Cabins in the forest

I had this idea for weeks before I sat down and actually tried it to see if it would work in real life the way it did in my head.  It's simple math, really, but I have been known to forget parts of the equation.  Anyway, I wanted to make a little forest of trees, and then I decided that I wanted a cabin or two in there as well.  I decided to use my ugliest green scrapbook papers for my test run.

Since the tree die is asymmetrical, you need four diecuts for each tree - two cut from the front side of the paper, and two from the back.  Stick them together on the sides, alternating the front cut trees and the back cut ones.  after you get all the sides together, I recommend a dab of glue at the top.  You can get 5 trees out of two sheets of scrapbook paper.

After doing a few trees, I felt that having just a forest was boring, and that I needed a cabin or two. However, I dreaded creating and printing a template.  Suddenly I remembered the Michael Strong mosiac frame had a strong geometry similar to what I needed to cut the bases of the houses, and I realized I could simply stamp the stamp and use that for  template.  I have created this diagram so you can see where the cuts are on the stamp:

 This makes two bases.  The next diagram shows where the folds and the glue have to go:

The roof was cut from another scrap that was 1.75 by 4.5 inches.

So you are probably thinking that I should now be ready to make this with my good paper, and it would be a lovely little scene.  I agree, however, I think it will be a fun craft project when all my kids are home from school - we can all make trees and cabins together.  I know from experience that I can't have my best work waiting as a sample - if mine looks too good, they won't bother to play with me.  Mine has to make them think that theirs will be better.  Therefore, the good trees and cabins won't be ready for a couple of weeks, but you get the general idea of how it goes.

If you would like to try this and you have any questions on how to do it, just ask.

Trees in the windows

This was a hard technique to photograph.  Can you see what I did in this photo?

Other than the fact that I have stuff piled up on my counters, and a cat condo, and my son's bookbag on the floor, can you see what I did to the panes in my french door?

You may think I'm crazy for stamping on my windows, but really it's is very simple to do - I used acrylic matte medium, applied to the stamp with a brayer.  I don't know if you can see it well enough, but it looks like etched glass.  It isn't hard to remove, either - it will come off easily the next time I wash my windows, as the matte medium dissolves easily in water.

The cloisonne stamp is perfect for this technique, because of the bold lines.   What a quick and easy way to add a holiday touch to my home!

Cookie jar sleeve

I have a blue cookie jar which looked really good in my kitchen when I had wallpaper, but now looks nearly invisible now that I have painted blue walls.  However, I have come to love it and the unique sound it makes when one of my kids is sneaking a cookie - I can pick out that sound from almost anywhere in the house.

Anyway, I was filling it with some freshly baked white chocolate chip macadamia nit cookies when I decided that the cookie jar needed be as festive as my cookies.  It took a single sheet of scrapbook paper and scraps of cardstock that I had lying about.

The christmas trees were the diecuts I had leftover from the luminary card I showed you on Monday.  building a snowman out of paper scraps is nearly as much fun as making one out of snow, and not nearly as chilly.

Just looking at my cookie jar makes me want to bake!

Festive earrings

I have several Christmas parties this week, and I bought a new (to me) sweater to wear to them.  The thing is, the sweater really isn't in traditional colors, so I needed so Christmas earrings to wear with the sweater that would go.

Yes, teal and purple Christmas trees will go perfectly with my sweater.

I used the faux chipboard technique to make tree beads.  They are built with six layers of cardstock, and I simply cut a channel in the center two layers for the wire to pass through.  The tinsel embossing powder doesn't scan well - it looks a bit neater in real life.

Luminary card

My sister gave me a lovely birthday gift this year - the Christmas tree stamp and die set from Michael Strong.  It's a little late in the year for me to be making Christmas cards, though, so I thought, for my week as card captain for the EnjoyMichaelStrongStamps yahoogroup, I would try making things that aren't cards.

This is a luminary card - there is an electric tealight inside right now, but it fits over a glass votive holder, too.  The inside panels are vellum.   This is made from a single vertical half-sheet of standard size cardstock, so when flattened, it fits into a normal card envelope.  It's a card that is also a gift, or just keep it as a decoration.

Cat with leaves three ways

The challenge at EnjoyMichaelStrongstamps this month is to make a fall-themed card with red, orange, and yellow.  I didn't really feel like making a card, but I thought it would be nice to make a cat sitting in a pile of fall leaves as an ATC.  I ended up making three of them.

For this one I stamped the cat on yellow cardstock and distressed it lightly with orange ink.  The leaves were punched out of a postcard.  The overall effect was not nearly as colorful as I would have liked.

