kind of an accidental card

around easter-time i used some glorious shiny spring paper from papertemptress for easter cards. one of the many things i did was punch flowers from the card stock which i used to accent many cards. i stored the leftover flowers in a plastic bag. like many of you i can't throw anything away so i also saved some of the bits of card stock that i'd punched flowers out of, even though the punches weren't even and the papers were odd sizes. but i thought i might be able to use it again for something.

fast forward to today. i was set to make a birthday card for a co-worker who loves art deco. i actually bought her journal with a lovely deco cover. i was going through vintage images i have from twistedpapers and found the exact same image that was on the journal. i didn't even know i had that image! anyway it clearly needed to be the main focus of the card. i chose some beautiful silver card stock, also from papertemptress and then began looking for some card stock to frame the main image. i came across the card stock with the punches taken out. the colors were right though the pieces were irregular in size. i fooled around with it until i got a layout that worked for me (and that didn't reveal the punches!). then i used some of the leftover punched flowers themselves and accented them with little pearl stick-on beads in the centers.

as i was putting things away i noticed my stash of butterflies, bugs, flowers and birds from alphastamps. there was a lovely butterfly waiting to be put somewhere. so it went on here. several aspects of this card are sort of left-over and accidental. but i guess that is what makes crafting interesting. this was photographed today, instead of scanning. the shininess of the papers shows quite well.

hey by the way, thanks so much to you dear ones who leave comments on the blog. you make my day.

love to all.

a dodo in a fossil

hello friends. i tried a "try that technique" challenge this week from Beth and Diana at technique junkies. the selected technique is "fossil stone," a technique i had never looked at before. see http://www.techniquejunkies.com/ for more about it.

this is an easy technique that provides a wonderful background. although i did use two colors as is suggested by the technique, only one (the yellow) really showed because the other color (peach) was too light. but the marbling effect is cool and i can see myself using this a lot. the stamp is a dodo by madratrubber. for some reason the fact that the technique refers to "fossils" made me feel like using an ancient creature for the focal image. actually i have a petroglyph stamp and when i was looking for it the dodo turned up. i love the dodo!

have a great day & week!
love to all.

kard krazy no paper tag tuesday

hey gang. this week at www.kardkrazy.blogspot.com the challenge is to make a tag that is not on paper. i feel challenged enough working with paper. working without it is a whole other proposition. but it’s all about stretching yourself so i decided to try. i thought about fabric but i don’t really have any. i thought about foil and that felt daunting. i went to the laundry room to see if there was a nice textured rag from the rag pile i could use and there wasn’t really. then my eyes settled on the box of dryer sheets. voila.

fair warning, the following tags look a little like something your kindergartener brought home but i spent too much time on it this weekend not to post! first i looked at the sheets a long time with no real idea where to go with it. should i stamp on them? glue something on them? i had to do something with it. i pulled out some glimmer mist and sprayed the tag – would it work? the purple looked really nice. what next? i have a new template that makes dragonflies so i cut a couple out. note to self: dryer sheets do not cut well. but i succeeded and then colored with markers. second note: dryer sheets don’t want you to use markers on them either. i endured. i thought the tag needed some sort of a border so i used some ribbon from the stash. it was actually seeming somewhat hopeful so i tried different placements with the dragonflies. something more was needed. i thought the purple background was kind of like a night sky so i tried some rhinestone star and dot stickers. that seemed promising so i adhered everything (note: dryer sheets do like glue). it wasn't brilliant but it was okay.

the next challenge was trying to photograph it. i knew scanning wouldn’t work because those rhinestone stickers do not scan well, i know from past experience. every shot I took looked really bad. too many shadows, colors got weird. the higher up dragonfly up on the card is mostly white with purples and blues in it but in the photographs it soaked up all the purple behind it and looked muddy. i realized i was going to have to involve DH (who is a photographer). poor guy. the look on his face was clearly “why would you photograph that?” but his mouth just said “okay.” he helped me eliminate the shadows that were plaguing me and also helped bring out the lightness of the lighter dragonfly. so that’s the story of the dragonfly tag.




