Hello to You and a Question for Tim!

I wasn't able to get down in my craft room yesterday until about 8:30pm but "whipped" out this card in less than an hour.  I had the idea in mind...had seen some similar cards that had inspired me.  For one...I am totally inspired by Darlene of DARLENE DESIGNS.  I believe I read an interview by her once that asked her what her favorite line of paper is and she stated that she likes plain white paper the best because she can make her own printed paper.  She does amazing stuff with inks!  I am addicted to her videos!
Another card I saw had a bicycle and clouds on it...I just decided to do mine slightly different and here it is:

This was done with a Hero Arts/Sizzix set (which comes with the stamp and the coordinating dies).  I am most proud of myself though (patting self on back) because I "drew" the clouds in Silhouette Studio (basically a bunch of circles welded together) and cut them out with my Cameo.  I taped the clouds to my white paper and inked them with Tumbled Glass Distress Ink and then removed the clouds so that it would give me a nice blue sky with nice white clouds.  I loved the way that looked but then I thought...why not ink additional clouds and pop them up/ so that's what I did for a little more dimension and I loved it.  I even took another piece of paper and inked it up the same way...with some Evergreen Bough for the grass and a little Spiced Marmalade where the blue met the green and stamped on it with Memento Tuxedo Black and then die cut the bicycle out so that it would match the paper colors underneath.  I added a piece of black grosgrain ribbon to simulate a path.  I added the sentiment on a well chosen cloud and was done after mounting my design to a piece of kraft cardstock.  Finished...and a nice bright and cheerful card!
Here's another look:

Pretty Easy Peasy...and I love I did it with nothing more than some inks, a piece of white paper and a 6 inch piece of ribbon (well, and $5279 worth of Cuttlebug, Cameo, craft mat, fancy scissors, stamps, inks, ribbon, glue, dimensionals, trimmer, etc. etc. etc.!)  LOL!!!

I'm also entering this in The Go Fish Challenge #15 Anything Goes.  *Thanks for the heads up on it, Amy!

OK...now I have a question for Tim Holtz!  HOW DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT ALL YOUR INKS LOOK LIKE?  Do you just KNOW?  Or do you use a cheat sheet???

It seems like every time I use my inks I pull out the colors that are all similar and do little tests and waste a lot of time finding the right shade.  When I was on Darlene's blog the other day I saw she had made samples of all her distress inks and I thought...well, how smart is that?!

So, I began making my samples...I also have the sponge applicators for each one that I keep in the cutest teensy zip lock bags (with the name of the ink printed on each) so that I don't waste my applicators (trying to save money where I can! LOL!).  I ran our of applicators so I only got so far but here is what I have so far.  These are done on 2x3 inch pieces of paper and I printed the name on each one, as well.

So now I need to go spend more $ buying more sponge applicators!  But at least now I can tell the difference between Faded Jeans, Tumbled Glass and Broken China! 

Another question for Tim...do your hands look like this all the time???

Happy Crafting!

What Fun and So Easy!

I bet I grabbed your attention with the words fun and easy, right?  LOL!  Well, I'm probably fibbing a bit on the "easy" but once I got my "issues" figured out this whole layout was very easy to complete!  This layout is the left side of a yet to be completed 2 page layout of Taylor coming home from the hospital after her birth.  The left side shown below is the decorated mailbox and a photo of Mommy and Baby. No journaling on this side...I'll do that on the other side which I hope to work on today.

What was so exciting to me was that I bought a these adorable digital hand drawn images from Shanna Vineyard HERE.  The name of the kit is Home Is Where the Heart Is.  I was really excited because I thought they were oh-so-cute and I loved her samples on her blog where she had done a digital layout as well as one where she had printed out the images on cardstock and then fussy cut them out.  I decided to see if I could simplify the process a bit with my SILHOUETTE!  Yep...all of these were printed on my home printer and then I was able to cut them out with my lovely Cameo.  and it really was not difficult at all.  I am a big fan of stamps and coordinating dies and I got this same look but in a much less labor intensive way.  I simple pulled the png file into my Silhouette software, traced it, and then created a white edging around the image for the cut line.  It was sooooo easy.  And actually I did a layout on a yellow background and just didn't like it (wish I'd taken a picture for comparison) and redid it on this Jillibean black dotted paper.  As I was redoing it I resized my images.  That was the other great thing...I can use all of these images again and again and again at any size I'd like!  

This layout only took me about 8 hours to complete...you know how fast I am (!)...the next one should be faster now that I know what I'm doing!  LOL!

Look how cute these images are.  Shanna did them so they look textured and then I printed on Colorbok textured cardstock which cut like BUTTAH on my Silhouette.  Look how wonderful those cut edges look...very smooth...perfect cuts!

It looks like I drew them and colored them myself!  

I added some Glossy Accents to some or parts of the images:

I really had a great time figuring out how to do this and it really opens up some possibilities for me....that is being able to pull in .png, jpeg, etc files to print and cut.  The Silhouette is just so smart!

Happy Crafting...I'm hoping to get an hour of tennis in before it rains!

And We Have MORE Baby Girl Layouts!

A quick post today...the week begins and so do my weekly activities beginning with some tennis this morning.  Typical of March we will be playing in hurricane force winds! LOL!

Here is another 2 page layout I did of Taylor's birth.  These photos were taken when I was trying to wiggle my way in between the DADDY and the DOCTOR who were preparing to cut the cord.  I remember Daddy David kept asking "Here?", "Here?", "Here?".  It was kind of funny....I think he was worried about snipping!

And here...without further ado...are the layouts:

 

 I used the Lavender Chateau paper stacks from DCWV (same line I used in the sketch challenge layout from yesterday).  The flourishes and the frames or labels were cut with my Silhouette.  I loved that journaling frame...nice room for writing...and sometimes my journaling is rather spotty!  I put some Swarovski crystals on the flourishes for a little extra something.  Again...I love the balance the 8x10 gives the 2 page layout with the smaller 5x7s.   Photos of a birth need to be dramatic, don't they?  I wouldn't want small photos swallowed up on my pages.  

Well, that's it for today, girlies!

Happy Crafting!