Center Step Card

Believe it or not, I started this project with the idea to make a Christmas card with a dancing bear on it.

The stamp is from SweetStamps, and the sentiment is pieced from an old CTMH alpha.  This is the first time I've tried to spell a word vertically with it. The outfit on the woman is paper pieced. My flower did not come out the way I originally intended, either.  I don't know what happened here, but I think it is all right.

Challenges:

• SweetStamps - centerstep card
• Crafting when we can - homemade flower
• Addicted to stamps - colors
• Sugar Creek Hollow - vintage
• A Creative Romance - metal

Plane ATC

Planes, trains, and automobiles was the theme for an ATC mingle the altereddesigns group was having.  I hadn't made any ATCs in a long while, so I thought I would give it a go.

Embossing, burnishing, tissue tape, punches, and doodling - iI felt pretty good about it, until I check the due date for the mingle - it was last Friday.  Ouch!

Stamps are from Close To My Heart.  There is a story about the airplane punch - I bought it on clearance at Michael's a few years back. I used it exactly once, for a small set of airplane inchies.  I had even forgotten that I had it, until someone, googling around for an airplane punch (this one is discontinued), found my blog post about my inchies.  She asked if I would be willing to sell it, so I decided that it needed some love more than it needed to stay at my house.  However, my gut was telling me that if I got rid of the punch, I would surely need some little airplanes, so I punched out about a dozen before I boxed it up and mailed it to her.  This is one of those dozen.

Challenges:

• Papercraft Star - use a stamp
• Whimsical Designs - Embossing
• Oldie but a goodie - transport (airplane punchout)
• Party Time Tuesdays - anything but a card
• Cardmania - punches

Tag suitable for mailing

I tried another Tim type tag, with the idea that it could fit into a normal envelope for mailing.

I love this background paper from a•muse studio - the print is small enough that it looks like book text, but it has "T'was the Night before Christmas" written in paragraphs on it, so you never have to worry about strange text showing.  It has a nice ivory color, which looks good plain or burnished with distress ink, like I did here. all the stamps here are a•muse studio, too. I used the Blended Glitter and the Faux Vellum technique from the Technique Junkies newsletter; the burnished emboss resist is a basic Tim Holtz technique.  The framed sentiment is from CTMH.  It has a little dimension from pop dots, but nothing that would upset a postal machine.

Challenges:

• ABC Christmas - favorite punch (pine branch is my favorite Christmas punch)
• Crafting for all Seasons - red, green, and glitter (on the tree and the coloring)
• Creative Moments - anything but a card
• Dragon's Dream Tag It On - Christmas tag
• Papercraft Star - Christmas Tree

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

Tutorial: A Fan using the Dahlia fold

Today I want to show you how to make a fan embellishment for your paper projects that will lie flat.  Of course you can make an accordion folded fan, but it will not fare well once you stuff it in an envelope.  This fan is deeply dimensional, but flattens nicely.

The two main things you will need are double-sided paper and circle punches.  The radius of your fan will be the diameter of the circles you will need to cut.  For example, if you want a fan that is two inches wide, you will need a one inch circle punch.  If you don't have double-sided paper, then color the back by brayering or burnishing with a dye ink.

If your paper has a repeating motif, try to punch your circles so that they are identical.  

This paper doesn't have a repeating motif, so I tried to simply make sure they looked as similar as possible on the top edge.

Crease each circle into quarters by first folding it in half vertically, opening it back up, then folding it in half horizontally, then opening it again.  This is the back of my demonstration piece.   I cannot stress this enough - keep track of the top of your circle!  Double-check before you fold!

With the back side facing up, fold the curves towards the center, using the bottom and side creases as guidelines.  Because the back side is up, it is very easy to accidentally fold the wrong edges.  Double-check before you fold!

To complete the "petal", flip it over so the right side is up.  fold the two folded edges from the previous step to the center crease.  It looks a little open in this photo because I'm not pressing it down, but the two edges do meet in the middle.

Put an arc of glue on your base.  I like tacky glue for this because I can slide the petals around to adjust them.  This base is an ATC, and the circles I am using here are 1 1/4 inches.