When I stamped the second cat, I accidentally did not get the cat's back onto the paper.  A little creative cutting, and you can't even tell it was accidental.  I added a little red ink to the distressing. The leaves are a paper confetti that I had in my stash for years now - I use some every fall, but I never run out.

While I was working on the second one, I noticed that I had in my stash some rhinestone fall leaves that I must have purchased at least a year ago but never used.  I tried stamping the cat on red cardstock this time.  I do not have yellow embossing powder; I colored the white embossing with a yellow copic marker.  I then used a dark red copic marker to add contrast between the cat and the background.

So, It's the same concept and the same cat, but three very different cards.  I will be swapping these on ATC_World.

Challenges:

• Cuttin and Stampin - use your scraps
• Loves Rubber Stamps - fall colors
• Oldie but a Goodie - dies/punches
• Use It Tuesdays - 2 hoarded items
• Craft Your Passion - no coloring inside the lines

Michael Strong mosaic frame ATCs

I think that I have mentioned before that the first Michael Strong stamp that ever said "buy me!" to me was the cloisonne mosaic frame, but I'm guilty of not using it as much as I should.  When Trix said to me that we should swap ATCs using Michael Strong stamps, the mosaic frame leapt into my hand - it is versatile for all sizes, being blocked into 1/2 inch increments.  Here are the ATCs I made:

The paper is some that I gelli-printed about a month ago.  I heat-embossed the stamp, then cut out the parts that I wanted.  On the green paper, I got a clean impression with the stamp.  On the dark blue, the stamp slid a little, but the distressed effect is pretty cool in its own way.  I couldn't resist cutting out the flowers in the design for the last one, and the gold circles in the middle of the flowers are actually jump rings from my jewelry findings.  I just realized I have the sea, the air, and the land depicted here!

Challenges:

• Artistic Inspirations - swirls
• Incy Wincy Designs - ATC
• TimbroScrapMania - underwater
• The House that Stamps Built - things with wings

Cloisonne Cat 5

One last cloisonne cat for the week.  This one I heat embossed in Black, then paint with Stargazers.  It's very shimmery in real life.

The background is a technique scrap - like Shelly and Hetty, I subscribe to the Technique Junkies newsletter, and Like Shelly, I have a bunch of backgrounds that I've made that I can't even remember the name of the technique any more.  I recall that it involved reworking scrapbook papers that I didn't like, by painting lightly over them and tearing them into strips.

About the key - I was walking to my crafting desk and saw this key right in the middle of the floor.  It is a shiny new brass key, and it had no key tag on it, so I have no idea what it is for or to whom it belongs.  No one is even home right now except me - the men are off at Boy Scout camp this week - so I have no idea how a strange key found its way onto my basement floor. I don't entertain down there.  If someone wants it, it is on this card now.

Cloisonne Cat 4 with techniques

I have had fun working on vellum lately, but for this card, I decided it would be fun to try faux vellum.

You may notice that the cat is facing the other way.  That is because the heat embossing is on the back of the paper.  Faux vellum is created by heat embossing your image on regular copy paper and then saturating the paper with mineral oil.  It looks just like the real thing, but is a lot easier to work with, and a lot cheaper, too.

I used my eyelets to attach my faux vellum piece to the background.  You will find that it is just as slippery as real vellum, and glue is worthless.  Notice the corner punch?  it is asymmetrical, which is unusual for a corner punch, and requires special attention to get the corners to mirror each other.  The trick to doing that is to punch two opposite corners with the paper face up, and then the remaining two with the paper face down.

The final technique I would like to point out is the ribbon - I crinkled it with my heat tool.

Challenges:

• The House that Stamps Built - monochrome
• The Paper Shelter - swirly girly
• Pinspirational Challenges - photo insp.
• Catered Crop - buttons

Cloisonne Cat 3 - ATCs

The Cloisonne Cat doesn't just come with the one cat, in includes a little mini cat which is good for accents and smaller pieces.  This is I used for the ATC Sketch challenge at the EnjoyMichaelStrongStamps yahoogroup:

The cat is the only stamped part, everything else I did with a fine tip uniball pen and a ruler.  Which one do you like the best?

