Two Words!

SCRAPBOOK EXPO!

(OK, more words...I'm going to Scrapbook Expo this morning to shop!)  I'll check back in later with my finds and if there is a haul to share I'll share it!!! :)

Not My Favorite Technique...

....and not sure I'll use it again!
What am I talking about?  I'm talking about a technique that was demonstrated in the online Card Camp class I'm taking.  It was a technique by one of my favorite people in this wonderful world of stamping and paper crafting...Jennifer McGuire.  I've taken classes with her before and have been wowed by the techniques she has taught.  BUT NOT THIS ONE! 

Anyway, here is my finished card:

I will say that when Jennifer demonstrated in her video her project came out looking pretty nice.  It's basically a sort of reverse embossing technique where you "kiss" of some embossing powder (before it's melted, of course) with a stamp image.  After several tries with several stamps I own I decided it's the kind of stamps I have....you really need stamps with large parts stamped out. That makes no sense, I realize that and I don't know exactly how to explain it but let me try again.  Most of my images are line drawn so when you stamp with ink (say you use black) you get a line drawing of your image and then you can color in with paints or watercolors or inks or whatever.  Those kinds of stamps do not work well for this technique.  You need a larger area that if you were to stamp with a traditional ink would have a lot of ink on it.  Know what I mean?
OK...here's a stamp set from Hero Arts.  The stamp on the bottom left might work ok for this technique but the one on the top right would probably not do quite as well.

Basically what you do is you take your Versamark ink pad and just press it down (to leave a rectangle of Versamark) onto a piece of paper...Jennifer used watercolor paper and that's what I used as well.  Then you sprinkle embossing powder on your ink on the paper....shake off the excess and THEN you get your stamp and ink it up with the Versamark and press it down onto your embossing powdered and what happens is the part of the image that has the ink on it will pick up the embossing powder off your paper as you "kiss" it.  Got it?  Then what you kind of have is a reversed embossed image.  You melt the powder so the image is sort of framed by the embossing powder but your image is actually NAKED.  Then you can take watercolors, inks, whatever you want and color your image. 

As I said...I think Jennifer's card came out beautifully but I think my problem was not having the right kind of stamp.  I tried several but didn't get the look I wanted so did it with a Hero Arts sentiment stamp.  After I got it embossed I painted it a few times with some Twinkling H20's I had on hand (which I had to have a few years back and rarely use!).

Anyway, the card is simple in design but took me forever to make! LOL!  I embossed and embossed and embossed and embossed...I had a mess!!! But fear not...my nice clean room is clean once again!

To finish off this card I used Paper Trey Ink printed papers and cardstock, some Kraft cardstock I had, Swiss Dots embossing folder, Paper Trey Ink satin ribbon, and some buttons I have had on hand as well as a little twine. 

I will say it was half fun to make but half aggravation, too.  I don't know that I will do this again....

OH....and for those of you who saw my post yesterday about our trip to see my kids' grandmother I was able to get a picture of her wedding photo.   The photo is actually sealed in a frame so could not be scanned...this isn't the best image but isn't it lovely.  A.G. and N.B.G's great grandmother is on the top of the stairs and her sister is on the bottom.  I just love this photo of these matching brides....don't you?  I imagine it was taken in the mid 1940s.

Happy Crafting!

No Time for Crafting Yesterday

We spent the day yesterday in Northwest Georgia visiting my kids' grandmother. It was a wonderful day for us and we enjoyed the visit very much.  A.G. and N.B.G.'s great grandmother will be celebrating her 86th birthday in another month or two.  She is a retired schoolteacher and always has such wonderful stories of her life to tell.  One of my favorite stories that she told us again yesterday (because I had forgotten details and wanted to hear it again) is the story of her wedding.  She and her sister had a double wedding.  Her sister wore a long white gown worn by two older sisters at their wedding and they took the dress to a seamstress who made an identical dress for her.  So their dresses and headpieces were the same.  There is a photo hanging in her house of the two brides and grooms on a staircase...I'll have to remember to snap a photo of it next time I go up because it is a great photo!  Here are a few photos of Jessie and her granddaughter and great grandchildren:

So...no crafting time yesterday....and now I'm waiting for A.G. to come spend an hour or two with me as his mother takes N.B.G. for her 1 month well baby check.

