Fish on a string

With all the rain, I was feeling bored, and decided to play with my beads.  I noticed that I had a lot of larger beads that were sitting unused for years, and I thought they might look nice strung.  I don't normally do stringing - stringing is to beadwork what salads are to cooking; it's not about the technique, it's the ingredients.

I have had these little fish beads forever.  There are only seven of them, and the store where I bought them doesn't even sell them any more, so I either needed to come up with a design that would be good enough with those few fish, or get rid of them (never my first choice).  Once I developed the pattern for the necklace, I saw that I only needed three of the fish!  I decided the rest would go well on a bracelet.

I like the freshwater pearls and the silver filigree beads on the necklace better than the pearlized glass and rocaille beads on the bracelet, but I used a thick stretchy beading cord for the bracelet, and the holes weren't big enough on the better beads.  It's all right - the fish are finally out of my stash!

Challenges:

• Crafty-emblies - under the sea
• The House that Stamps Built - anything but a card
• Craft My Life - all crafts
• Craft-Room Challenge - oriental
• Ladybug Crafts Ink - things with a P (pearls, porcelain fish)

Burnt

a•muse studio has a free stamp set out for Breast Cancer Awareness; you only pay $3 for the shipping.  It has 8 different cling mount rubber stamps in the set, and they are good for other things besides BCA, so it is a really good deal.  I went to a workshop yesterday where we used some of the stamps in the set.  You can see some of the cards we made on Chris's blog, but I will warn you - when you see how awesome Chris's cards are, you won't be able to keep yourself from ordering the set.

As I was embossing one of my cards, I got distracted and burned the paper.  Curiously, the pink paper turned orange where it was burnt!  It happened to be in the center of a flower, so I decided to go for it and burned the centers of the other flowers.

The white embossing powder also changed color to a soft caramel.  The vellum piece covers a spot where the paper was a little too burnt.  It makes me want to deliberately burn other colors of a•muse studio cardstock, just to see what will happen (other than possibly setting fire to my house).

Challenges:

• SweetStamps - burnt embossing
• Critter Challenge - embossing
• The Paper Girls - photo inspiration
• Gem of a Challenge - flowers
• Freshly Brewed - thinking of you

Cardinal

This card has three things I love:  Vintage Silver Lustre paper from Paper Temptress, an image from The Angel Company (now defunct), and the Woven Bakers Twine technique from the Technique Junkies newsletter.

I was strongly inspired by this image to make a card, but I wanted to make a Christmas card for my stash, so I substituted a cardinal for an owl; the berries made me think of the bakers twine.  It would have easy to dump a lot more embellishment on there, but really, it has everything it needs already - nice shimmer from the paper, texture from the woven twine, and 3 different textures of paper. 

Challenges:

• Stamptacular Sunday - no rules
• CMC Copic Challenge - touch of red
• CraftyHazelnut's Christmas - black, white, and one other color (the branch doesn't count!)
• Clearly Inspired - twine
• The Stamp Man - bird

Ride on

I wanted a quick card of encouragement for my daughter, who is studying hard at college (4th year).  She rides her bike around the grounds, so this stamp set (enjoy the ride by a•muse studio) is perfect for her.

I used the In the Middle technique from the latest Technique Junkies newsletter, and used the leaves from the  marvelous marigolds  stamp set for the fall leaves - I have a lot of leaf stamps, but I wanted the bold image ones for embossing and overlaying.  The sentiment is punched and glued on.  The sentiment was embossed with white, but the white looked too stark against the warm colors, so I colored it with copics.

Challenges:
Allsorts - Autumn colors
Speedy Fox and Friends - leaves
Charisma Cardz -CAS
Inspired by - photo inspiration

Rosette dare

A girlfriend sent me a photo of a Halloween rosette decoration she made at a SU workshop.  I liked it, and felt challenged to make a similar item. I didn't have the punches and stamps she used, so I improvised with what I had.

The lighting isn't great, but you get the general idea.  I used about half a sheet of CTMH double-sided paper for all the DP in the project.  There was some stamping on the orange cardstock, but most of this is just punching, die-cutting, and glue.  I used a bar coaster for a sturdy base; I would guess the whole project is about 6 inches across.  Mostly, I built depth by curling the paper into cones.  The sentiment is diecut from an old Zip-e-cuts alpha.  This project is 100% paper; no buttons or ribbons or bling.  I even restrained from using metal or glitter!

Challenges:
Aud Sentiments - Halloween sentiment
Crafting for all Seasons - spooky
Decorate to Celebrate - for a Halloween party
Fab n Funky - black, orange, choice
Inky Impressions - anything but a card

Nordic noel flowers

I love the reindeer in the nordic noel stamp set from a•muse studio, and the dove is great too.  the Noel is perfect, and those tend to be the only three stamps in the set I use.  it isn't that the other stamps aren't good, it's that I don't know what to do with them.  Take, for example, the little flower border - so cute, but what to do with it?  I challenged myself to use it on this card:

The reindeer and flowers are embossed, and the pine branches and snowflake are punched.  A bold image like this is great on a masculine card.

Challenges:
52 Christmas Card Throwdown - colors
Crafty Hazelnut's - snowflakes
I ♥ 2 Stamp - sketch
One Stop Craft - heat embossing
TandaStamps - manly

reindeer ambition

The last time my mother came to visit, she saw a picture of a deer looking up (very unusual, deer don't usually look up, but this one was reaching for food) in a wildlife magazine, and said that it would be a great idea for a card, to have a deer looking looking up at Santa flying through the sky.  It occurred to me that I had the necessary stamps to do it, but only today did I get around to making it happen.

 The deer doesn't look up on the stamp, either - I just stamped the head, and drew in the neck.  It was surprisingly easy to execute - I spent more time figuring out how to layer it onto a card than I did stamping and inking.  The stamps are a•muse studio.

Challenges:

Amusing Challenges - outdoor scene

Blogger's Challenge - take flight

The House that Stamps Built - masking

Simon says Stamp - dies

Stamp n Doodle - wet embossing (the santa sleigh is embossed)

Anything goes - animals

Baker's twine

It's the latest thing - weaving baker's twine!  I'm sure you've seen it all around lately.  I decided it would look even better on a linen textured cardstock.  The sentiment is from a•muse studio.

This was fun and super easy - I will have to try it again!

Challenges:
Amusing Challenges - baker's twine
Little Miss Muffet - simplicity
Crafts and me - sentiment
Divas by Design - texture
Fab n Funky - no patterned paper