in the end though i was not really satisfied with the dragonfly tag (see kindergarten comment above). so i decided to try another one. i thought about my laundry room which also includes mop and bucket and lots of cleaning supplies. thus the cleaning theme. i spritzed the background sheet with an orange watercolor from zia stamps. i stamped three images on a plain white sheet. i cut those images out and spritzed them separately with more zia colors. i originally spritzed the housecleaning girl with a green color but it looked bad against the orange – too muddy again. and it is difficult to get a clear stamp impression on a dryer sheet. so I left her un-spritzed in the final. i adhered the stamped pieces to the orange background piece and punched a hole up top to fit in a bit of white yarn. i considered and opted against any more stick-on dots or beads. i like the second one better. the stamps: housecleaning girl and “am i nervous” are 100 proof press. the swinging lady is ken brown.

this was an interesting adventure. i actually might use dryer sheets as an element in the future but not as the entire project. and BTW, this is the best smelling project i ever made.
love to all.

2 more pinwheels as promised

here we go. a second pinwheel using the dark blue card stock and stampendous leaves. this one uses a handmade (not by me!) paper background and a happy birthday message. this went to my TJ august just one partner. the light-bright blue version also uses a stampendous stamp. the blue background affixed to the card stock is one of the blue backgrounds i made when i was doing cards for the gingersnap color blue challenge some weeks ago. i seem to have gobs of that blue paper left so it will likely be showing up lots of places. the blue is colored with the watercolor jewels from zia stamps. the card stock in both cases is courtesy of paper temptress yet again.

not much "story" today, just the basics of the cards. this week i've made some "worn wallpaper" backgrounds (also in this month's technique junkies newsletter). but i haven't made them into cards yet. stay tuned.

love to all.

pinwheels a go-go

all the rage these days at technique junkies http://www.techniquejunkies.com/ is the pinwheel technique, courtesy of Hetty from the Netherlands http://craftchaos.blogspot.com/.

i made several over the weekend and am posting two of them here now. both were stamped with a stampendous cube that has flower and leaves images. the one with the light blue background has a piece of blue-streaked vellum adhered to the card stock. i actually made two pinwheels with the darker colors so you can compare when i post the other one later.

to be honest, i tend to shy away from any technique that seems to have a lot of steps involved. so my biggest reservation about this was all the cutting. but i did a marathon squares cutting session one evening and then the next day i began constructing the pinwheels. once you get the hang of it its pretty easy.

i think this is a very versatile technique. several people on the TJ list have been making holiday cards with the pinwheels and that is a great idea. normally i can't bear making holiday cards before december but i might just start making some snowflake-like pinwheels and then worry about affixing them to card stock later on. that could be fun.

hope you like these. i'll post the other two tomorrow.
love to all.

sunshine, even in the rain

it has been raining off and on here the past few days but i haven't given up on summer. i know there must be more hot sunny goodness to come. and in celebration of that here's a card for gingersnap's GC63: Random Redhead Challenge - Sunshine.

this wonderful southwest-inspired sun is from madrat rubber. the technique around the sun is another mono mask (techniquejunkies newsletter feb/march 2009). the stamp in the mask is another stampendous cube. i used colored pencils to enhance the sun and mask. the little mono mask is adhered to a wonderful bright yellow cardstock from paper temptress. since the sun helps the flowers to grow i threw in some of those too. and that's that!

and just so you know, my philosophy is that the sun is ALWAYS shining. sometimes you just can't see it.

love to all.

oh happy day (weekend)!

dear ones: what a gift. my first weekend in a long time that i wasn't working or traveling or committed to be somewhere doing something for somebody. i have a rich, full life and no complaints but it gets a little low on "me time." so what floated my boat this weekend included scrubbing the dickens out of the bathroom (not a task i enjoy, it is the end results i like); cooking and baking (the shortcake will be out soon and the strawberries are ready to roll); writing; reading; AND (trumpet blast here) ART. yahoo!

i played with the most recent technique junkies newsletter (cards to share as this week progresses). but i also wandered through the online tutorials and scanned around for something i'd never tried from the past. the card i'll share today is a mono mask technique from february/march 2009 technique junkies newsletter. this is kind of neat. the pear is from rubber stampede and the background stamp uses all 4 sides of a cube from stampendous. the cool green paper is from papertemptress, the paper bag series.

and by the way that smell is a couple minutes too many on the shortcake. ha! it is salvageable... poor multi-tasking me! i usually don't do that but i was so anxious to blog. everything else i made this weekend came out great though i swear!

love to all.