Lace Hello

This card is for this week’s sketch challenge at CPS. I thought I had a good idea that turned into a bad idea, maybe that's what I get for thinking :)

For this card I chose two shadowed images the bear and moose from the Stampin Place. The sentiment is from a SU set Fundamental Phrases. All three were stamped on black cardstock with versamark and embossed with detail white ep, then punched out. Next I was going to punch another larger square for the layer behind the image squares, but I happened to have a scrap strip of black just laying there and liked that look, which I later changed to red. The good idea/bad idea was the lace. Lace isn’t something I have bought a lot of, and was thinking it would look nice as a backer, but didn’t really want it to be the color it was, so I was sitting there thinking…..if you can change the color of ribbon by running it across your ink pad…….why couldn’t you do lace the same way??? Well, let me tell you, this particular piece of lace was not that easy! I tried running it across the ink pad, I tried brayering the color on it, my fingers were getting blacker than the lace. I could not seem to get the ink to color the whole thing. I should have done it with stazon jet black, I have a re-inker for that, but noooo I was trying it with onxy black versafine. I started this project last night, and figured to let the lace sit all night to dry…….didn’t happen. Today when I went back to work on it, originally I had another Shadowed image of trees from the Stampin Place, in the middle but decided today the middle should be a sentiment. So thinking the lace was dry, I was throwing the stuff around changing things and found out that the lace was not dry. I had more black ink on my fingers and it was coming off on the red & black checked dp, luckily the most came off where it would be covered by the lace, but if you look closely you will see some spatter looking on the left side edge and above the bear.  The red & black checked dp is from my scrap pile, I chose it because it just looks like something to go with bear & moose, behind the dp is a black layer and the base card is red. Now I’m ready to put the card altogether. I placed some tape on the dp where I wanted the lace to be………..guess what? The lace would not stick, I tried a couple different types….no go. So I used two black mini brads in the end of the red strip to help hold it in place. Then I put all the rest of the card together, and distressed the edges of the red base card. The next step was to take pictures, I did this, then set down to write my description, I looked over at the card and realized I had put the lace on backwards, it’s a good thing the tape wasn’t holding that good, I took it apart and turned the lace over, then retook the pictures.

Hope you are having a better day. Thanks for stopping by and I’d love to hear your comments.

DH's Birthday 2011

My DH’s birthday is coming up fast and I didn’t want to wait until the last minute to make him a card. For the past couple of years I have made cards with deer on them, so I switched off this year. I think I'll enter this one over at Party Time Tuesday's also.

He recently built this corner entertainment center for our living room.

  He sat down, figured out what he wanted to do and built it with no plans (other than his own). Our log cabin kit came with a mantle for a fireplace. I don’t know why since we don’t have a fireplace. But the mantle, a hand hewn log, like the rest of the house, laid down in the basement since the roof was put on, so it would be out of the weather. He cut the mantle for the top, it steps up to the corner, that way you can better see all the junk I have on top of it (birdhouses, pictures, candles, knick knacks). Then he bought the lumber to finish the rest of it. The picture has been brightened considerably, so you can see more of the detail. I took the picture right after he finished it and it was loaded down, it was very hard to take a picture of since there are windows on both sides of it. If he wasn’t in there right now, I’d turn all the lights on and try another, but then he would wonder what I was doing.

So for this card I decided to use the SU set Totally Tool. I don’t know if I cased anyone on this idea. I remember seeing pics of tool belts, but not sure about the pegboard. Anyway, as this idea was forming in my head, I stamped the the wrench’s first with versamark on white cardstock, embossed with detail silver ep, colored with prismacolored pencils. Next I stamped the saw, the screwdrivers and the hammer the same way, but I used detail black ep, colored with prismacolored pencils and then cut all of them out. For the pegboard, I had to decide what size I wanted to use, ran that through a Cuttlebug folder Swiss Dots, turned the piece over, so that the dots were away from me and pierced each and every hole with a paper piercing tool, then I decided that the paper should have been heavier for mounting the tools, so I cut a piece of cardboard, attached the brown pegboard piece to it, and had to pierce each and every one of those holes again. I was working my brain on overdrive, trying to figure out what I could use, that would look like those hooks for pegboard, and I came up with wire. The hammer, screwdrivers, and saw have wire to hold them on. For the wrenches I used brads. I had decided to use the Tim Holtz Bricked ef to represent the basement wall, and since pegboard doesn’t work up against a wall, I also used the Tim Holtz Woodgrain ef to make boards up the side, and sponged some walnut stain on them. The pegboard is attached to the boards with silver mini brads. The sentiment isn’t a birthday sentiment, but I can do that inside, thought he’d get a kick out of this one. As an afterthought, I stamped the measuring tape and colored the same as the rest of the tools.

This is his 2010 birthday card.

This is his 2009 birthday card, I cased this one.

Thanks for stopping by, and I’d love to hear your comments.

Pieced Farm

There’s a blog hop Animal Kingdom challenge going on at Stamp TV to use any of the listed GKD animal sets. I chose Funny Farm and here is my card.

