Pretty birdie!

I made a card in this vein a while back, but this one is definitely the quick and easy version. This one is the standard size (half sheet, folded). I started with some lovely new heavy weight smooth white cardstock and stamped Picotage Print in Versamark Dazzle and embossed with clear powder. I then applied several colours of fluid chalk ink, mostly with my small brayer, but I used the sponge wand too, and some cats eyes direct to paper. I stuck to purples and blues, but used a bunch of different ones to get depth. I would like to tell you that you can get the same effect with one or two colours, but it would be a lie. You would get a different effect and it might even be nice (I wouldn't know, not being able to use only a few colours, even if my life depended on it). But it wouldn't be the same. The colours I used are listed at the bottom.

Anyway, I merrily brayered and wanded and sponged and dabbed till I got a little too much colour on (sigh). Then I removed the embossing using a dry hot iron and stamped on the bird image (Song Bird, Penny Black*) in Dragonfly Black and embossed in black. It's mounted on black, then on a lovely piece of tsumugi paper. I couldn't decide which colour suited best, the purple or the blue, so in true Winnie-the-Pooh fashion, I used both so as not to be greedy. A few accents in the form of sheer ribbon (knotted, thank you very much) and pearl stickers. All in all, this took me less than half an hour to make, in part because I'd figured out the design and colour scheme already for the other card. But really, this type of card is quick to throw together, and you still get a bit of a wow factor. I spent the most time hunting down my pearl stickers.

Heather asked me to try this white paper and I have to give it two thumbs up. I like it as much as the heavy, heavy 180 lb paper that I don't know where to get anymore now that Western Educational closed. This new paper is slightly lighter weight (and probably easier on my cutting blades), but still has a good heft. I loaded the ink and none bled through. I also had good success embossing, removing and re-embossing. Not all papers are so cooperative. So, when all is said and done, I really like this paper. It's also sturdy enough to make a good card base when you want a white one. I'll be glad to have a local source of this paper!

Sources: Heavy white cardstock, Picotage Print, Versamark Dazzle and Colorbox Fluid Chalk, small brayer (Ranger), sponge wand: Heather's Stamping Haven. Penny Black: hard to find a Canadian source, if you find one, let me know. I think I got this from Addicted to Rubber Stamps. Tsumugi paper: Heather sometimes carries it (she got me hooked), and I bought this batch from California Paper Goods. You can also get it at The Papery in the Glebe (Ottawa), and if you go there, you should also check out their other Japanese papers (washi? yuzen?). I got some nice tsumugi square notecards with coloured envelopes. They are so gorgeous that I am battling my every hoarding instinct and even went so far as to consider using one as a card base. Baby steps, my little one, baby steps.

Colours of ink used: In case you are interested (or want to wag a puritanical finger at my wanton colour use): Ice Blue, French Blue, Prussian Blue, Wisteria, Warm Violet, Dark Peony, Blue Iris, Night Sky (all Colorbox except Night Sky, which is Versamagic).

Birthday Card

This card is what is known in stamping circles as a BRAK - Birthday Random Act of Kindness. (Not to be confused with the BRAK diet [bananas, rice, applesauce and kielbasa***], to be fed to children after a tummy upset to ease their little g-i tracts back to health.)

It's not really random, though, as it's from my mother, who was fairly instrumental in me having a birthday at all. I suppose my birthday could be considered a random event in the cosmic scheme of things (or not, depending on your theological leanings), but this card was a custom-made treasure, just for me and the farthest thing from random you can get!

As for the card itself, a little stamping-scene investigation reveals that it is a lovely floral swirl (a new one from the Stamp Barn), stamped and embossed in gold, and coloured with Twinkling H20's. It's stamped on pale blue paper, which has been sponged around the edges and matted on black. The perfect ribbon from the stash (pale blue with gold edge) is tied in a darling bow for accent. The whole piece is layered on the most gorgeous Japanese paper (washi? yuzen?). This paper is so beautiful that I could never in a million years have sacrificed a whole quarter sheet for one card. This is why I know my mother loves me and this card is the farthest from random you can get!

Thanks Mum! I love it!

***This is not medical advice. I am not a physician. I'm not even all that funny. And where I'm from, it's koubassa, not kielbasa, as in koobie on a bun! What is with these Ontarians and their weird sausage appellations.....

Public Service Announcement in case I have a reader from Australia:

Platypus Creek has a big sale on right now (till 22 Jul) on Sunshine Designs and Stamp Barn Stamps (50% off wood mounted and 10% off cling), and other things too. Kinda neat to think of stamps from my neck of the woods being stamped with on the other side of the world. Makes me want to dash off to Australia for the sale, except that my friend told me it takes 29 hours. So not really a dash. As my dad likes to say, "If you're going there, you shouldn't be starting from here."

Big Bow Club

Hello! Thanks for stopping by!

Today's card is living proof that you can teach an old leopard new spots. I've joined the enormous bow club! Kinda-sorta. I cheated - it's not layered on massive buttons and tied with twine. But still, for a big bow virgin, it's a big bow. I was hesitant, but I took the plunge. And I feel that the bold image and the strong colours called for a bold embellishment. In fact, the turquoise brads, which usually scream on a card, are muted to a whisper in the face of all the other exuberance on this card.

