine from university recently (well, not that recently, but it still feels recent to me) had a baby boy. This is very exciting news and I wanted to send a card and my well-wishes. I don't have a lot of baby stamps because it seemed like all my friends were done having babies. But they aren't, so I had to expand my repertoire of suitable images (more stamps - poor me!). I found this one at my LSS and it has a coordinating word-y image, which I used on the navy background.

I cased the sketch from Krista's summer class (the peapod one) and turned it portrait instead of horizontal. Really this card started out with the alcohol ink polished stone panel and I had a vision of that as the starting point, with soft blues and a dreamy quality. Then I had to colour this little lambie to match (used markers and paintbrush), and then took forrrrr-evvvverrrrr (said with all the dramatic emphasis I can muster) to find some matching blue cardstock to bring it all together. There were some tense moments at the last minute that it all wouldn't fit until my mother, who was visiting, suggested I turn the critical piece 90 degrees and whew! it all came together. (Have I mentioned that I have very poor spatial skills???) Anyway, thanks to my spatially gifted mother, this card all came together. I almost ruined it by over-stickling the sheep, but did you know that you can scrape most of the stickles off once they have dried. In the absence of a carding comb, it is a good way to remove excess glitter from a fleece.

Now I just need to get this and the present in the mail!

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Heartfelt wishes

Our wonderful office admin assistant has left for greener pastures and Friday wa her last day. She's a wonderful lady, one of those people who just brightens your day, so I wanted to make her a special card. There was a group card circulating somewhere, but I thought another one wouldn't hurt the matter (and I never did see the group one so I'm glad I made this one!).

I totally ripped off the layout from one we did at last year's Christmas class with Krista Schneider (it was the piggy one). However, I did chang up the image and the colour scheme to this. I have had a big crush on the Indian Summer collection and have been dying to use it, and this seemed like the perfect occasion. I cuddled up with Jean and Lionel on the telly (those reruns of As Time Goes By just never get old!) and had some happy times colouring. This came together really quickly since I was using patterned paper and a pre-designed layout. When I'm trying to match marker to paper, I do test swatches on a scrap of watercolour paper. I usually have little scraps like that to hand since I can't throw them out because they will come in handy. (However, I ruthlessly throw out any piece smaller than 1/2" square. One does need to keep the tide of scraps at bay after all.)

The sentiment is a SU rub on since I didn't have an appropriate stamp of the right length (gasp! it's true!). (My stamp collection is quite varied and I usually can find something, but I didn't have a sentiment suitable for a farewell that was between 1 1/2 and 2" long and no more than 1/2" high.) This is just the sort of papercrafting emergency I foresaw when I ordered the Chit Chat rub ons, and they did indeed save the day.

Thanks for stopping by.

Supplies: email me if you're interested. Rub-on: SU (chit chat) and bravo burgundy cardstock (plain and textured).

Jerome and Yvonne's house

When I showed this card to DH, he said it would be perfect for his aunt and uncle, who are Jerome and Yvonne. DH cracks me up. It's a lot of fun being married to the funniest guy around. (BTW, he now claims that he knew all along that the doors spell "JOY".) I do think we should send this to Jerome and Yvonne though. I tried out some rock candy here and it has a very snowy twinkle, without being glittery.

This was another of my stamping binge cards. I coloured it up last night with this Eskimo Kisses paper in mind. I kept the layout pretty simple - my brain was tired after a big day at work learning all about multilevel modelling for longitudinal surveys. This sounds harmless enough, but it was a full day workshop on 136 (it's true!) power point slides displaying the mathematical proofs and obscure syntax for calculating some sort of something to do with longitudinal surveys. It's the sort of thing that comes with a warning label on the text book and should only be attempted by a trained professional on a closed course (in other words by raving math geeks in a padded room!). It was just as well I had large doses of high-test stamping to look forward to at Krista's classes!!! Anyway, I will blame the peculiar combination of green trees and a snowscape on my temporarily addled brain. (And I will maintain to the last that any addling is only temporary.....)



BTW, Krista's classes were fantastic, beyond fantastic. I had such a lovely time. There were wonderful stampers there, and a real highlight was getting to meet IRL one of my blog fans, possibly my only blog fan who is not related to me by marriage or blood. I'm not sure what the netiquette is on being a fan of blog commenters (seems like it could be bordering on the immodest, but I won't dwell on that being someone whose blog exclusively contains her own creations and ramblings), but if I am allowed to be a fan of blog commenters, I am a big fan of Nimmy's! She has such lovely things to say and always makes my day. Thank you Nimmy! It was such a pleasure to meet you IRL. Just like my cards, you are wonderful in real life :-)

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies: some non-SU, including stamps, buttons and paper. SU: soft sky ribbon, bravo burgundy paper, old olive (kiwi kiss?? it's dark and I can't tell) paper.