But I will get to the business of creating later today, I hope!  So hang in there with me!!!

One thing I wanted to share, though, is often times how I keep up with all the blogs I love to read!  When I go to bed at night I grab my iPad and open up the fabulous FLIPBOARD iPad app and go to my GoogleReader and read all of your fabulous blogs! It is so pretty to see in this format!  I love it and you all look so so pretty!  (You look pretty on my laptop, too...but I do like saying goodnight to you all by checking in with you before I go Night-Night!)

So, this is the way I see you...and this photo I took with my iPhone so it's not so great because my room was dark when I took it:



Judy, I think I see your blog there! :)

Now the other thing I wanted to share is this original photo and you can see it's a little darker:

I was reading Scrapbooks, Etc. magazine yesterday (June, 2011 issue) and there was an article on some photo editing.  I use Photoshop Elements 8.0 and am good with that program. I've looked at upgrading to Photoshop CSE but it is just so pricey and for my needs (basic photo editing) I think PSE is enough.

Anyway, I love to edit my photos a bit at times and a new tip I learned yesterday from Scrapbooks, Etc was with lightening a dark photo.  It was so easy...I've done it other ways and gotten similar results but the steps I used to take before reading this were much more involved.  Perhaps you knew this...I didn't.

1.  Open up your photo.

2.  Make a duplicate layer and stay on your duplicate layer and click on your layers palette.

3.  Click on "screen".

4.  It will lighten your photo significantly and then you can adjust the opacity to get the lightening you want.

And that's it!  Love little tips like that that make my life easier! LOL!

Well...A.G. is here and needing my attention!

Happy Crafting!

Simple Sympathy Card

I think there are years where I don't have the need for a sympathy card.  Sadly I've needed several the past few weeks.

I made several of these cards yesterday...very simple and fast but with a touch of elegance, I think.  (slight glare from the light and glitter on the bottom left but it is what it is!)

I used paper from My Minds Eye called Grand Vignettes by Carina Gardiner (it has a glittery look to it...sorry, Donna!...but I love me some GLITTER and SHINE!).  The butterfly is a Hero Arts stamp from the Vintage Engraving Set. 

 I stamped on black with Versamark and embossed it with Bridal Ranger Embossing Tinsel....I love that stuff....it is so pretty when melted!

 The sentiment is from a Heidi Grace set and I also embossed it.  No ribbon or other bulky embellishments were added so that they'd mail easily.

I made four of these in less than an hour.  Sometimes fast is good....

Summer Card Camp 2011: Week 2: Card 1

The new palette for Week 2 of the Summer Card Camp 2011 was released today for us to use to make a

 card.

I had a little trouble deciding what to do...should I just use various paper, punches, stamps, inks?  What to do...what to do...  Sometimes the hardest part is getting started. Sometimes the ideas in the head do not compute to something worth a toot on paper!  But sometimes it DOES all come together! :)

I decided I wanted to use this cute Margarita Moments stamp set by Unity which I bought recenlty but have never used.  So that gave me a starting point but it took a while to decided a card design.  This is what I came up with, though:

I thought it turned out rather cute...and once I figured out what I was going to do it didn't take long at all.
I used my Mat Stack die from Paper Trey Ink and used one of the Mat Stack Collection 3 stamps and tucked it under the orangey cardstock strip.  I stamped the margarita glass in black used some colored pencils to color it and used Gamsol to blend.  I added a little glitter to the rim and some glossy accents to make it nice and shiny!  I stamped the sentiment on the bottom with Versamark and then used some Ultra Detail White Embossing Powder with my heat gun.
The supplies I used...and YES...everything I used I had on hand...included:
Hero Arts Sunshine Layering Paper
Artist's Loft pencils/Gamsol
Versamark
Ultra Detail Embossing Powder
Ribbon: Michaels
Hero Arts Poppy Chalk Ink
VersaFine Onyx ink
Hero Hues Flowers
Crystal Stickers-Orange

I think it's a nice happy little card.  And it makes me thirsty for a nice frozen salt on the rim 'rita! Yum!



Cricut Challenge 10B: Country Life

My dear friend, Jeanne, from Kansas who is a loyal blog reader (we'll see if she is really paying attention!) asked me to make a farm type card for her.  A friend of hers is retiring from full time banking and farming to just full time farming.  He farms wheat.  Wheat does not grow in Georgia.  We have cotton, watermelon, peaches, and peanuts!

