Card Swaps...what got me here!

I have been an active card swapper for years.  My family got me into this rubber stamping hobby and my online friends have helped keep me involved.  I've been a group moderator and/or member of one Yahoo rubber stamp group or another since 1997.  I enjoy card swaps because they give me a reason to play with my stamps even when no one in my family is having a birthday or other special occasion.  It's nice to get back an assortment of cards from other stampers, too!  Back when I was a brand new stamper, it's how I learned some of the techniques.

Western Swap Card

I happen to be hostessing this particular swap for the Yahoo Midwest Stampers group.  The theme is Western and I chose this gruff looking cowboy.  I stamped him on white card stock using Memento Tuxedo Black ink and colored him with Sharpie markers, then fussy cut him out.

I chose several different western elements for the background scene. The road and sky were colored with Faber Castell Gelatos.  After coloring, I took the paint brush that came in the set and wet them just enough to spread the color without watering them down too much.

When the Gelatos were dry I used Sharpies and Bic Mark-Its to color the rest of the scenery.

I found some great blue jean material trim on a recent trip to JoAnn Fabrics.  What a great 3D element to go with a cowboy!  I attached the trim to black card stock using Helmar Craft Glue.  I cut the trim even with the edge of the card stock and used a toothpick to place a thin line of USArt Quest PPA along the edge to keep them from fraying.  I chose the PPA over the Craft Glue because it dries matte and flexible and virtually disappears on this fabric.

The original color I had chosen for the cowboy's jeans was a washed out denim but with the addition of the trim I had to darken them up to pull the element into the card.  With the darker jeans I also had to darken his shoes.  Then I put some double sided tape on the back of a silver sheet of paper and punched out a star for his vest.

I attached double-sided foam tape to the cowboy so he would stand out from the background.

I didn't have enough star shaped buttons for all six cards so I cut the back off of these brads and attached them to the trim using Helmar Gemstone Glue.  I like these brads because they are dimensional but still flat enough that the card can be mailed without adding additional postage.  Even though I love the look of cards that have large embellishments or thick paper flowers, it just isn't practical for a card swap.  These are cards that other people may be mailing out.  I like to keep my swap cards to the 1-stamp rule.

Here is the finished card.  Inside is a paper liner and the stamp, "It's your birthday...saddle up and party 'til the cows come home!"

Stamps used on this card are:

Cowboy - Biblical Impressions

Western Roadway - Third Coast Rubber Stamps

Cactus - Beeswax

Skull - Viva Las Vegastamps

Horse Silhouette - unknown

Buzzards - Stampscapes

Saying - DRS Designs

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A weekend spent cleaning pays off

What is a crafter to do when there is no room on the table for even a coffee cup?  Clean, of course!

No this isn't a joke, it's a serious mess!

I spent all day Saturday and Sunday sorting, cleaning and generally putting things back where they belong.  I think I have a pretty creative solution to the problem of where to put my stamps after I wash them so they can dry.  I have a double laundry tub and in the "other side" I have a coated wire rack with a dish drainer mat.  Not pretty, but a pretty good use of space.

I wash my stamps with each use.  I just use a soft brush, Palmolive dish soap and warm water.

I've shown pictures of my studio before but I thought I'd try something new.  I made a short video of my space.  Maybe I just really want it documented that it was this clean at one point.  I hope you enjoy the tour.  It starts with the back "wall" of my main space and then goes around the corner into the entry way to the laundry room. 

OMG - is that really what I sound like??  LOL!  I did the tour in stages mostly because it took so long to clean the room.  Part two is the small area just behind my chair.

The main table area is where I spend most of my time in my studio.  When it's clean, there is room for two at the table.  It's a great size for a studio and I feel blessed to have it.  My husband agreed that it could be mine before we even bought the house.  I love it.  And I love it even more when it's clean enough to work in!

Here are my storage cabinets.  You can still get them at Home Depot, but they aren't as nice anymore.  They have really cheapened them up over the last couple of years and they don't have the nice built-in peg board on the doors.

Do you store any of this stuff  you see in a better way?  See something that could use improving? Drop me a line below and let me know.  I'm always looking for ways to have my room be more efficient.  The less time I have to spend looking for things, the more time I have to create!

If you like the blog, please consider following it.  There are two different ways on the right of the page.  I always welcome new followers!  Happy crafting!

More weekend projects

I've spent a lot of time in my studio this weekend.  I did some cleaning but not enough to make a dent in the mess on my tabletop.  I finished a page in one journal and started a page in another.  I made some card size backgrounds and finished a doorknob hanger for the Anything But A Card challenge.

The complete page is in my small journal, which I use mostly for doodles.  I had to gesso the backside of some of the pages because when I doodled with a Sharpie it bled through.  So the page I completed this weekend was on one of those pages and uses acrylic paint as well as ink.  It was also a good excuse to try out my new die cuts.

