WOYWW #409

I just had to share! As soon as I saw what number we were this week, the song popped into my head.

Okay..
First off, I apologize for not commenting the past couple of weeks. The sinus gunk just overtook me and I barely had the energy to get the work done I had to do. Happy to say I think the sinus stuff is gone and while I still have tons of work to do/ catch up on, I also am getting some play time in.

Here's my desk this morning as I'm in the middle of projects for the Stampin' Up blog:

Last Saturday, in prep for serious Virtual Stamp Night FUN at Splitcoaststampers, I did a major clearing of the work table then put stuff back in a more orderly fashion. On the desk this morning are the 3.5" square mats of various papers for making mini treat baskets using the Basket Bunch from Stampin' UP! for my Friday blog post - Fab Five Friday. I take one stamp set and use it five different ways. Need to run some errands with Bob this afternoon then I'm back to work the rest of the evening.

That blue bordered piece? I adhered my silicone mat to a piece of heavy-weight chip board using that pretty blue patterned duct tape I found at $ Tree last year. You'll also notice the numbers are wearing off my trimmer. Might be time for a new one. 

I managed 6 cards so far from the Virtual Stamp Night (VSN) challenges last weekend. Here's one of them. I actually made 6 of this card to add to my Christmas stash.

That's it for my desk this week. Who's Miss Julia and why am I here?  That's my desk? What's on yours? When you are done visiting me in the Ozarks, please hop on over to Stamping Ground where Miss Julia has a long list of other studios you can peek into. No standing on an up-turned milk pail to look in the window. We open the doors wide and welcome you.  Please leave your number and you'll be among the first on my list.

MIXED MEDIA MONDAY - Cards Galore!

Okay... first off, I didn't think there would be a post this week. Well as you can see... LOL
Second, I plan to use this for my Document Life Project and I had hoped to play with that tonight. While traveling this weekend I bought a LOT of Washi Tape. However, I can better work with the yummy new toys - IF I hadn't left it at my sister-in-law's in Oklahoma LOL We were about 45 miles out when she called to say I'd forgotten something. Depending on how long it takes for her to drop those in the mail to me....

I also forgot the DCWV Vintage slab I bought to use but we're going to the city this week and I can pick up another one ;-)

In the mean time, while at my SIL's this weekend, we played with the challenges at Virtual Stamp Night (VSN) on Splitcoast Stamper (SCS). If you are not familiar with VSN, they do this big gathering on-line once a quarter (I think that's about right). Each quarter has a theme and there are 12 hostesses. Each hostess is assigned an hour when she will post her challenge for us to do. They may choose a color scheme, a technique, theme that coordinates with the big over-all theme. This month it was Weather Or Not - so all the challenges had something to do with weather.

Here are the 11 (I forgot to do the last challenge hehe) cards I made with a subtitle. Clicking on the picture will give you a larger view.

Use a world globe or a snow globe & Lots of Green

Love the snow globe set from SU (retired).

1 leaf or many leaves - just no fall colors

I used versa mark to repeat the leaf pattern on the background

In like a Lion with clouds or scene.

This lion is from a color page. Great place to get digi images!

Tone on Tone. Only color allowed was in the sentiment

Think Song Lyrics. 

Mine is a combination of Singing in the Rain and You Are My Sunshine

Gray tones with only 1 pop of color.

Baked Brown Sugar is my favorite new 'bear' color!

A Little Negative

I used Gelatos to color the background

Used the negative spaces from other punched out items

Weather Symbols. 

I used the Warm Front symbol

The world map background is for my husband who is my whole world

the symbol for he warms my heart (I know, corny hehe)

Sunburts. First time doing this technique

Already envisioning other colors to use

The paper and the bottle cap image are from the Vintage DCWV slab

Blowing in the wind

Blowing ink with a straw on glossy paper

Use an umbrella or parasol and make it CASable

This paper is from DCWV Four Seasons slab

The border trim is printed on the paper. 

Felt good to play with things. Amazingly, except for the slab and the twine I had packed almost everything I needed. Only used 3 or 4 items from Rhonda's stash!

Magazine Monday

I'm so glad I got the posts for this week and next pre-written. We're having so much fun with Adrian but it seriously cuts into my computer and creative time. I'm hoping we can get some stamping in today so maybe... maybe I can get a Teapot card done for this week. We'll see.

In the meantime I came up with this card during the last Virtual Stamp Night (VSN) over at SCS.

Okay, so this card is a couple weeks late. But being Irish, it’s St. Patrick’s Day all year long for me. I made three of these cards. One went to my granddaughter, one to my oldest sister and one to a 2nd cousin whom I’ve not seen in years but we share the same surname.

