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

Bunco envelopes

Do you belong to a Bunco group? It took me years of hinting before I was invited to sub in a local Bunco group, and couple of years of brown-nosing after that to get invited to be a regular.   This week will be my first time hosting, and I want to make a good impression.

I looked through the Bunco box, and I am going to make a couple of upgrades.  First of all, I'm replacing the dice, which must be as old as the Bunco group itself - half of them have the dots worn off.  Not a big deal - dice are cheap.  The second thing that I decided had to go is the old, torn envelopes that they were using to hold the money.  They weren't even plain white ones; they have the return address of someone's business in the upper left corner.  I decided to try and make fancy ones.

I handwrote the different prizes on them using a doodle alpha, colored it in with a versamarker, then embossed with iridescent embossing powder.  Then, using the wild rose stamp set from a•muse studio, I layered on roses in different colors of distress ink (Tip: did you know that distress ink can be used for embossing?) and embossed each layer with clear EP.  Finally, I burnished away the last bit of white.

I don't know if the other ladies will like them, but they will have to replace them with something good if they don't.

Challenges:

• Polkadoodles - make your own background
• Art Impressions stamps - floral frenzy
• Top Tip Tuesday - office supplies
• Created with Love - for the girls
• Crazy Challenge - anything but a card

Romantic Rose

I have a ton of stamps of roses, but there is something about the rose from a springtime day (a•muse studio) it has a very vintage look to it, and I thought it would be good for a faux parchment technique card.

It has a lot of elements I haven't used in a very long time.  Eyelets are so easy to apply with the Cropadile, but I can't even remember the last time I used them.  It took me longer to find my eyelets than it did to make the whole rest of the card.  I love this corner punch, but it is so rare that I think to put fancy corners on my cardstock.  The vellum and the painted paper are leftovers from a card I did a couple of weeks ago.  Sheer ribbon, heated to make it curl, topped with a button tied with scrapper's floss - I haven't done that in a  long time, but it's still an elegant finish to a card.  There is enough room for a sentiment, should I need to add one.

Challenges:

• That Craft Place - flowers
• Speedy and Friends - purple
• Daring Cardmakers - forgotten treasures
• Wags 'n Whiskers - button
• Shopping our Stash - oldest embellishments (eyelets)

Gordon Approved

I went to a technique-based card workshop this week, and one of the techniques we did involved using colorwash spray (Splash, from a•muse studio) as a watercolor medium, poured out of the bottle and into a palette, applied with a brush.  This is the card (the graininess is glitter):

After I finished it, the demonstrator who was hosting the workshop came over and told me that I did it "wrong".  Apparently, I was supposed to do it on a provided piece of watercolor paper, not directly onto the card base.  She pointed out that with the addition of water, the color would probably soak through the paper.  I opened it up and saw that there was a little bit of color coming through, but not a lot, and filed it away as a lesson learned.

When I got home, I showed it to my 24yo son Gordon, and asked him if the little bit of color on the inside was a problem, or if it just made it more "homemade".  He looked at it, and told me that he had seen me make a lot of intricate cards with layers and fancy cutting, and that he would feel insulted to get a card from me that was just 5 stripes.

Ooof!

So, I cut the front off and reworked it into the following card.

I used glitter cardstock for the umbrella, and mounted it on a blue base.  Small changes, but they make all the difference, don't they?  Gordon likes this much better.

Parchment Stiletto

Although the only way I would ever wear stilettos would be flat on my back, I loved the lacy look of this particular shoe (stamp is from SweetStamps), and thought it would be perfect for a faux parchment technique on vellum.

 The paper underneath the vellum is that homemade paper I made a couple of months ago by smashing azaleas into white cardstock.  It had a very muted purple color, so I tried to match it with purple cardstock, which just made the color look gray.  I figured the only thing to do is to match it with gray cardstock, so you can really see the purple.  I had to punch and doodle a couple of butterflies to match the one on the shoe.  Three brads hold the vellum to the paper - I hate trying to glue vellum!

Challenges:

• SweetStamps - parchment crafting/vellum
• Animal Friends - butterflies
• Crafting Musketeers - stamped image
• Emerald Fairies - punches
• Love to Scrap - rubber stamped images only

The head of our home

I was struggling to think of a Father's Day card for my husband, when I remembered that I did have a skull stamp, in my nevermore set from a•muse studio.  It's a very gothic/Halloweenish set, but my husband rides a Harley and has tons of tshirts with skulls on it, so this is more representative of him than your usual fishing/golf motif.

The metallic background is cut from a sheet of newspaper that was under a project my husband was spray-painting - I'm sure he will recognize it.  The nevermore stamp set doesn't have wings, but it does have a raven, so I stamped the raven twice, once using a mirror image stamp, and cut the wings off the raven.  The orange accents are a Harley Davidson color .  This is the inside of the card:

It is very much my husband's style.

Challenges:

• Bunny Zoe's Crafts - Wings
• Craft Your Passion - Father's Day
• Crafty Cardmakers - Father's Day
• Creative Creations - Father's Day/masculine
• Love to Scrap - use rubber stamps, no digis

Cut Borders

I was at a workshop yesterday to make cards for foster children.  The hostesses of the workshop and most of the attendees were scrapbookers, which I thought was in the same general classification as stampers, but was I wrong!  These ladies were afraid of ink.  All their cards were done with punches and stickers, but not a stamp in the lot.  I brought a couple of stamp sets and a black ink pad and my tombows, and made some cards that looked very different than theirs.  I offered the use of my stamps, but they were having nothing to do with them.

One of the ladies said that she was intrigued by stamping but didn't want to have to by all the stuff, which seemed a funny thing to say, considering there were hundreds of dollars of stickers on the table, and when you use them once, they are gone.  Anyway, I do know that I spend a lot on stamping stuff, but really, I don't need to.  Even a simple stamped card can be satisfying.  Case in point:

This is plain white cardstock, black ink, and some markers and scissor work. The butterfly stamp and sentiment are in the snail&co stamp set from a•muse studio. The Cut Borders Technique uses masking to create a continuous edge of stamping.  The most expensive part of this card is the Technique Junkies newsletter subscription, which is where I learn to do stuff like this.

Challenges:

• Amusing Challenges - masking
• Glitter and Sparkle - begins with B (butterflies, border)
• Eclectic Ellapu - things with wings
• Quirky Crafts - black and white with a touch of color
• Crafting with Dragonfies - card for a girl