Embellish

Super Quick Cards

I like to start my workshops off with an easier card, to get people in the swing of things and try to prevent intimidating the new stampers. During Sale A Bration, I also like to work in some of the cool freebies you can get into the projects, like the Scallop Trim border punch. It really makes this simple card.

Here are two versions we've made recently at my workshops. All use the Bashful Blue cardstock and new satin ribbon from the Occasions Mini Catalog, but one is a valentine using the You & Moi set and the other two are everyday cards with the Flight of the Butterfly set and matching punch. 

Super simple, but graceful and fun to make. I hope you try this one, the butterfly one with the unusual placement of the ribbon, or the valentine one (which would also make an adorable baby card).

Sweet Pea Double-Sided Paper

I'm already on my second pack of this great paper stack from the Occasions Mini! I love all the fun colors and the wide variety of patterns, which you can see here. Polka dots, stripes, houndstooth, circle, flowers, clouds, butterflies--it's all beautiful and of course since it is Stampin' Up DSP, it matches all my cardstock, ink and embellishments--which means I'm in heaven!

Like I said in my previous post, I needed a little orange in my life right now with this nasty cold weather. My stamp room floor is linoleum (formerly the old kitchen of our 1920 era house) and has no heat vent... so in the winter I like to do lots of embossing techniques : )

These are cards I made just fooling around with leftover papers from a couple of projects. I turned them into a cute hostess gift by making a purse with a tiny matching card clipped to the side. By sticking with a Bermuda Bay, Pumpkin Pie and Chocolate Chip color scheme, it makes a cute and cohesive gift set.

A little orange and turquoise to brighten up January

It's so cold here! See the little Current Weather widget down on the bottom left hand side bar?? Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' about... and outside, the pretty snow, half melted last week, is frozen solid again, and unattractively dirty. I have nothing against January, but this month is UGLY!

So let's throw some bright splashes of color at it and see what happens! This card was inspired by an amazing Leadership Conference roommate gift given to me by my friend Staci Miserlian. It was a cute scrapbook made from DSP that was cut all the same length, but scored differently so it folded into pages of varying sizes. I thought it would be cool turned into a 5.25x5.25 card to fit our square envelopes.

I like how it turned out! We made it at Incredible Cards Club and had a lot of fun decorating the pages with different punches, photo mats and corners, and the cute little set You & Moi, which is actually available for FREE right now as one of the choices for Sale A Bration!!! Check out the back page of the SAB brochure to see all kinds of sets from the Main Catalog that qualify for free. Sale A Bration has always been awesome, but this year is better than ever before.

Vintage Card with the Big Shot fabric flowers

Wanted to share this card with you as another use for the fabric flowers you can cut with the Big Shot! We made this vintage doozie in Incredible Cards Club last week and it is just full of amazing textures.

The card is scored at one and two inches from the left hand edge, folded in on the one inch line, and then the right hand edge is folded over to meet the one inch flap. So the opening is on the left hand side rather than the right. When you put a 1.25x5.5 inch Basic Black strip through the new SAB punch, you get just enough of an overlap to hold the card closed by itself when it is shut. Four Basic Black vintage brads were pierced through the flap before adhering it down with dimensionals.

The card itself is stamped with the Woodgrain background stamp in Soft Suede, and the sentiment from Well Scripted in Basic Black, then sponged heavily to age, first with Soft Suede, then with black, and finally with a thin layer of Encore Gold all over, so the edges have an antique gilt look. Isn't it awesome along the edge of the Scallop Trim punch?

The flower was cut from layers of bronze fabric and fine-gauge black netting, pierced with the Crop A Dile and anchored with a Kraft corduroy button which was aged with sponging as well. The button goes through the flower to a circle punch, which is then used to adhere the flower to the card, so that the backs of the brads don't poke out in the card and be all unsightly on ya. 

Inside the card is more sponging and the floral border stamp from Vintage Vogue, so the inside is just as special as the outside. There's lots of space to write in this one, but you could add an additional sentiment if you didn't want to be quite so wordy.

I loved adding fabric to my cards. Look for more samples of this great Flower Folds die for the Big Shot, coming up!

Scrapper's Sketch of the week: 1/28/10

Today's sketch is a super-fun grid layout composed of squares that you just play with until you like it. Crop your photos and a couple of patterns of coordinating DSP or solid color cardstock (depending on how busy or colorful your pictures are) into eight, three inch squares. Arrange them around a 10x10 square mat on a 12x12 page.

Stamp your headline in large letters in the center before you adhere anything (in case you're like me and you generally have to stamp things twice to get them perfect.). That way, if something goes wrong, you can still change the arrangement of the square, or flip the paper over and try again. Scatter your embellishments around the page and be sure to reserve a square or two for journalling.

This is an excellent layout for getting a lot of pictures into a small space, and also for pictures that carry all the same "weight" or heaviness on a page (meaning there is no one focal-point photo to bring out). I use this style of layout a lot when I am scrapping older photos from back when we all took pictures from so far away that the people were only a tiny speck in the distance. Now we all have the opposite problem--our fancy cameras can zoom in so far, there is often no extra space to edit or crop on our modern photos!