Here is the completed card.  After I glued the petals in a fan shape, I put a doodad in the middle.  This particular doodad is a gold charm, and it already had a hole for a ribbon.   I like putting ribbons on my fans, a consequence of too many years at the ren faire.

You can go to any size.  You can see by the grid underneath that the circles are only slightly over a half inch in diameter.  Note also that I carefully punched the paper to give me identical circles, and lined them up so that the white flower is at the top.

It's an inchie!  a fancy brad is enough for a hinge.

Stripes are great for these fans, but one again, be careful how you line them up!  they will look good either horizontal or vertical, but terrible if you mix them up or don't pay attention.

This is a standard size card.  I used 2 inch circles, and to make the handle, I first punched a small flower out of gold cardstock, then punched a hole for the ribbon.  I wrapped the ribbon in gold wire to make a handle.  See how dramatic the stripes are?

I hope you will give this a try.  I would love to see your results!

 UPDATE:

Diane in Idaho sent me a photo of her fan.  She says that this is a work in progress, but doesn't this fan work perfectly with the image?  The heart brad at the hinge is terrific, too!  Then she made this one, using half-inch circles:

Jeannie has a great dahlia fold fan on her blog - you can see how great it looks when the papers in the fan are echoed in the layers on the card.  She also made a medallion using scalloped circles.

Becky Partan of My Paper Moon Stamps put made a card using the same paper in the background, the fan, and paperpieced as the kimono on her image .  She left the back white, and the contrast really pops!

Vicky did an awesome job using this fan in her vintage themed shadowbox. Not only geishas hold fans!

Easter Card on Passover?

Happy Passover!  This is not my Seder night, as my husband is out of town until tomorrow, and that is when my son and daughter will come for dinner too, so I quietly blessed and ate my matzah and went on with my evening.  I knew I needed a card for my mother in law, and I was absolutely in love with this image (cutest bunny ever!), so...

 
The image is from Sliekje, of course, printed on poison ivory iridescent paper from the PaperTemptress. The patterned papers are from an old CTMH set, Victorian Elegance, and so is the copper cardstock and copper brads.  The sentiment is from TAC, so you can see I don't really have any brand loyalty to anyone.  I just buy what I like.

Challenges:
Creative Belli - bunnies
For Fun - colors
Lil Red Wagon - Easter
The Paper Variety - Flowers

Fun with Shapes and More - animals
Crafty Catz - Furry Friends
Nettie G - color a favorite digi

Scrap doll

One last bookmark doll, I promise! This one is unique in that all the paper on this card except the base is from scraps. The hair and head are leftovers from the other dolls I've made, but everything else is from a CTMH class I took last month. Unlike other workshops I've attended, Michelle doesn't give us precut pieces for our cards; she gives us uncut pieces of paper and a cutting diagram. There is always a lot left over, sometimes enough to duplicate all the cards we make at the workshop and then some. Anyway, I used the leftover CTMH paper because I knew that all the colors and papers would go together without even thinking about it.

Fast forward a month - I'm at this month's card class, and we are chatting about CTMH blog hops, and it's time for me to go, so I ask what I should do with my plastic drink cup (I was looking for a recycling bin), and Michelle tells me that I should use it on a card for the recycling challenge on the Heart 2 Heart blog.

So, I took it home and punched a butterfly out of it, and hit it briefly with my heat gun to curl it a little.  The tan color of the solo cup goes nicely with the muted tones of the paper, I think.  It was easy enough to add it to the card with a glue dot.

Other challenges:
WoodwareUSA - anything goes
Stamping Vacation - no black ink
Papertake Weekly - dimension
A Spoon Full of Sugar - small creature (butterfly)
Rubber Redneck - color
Freshly Brewed - cute and sweet
Fabulous Friday - handmade embellishment

gift box for Valentines

I talked about a CTMH workshop I attended yesterday, and today I wanted to show you the gift box we made:

The cover is a clear slider, made from an 8.5 inch square of acetate.  The box was made from a couple of pieces black cardstock.  There are 4 mini cards with envelopes in here, along with the three pieces of candy.  It's lovely, but I have no idea who to give it to!  the "kiss me" cards are a little too provocative for children's valentines - I thought about giving the whole set to my high school aged son.  He could have used the mini cards for girls, and eaten the candy himself, but I didn't think he would appreciate the "kiss me" cards, either.