Challenges:

• Loves Rubberstamps - use a hoarded item (this is the first time I've inked the mini cat!)
• Simon Says Stamp and Show - a little stamping
• Sparkle and Sprinkle - anything but a card
• There She Goes - animals

Explosion Card

I have to say that I was very resistant to card-making for a long time, although I have always liked crafts.  I just preferred crafts I could keep to ones I would send away.  However, a very long time ago, I was watching Carol Duvall on tv, and she had this guy as a guest who was showing how to make a very interesting card - the inside opened out to be twice the size indicated by the outside.  He called it an "explosion card", and it had a tricky fold that forced the paper inside to open up when you opened the card.  I went through a lot of paper trying to master that fold, but once I did, I had no idea what to do with it, so I forgot about it - I wasn't going to make any cards anyway.

Fast forward to the present - the July challenge at the "Enjoy Michael Strong stamps" yahoogroup  is to make an exploding card.  Now, to remember the fold... a Google search of explosion cards did not produce the result I remembered.  Who was that guy?  Could it be... Michael Strong?   I decided to google "Michael Strong Carol Duvall"  and got this result: http://scrapbooking.com/article/74222 .

He doesn't even call it an explosion card in the tutorial, but that's what it is!  Here is my version:

This is the front, a standard card size.  It uses the Michael Strong mosaic frame  I wrote about yesterday (ha, you didn't think I bought it, but I did!); the interesting texture to it is the result of stamping on textured cardstock.  The sentiment is from Target - I have never liked the quality of the stamps I have bought there, but it was the perfect size for what I wanted.  now, here is the inside:

It's a full sheet of copy paper.  It has a lot of white space for signing - a great card for a group to give to a coach or a scout leader.  An explosion card is a great way for a little card to hold a lot of info - maybe even a Christmas letter!

Cloisonne Cat 2

Yes, I am going to showcase the Cloisonne Cat all week.

For those of you who are unclear on the concept of CAS (Clean and Simple); this is not even real CAS - it has 4 layers.  Still, it makes the point that if you have a really powerful stamp, you don't need froufrou.

 Challenges:

• Melonheadz Friends - embossing
• Ooh La La Creations - Ebony and Ivory
• Tok Bobok - animal friends
• Gem of a Challenge - lots of layers 

Cloisonne Cat 1

I first saw Michael Strong on the Carol Duvall show, many years ago.  He was showing off his Mosaid Frame stamp, and I fell in love with it right there, but had no idea where to buy one (this should give you an indication of how long ago this was!).  Anyway, some years later I discovered shopping on the internet, and did eventually remember to look for Michael's stamps online.  I found the mosaic frame, but forgot why I wanted it, and also an adorable cloisonne cat.  I was about to purchase the cat, when I saw that the shipping on the cat was as much as the stamp itself! (not that the shipping is unreasonable, but that Michael Strong stamps are very affordable).  Being a cheap person, I put off buying the stamp.

I will tell you that every December, Michael Strong has a free shipping special.  I thought about getting the cat then, but you know how it is during the holidays - you buy for other people, not yourself.  I still did not have any Michael strong stamps.

Then, at the recommendation of a friend, I bought this book Drawing Lab for Mixed Media Artists, and one of the first exercises is to draw lots and lots of cats.  After you do a bunch, you can select your favorite and use it as a digi; I did, and offered the image as a freebie to my readers.  The more I worked with the image, the more I liked it, and toyed with the thought of making it into a rubber stamp, which is not a cheap process.  However, there was a feeling in the back of my head that I had seen this image before.  It would be months before I thought about the cloisonne cat again, but you guessed it - they were (to me) very similar.  Frankly, even with shipping, buying the cloisonne cat was a lot cheaper than having mine custom made, so I now own the Michael Strong Cloisonne Cat.  I will be featuring cards made with this stamp this week.

Even though the stamp is a very clean graphic style, I couldn't resist combining it with Tim Holtz papers and techniques.  Burnishing the image really makes the white embossing pop.  I have to say that it has probably been years since I used any of my little vellum tags, but I always like the look when I do.  The ruffle is something I pleated myself from a scrap of gift tissue - I thought the card needed a pop of color.

Challenges:

• Paper Creators - pink
• Dream Valley - handmade flowers/embellishments
• Quick Quotes - Dimension
• Amusing Challenges - emboss resist(sentiment on the tag is from a•muse studio)
• A.R.T. card challenge - colors

I woof you

Can you guess what this card is for?

It's a Mother's Day card from a furbaby.

 Dog stamp is by Michael strong, and I used the Banner Card and Watered Crayons techniques from the TJ newsletter. The sentiment is from my computer; I love the handwriting fonts at Fonts for Peas, especially the ones I can color!

Challenges:

• ABC Challenges - Mother's Day
• Craftin Desert Divas - pun
• Craft your passion - text as focal point
• Paper Playtime - embossing
• The Squirrel and the Fox - furry friends