There were quite a few sets you could use on the list. I only had two of those sets. I don’t know about everybody else, but sometimes I have ideas fly through my head so fast, I can’t keep up with them, it’s almost like a roulette wheel, going round and round, and when it stops that number (idea)  is what I use, all the other numbers (ideas) are forgotten. I should have a tape recorder, if they still make them, and just speak my ideas out loud, then I could remember more of them. While blog hopping tonight there was a lot of beautiful cards, I don’t think anybody paper pieced the set I used, but when that idea popped it stuck. I think this is a first for me, when I paper piece, it is normal looking, that is also why I chose the sentiment Funny Farm from the same set. I started digging through my scrap pile to find some pieces with small print, I just made different card not long ago, using this sketch, and the same white, blue, dp (except for the pig), tag, and the ribbon for the Clearly Inspired Challenge sponsored by Clear Dollar Stamps. I really liked the way the colors went together. So rather than sitting half the night trying to decide what to do, I went with that.

The animals were stamped first with versamark, embossed with detail black ep, I used a white gel pen to fade out the dp colors around the eyes, the flowers and the spots on the cow, then I colored over some of those spots with different glaze pens. After all why would a cow have white spots, when it is purple with green designs anyway. The animals were laid to the side, while working on the rest of the card. Next I used a 4” square of purple, my MS fence border punch and my newly discovered technique of how to punch around a square using only a border punch. You can find my redneck tutorial here. I cut a square of blue instead of green for the grass, stamped some grass from a CDS set called Mini Silhouette Scapes with Dusty Concord distress ink. Then I proceeded to cut the background pieces. The darker of the two dp’s is a whole layer, the lighter of the two are cut and layered on white and placed on the two corners of the darker dp, this was attached to a layer of the same blue used for tag and square. I cut out the blue tag with a cuttlebug slider die, stamped with versamark, embossed with detail white ep, ran the ribbon through the tag and across the layers of dp to the back of the blue layer. The animals were attached to the blue square, which was attached to the fence square, and put in place over the ribbon/dp layers. The base card is white. I had to use more of the dp than was in my scrap pile, (except for the pig) the dp is from a DCWV Summer Dream matstack.

I don’t know what they are smoking on this farm, but I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for stopping by, and I’d love to hear your comments.  

Aerobics Suck!

This week’s color challenge at Stamp TV is to use crème de menthe, red hot and lemon drop. Here is an entry.

I chose to use two of my Rubbernecker Stamps, Aerobics Suck! and Ethel in Leotard. The main image was stamped on white cardstock with onyx black versafine, colored with prismacolored pencils & goo gone, cut out, then I decided to give her varicose veins, (hope you can see them in the picture), and her glasses have a coating of All Night Media Liquid Embossing Sepia Glass Finish, so she was laid to the side to dry. The layer under her is a piece of yellow matching the cardbase, it was run through the Cuttlebug with the Perfectly Paisley ef, then cut and embossed with Nestie Labels Thirteen, and sponged with some distress inks (Tumbled Glass & Fired Brick). The artificial crème de menthe layer was also cut and embossed with the Nesties. The red layer was also run through the Cuttlebug with an ef from the Heritage Collection, the corners sponged with Fired Brick. The sentiment was stamped on artificial crème de menthe with onyx black versafine, then cut out with a Ribbon Tag Trio die, I used another die from that set and cut out a layer of yellow to put behind it. The yellow ribbon was run through the tags and attached to the back of the red layer. The lady was added with foam pop-dots.

Thanks for looking, and I’d love to hear your comments.

Bug Catcher

I want to play!! I have the house all to myself, and can play and play all day! It’s miserable looking outside....changing from rainy & foggy, to the sun peeking for a second, to cloudy & real windy, so what better thing to do than stamp???

This  card came about while flipping through  a DCWV The Spring Stack, when I spotted those bugs, out came the Crafty Secrets set Feeling Yucky. I decided to use this week’s sketch challenge over at CPS. I hope it’s ok to enter more than one card. I’m also going to enter it at Use It Tuesday for their challenge to use your hoarded pretty patterned paper…………bugs are not exactly my idea of pretty patterned paper, but the colors are pretty, and it fit so well with the image & sentiment. Those bigger bugs remind me of stink bugs……maybe this card will be stinkin’ cuteJ. Since anything goes this week at Party Time Tuesday’s I’ll go ahead and enter it there too. Maybe I need to get a life?

The main image and the bug in the jar was stamped with versamark on white cardstock, colored with SU markers (red crosses and blue dress) prismacolored pencils & goo gone (skin & hair), black glaze pen (eyes & shoes), black gel pen & waterbrush (bug in jar), then cut out. Before cutting out the bug in the jar, the crystal lacquer had to dry, that was applied to the jar. The sentiment was stamped on yellow with onyx black versafine and punched out with a circle punch. For a backer to the image I chose a green, then a layer of yellow. I wanted bigger circles for this card, and since bigger circles means less background showing…….and I wanted to show off those bugs, I pulled out my Circle Scissor and cut out one layer of the bug dp and a layer of yellow matching the basecard.  Looking back at it, I’m wishing I had cut the bigger circle out of the green instead of the yellow. Behind the circle layers is another layer of the bug dp, then a  layer of green. The corners of the layers were punched with a Southwest corner punch (had to look it up, couldn’t remember the name), and yellow Hippie Hemp (that’s the name on the package) was wrapped around the slits. The nurse is attached with pop dots. I cut around her hand with an exacto knife to insert the jar.

Who knows what I’ll come up with next, ya’ll come back ya hear!

Thanks for looking and I’d love to hear your comments.