That's the problem with this project - it's precious, but useless.  That could just be me - would you give something like this to someone?  If you were making it from scratch with a different theme, what theme would you use?

Challenges:
A spoon full of sugar - anything but a card
Oldie but a Goodie - add a heart
Crafty Cardmakers - plastic (I would have entered their hearts one too, but that wouldn't be right!)
Cupcake Craft - hearts
Kaboodle Doodles - hearts and flowers
Creative cowgirls - hearts

Lots of heart challenges!

So Lucky

This is the valentine I gave my husband this morning:

Curiously, it wasn't one I made custom for him, it was one that I made at a CTMH workshop.  It was a very awesome workshop!  We made this card on an acetate card base, then we made a horizontal card on regular cardstock - same sketch, only rotated 90 degrees.  Finally, we made a gift box with a clear cover, holding 4 3x3 mini cards with handmade envelopes and 3 covered Hershey nuggets.  The cost for this workshop - only five dollars!  That was for 3 sheets of cardstock, 2 sheets of DP, a clear card base, a sheet of transparency, all the buttons and ribbons (there was a two feet piece of pink twill ribbon holding the gift box shut!), and full color handout with photos of all the projects, instructions, and cutting diagrams - everything was stacked on a placemat when we sat down, and we just read the directions and crafted our little hearts out for 3 solid hours.

Anyway, I gave my husband this one because I was pretty sure he hadn't seen it (I have quite a few freshly scanned valentines hanging around my computer desk), it's very luxurious, and I really like the sentiment!

It's a pretty talented group, too - not every group of cardmakers can sit down with uncut cardstock and directions and complete something this complicated.   

I wonder if the challenge blogs will like it as much as my husband?
Catered Crop -ingredients
One Stitch at a Time - make it pretty 
PaperWorks - hearts
2 Sisters - hearts
Allsorts - all about the sentiment
Challenge up your Life - monochromatic
Our Creative Corner - cut it out
Skipping Stones - sketch

20 cards for $12

When I heard the price for this workshop, my jaw hit the ground!  How can you pass up a deal like that?  In addition, we all brought food to share for dinner, so it was a great evening.  The demo/hostess, Carolyn, gave us six sheets of 12x12 paper/cardstock, full size cutting diagrams (she drew them directly onto the gridded placemats that demos always seem to have), and unlimited access to her stamps and embellishments.  She didn't predesign the cards - we went our own way with the papers after we cut them.  Carolyn asked me to scan what I made, so I decided to show you as well.  If you are a stamping demo, this is what I can home with - two each of the following cards and envelopes, plus lots of leftovers for me to play with later.

I could have gone a lot fancier with the layers and embellishments, but I was really scrambling to get 20 cards done in three and a half hours (I arrived late).  I'm ready to do this all over again, this time with Christmas papers!

Teddy ATC

This limited time freebie over at Designed2Delight was just my style, so I printed out a whole sheet of them. I chose to print them on cocoa cardstock so that they wouldn't need to be colored, just cut out and applied. In addition to the four that I printed out in a suitable size for cards, I also printed out a dozen for ATCs.




I've used the TJ Level Up technique here, it gives a very simple layout just enough depth to be interesting. I happened to have a bunch of CTMH paper scraps that a demo I know kindly gave to me, and the little balloon brad was a dubious clearance bin buy - dubious because this is the first time I've used it since I bought it years ago. It doesn't matter how cheap something is, it's not a good deal if you never use it. I hope the ATCs that I make will justify the balloon brads - the rest of the ATC is free!

Double Challenge

Today I decided to do two challenges on one ATC - Sketchfest Thursday and Cook Up a Card September. I was getting a little tired of the vintage papers and images, so I went in a completely different direction.



This is the first time I've inked this three-step flower from CTMH. I think it's the only one I have that is big enough for the sketch challenge. I think if I were doing this one over, I would use a slightly different palette and some fun Hawaiian print papers I have in my stash. I don't know why I'm always so quick to glue things down; I always want to change them up after it's too late.