This is another one of those horrible pictures I told you about last week. It isn’t yellow – honest. It’s supposed to be SU Very Vanilla paired with ValuCS Primary Green. I used a St. Patrick’s Day sentiment stamp from Studio G and cut the mats from the Cricut Lacy Labels cartridge.

I kept the layout the same from a card by Beth Opel, called Joy to the World in Nov/ Dec 2012 Paper Crafts magazine. I found a link to Beth’s typepad, which she closed on March 22nd so I can’t link you to her creativity.

Beth did a business-envelope sized horizontal card in silver from DCWV. She created a 2-layer ribbon strip black on red. She used a gold doily rub-on from Hambly Screen Prints onto a red base and fussy cut around the red base about 1/8” from the doily edge. Her sentiment (rub-on from American Crafts) was done on the silver CS. She rounded the corners of this and the black mat she adhered it to before placing in the center of the doily. Beth’s card had a simple elegance about it and suitable for any Christmas recipient.

Next week I’ll give you a very early (say 6 months) peek at my husband’s birthday card. I’ll tell you why it’s so early… next week.

Creative Blessings

Magazine Monday!

I had a really good weekend. I hope you did too. I spent the entire day on Saturday working on some of the challenges from the SplitcoastStampers VSN that was held on Friday night and all day Saturday.

When I participated in the VSN back in December, I focused on Christmas cards, using the challenges as my guide to get all of my 2012 Christmas cards done. It worked out very well. Each time I opened up a challenge, I figured out what I wanted to do, used a Christmas theme (unless the challenge called for a specific theme) then cut enough of everything to do 10-12 cards of that one challenge.

This time my focus was on Birthday cards. One of the threads I co-mod on SCS is a monthly reminder thread to get our birthday/ anniversary cards out on time. Because I’ve been busy playing catch-up on the business, I haven’t been getting my cards out like I wanted. So I decided I needed to get some of these cards done up ahead of time.

I found this birthday card inspiration in the 4th quarter 2011 issue of STAMPING-STATIONARY-AND-SCRAPBOOKING, an idea magazine from Hobby Lobby. For $1.99 you get a ton of great ideas for card and scrapbook page layouts.

This particular card was under Thanksgiving – not a birthday card. It was a Happy Thanksgiving design by Regina Farrell of TX. I tried doing a search for her without success. I kept her sketch pretty much the same. Where I have 2 sunflowers, she used 2 pumpkins, accented with a couple of green oak leaves. Where I used the Vintage Labels, Regina used an actual tag with Happy Thanksgiving stamped on it, a bit of chocolate ribbon tied in a bow on the tag and a brown oak leaf. Across the bottom of the printed band, she added a row of the brown oak leaves.

I tried just using the sun ‘flowers’ but decided they really needed the stems/ leaves. I used the Marvy Daisy punch for the flowers and the SU Build A Blossom stamp set for the leaves. The green stripe is from a 2-sided paper by Heidi Grace Designs called Baby Girl. In trying to use up stash, I’m using my ValuCS on cards I know will probably be tossed after receiving so I used ValuCS Yellow and Green from their Primary collection as well as SU Garden Green. I used my favorite SU Vintage Labels for the sentiment. The MS Daisy border punch gave a nice country look to this card in keeping with the sunflowers.

Recycle Wednesday

I have so much stuff in my studio, it's hard to know what to play with. And I find myself going back to the same old stuff... or should I say new stuff. Do you work that way?

I decided for this year I want to work on the 'reuse/ reduce/ recycle' concept a bit more. So every Wednesday I'll showcase a project that has something recycled on it. It might be the base of the whole project, or it might be something as minute as a small piece of paper... like today's project.

During Virtual Stamp Night (VSN) at Splitcoast Stampers last fall we were given a challenge to use 'recycled' wrapping paper in our card. We couldn't take it off the roll new. It had to be some that was 'saved' from a previous Christmas for whatever reason. Come on, admit it... you have some!

My plan was to have a Christmas tree with presents around the base. All the presents would be from recycled Christmas wrap. I spent the entire evening (notice I didn't say 'wasted') trying to make my plan work. The presents just didn't work right. So I went to my trusty PrintShop program and found an image of a stacked row of presents.

Thankful I'd just put in a colored ink cartridge, I sized it to fit a 4x 5.5 greeting card, printed it out and then cut the strip out. Okay... got my presents, but how do I incorporate the 'recycled' gift wrap? These presents come pre-wrapped LOL

Can you spot my wrapped packages in the card below?