This was going to be a club project, because the hostess is a bright colours fan, but I couldn't remember if we'd done this technique. Also, it takes a while, and the last time I tried to get the ladies to do some messy stamping, there was almost open revolt. Instead we will be doing a nice tidy project, but still with bright colours :-) No crooked letters and blurry watercolours!



Anyway, back to the card. I just love this summery colour scheme! It's the new colours with tempting turquoise: crushed curry, dusty durango and melon mambo (mamba? I always forget which is the steamy dance and which is the deadly snake...and where I would normally trail off into a mumble to disguise my uncertainty, I have no such options with a blog, because as liberally sprinkled with ellipses as this blog is, they would look ridiculous, even by my astonishingly low standards, at the end of mamba. Mambo. Whatever....). I would love to have some flip flop (or plip plops as DD2 used to say) stamps for this colour scheme. I also love how the watercolouring on the curry cardstock turned out. It's so intense, and it blended quite well. I'll be trying that again too. I also love the white embossing - just freshens things up where black would be too severe. I just love it when a design comes together [the next day after a lot had been thrown out and I went to bed in a stamping huff].



So do you think this needs two more turquoise brads? I wasn't sure if that would be too symmetrical, and once the holes are punched, there's no turning back. (Which is why the brads are on there in the first place.....)



Thanks for looking!



NSR SPOILER: Has anyone watched Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food? I was really inspired. I try to cook for my family, but living in town now we eat out more than we should. This week I made a few stir fries, even venturing to the local fishmonger for a fishy stir fry. I was able to coax the kids into eating it too - and they loved it (not so much the second night, turns out that purple cabbage, despite it's wonderful colour, is still cabbage...). I love the idea of cooking in the community. I will have to let the idea percolate a bit.


Supplies (all Stampin' Up): Stamps: Jumbo Alphabet, One of a Kind; Ink: whisper white, dusty durango, crushed curry, melon mambo; Paper: crushed curry, dusty durango, melon mambo, tempting turquoise; Other: eyelet border punch, crushed curry ribbon, white embossing powder, tempting turquoise brads.

Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day! The forecast was for rain, but it has "fined up" as they say in Canada's easternmost parts.

DH is making a picnic and we're off to do some kiddy stuff to celebrate the day. We sang Happy Birthday to Canada this morning - 142 years old. We stand on guard for thee!

No card today. I did a bit of stamping last night and colouring. I'm making a waterfall card for my dad with the Under the Stars set. He loves the outdoors, so it's appropriate.

I wanted to post where I got the Four Little Birds stamp I posted recently (and I will try to post the sources of things if I can remember them). It's available in Canada from Shamrock Rose Treasures . I just looked at her website and she has the most beautiful journals with covers from the Book of Kells. Gorgeous! There are also covers with prints of manuscripts by Mozart and Beethoven and lots of stuff like that. Double gorgeous! I think I'll hold off since I just ordered some new BasicGrey from Paperworks Co, some tsumugi paper and other fancy stuff from California Paper Goods (chugging its way northeast as we speak), and I have a cart on the go at A Muse. I'm trying to resist that. Hey! Just remembered it's a new month! I will have to revisit that cart. They have the farmer and the field on sale and I have a card in mind with a really dreadful pun...... C'mon, you know you're thinking it too! I emailed A Muse to see if they have that stamp, and they said they would consider it since it's not one they have. Cross your fingers for me that they make it :-)

Thanks for stopping by. Happy Canada Day!

Big thank you!

Here's a fun little card I made for Mother's Day, but am only just now getting around to posting it. I fell in love with this image (Four Little Birds, by Stamps Happen) and it was perfect for painting with my Twinkling H20s. I pretty much followed the colouring style on the stamp itself, I liked it so much. Ornithologists might beg to differ, but I think of these as pretty little Eastern Bluebirds. We had a pair nesting down the road from us at our old place. They're really lovely, though not as vibrantly blue as the Mountain Bluebirds that nested at my childhood home in the West.

My mother loves birds, has lots of feeders, and a pair of binoculars next to practically every window in case she needs to watch a bird at short notice. I thought she'd like this card, and indeed she did.

This image had a lot going on and a beautiful shimmer from the twinklings, so I kept the layout pretty simple, and sized it to go in a small open ended envelope (SU). Inside I stamped "Happy Mother's Day". There are a couple of embellishments (sheer ribbon and Adirondack acrylics in Lettuce), image on black and brocade blue and that's it! I really liked this card and it was one where I used the stamp right after I got it. (I normally like to let them age, or cure, for some time.)

Thanks for stopping by!

PS. To Nimmy: thank you so much for your lovely comments on my blog. They always make my day! Yes, this is really me, thought I don't know how proud I should be about ranting on about B&E Fairies, etc. I'm just grateful you think I'm real and not crazy! lol Thank you once again for all your kind and supportive words - they really mean a lot. If you were my neighbour, I'd have you over for colouring all the time, and as a special favour, I would labour hard and make you a great card the next time you went for poutine. BTW, thanks for the chip wagon referral - I will have to google it and see if we're anywhere close to the fabled fries.