Happy Scrapping! I'm off to finish prepping for Scrap A Stack Club tonight. We have space available for YOU to join us. Normally we meet on the second Thursday night of the month, so our next club is February 11th. Come and make three advanced 12x12 double-page spreads, using stamps and accessories you probably already have to make cards with. Many people don't realize how awesome-ly you can utilize stamps in scrapbooking! This is a great opportunity to learn to get more out of your card-making supplies. 

Vintage Vogue--my new go-to favorite!

This is a card I've been making a LOT of lately--at multiple workshops, Incredible Cards Club, and now two sets of 20 each of swaps. That oughtta tell you how much I like this Vintage Vogue stamp set!

This is three different incarnations, from a simpler one to a special fold with multiple stacked flowers and rhinestones. Mostly I've stuck with this combo of Mellow Moss, Very Vanilla and Elegant Eggplant, but yesterday I switched things up and made 20 with Bashful Blue as the Base and Not Quite Navy for the flowers. I'd be a toss up which one I like best! 

Love the yummy Very Vanilla Hodgepodge Hardware with the new Very Vanilla Satin ribbon from the mini catalog! Something about the combination of the hard cool metal with the silky-soft satin is just a true delight for the eyes... added to Crystal Effects to make the flowers pop, and this is one of those cards you can't resist running your fingers over.

I love watching the recipient open one of those type of cards... you can see it in their eyes--it's compelling them to feel all the textures. I'm that type of person who has a hard time telling her kids to keep their hands inside the cart at the fabric store, because I myself have my hands out to run over the fabrics as we pass by...

Love Bandit

I'm having loads of fun with the adorable-licious Love Bandit set from the Occasions Mini catalog! My fave stamp is hands down this raccoon. He's just too cute. I made this card by laying a folded card on top of the Scallop Square die for the Big Shot, with the fold pulled in a little ways from the scalloped edge on one side so that it didn't cut the fold off. It fits perfectly in a clear envelope, then, too! 

Here's a sweetie from fellow Demo Alex Hobson. I love how she masked off the tree so she could stamp the raccoon peeking out from behind it! Great use of the Sending Love double-sided, glitter infused papers as well. 

Here's an image with all the stamps in the set. Can't wait to play with the squirrel, too! And I am going to love the goofy little owl for making backgrounds for my punch art owl cards. Great set--in clear mount, just $13.95, or 17.95 in regular wood. I have orders going in every day this week--let me know if can throw Love Bandit on there for ya so you can have it in time to make some valentines and love notes.

All Day Crop pages

We had a great time at an informal all-day crop here in Watertown this Saturday and I thought I'd share what I got accomplished in between brainstorming, snacking and chatting! This colorful page about the April 2007 Stampin' Up regional convention in Milwaukee was done with my Scrapper's Sketch of the Week from last week--I was pleased as punch to note that a couple of people were working from printouts of my sketches. You can find this particular sketch here.

My favorite part of this page is the Bermuda Bay corduroy buttons I made by coloring Kraft ones with my marker. I also put Crystal Effects on the lettering to make it pop (the retired Doodle Alphabet) and in big dotted circles around the other groupings of circles.

Finished up a couple of 8.5x11 pages to go in past albums that I did in that size. These are pictures of Natalie from the fall she was five. I like how this one turned out. It's so fun to do really girly pages. You might not be able to see it so well, but there is Shimmer Spray and Crystal Effects on the flowers. I'm really enjoying my new pack of Sherbet buttons, too. The flowers were made with multiple punches.

My husband had to clear up a mystery for me about this page, when I got home I couldn't figure out why the Casper "Ghosts" (get it?) had a "duck" as their mascot. Well, turns out, it isn't a duck at all--it's a platypus--making much more sense when you realize the Platte River is right next to home field for this minor league team!

It was Dan's first game and he was precious, although much more interested in the popcorn, peanuts and free shirts than the actual game, of course. I enjoyed adding a splash of Certainly Celery green to these pages to accent his goofy plastic sunglasses. The DSP is from the Autumn Meadows pack, which you might note has no Celery in it--well, I fixed THAT--I just colored one of the white strips green with a marker and viola!--it matched perfectly.Neat little tip!

Gracious but my kids are adorable!! That is the best part of scrapping... getting to unashamedly stare at pictures of your beautiful, quirky, silly, smart kids for hours. The focal point photo here of Daniel just makes me bust with mama-love... who could resist a gangly, muddy seven year old with a fistful of wildflowers? Loved these photos from our trip to Wyoming this summer. I used more Kraft corduroy buttons and set some fun hardware and Jumbo Eyelets in with my Crop A Dile, to accent this Autumn Meadows DSP. I forgot my sponges, so all the weathering was done with direct-to-paper techniques.

So that's what I did on Saturday. Well, there was one more spread, but it didn't make the cut. See, not everything I do is blog-worthy! Ha!! Now you get off the computer and go scrap some of YOUR memories! And call me if you need anything.