One is easy to spot... it's the Santa on the far left. The other one is the blue package right under the 'creative' part of my watermark.

I cut the shapes of those two packages out of white card stock then adhered them to scraps of wrapping paper and glued them into place over the existing packages in the preprinted strip.

The card base is SU Pacific Point. I used a scalloped oval from Cricut cart: Lacey Labels. The tree is from an Original Sizzix Die (retired). I added the garland with Red Stickles. The star is a small snowflake punch. I determined it's position on the mat and chalked behind it with SU Daffodil Delight. The package strip is popped out with pop dots to give them a bit of dimension.

Okay, not a big recycle project but it's where I'm at as I try to get caught up after being off work for so long.

Remember: every piece we reuse isn't sitting in a landfill contaminating Mother Earth.

Magazine Monday!

I took a break from decorating over the weekend to play over at the VSN (Virtual Stamp Night) at SCS. The hostesses for those events come up with some amazing challenges to coordinate with that particular VSN theme. This time it was Winter Wonderland. So with my mindset in the Christmas groove, I made a batch of cards for each challenge. By the time I've completed all of the challenges I will have my Christmas cards for the CCC12 (Christmas Card Challenge 2012) complete BEFORE January! LOL

The first challenge was to create a card based on what gives us Warm Fuzzies during the holidays. We could take the 'warm fuzzies' literal and go with furry pets, warm gloves, etc. Or whatever gives us that 'comfortable' feeling.

For me, Christmas is my baking season.Nothing says comfort like great smells from the kitchen. Growing up, my (step) mom introduced me to baking around the age of 9. I fell in love with the kitchen and have been baking/ cooking ever since. I don't bake a lot during the year because if I did, Bob and I would weigh a ton x3 between us. We like our home baked goodies and know if they're in the house, they're going to be eaten. So instead, I save my massive baking for the holidays when I can divide it all into treat boxes for friends and businesses who've served us well throughout the year.

Since our daughter's favorite cookie is my gingerbread men, I pulled out my Martha Stewart Gingerbread set from Christmas 2009, along with the coordinating paper. Then I went to one of the many Christmas issued stamping magazines packing my shelf. I chose the December 2007 issue of Scrap and Stamp Arts. I found a simple, yet great card from artist Grace Tolman called Merry Christmas. Sometimes a card is fine the way it is. The layout, right down to the pierced scalloped edge is the same with three exceptions. Grace's tag was more centered on the card front, bearing a Christmas tree withe the saying Merry Christmas, her candy stripe paper also had shades of green and she used white ribbon where I used green and white yarn.

I chose to separate the two. I stamped the gingerbread man on the tag and scooted the tag to the left. This left room for the sentiment on a separate tag on the bottom.

I used SU Garden Green and Cherry Cobbler CS. I decorated my gingerbread man with gold stickles and a black glaze pen.

Ten of my family/ friends will receive this card for Christmas next year. Maybe you'll be one of them!

WOYWW

As you can see, my desk is a bit of a mess. The candy items you see should be gone first thing. They are for goody bags that go out to participants on my Cauldron Café thread over at National Novel Writing Month. I always send little ‘survival’ bags at the beginning of the challenge.

If you’re not familiar with National Novel Writing Month – NanoWriMo for short – it is a month long endeavor to write a 50,000 word novel (approx. the size of Moby Dick for you visual artists) in 30 days. This is my 9th year as a participant and the 4th year I’ve hosted the Cauldron Café chat thread.

Once the goody bag stuff is gone, I need to see where I stand on my 2011 Christmas Cards. I’ve already begun co-hostessing the 2012 Christmas Card Challenge (CCC12) at SplitcoastStampers so I need my cards done for 2011 ASAP. Well, that and I try to mail the Monday following Thanksgiving at the latest.

Part of my co-hostessing duties is to send out goody packets every month. For every person who meets their personal monthly goal and posts a link to the card in their gallery, their name goes into a drawing for a goody envelope full of stamped images, designer paper (DP) and cardstock (CS) mats. My co-conspirator, Vikki Jo, draws around the 2nd of the following month and I like to have the envies all done up for the year. All I have to do is put the address she PMs me on the envie and pop it in the mail. It’s worked well this year.

To add to my artistically chaotic life, Splitcoast has a Virtual Stamp Night (VSN) beginning on Friday the 11th. So somewhere between clearing off my table and writing the next best seller, I plan to play with stamps just for FUN! LOL

Oh and if you don’t think my work table is a mess, take a look at my quilting table and you’ll wonder where I plan to work on all that fabric I’m going to show you tomorrow!

Creative Blessings!

Magazine Monday...