A Musing little card

I was cruising through blogland and stopped at Paper Trufflez, one of my favourite blogs. I followed the links to this challenge leading up to A-MUSE-APALOOZA, which was to make a card with ribbon as the inspiration.

I've had these A Muse stamps for a while, just waiting for a good time to ink them up. I really love this little stamp store, and the image struck a chord with me ;-)

I really like the A Muse style of stamping, which keeps things simple, lots of open space, and a little glitz here or there, a ribbon and some nice pattern. I tried to do that here, with the ribbon (wide grosgrain) as my starting point. I picked this nice stripe, which was languishing on my desk, rejected from a previous project. I trimmed it to fit here, added a lime scalloped stripe for the sentiment, added a bit of shadow and red glitter pen for accent (will probably go back in with stickles but I didn't want to wait for it to dry and it would have gotten my scanner messy).

This was fun to make. I've been doing a lot of manly cards lately so it was fun to just get out my stamps and play. It's also a bit of a change of pace for me, since my brayer didn't get involved and no chalk inks touched this paper. Anywhere. I couldn't resist the teensiest bit of colouring though. It was fun! I think I could get A Ddicted to this kind of thing!

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies: Stamps: A Muse; Paper: BasicGrey (Gypsy - stripe and lime), Memory Box duplex cardstock (I believe it's Forget-me-not); Ink: Van Dyke Brown (Nick Bantock line, Ranger); Other: Stampin' Up wide grosgrain ribbon in Real Red, Fiskars scallop edge scissors, Prismacolor pencil crayons.

Bon voyage

First of all, please accept my apologies for the terrible scan! (Do I say that every time or what!) I will have to break down and get a photo tent, or a photographer. I had a hard time scanning the colours and still picking up the letters on the brads (which spell "dream"). In real life it's quite rich. In fact, DH first saw it and said with some feeling that it was really nice. His usual observations are not normally so positive, tending to focus more on crooked pieces and cards that don't open (which by the way was the intended design feature, as anyone who has made a pocket card knows...). If this gets a gush (relatively speaking of course) from DH, it must be a good one (despite the total lack of stamping!).

Here I am attempting the "detail inset", used to great effect by more accomplished photographers and bloggers than I. So this is what it feels like to ape one's betters....

This card is the living proof that I have almost enough stuff in my stash to make any possible card (lacking only aeronautical flight charts). The two hours I spent last night looking for this collage sheet is proof that I need a better organizing system (maybe I will add this to the photographer's job description!). I usually go by the system "I know where I put it", which failed me in this case. I only have a few collage sheets, so they don't get their own "spot". I hunted high and low (literally) and finally gave up, hoping that sleeping on it would trigger a memory. No luck. I decided tonight (card needed tomorrow) that I would have to look in every single spot (again) and it worked. I found them (mysteriously) in a stamp drawer. Hmmm. I blame this on fairies who come in and mess up my house at night. Apparently they also rearrange my stamping stuff (give me back my clear ruler please!). I am waiting for them to make dinner while I'm at work.

Back to my card. One of the people on my team is leaving on Friday for a big trip he's been planning for a few years. It's very ambitious. He's a pilot and they are flying a small aircraft over 3000 km. He's very excited about this, needless to say. When I saw the aircraft image on this collage sheet (Crafty Secrets), I realized it would be perfect. I also used the tag and post card elements, and the words "trip of a lifetime", "far off places", and "enjoy the journey" are on the inside. The brads are letters that spell out dream. The background is an aeronautical flight chart. (Sidenote here with kudos to DH who was dispatched at last minute for printer ink and it took him 3 stores, and then he even printed it for me. When I called him a Prince Among Men, he said, "Well I prints, anyway." Not just princely, but funny too!) Thanks to DH, I was able to print the flight chart (which I found free! Yay NavCan sample page!!! Usually they are at least $16.50 to buy - yikes! - and didn't I swear off atrocious punctuation and run-on sentences???) and use it for the background. I'm assuming the recipient will recognize it for what it is. He must have a zillion of these things for his trip.

He'll be flying over some wilderness areas and so I will also make him a kit: bear repellent (bottle of barbecue sauce with new label), a mosquito swatter (piece of 2x4), and face cream (Watkins bug bite ointment). I'll do a bit of a presentation tomorrow at lunch. We're sending him off in style, going out for lunch at the chip wagon across the road. Yummy poutine, here we come! (For those non-Canucks, and possibly Canucks outside central Canada, poutine is a tasty concoction of french fries, gravy and cheese curds. If you can stand the guilt, it's delicious!)

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies: Adventures & Travel collage sheet (Crafty Secrets), fibres (Making Memories), Concho letter brads (Colorbok); Ink - Memories Artprint Brown (edging); Paper: Really Rust, Basic Black, Bordering Blue.