Oiler Ornaments

I have been on a stamping binge! To reward myself for a lot of recent hard (ahem) work prepping for stamp classes, I have gone on a just-for-fun stamping binge! A fellow instructor at my LSS inpsired me with her stack of Christmas cards in various stages of completion so I have been stamping feverishly, with reckless abandon, and heedless of vendor, but just lots of fun images to colour in. Fun, fun, fun! I am also so excited because tomorrow the fall series of Krista Schneider's classes starts at my LSS. I absolutely cannot wait!!!! This creative binge almost feels like the stamping equivalent of carbo-loading before a marathon (but without all the yucky running).

Here's one of the things I have been working on. I have been doing a lot of traditional Christmas colour combinations for my classes, so I wanted to do something out of the box. That DH hates non-traditional colour combinations like this is beside the fact (and the icing on the cake hehehehe).... I'm not sure why I picked orange and blue, possibly due to ornament shape triggering some vestigial after-effects of growing up watching the Oilers in their heydey. Either that or I wanted to use my pack of Marrakech paper in blues and orange. You decide....

[I just spent way too long trying to photoshop this card with the Oilers' logo superimposed on the ornaments. It didn't really work very well (and I learned I would make a terrible internet hoax artist) and I was also worried about getting in trouble with the internet police and the Oilers' lawyers for having illegal images on my website. I am sure this is a totally reasonable fear. And furthermore it seemed like a good enough reason to quit trying to photoshop it and get back to stamping. I will trust that you can picture the effect I was going for, and no one will be driven crazy trying to learn to use photoshop or get hauled off to internet jail for some sort of copyright infringement....] On the upside, I now have the perfect card to send to Wayne and Janet!

Colourful Birthday

I am on a colourful card kick these days! I needed a card for a little girl's birthday party so I thought I would do one using some as-yet uninked rubber. This is Kenya Ketto - so cute, and really lends herself to multiple colours. Uncharacteristically, I found the papers first and then coloured her to match. (Usually I do it the other way around, but I was in a hurry tonight. I have a hot date with DH, Survivor/The Office and the couch.)

She's stamped with india ink, coloured with prismacolour pencils (unblended because I like the texture, and also too rushed/lazy to root out the OMS). Because it's a flower theme over at SB this week, and because it's for a 7-year-old girl, I added some flowers, embellished with rhinestones. Also a rhinestone on her wand. I will add some glitter now, but wanted to scan it in and I will be in trouble if I get any more glitter on the scanner....

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Supplies: I am not allowed to post most of them here under the rules of my demonstrator agreement but if you want to know, email me and I will answer. Paper: whisper white, basic black and rose red (SU).

Alcohol Ink Splatter Card

Here's something I came up with after being inspired by Tim Holtz's video clip on alcohol ink splatter technique. I thought it looked like a really cool thing to try, so I got the few supplies together (compressed air, glossy paper -not photo paper - and alcohol ink), put on an old shirt, and sat down to play. I can't quite recall all the colours of alcohol ink I used, but if I were to guess: citrus, lettuce, denim, sailboat blue, red pepper, cranberry, lemonade, and currant. I am a big believer in using lots of colours! But you knew that about me already.

This background was my second attempt, since it does take a bit of practice. I used a variety of colours, some bright, some deeper, just fooled around a bit really. DH was not at all impressed with the initial (pre-stamped) background, and to be fair, it did look a bit blobby and messy (but to be fair back again, this is the point).

I thought my grungey-collagey stamps would be perfect for this. I got them in Victoria (BC) when I was there last year and my aunt took me to her LSS. They're Australian (Stamp-It) and are really useful for this kind of thing - very pretty background stamps in interesting textures and shapes. I used the corner mesh with a flourish and the large flourish and stamped with black India ink. The sentiment is embossed in black and sponged in yellows and greens, with a bit of navy around the edges. It's more vibrant in real life. (I couldn't get through a post without saying it looks better in real life, now could I!)

Normally I have a hard time figuring out what to do with this kind of background (generally being loath to cover up the splendid colour, but I took a deep breath and went for it. This one looked great on an early try with black and real red. I thought the sentiment panel being fairly plan balanced things nicely. I had some flowers in my stash, with some brads to finish it off. As an afterthought I pried off the sentiment panel and added the cord, and stuck it down again. This card also has a side hinge. If you're going to go outside the box, go all the way I say. Nothing says "wild and crazy stamper" like a side hinge card......

Here's a better shot of the alcohol ink (at the expense of washing out the sentiment panel and flowers). There's quite a lot of colour going on. It's so pretty that I want to try this again!

I highly recommend this type of card for late-night NVR (no vendor restriction) stamping therapy. The bright colours will really cheer you up and you will feel extremely clever and pleased with yourself for very little effort. Plus you get to use the canned air that has been kicking around the office for ages!

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies: Stamps: sentiment - Full of Life set (Stampin' Up), background - Laura Koh set (Stamp-It, code sisetoo8lk); Ink: versamark, India Ink, citrus, yoyo yellow (yes, I used yoyo yellow on a card!), gable green, tempting turquoise, night of navy (yikes - did I really use that many????); Paper: whisper white, glossy, basic black, real red; Other: Adirondack alcohol inks, black embossing powder, silver cord (SU), Making Memories flowers (Fifth Avenue collection), BasicGrey brads.