... with a twist.

First off, I apologize for not posting last week. The week passed in a blur of trying to get the attention of a literary agent and making my house presentable for weekend company. Oh yeah, and hubby came home on Wednesday after being gone on the boat for 3 weeks. I didn't tend to any business at all last week.

Today's Magazine Monday isn't from a magazine layout. A couple weeks ago I took part in Virtual Stamp Night (VSN) at SplitcoastStampers (SCS). I had a blast! Over the course of the two days, I completed all 17 challenges based on the theme You Make My Heart Sing. Seventeen Hostesses took a turn at offering up a challenge based on the theme. I had a couple of favorites.

The first challenge asked us to create a card based on the layout of the 4 champers of the heart. For some reason, my mind went directly to Easter LOL. I made this card for the challenge and liked how it turned out so much I made 20 more for a Easter card front challenge for Ronald McDonald House.

I used a combination of Studio G stamps (carrot and sentiment) and the bunny/ basket from Hello Spring (Retired SU) I'm still trying to use up as much of my Valu CS as I can so I eventually work exclusively with SU. The cardstock was from the ValuCS Garden collection. I added texture with the CuddleBug Dotted Swiss folder.

But one card really surprised me. I was challenged to use a technique I'd never done before (well, not on CS anyway) and to make it for a guy. The Soot Technique required using a candle flame to burn off the glossy finish on Glossy Cardstock to give you a black/ sooty effect to dry-stamp into. I knew I had to use the STAG from Noble Deer (Retired SU) The scorched edges were an accident but wound up adding to the overall effect.

This card was chosen for the Honors Award! I was soooo surprised. One card is chosen from each challenge for the award. I didn't even knew there was such a category! LOL I think what surprises me most is that it was on a technique I'd never done before.

This technique reminded me of the old burnt paper bag technique I learned years ago from Aleene's Crafts.

Because my three-year-old granddaughter is here for two weeks, instead of a magazine layout next week, I'll showcase a couple more cards from VSN.

Creative Blessings!

Magazine Monday!

Happy Monday, everyone!

After a storm moved through here in the wee hours of the morning, disconnecting my power for a few hours, I'm happy to see blue sky, sunshine and have power again. :-)

Friday night and for almost 11 hours on Saturday I had a BLAST at Virtual Stamp Night (VSN for short) over at Splitcoaststampers. Awesome hostesses put together a series of challenges - one new posting every hour - around the theme, You Make My Heart Sing. I'll try to squeeze in some of my favorites of the SEVENTEEN cards I made for the event. But it was one of the participants' take on a texture challenge that had me thinking. Then when I went magazine cruising for this week's card, the VERY FIRST one I came across lent itself to the technique. I had to do it!

This week I used Christmas Crafts for Kids - a Better Homes and Gardens publication from 2002.

Here's the sketch:

The sky blue background with blue and white snowflakes almost looked like a stamp resist. The mitten on the outside mimics a row of 3 hanging 'clothes line' fashion across the center of the opened card.

What I liked: The busy background and the layers

What I didn't like: Lack of real 'image and lack of texture. The background was busy but it was too flat for my taste.

So I inked up the inside front of my Cuddle Bug snowflake folder with Bashful Blue ink (SU), then proceeded to emboss the front panel with textured snowflakes. I loved how it came out:

Instead of one big centrally located, multi-layered panel I did 2 separate panels to incorporate an image and make it more Christmas rather than just winter. I haven't settled on an inside quote yet. I'm still shopping. But for the most part, I have 12 of these made to complete the Christmas Card Challenge for February at SplitcoastStampers.

Are you thinking Christmas cards? I guess now is as good a time as any to remind you there are only 10 months till Christmas!

Creative Blessings

Card Creations

A couple weeks ago I took part in my first VSN - Virtual Stamp Night - over at Splitcoaststampers. The forum leaders would post a challenge every hour and you had 45 minutes to rise to the challenge. The theme for the evening was the Winter Games. For this card the challenge was to use Flower Soft or a homemade version thereof. The homemade version is a shredded Styrofoam ball.

I did a repeat of a Christmas card I designed for our final Christmas in the Victorian house. For the original I had used white embossing powder. I love the glisten and the texture of this so much better.

Another challenge required using RED fiber to signify the red mittens worn in the games. I pulled out a Christmas Slab and came up with this one... I used the cuttlebug folder - snow for texture and a twisted red fiber with a gold thread running through it.

I'll have more to share next week, I hope. My WiFi time is limited for a few more weeks. But I'll try to keep you at least updated on all the things I'm playing with.

Creative Blessings

Kelly