Friday, February 27, 2009
Color Inspiration #43
P.S. How do you like the photos I've been posting? I think I've found a decent program on my camera for white balance and lighting etc. Let me know what you think!
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
WUAC Wednesday / Mojo Monday 75 / Caardvarks Challenge
I wanted to use a bit of designer paper as I haven't done so in a long time so I flipped through the little 6x6 pads that are usually found with Stampin' Up's lvl 1 hostess choices. The only one I really liked was the "Real Red" sheet but it totally looks way more like Rose Red. So I pulled out some kraft cardstock and rose red to match.
So as the sketch shows, it needs a scalloped edge and man do I ever LOVE my scallop edge punch. To think I used to do it with a corner rounder!!!
Next I decided the kraft cardstock needed a lil something something. So I whipped out my very new Bella Toile background stamp. At first I thought this background might be a bit floralish for me seeing how I don't like tacky floral backgrounds but for some reason I just adore this stamp. I inked it up upside down with sahara sand because there's no kraft pad.
Then I realized that layering it onto just rose red was sorta bland so I threw in some basic black! Now as I was taking the picture and checking back to the sketch I realized that the colors are pretty much the sketch colors!! Oh well... I'm copying the sketch and the colors I guess. Too late to turn back now.
So now I'm trying to figure out how to layer what and where... So in my mind I think I've got it straight.
You can see in this picture that I did lots of cutting (stupid extra piece of kraft in there took forever and it still doesn't sit perfect). I FINALLY got my order from Treehousestamps after I ordered it over 1 month ago. It was shipped about 3 weeks AFTER I ordered it. The lady only sent me an email saying that she lost internet due to a snow storm and was waiting for a backorder item AFTER I emailed her and complained and wanted to cancel my order. Arlie also ordered and complained and got the same email.. But alas, we both got our orders and needless to say, we're NEVER BUYING FROM TREEHOUSESTAMPS AGAIN. But back to the picture, I bought these little Dew Drops I guess they're called. Comes in a little shampoo like bottle with screw top lid and everything. I thought those'd be perfect for the little embellishments needed on the side.
Another new thing I got with my last order: Craft Stampin' Spots!! I was uber excited to try it out and only JUST realized tonite that my beloved rose red is actually in the RICH REGALS family!!! I was devastated for about 10 seconds before I realized I'd just try ruby red. So I get it open and stamp a bit onto some scrap paper and this is what I got.. Goops of grayish black color. I was mortified!!
But then I stamped it out and it was all fine. The stamp is from the new Fifth Avenue Floral stamp set. I love that set. I wanted it stamped onto the little sentiment part but the rose ended up being too big. So wasted some paper, embossing powder, ink and most important TIME!!
Pulling into the home stretch here... I decided to ticket punch the corners a touch for added... I don't know... Elegance? Thought about adding a sentiment as opposed to an actual picture in the middle so from the same Fifth Avenue Floral set is a great sentiment. Stamped that guy in basic black, threw in a whole bunch of dimensionals and voila! Lets call it a night cuz it's 2 AM on the dot. G'nite
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Color Inspiration 42 and CPS 104
I was poking around on the web and stumbed across a new challenge blog called Card Positioning Systems. I'm super excited to find another new challenge site because the more I have to choose from, the less limited I am in terms of deadlines. I love Mojo Mondays but like this week, I only had time tonite to make a card and tomorrow will already be a new Mojo sketch so I'll wait till tomorrow to play the Mojo sketch. I had a completely different card in my mind when I saw the layout. The layout picture totally reminds me of the stamp set Thoughts and Prayers from Stampin' Up! and I just bought that so I wanted to use it. But then I also bought Park Avenue Backgrounds and really wanted to use that too!! So Park Avenue won. I had a really tough time using the colors and the layout. Played around for a fairly long time and ended up with a card that looks like it took literally 3 minutes to make... Sigh. I hate that. Regan always says that if the card is gorgeous at the end of it, it doesn't matter if the card took hours. But when the end product isn't what you had imagined, even a 10 minute card feels like wasted time. Oh well...
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Secret Valentine
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
WUAC Wednesday
So I knew I wanted to use Pink Pirouette just because it's such a soft feminine color. Now I did toy with the idea of other colors. I tried pretty much everything that was sorta pinky from Cameo Coral to Ruby Red. Nothing really had the look I wanted so in the end I just stuck with the Pink Pirouette ink as well. (Ahh good old SU and their matching cardstock and inks... gets me every time)
So I repeated those little floral things 3 times and now I had a bunch of left over ribbon from gifts over Christmas. You know you sometimes get some pretty darn nice ribbon from gifts. I'm super cheap and I saved whatever looked even half decent. So here I've got two different ribbons to choose from. One is just a plain white satin and the other is a sheer almost cream color.
