Our Lady of Gourdes

One of my yahoogroups is having a swap - an arch card featuring a pumpkin.  The swap did not appeal to me at first.  I'd never done an arch - they always seemed baroque or even gothic to me, and I didn't see a pumpkin in that setting.  Then I was looking at an arch stamp I own and had never inked, of an angel holding a lamb, and I thought it would be hysterically funny if I replaced the lamb she was holding with a pumpkin.  How to do it?  I decided that it was not possible to do well with a rubber stamp, so I looked for digital images I could manipulate.  I found a free coloring book page of a stained glass window in Chartes and a clipart of a pumpkin, and it all just came together.

I colored it with the Penciled Twinks technique, so it really sparkles.  I have a few people who might find this as funny as I do, so I saved the basic image as a free digistamp, which you may download by clicking the thumbnail below.

Challenges:

• Di's Digi Designs - fall colors
• Crafty Catz - sparkle
• Digi Haven - anything goes with freebie digi
• Sweet n Sassy - shaped card with digi
• Creative Belli - harvest

Free digi - Season's Tweetings

It started out as a way to annoy my mother - I told her that I was going to use this sentiment with this image from Just Some Lines.  Terrible puns are a family tradition.

The image is super easy to cut out, and I whipped out some liquid applique to fluff up the birdie's hat.  The background - well, I used the sketch from Inspired by Stamping, but the papers are all scraps that were cluttering up my desk.  I really need to either clean more or stamp more, maybe both.

Would you like my sentiment?  I know I'm not the only person who likes birds on her Christmas cards.

Click for full size image.  I love sentiments that I can color to match my image!

Other challenges:

• Quirky Crafts - Christmas in July
• Sentimental Sundays - things with wings
• 2 Sisters - Christmas plus an animal
• Hiding in my Craft Room - lots of layers

Dubious freebies

My buddy Cat said that I should put my head and rabbit images from my Year of the Rabbit cards up as digital freebies.  I laughed - the head that I drew is completely bald, and the rabbit is really only half a rabbit - I knew exactly how I was going to use the images when I drew them, and didn't see any other application for them.  I did save them, though.

So, I attached them to a reply and told her that if she used them on a card, I would put the images on my blog.
She was up for the challenge, so here you go:

These are my special Year of the Rabbit gifts to you.  Feel free to manipulate them in any way to make them work for you.  If you take them, and you make something with them, please let me know using the linky below.  I will come by and give you some comment love.

Lulu tag

I just joined the CS Designs group at Crafters Digital Art Center - It's a ning group, which means it's impossible to figure what is going on half the time, but if you like digital freebies and tutorials, there is a lot of good stuff in there.

Anyway, Chris (of CS Designs) gives the members of her group the Lulu Fashion Diva digi free for joining, so I felt like I ought to make something with it.

It's way different from what I usually make, but it was fun to put together.  I can always use a tag.  It's done with the Blended Glitter technique, and a bunch of ribbons, felt flowers, and stickers that have been sitting on my crafting desk unused for a long time - it's been a while since I've done anything like this!

There are other Lulu stamps here, if you like this style.  Chris has a lot of really different and fun stamps!

Challenges:
Crafty Emma - fairies (according to the CSDesigns website, Lulu is a fairy)
Fairy Tale - flowers
Stamp Something - cute
Tellen's Place - polka dots
Wags n Whiskers - Fairy
Little Red Wagon - one layer

Polar Bear

I wasn't going to use this polar bear image until i saw how cute he looked on other people's cards.  Then I had to try it out for myself.  I had already figured out that I could mask the snowflakes with a clear glaze gelly pen, making it easier to color, but there is no easy way to color with Twinking H2Os - there is a reason why I stopped using them for so long.

The xmas adage tickets are just too easy to use; I may never stamp a sentiment again!  Again, I pieced together the background from scraps, layered on the image, and glued the tickets in place, using a punched snowflake as a conjunction.

The image is from Designed2Delight, and you can see other cards using the image from the Delightful Inspirations blog.  You get a freebie image if you play in the challenge.  I like the networking - Faith has a freebie (the polar bear image), I have a freebie (the adage tickets), everybody gets something and we all have fun!

Hmmm, Gingersnap Creations is having a polar animal challenge - gotta play!

merry and bright (tickets)

I was preparing Christmas cards for mailing last night, and I was starting to get depressed - so many of my cards were dark and sober - where were all the bright happy ones?  Then I remembered - I mailed the bright happy ones in my stash to Operation Write Home, and all I had left were ones that I've made since October.  Still, I've made some bright ones this year, haven't I?

There was nothing to do but print out some holiday digis on some Cryogen White iridescent paper from the PaperTemptress.  I love using the iridescent paper for digis, because the sparkle in the paper shines through most types of coloring.  I like digis for coloring, because the toner prints don't smear.

This card uses one of the free digis from Sliekje - this image is so cute!

You can see that I also used my Xmas adage tickets freebie, lightly highlighted with yellow glitter pen.  I used a yellow bic Mark-it to turn my star brad yellow, too.  You can't tell from the scan, but there is sparkle and shine all over this card - I used glitter and glaze pens all over, and the scanner doesn't show any of it.