I have known Jeanne for over 30...wait, NO...40 YEARS.  We went to junior high school together in Frankfurt, Germany back in the wonderful days of the Cold War when there were lots of  US troops and support personnel based in Germany.  We had such a good time over there and did all kinds of fun and dumb things....like lighting fireworks and throwing them out of a third story window after they were lit!
Her parents didn't know about that, though....and mine never found out either.  We hid the evidence!

It's amazing Jeanne and I have kept in touch all these years.  Remember snail mail?  That's how we communicated for about 30 years...and we pretty much always stayed in touch.  When we both got on the WWW we have been able to keep in even closer touch.  Technology is amazing, isn't it?

So, I pulled out the Country Life cartridge once again and made this card:



And except for the card base (which is 5.5 by 8) and the Kraft mat on top I pulled out my neatly organzied (and more importantly) LOCATABLE scrap box  (because it's in my nice, neat and organized room!) and used pieces of this and that to make the rest of the scene.  Some inking was done although not shown in this picture.  I used a small button on the door....some foam tape to pop up the farmer and the monstrous wheat and used a Paper Trey Ink sentiment that says "Happy Retirement"....all things I had on hand!  I like that!  Although I do like shopping for new stuff, too, of course.

Speaking of shopping run to your local Joann, Etc. today.  All single sheet 12x12 paper is 5 for $.96.  That includes the wonderful Core'dinations cardstock.  My Joann's had the new Tim Holtz distress Core'dinations

cardstock in some wonderfully fabulous new colors....there are 36 new colors available....I got 2 of each! :) 

Paper addict, I know....I confess...

Happy July 4th to all Americans...my husband and I were talking last night about a very memorable 4th of July for us.  We had taken my son who was about 12 at the time to Washington, DC and went to the Mall area to watch the national fireworks.  We were just in front of the Washington Monument...the White House was to our right and the Lincoln Memorial with the reflecting pool was straight ahead.  We really enjoyed the show...with about 500,000 other people! It was really crowded but was worth it....not that I will ever be inclined to do it again but was an experience that my son still talks about today. 

Happy Crafting!

Back to the Business of Making Stuff!

Once I clean up my room I usually have trouble motivating myself again because I don't want to mess anything up.  It's like when you clean your kitchen really well and then don't want to cook or even boil water because you're afraid you'll make a mess...or you wash you car and then don't want to take it out of the garage because you don't want it to get dirty.  Follow me?  It's another one of my many issues!

But I decided that I was going to forge ahead with the business of making stuff.  So, I went to my "This ain't no Ikea-Showcase-Pretty-Colors-On-the-Wall" studio.  BTW...I'm from Georgia.  We say things like "This ain't no" or "ain't got no"...and even though there are two negatives as in 'ain't' and 'no' it does not create a positive.  "Ain't no"....means IS NOT or ARE NOT  "ain't got no" means NONE, NADA, NOTHING, NICHTS!  So if you are not from the south perhaps you will feel enlightened to our way of saying things a bit.

Anyway, my husband's birthday is coming up shortly so I decided to make him a card with some leftovers.  (He loves leftover by the way...)  I don't think anything I used on this card is something I purchased within the last year.  Old, old, old....just like my husband will be on his next birthday! 

Actually my husband is 2 months younger than I am....he's smart, though...he never throws that up in my face.

So here is the card I made using the weekly sketch from Clean&Simple Stamping.  It's really quite simple and didn't take long at all to make. 

I used kraft paper from a pack I bought at Joann's, printed papers by MOD (I don't even know if this company exists any longer...), Stamps by Hero Arts and Page Pebbles by Making Memories.  I also used a Fiskars border punch...I love that spiral notebook paper edge.  I also Baroque Burgundy Stampin' Up ink.  A little twine tied at the top finished it off. 

Simple, simple, simple.  And it only took me about 5 minutes to clean up my mess! :)

I am also putting this in the CAS-Fridays challenge which was to make a masculine card and use kraft paper.

All done! 

Happy Krafting (terrible pun....I know...it's late....my room is clean....I don't know what to do with myself...)