So I made my choice and hopefully you agree. If you found the white satin looked better well... too bad because it's already glued and assembled. But perhaps if I make another one of this exact card I'll try the white and see. So those little scalloped circles were popped up on the foam dimensionals.
I glued everything together and finished off the card with a simple Happy Birthday from the retired Stampin' Up set It's Your Birthday.
Now I know this picture isn't quite as good but I like the black background I tried to use. Anyways thanks for checking out another WUAC Wednesday. Hopefully my regular 2 girls continue to play and that some of the girls I've harrassed might play as well. 1:22 Am... time for bed. Maybe this is why I'm always so grouchy at work?? On a side note, I just tried to change the pictures a bit and my internet crashed. My heart skipped a beat but thank GOODNESS for auto save.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Valentine's Day Card
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Stamp Something Chocolate Challenge
Friday, February 13, 2009
Paper On Paper is BORN! / Happy Valentine's Day!
Anyways, Regan came over today after an uneventful dim sum with the ladies from work (no chicken feet or cow stomach was consumed or so they think.... jk) we sat in my little crafty room and made cards. So as I'm typing this very sentence, a thought just crossed my mind... What if Jay (and I know that isn't how you spell it but I won't get creative cuz that will just make me look worse) comes and checks out the website and sees this card that's made for him? But now as I just typed that sentence I realized two things. 1. It's past midnight so it's technically already valentine's day so Regan will likely give the card tomorrow and Jay will likely not come and poke around on my blog. 2. It's flipping valentine's day and here I am blogging instead of making a valentine's day card for Jamie!!
So I guess this is really a two part post. The first part is dedicated to Regan. Check out her blog to see how she came up with her blog name. Now this second part is dedicated to Jamie. We've been together for 4 1/2 years now and at the beginning Valentine's day was a big deal. But I've definitely gotten lazy over the years and found Valentine's day to be just another day. I don't have anything special for Jamie but I did custom order this AWESOME donut key lanyard for Jamie from a fellow Etsian Enchanted Fairy. I think I remember her telling me it's made from polymer clay and she makes them all by hand!!! How insane is that? Now it may be hard to tell how big those mini donuts are but the small ones are just a touch smaller than a penny!! How she does it I have no clue but I love it and I hope Jamie does too. He's got this weird thing for donuts especially for the one that looks like Homer Simpson's donut with all the sprinkles. Jamie's probably not dreaming of the pink frosted donuts and sprinkles and definitely not dreaming of it in a heart shape but hopefully he'll like it. He's snoring away in the living room right now so I'll surprise him with it by leaving it on his pillow =)
G'nite!
**UPDATE**
So Cynthia kindly filled me in on how to spell SUCCUMB. Who would've thought that's how you spell it?? Geez... And Google wasn't quite smart enough to figure it out for me with the "Did you mean..."
Thursday, February 12, 2009
30th Birthday Card
Now I just wanted to post something quick. My friend Arleigh (yes another Arlie, notice the spelling?) was asking for a 30th birthday card for a girlfriend of hers. Now the request was for a big 30 on the front, sorta funky and girly with perhaps some pink and purple. I think I've got most of those covered except for the funky part. I tried to do a black and pink combo earlier (for like 2 flipping hours) and failed miserably. So I went looking for some inspiration on one of my favorite blogs, My Life. I remember wanting to CASE this card from the day I saw it and now I had a chance! I didn't get it quite as nice of course but it turned out alright. Silke has some amazing work and she's as kind as kind can be. I've always loved how all her cards just ooze elegance and beauty. Anyways it's time for bed. Jamie's warming my side of the bed for me =)
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
WUAC Wednesday
So this week I really wanted to make a birthday card since I've gotten two requests on Etsy (both from friends, so lets not get ahead of ourselves with excitement). Jamie did bug me a bit about doing a Valentine's day card so I figured I might as well dig out some super old V-day paper I got a Michael's and try to hack it up. So here's a bit of what I had to work with. I wanted to use the Happy Heart stamp set. I also wanted to use up a bunch of pink pirouette paper that I had cut and scored to be 3.5"x3.5" cards which I never ended up using.