As always, feedback of any kind is welcome.

Reindeer Save

The other day, when I was stamping at Chris's house, one of the other ladies was looking through the inspiration book, and she commented that she only wanted a couple of the stamps out of a six stamp set, wouldn't it be nice if someone would split the set with her? I looked at the set, and I remarked that I liked the reindeer, and as it wasn't one of the stamps she wanted, I offered to split the set with her. We were all set to spend $25 bucks on this stamp set, when Chris looked over our shoulders and said, "Oh, I have that set, you can just borrow mine."

I don't know how she sells any stamps like that.

Anyway, the next time I saw her, I brought cardstock to stamp a bunch of reindeer images. I was rushing through, and some of my images were poorly inked, but I stamped enough for everything I thought I would like to do with them, and some to spare, so it was no big deal.

I'm telling you this because this reindeer below is one of the poorly inked ones - the whole corner was missing. However, trimmed to an oval, you can't tell.



Now, I have to admit, I'm sloppy in other ways, too. I can't color within the lines to save my life, and stargazers are not that easy to paint with anyway, and I got glue everywhere, but really you can't see the glue, because I finished the whole thing with Dorland's Wax medium for a vintage finish and texture.

Yes, it's an ATC (available for trade, BTW), and the layout is from Caardvarks Sketchfest Sunday. paper is CTMH, and the stamp, of course, is TAC.

Wine wine wine

I had just enough paper from the card I made before left over, so I thought I would dig out another virgin stamp set and give it a test run. I bought this CTMH set purely for the 3 step grapes:

I had the Midnight Madness sketch in my head when I did it, really I did.

Once I made it, I wondered what possible reason I might have to send someone this card. I might send it to my mother, and put "Wine, wine, wine" on the inside, but then she couldn't show it to her ladies. There is no point in sending my mother a card that she can't show off to the ladies.

Gesso to the rescue!

Michael's was having their "Lowest Price of the Season" sale, so I stopped there yesterday so I could buy more things that I didn't need. I bought some beads, which I did "need", but I also bought some paper pads. K& Co has amazing heavy paper that is printed on both sides, and at 40% off, it came to about 16 cents a sheet - it was just too good to pass up.

I had to use it right away, and this ribbon I bought yesterday (I bought 8 spools of ribbon at 50 cents a spool) seemed to go with. The sketch is from Techno Stamper:

It all came together pretty easily, until I accidentally smeared some ink on the flower. I thought I would add a distress inked edge, and it just kept getting darker and too saturated for the papers underneath. I thought a layer of gesso would soften it a bit, and it smudged the ink around artfully, and then I remembered the Pearlized Gesso technique, but I thought I would morph it a little with glitter instead of Pearl Ex. It doesn't show in the scan, but it's a very glamorous card.

The stamp is from one of my favorite sets, Cherish from Close to My Heart. Too bad it is retired.

Done and Fun!

I finished up my twenty cards that I made with my Close to My Heart Wishes book workshop. I didn't really expect much of these cards, because it was just a test run of the workshop, but I have to say it was a LOT of fun, and pretty quick, too. The cards are not the most glamorous cards I've ever made, but they have a lot of layers in unusual layouts and a variety of techniques, and they came together very quickly. In previous years, I found that making 40 Christmas cards all alike could be quite a chore, but I assumed it would be to ambitious to make them all different. With this workshop, I get to make them all different (or, at least there will only be two of each card), and they will still be as fast as a mass-produced card.

I won't bore you with all twenty, but here are the last few I finished up tonight:


As you can see, this one uses my Cuttlebug Snowflakes embossing folder and my SU oval punches.



All stamping and distressing and watercoloring on this card was done with Tim Holtz distress inks.



A buckle card! Seriously, a 20 card workshop with buckle cards - who would have thunk it? The image and sentiment are sequins from a confetti packet, and the faux stiching was done with a white Sakura gelly roll pen. No stamping, just piecing and gluing and a little bit of drawing.

I'm thinking I want to do this all over again, only making birthday cards. If I like the cards this much with my old neglected paper, I wonder how they will look with my best scrapbooking papers, or even with technique papers?