The page started out with a pretty bright pink background and when I was adding the floral stencil, it slipped and the top corner turned into a big black smudge.  I tried covering it with just the birdhouse, but it looked bad so I got out the gesso again.  I planned to cover the entire thing and start over, but I really liked how everything still showed through so I just kept stamping and adding ink and paint...and voila!  This is what I came up with.

The page that I started is in the larger journal.  I grabbed three bright spring-like colors.  I think they are very pretty, but they are out of my normal color palette.  Turquoise and bright green glitter were sprinkled into the wet paint.  When that layer was dry, the edges were colored with a cotton candy Gelato and some drips were added.  I'm still trying to decide what the page is saying to me. 

Finally this weekend, I made a project for the Anything But A Card challenge.  The theme this time around is Steampunk.  I haven't played much with the genre and thought it would be fun to give it a try.  I made a door hanger using the Tim Holtz pocket watch embossing folder and several stamps.

I embossed the image three times across the page and then used a sponge to added Colorbox Chalk toffee colored ink and then brushed a Cat's Eye Colorbox bronze ink page across the numbers.

The images I chose were an acrobat by Viva Las Vegastamps, a hanging pocket watch from Sin City Stamps, train by Creative Gifts and key & steam from Stampin' Up.  Sorry, I have no idea who makes the train track.  The saying was in a set I got at Michael's in the dollar bin.  I got it in a bunch of other stamps on eBay several years ago.  All of these images were masked together on a single piece of paper.  When the images were all on the wooden hanger I added a few charms.

All in all it was a pretty nice way to spend a weekend!  Sure beats housecleaning!!

Thanks for stopping by and spending a minute or two with me.  Please feel free to leave a comment.  And I always welcome new followers!  See you next time.  Happy stamping!

An Anniversary "Card"

I made my husband his usual anniversary card this year and it turned out okay.  I'm never happy enough with the cards I make for my husband.  I always think they should be ... MORE.  Either more romantic or more pretty or just plain more special.  Since they are for him I would like them to be the best I can make.  So this year, along with the usual card I also made an anniversary journal page. 

Let's start with the card.  It also started out as a journal page from very early in the process.  The images I chose really didn't work well together as a whole page but I liked certain parts of the design.  I ripped it out of the journal and cut it into different size panels and they work much better separately. It's pretty but also kind of plain.  He loves it, which is really what matters most since it was for him!

But I thought I could do better and decided to make a journal layout to celebrate our anniversary.  I wanted a romantic page but I didn't want pink or red because those say Valentine's to me.  One of our wedding colors was purple so I went with every shade of purple paint I had. I added some silver to give it shine and teal and white for contrast.

The challenge in my mind was how to make a romantic layout without making it too feminine.  I used my favorite Stampin' Up butterfly, an open diamond weave and a script stamp both from Stamp Camp and a the largest Eiffel Tower from Viva Las Vegastamps. All were stamped with acrylic paint instead of using ink. Tip for you - when you're using paint to stamp something as detailed as the butterfly be sure to wash it right away.  Normally, I have no issues getting paint off the stamp.  It just peels right off when it's dry.  But the butterfly has a lot of tiny crevices and I'm still working on getting that one clean!

To add more texture and interest I grabbed the smaller diamond weave from Stamp Camp and the textured diamonds from Sin City Stamps.  To make the variegated diamonds, I just smeared three different colors of acrylic paint on them with my finger.

 

After the images were in place and dry I took a stencil and USArt Quest's 101 Heavy molding paste and added some floral touches.  The flower placed over the butterfly was to cover up a stamping error and is great camouflage.  Even I can't find it now!

More 101 was used to add some polka dots along the edges.  The words were stamped with matte white acrylic paint so that they would be bold enough to stand up to the shiny background. 

There it is...my anniversary gift to my husband for our 18th year.  The first anniversary "card" I truly like!

Thanks for stopping by!  I love comments and welcome new followers!  Have a wonderful day!

Cards made with my new Sin City Stamps images

I have been playing with the journaling stamps from Sin City Stamps for a couple of months now and I really like them.  There are so many stamps in their collection that I want that it is very hard to decide what to add to my stash first!  So last month I decided to order their 1 lb. grab bag and let fate decide which stamps I get to play with next.  I like to order stamps this way from time to time because it’s an envelope full of surprises!  And who doesn’t like a good surprise, right?

This package had stamps of backgrounds (fabulous for journaling), children & silhouettes (always fun for Mother’s Day, etc) and…Halloween!  And not the happy-funny-smiley Halloween either!  MY kind of Halloween!  I have always made my Halloween cards dark and scary. To me, that is the best kind of Halloween.  When I saw this graveyard stamp I couldn’t wait to play with it.  And I love the spooky font on the Oct 31 stamp.