So final thoughts on the card... I'm not thrilled with it. But I'm sure my body will be thrilled if I can crawl into bed by 1 am. I've forgotten how tiring 12 hour days can be even if it's not running your butt off in the hospital.
So here's your challenge. Get off your butt and WUAC!! Here are some ideas to link it back to mine: use pink pink and more pink, layer paper like mad, use similar punches if you've got or make a card with a cow! If you're still stuck, well I'm sure we'll all be happy if you make a v-day card. And if you happen to not celebrate v-day, then heck just glue some paper onto paper and call it a night.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Baking For The Office
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
WUAC Sharing
Now if we're going to do a regular sharing of WUAC Wednesday cards I think we need to put a little something something for rules so it's also a bit challenging as well. (Although sometimes making a card is challenging on its own!) So I was thinking, as a general rule for WUAC Sharing, the card you WUAC has to use something from my WUAC Wednesday card. So this can be anything from the same colors, layout, sentiment, stamp set or technique. This week isn't fair because Arlie and Regan both made cards already. But for next week... =)
***UPDATE***
So I just published the post and the Mister Linky is there!! How exciting!! Remember the rules will apply next week!!
WUAC Wednesday
So good morning everyone and welcome to the second Whip Up A Card (WUAC) Wednesday! In case you haven't caught on, it's actually 1:13 am and yes I've got to wake up and go to work tomorrow. But of course, I can't let my 3 loyal readers down and not have a WUAC project to show!! And I also didn't want to have only the second WUAC card posted on a Thursday like the first one happened to be... So it'll either be stay up late tonite or stay up late tomorrow night.
I was talking to my beloved Arlie today and she pointed out that last time I linked to Jamie's wonderful (and not gay) knitting and coffee blog, the link was broken. No I didn't sabotage just so he wouldn't get as many links. So I'm going to link it again and you can find his blog HERE. Perhaps I'll even try it out this time after I post it. But likely not since it'll likely be like 2 am by then. Anyways on with the post. If you had read the last post, you'll know that I purchased a little creature stamp set from Doodle Factory. Well I desperately wanted to make a card with the little guy named Zot so why not just do it right? My thoughts exactly. So in the picture is my new stamp set mounted on an acrylic block, a SU blender pen, Staz On, kraft colored cardstock and some water color paper.
So now if no one has told you this before, I'm telling you now. Staz On ink is absolutely fantabulous for not smudging when you color with blender pens or aquapainters but it's definitely a witch with a B to get off of your stamps. For a few bucks, just pick up a Staz On cleaner and it's presto! Clean brand spanking new stamp. It works like a bingo dauber and who doesn't like bingo daubers? Anyways I get off track way too much. I stamped little Zot in Staz On onto the watercolor paper. Doesn't he have quite a resemblance to the Wii game Raging Rabbids?
I was talking to Regan tonite and she had discovered this website when trying to search for mine. She found StampinStuff and from there she also found High Hopes Stamps. There she has these amazing cards that she colors with ink and also these Twinkling H20s. So I thought I'd try some more water coloring because her's look amazing. I obviously didn't do so hot. She gives a great tutorial HERE.
I gave up on the blender pens after two failed attempts and moved onto the beloved aquapainter. I started off coloring the entire image in a very light coat of Brocade Blue.
Then believe it or not, I took Pacific Point and went around some of the edges that a "sun would create shadow".
Then I went around one last time and put a bit more darker edges with Not Quite Navy. To give it a bit more oomph, I went around the edges of Zot with Sahara Sand just very lightly and pulled the color outwards.
So these are my three attempts. Boy it sure is a waste of watercolor paper. I figured out what part of the problem was after I reread StampinStuff's watercoloring tutorial. I don't think she tries to color the entire image lightly with a blender pen. It just caused my water to pill up. (is that the right way to describe it?) I think using a blender pen for the darker colors on the edges and stuff for shading would work a lot better. Can you tell which one my favorite is??
So here's the final product. I know it's super simple and plain but man I'm tired!! It's 1:49 am and I'm absolutely pooped. I finished off the card by layering it onto Night of Navy cardstock and then onto Kraft. The card is 3.5"x3.5". Super cute. At least I'd like to think Zot is super cute. Ok over and out guys. Nite.
P.S. I have no idea why the spaces are all weird. Blogspot is messed up like that sometimes and I cannot for the life or sleep of me get the spacing right no matter what I do. If anyone knows, please let me know as it'd save me tons and tons of minutes of my life. Ok 1:55 am, now it's truly over and out because I don't care anymore!!!