Summer Card Camp Week 3

Here's the colour combination for this week's project at Summer Card Camp. I was stuck in Christmas theme cards, but couldn't bring myself to do a Christmas card. It's July!

Speaking of July, we have started getting our veggie box from a local farm (Foster's Farm). We've been enjoying the most delicious fresh vegetables. Tonight was beet greens, sauteed in flavoured butter I had in the freezer thanks to Jamie Oliver. The greens were delicious and I swear you feel healthier just cutting them up, inhaling the antioxidants and enjoying the emerald green leaves and ruby stems.

Back to the card. Here I started with a scrap of off white paper, stamped the quote (Fred Mullett) and embossed it in Bavarian Bronze (metallic brown). I thought I would incorporate the stone and butterfly imagery from this poem and stamped my Stampotique stone (large and small sides) here and there in Lake Mist. I antiqued the edges a bit with distress ink and matted it on some brown card and some medium brown Bazzill. The card base is 3 1/4" x 6 1/2" and stamped with a butterfly and the word Papillon (both Quietfire Designs). I used a bit of fancy Japanese paper for red accent behind. More red elements are the red eyelets (I knew they would eventually find a home on a project!), some crochet cotton and a button. The button was a late-game addition, added on this morning before I went to work. This description makes it sound like the card came together in a hurry and part of some master plan, but really it came together like all the others, trial and error, and hemming and hawing, trying different things. I like how the butterflies came out - stamped in Toffee versafine, and the lovely "papillon" from QF, hand lettered by the owner, Suzanne Cannon. A long time ago I dabbled in calligraphy and have always loved it. As for that poem, well, it came in a lovely parcel of Fred Mullett stamps, as the English translation to the Japanese calligraphy stamp I bought. I presume someone more cultured than me would be able to plumb the depths of that poem, but for me it was the ideal shape for this card, and had the words "stone" and "butterfly". More opportunistic than cultured, granted. Still, maybe one of my readers will enlighten me. In the meantime, I'm pleased with how this turned out even if I don't have the faintest idea who I'd give it to.

Well, off to enjoy an episode or two of Game of Thrones with hubby. Sean Bean....now there's a reason to pay for extended cable!

Summer Card Camp Week 2

Hello! Here's my card for Summer Card Camp, Week 2, featuring this week's colour combination (pale yellow, rusty orange, poppy, lime, grass green). I'm also using this card for this week's Bellarific Friday at Stamping Bella. I placed the three daisy stamps on an acrylic block and stamped them down the length of a 3"x6 1/2" piece of Bella's Bestest paper. I chose Copics in this scheme, or as close as I could get. I don't have a juicy yellow green like that - all mine are a bit greyer. I love that juicy lime colour - you can almost smell the lime zest! Anyway, I coloured it and then had to figure out the layout, which has to include ribbon for this week's Bellarific challenge. You know me and ribbon (love-hate releationship - I love ribbon, it hates me). Anyway, I finished off the card by matting onto some So saffron (SU) and Poppy Parade (SU) in an oblong card. I embellished the flowers with matching stickles (lime green, yellow, copper, Christmas red) so they're quite sparkly in real life.

NSR: Two notable family achievements today: DD2 (age 5) rode her two-wheeler today for the first time, no one holding on, no training wheels, just free-wheeling down the street and pleased as Punch. She must have gone up and down the street a dozen times (Hubby's going to be sore tomorrow - jogged alongside). Second notable achievement, different scale, different continent, different generation. Grandpa is due to reach the summit of Mt Kilimanjaro at sunrise, which is some time in the middle of the night tonight my time (see earlier post on baffling nature of timezones). He was going to try to send a text, but wasn't sure whether it would work. Part of me hopes that at least mountain tops are unsullied by digital traffic. But part of me hopes it works. Apparently he's having a great time and really enjoying himself.

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Glimmer fish

Here's another card I made with a glimmer-misted sheet. I embossed the fish image (Heather's Stamping Haven) in black and matted on a blue-green piece, then black. The card base is more of the same sheet of glimmer misted paper, but I sponged on some sequin waste, stamped a shell (Stampin' Up) in orange distress ink, and a fan coral (Coronado Island) in black. A little piece of netty looking mesh ribbon is an accent. I misted that with light yellow to tie it in. Overall, I like it, but it's a bit busy. If I had my time back, I'd re-think the black fan coral and the really dark sequin waste. Still, I like it well enough. In real life it has a life of its own with all that sparkle.

NSR: The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are in town today, but we're not battling the crowds. We went last year to see the Queen, but that was enough for a few years. We'll watch on TV. I had my last day of work at my old job yesterday - very emotional. Was there way too late cleaning out my filing cabinet and backing things up. That always takes longer than you think it's going to. Backing up is a pain in the neck - and the program we use at work won't allow you to take out the disk without turning everything off and on again. That adds a lot of time and headache. I made stern vows to myself to become paragon of organization and order in my new job. This may be a vain hope, but hope one must. Well, must dash. 1001 things to do today and I forgot to add blogging to my list so it would "count" as a legitimate activity.

Summer Card Camp Week 1

Hello!

As you can see by the image below, I'm doing the summer card camp I saw advertised on Jennifer McGuire's blog (link in sidebar). This week's colour challenge is shown below and was a real stretch for me, as I don't normally go for such bright colours. But that's what challenges are all about - stretching creativity.















Here's the card I made, with a stamped image on Heather's 130 lb cardstock. I will have to check where the image is from, but I got it at Heather's Stamping Haven.


I coloured it with Copics, keeping to the scheme, and added some pencil crayon for depth, and stickles for sparkle. The orange piece is embossed, and the sentiment (Stampin' Up) is punched with an SU punch and accented with the perfect Swarovski crystals - they are pink or purple or orange depending on how you look at them. The card base is rich razzleberry and stamped with a dotty flourish (Impress Rubber Stamps).


Thanks for stopping by!

This says it all (or at least some of it!)

I picked this up a while ago, and gave it to myself for my birthday recently. I loved this - it's by Anne Taintor and there are a bunch of great magnets and other gifty items like it. I got another one that says, "I always wanted to be someone. Now I realize I should have been more specific." Too funny.

I was a bit down about this milestone birthday, but thanks to the kindness and generosity and love and support of friends and family, I am enjoying it immensely. Hurrah indeed!

And I want to know where Anne Taintor got my picture.

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!

Inkurable Stampers June Challenge

Here's my entry for the June challenge at Inkurable Stampers, which is Spots, Dots and Circles.

I recently took a great class at Heather's, featuring Glimmer Mist and I used that technique here, misting and spraying and bleaching out selected portions. I coloured some back in with pencil crayon too. I chose the bird image (Hero Arts) for the circles on it. I also added some paint circles, and the background has a circular motif on the stamp (Stampers Anonymous). The message (also Stampers Anon) is embossed in black. The paper is from a Tim Holtz pack, two sides of one sheet. And a little round clock brad to finish it off. In real life it's quite sparkly. I'm not sure about it - maybe the square is too square. Still, needed to get my entry in before the end of the month, which arrives early due to time zones in Australia being several days ahead of us here in Canada. (I love to say things like that to hubby, who is an engineer and immediately starts to explain the quantum mechanics of time zones and how it's not actually time travel, it's to do with the curvature of the earth and Sir Sanford Fleming trying to catch a train. It's at this point I normally tune out so I can't exactly say how time zones work, other than it's either much earlier or much later somewhere else, and will always be the wrong time to call.)

Thanks for stopping by!