I think that is one reason why copics are so popular - they scan and photograph beautifully!

Anyway, I took this card to my computer to scan it and what do you know - that's where all my most recently made cards were hiding!  Sheesh! 

A lot of challenge blogs are shutting down for the holiday, but a few are still open:
Creative Belli - Christmas embellishments
Fairy Fun - star
Fab n Funky - for children
Fresh Brewed - Merry Christmas

Freebie! Xmas adage tickets

I was thinking earlier today that I liked the look of adage tickets, but that they were 1) overpriced for what they are, and 2) not exactly to my taste. I wanted ones that had Christmassy messsages so I could add a quick sentiment to my last-minute holiday cards and crafting, without a fussy background, so I could match them to my cards, and cheap - always cheap. It occurred to me that I could make my own, so I did.

These are the tickets I made, and I will tell you how I did it, so you can do it too.  First, I printed them out from the image I will be giving you in a bit.  I placed them in a tight grid, 40 tickets to a sheet of cardstock.  To get perforations between the individual tickets, I ran the sheet through my sewing machine UNTHREADED - that made the little holes.  then I took a regular sized circle hole punch and punched at the intersections of the tickets to get that ticket corner look (it's fast - you do 4 corners at once!).  Then I cut it into the strips you see here.

I printed these on white, with the thought that I could burnish them with distress inks for color, or even stamp or color them (picture candy stripes!)  I could also print them on any color or type of cardstock I wished.  Tickets are one of the few things that look really good on construction paper. 

However, for this card, I thought the plain white background looked very nice:

 

You may recognize the reindeer from papiersalat by janna.   Everything else is scraps.  I cut the layer circles freehand; it seems to go with the reindeer.

so, would you like the tickets to print yourself?  Here they are!  Just click to enlarge and save to your computer.

If you take them, and especially if you use them, please leave a comment!  I would love to see what you do with them. 

Challenges:

2 Sisters - T'was the night...

Allsorts - last minute projects

Ellephantastic - Xmas

Delicious Doodles - recipe

Digis with attitude - anything with a digi

Stamp Something - digi

Have fun!

Dodecahedron ornament from flower punch + freebie!

I like dodecahedrons, and I've struggled for years with making them, mostly because I'm too lazy to cut all the pieces out by hand neatly (neatly being the important part). However, it just occurred to me recently that I could make one out of a five-petalled flower from a punch, and it might even make a nice ornament.



I included the punch with this picture, and the blue one next to the punch is my prototype (not so great, eh?). After I made it, I found it it was a lot easier to decorate before assembling the bits. I thought it would be hard to stamp something consistently amazing 12 times, so I decided the best way to go would be to make digital punchable images, and assemble the dodecahedron from there.



This is my finished product, for the Spotlight challenge, and the recently discovered (I keep finding new challenge blogs!) Inky Impressions challenge. I just found Inky Impressions today - they sell the kind of stamps I love to buy, deeply etched rubber with EZ Mount. They are looking for members for their design team right now, too! But, I digress...

I have saved the printable file as a .pdf - it has 24 punchables, enough to make two different dodecahedrons (the other one has different vintage image, I will probably post it later after I assemble it). If you have this punch and would like the file, download it here from Google Docs. If you don't have the punch but don't mind sitting and cutting a lot of pieces with scissors, you can use this file too. It could be a fun project to make with the kids if you are bored after dinner next weekend.

You can make this kind of ornament out of any five-petalled flower or even a star. If you try it, and post it somewhere online, leave me a link - I would love to see it!

Remember, my sig tag is a clickable link to my email...

Digital Tri Shutter ATC

When I was making the tri shutter card, it occurred to me that I was doing it the hard way – it would be much easier to decorate the pages before I folded them. Taking it to the next logical step, it occurred to me that the tri shutter ATC could be created digitally, 3 to a page, and then all I would need to do is cut them out and fold them.

I just downloaded some beautiful digital papers from The Sum of All Crafts this morning, so I used a piece for the base of my card. The Sum of All Crafts has downloads every day, and a few days ago, some vintage nude bodybuilders were posted to the site. All of Valerie’s subscribers got very excited and wanted to do a swap using these images. I was all for doing a male nude swap too, but I’m not so big a fan of vintage images, so I googled some hotties and worked with those.

You would think that it would be simple to just plaster my digital base with images, but it does take some thought. You have to consider how the card will look closed, as well as open, and you have to make sure the elements don’t crease in the wrong places. I was very concerned that the guys on my card would look like they were playing with each other. That could be interesting in a different way, but it was not the look I was going for.

Anyway, as I was finishing and cutting this ATC, I remembered why I don’t like doing digital ATCs. There really is no point to printing and mailing them. I could just as easily send you the digital file and let you print and cut them out yourself.


So, here is the deal. Here is a digital representation of the card closed. If you want to see the complete tri shutter ATC, you have to email me for the file, print it out yourself, and cut and score it. It is a 7.5” x 3.5” jpg, 200 dpi, and I don’t have the copyright to any of the images (in case you were wondering).