I started by choosing bold colors.  I love how orange and blue look together and every spooky Halloween deserves a big bright moon so I added a vibrant yellow.  Then I stamped all of my images in all of the colors so I could play around and get the right combination of layers. 

It’s a scary card that can even go to the young people on my holiday card list because the colors are bright and bold and the coffin isn’t too scary.  

Of course, I couldn’t resist playing with the coffin on another card.  I used the direct-to-paper method and my little mini inkpads to get a nice background going.  I stamped some texture images around the sides and randomly in the middle before placing the main image on the card.  

A little coloring and then I sponged more ink around everywhere except the moon. The gray is a chalk ink and gave it a nice muted effect.

Two very different cards with one stamp – those are my favorites!  I love stamps that can be used over and over again without repeating a design. 

Thanks for stopping by and following me on this creative journey.  Please feel free to leave me a comment or like/follow my page.  Happy stamping!

Stop and smell the roses

The roses in this case are napkins and they help bring my Garden of Dreams layout to life.

This double page features a lot of greens and browns.  I made this background knowing that one of the techniques that Terri Sproul highlighted in this lesson was using napkins to enhance the page.  But when I was done with the painted background I thought it was going to be too dark and too busy.  In the past, I would have scrapped the idea and made another but I really wanted to see where this would take me.  Before the paint could dry I added a sprinkling of gold Mica D'Lights so the page would have a very light sparkle.

I started my napkin collage with a tan and cream floral napkin to try and soften up some of the dark swirls.  Some of the pieces of this pattern and one of the large flowers were stamped with a handwriting image and allowed to dry before being decoupaged onto the page.  These were the napkins I chose.

After the tan floral, I added two of the large lilies and two roses.  A marble pattern was stamped in gold to add a little depth to the background.  I wanted more of a garden feel to the page and because of the dark background the napkins weren't as prominent as I'd hoped.  No problem!  I grabbed a stencil and some of my USArt Quest 101 Light and added some vines.  While the paste was still wet I sprinkled Mica Delights in ruby and green.

A green Bic Mark-It was used to highlight the vine and a red one was used to highlight the circles to match the mica used on each.  After that, I stamped bees in cream colored acrylic paint and dragonflies using a brown Faber-Castell Gelato.

Terri's original theme was "Dream Big" but it just didn't seem to fit my page so I changed the title to "Garden of Dreams".  I chose a font from my computer and printed it out to use as a guide for how to draw each letter.  The same Bic Mark-It that was used on the vine was used for the letters.  And voila!

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Be Brave in your art journal

Be Brave and Take a Chance was the theme of this next layout.  My bravery on this layout was mainly the use of mustard yellow!  That color took me out of my comfort zone.  There were a lot of techniques going on for this layout.  Hey, you can catch Terri Sproul's art journal tutorial #3 over on YouTube if you'd like to play along on Tuesdays and make your own brave layout!

First I tore large sections from a sheet of scrapbook paper.  It was a brown paper with copper hexagons.  The brown paper really drove this layout, which is ironic because I used so much paint that it almost doesn't show.  Only the shiny copper really comes through.  That's a shame because it was wonderful paper. 

After the paper was down I spread on a generous amount of Elmer's glue and a little touch of copper color glitter glue.  You have to let that start to dry and then paint over top.  While the paint and glues dry the paint begins to crack and split.  Because the paint got away from me I tried to wipe some of it off.  A couple of things went wrong at this point.  When you blend the glue and paint it doesn't really crack.  Also, because the paper was saturated with paint, when I began wiping it off I was also wiping off the scrapbook pattern!  So I stopped wiping and decided to go with whatever happened.  I sprinkled on a few of the turquoise mica flakes that came in the mail that day.

 

Because I was being Brave. I wanted to do something different to add interest to the page.  I took my largest mica tile and split it into two pieces so that I could have the same shape on each side of the layout.    The "Be Brave" tile has the yellow paint on the back and the words and my thumbprint on the top.  The "Take A Chance" tile has the yellow paint on top so it's not as shiny.  Both tiles were attached with Helmar 450 glue.

 

After the paint was thoroughly dry I  added a couple sections of USArt Quest's 101 Heavy on two different stencils.  The first was an Asian symbol for energy, which was decorated with their Mica D'Lights.  This wonderful stuff is like glitter, but it's all natural.  It also matched the flakes so I thought it would be a nice burst of color.  I stamped a couple of flowers with glue and added more D'Lights.  Then I added some checkerboard sections just for fun.  I stamped some additional background images and let the whole thing dry...again.

 

So this is my page.  There is a lot going on and it is different than anything I've ever created.  I like it for that reason alone!  One more step along the new creative path I'm taking.  I hope you like it.  

Please leave me a comment or follow my journey using the links here on the page.  Happy creating!