Amazing card fold

I received this fantastically beautiful card from my friend Connie Ingram at Leadership and had to share it's unique fold with you. Using Bella Bleu DSP, unusually paired with Old Olive and Not Quite Navy, she made this gorgeous card with the new Vintage Vogue set, the Scallop Square Big Shot die, and the silky new satin ribbon from the mini catalog.

Loved the way it opened--gliding unexpectedly up to expose the message area and another sentiment. It's easily done by creating your card base as usual, then scoring a fold line half way through the card front (two and one eighth inches), and attaching an entirely new card front to it.

Great work, Connie! I'm going to swipe this for my next Incredible Cards Club in February. They will love it. Thank you for sharing your art with me!

Scrapper's Sketch of the Week: 1/21/10

I've decided to start throwing some two-page spreads into the mix, because that's what I personally almost always do myself, and sometimes it's not easy to come up with a second page that coordinates with the first one, if you are using a sketch.

This spread is one of my all-time favorites as it incorporates quite a few photos in an orderly and sequential fashion. You can squeeze in more secondary photos if you cut or punch them into circles and all them in with the circular DSP and embellishments in those areas.

I'd keep the background a solid color but have fun mixing and matching the patterns of the circles. They provide a great contrast to the rigid march of the photos across the spread.

Happy Scrapping! And if you live in the area, email me for details about a free all-day crop in Watertown tomorrow or to get on the email list for the next one.

100 Cards By Christmas UPDATE

I am quite late on this update, but wanted anyone who was following this effort to know that I did make my goal of creating/collecting 100 cards by Christmas for the Necessities Bag charity work, although I admit the package did not get mailed until this week due to the busy holidays and my recent trip. You can read about the Necessities Bag ministry to breast cancer patients here. They would LOVE it if you would send them some thank-you cards to go in the bags they give out!

Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who donated cards. My especial thanks to those who shared their survivor stories and offered encouragement about my precious grandma's recent diagnosis. She is doing very well and has a great attitude about everything. Please continue to pray for her! And continue to look for ways you can make a little difference in the world around you.

Leadership Swaps 7--cute and colorful

This is a bunch of the fun and funky card samples from our Leadership Convention. I love COLOR and I enjoyed seeing these stand out from the crowd of "safer" color combos.

Fabric tote bag made with the Scallop Square Big Shot die

I just had to dedicate a post to the HOTTEST new trend in Big Shotting--did you know that Big Shot is a verb now?--TEXTILES!!! That's right, fabric. Now, you probably knew that the Big Shot can cut over 70 different materials besides just paper and cardstock, but I bet you never knew it could be used in quilting!

My friend and upline Jessica made this adorable bag, and Ginger took some great photos and overlaid the EASY instructions on them, so without further ado--here's your next done-in-an-afternoon project!

 

The bag shown is three panels long on each side and bottom, and two panels high on all four sides, one panel wide accross the bottom. It is a perfect purse size. You can add or subtract panels as desired.

You can either choose several coordinating fabrics, like this bag, or one pattern. Any fabric works, though of course it will be the sturdiest if you choose a heavier one with a tight weave. The Big Shot can cut through eight layers of any light fabric like a breeze--heavier fabrics, you will need to experiment. Remember never to force anything through the Big Shot that feels like too tight of a "sandwich."
 

So for each square, cut two Scallop Squares from your fabric and one slightly smaller square from batting, felt, or some sort of stiffening fabric. I'm making a baby quilt right now with polar fleece inside the squares for extra coziness.
 

Even a complete sewing novice can do this! It's all straight lines! Once you have all your squares X'ed, start sewing them together in strips and then in squares. The only trick here is to make sure the raggedly scalloped edges are all on the same side. They will naturally fray and you will have an adorable shabby chic kind of look.

 

You can have a closure or not, as desired. Jessica put a button hole clasp on hers with a cute button. You can also just sew a loop of ribbon to go over the button, or just two ribbon ties, too. Or you can get fancy and do a snap, magnetic closure or velcro. Don't forget to make coordinating handles!
 

Here's a sweet one Jessica made for her daughter, which would be an adorable and quick, reusable Easter basket. It's just two panels wide and two high and just as cute as can be. You can embellish your bag with felt flowers, rhinestone brads, the Crop A Dile and eyelets--anything you desire! Have a ball with it!

Barbara's pocket tissue holder

I HAVE to show you this adorable project given to me in a pack of goodies by my friend Barbara, as a welcome gift to her home city of Phoenix. It is a clever, easy little sleeve to hold your pack of pocket tissues!

I don't have the measurements, but you should be able to easily measure the length, then the width and side times two, plus a half inch for overlap and glue.

Cut out the back of the tissue pack and punch your access hole in the bottom of your sleeve BEFORE you adhere the sleeve flap shut : ) Then just slide the tissues in.

Isn't that cute? And what a great little useful and practical teacher or co-worker gift during cold and flu season. It would be a great "I'm your shoulder to cry on if you need it" kind of present for a girlfriend going through a tough time, too. 

Thanks for the idea, Barbara, and for being an AWESOME Phoenix welcoming committee!

Awesome area demonstrator meeting kicks off the new year right

We had a great time on Friday night at Cyndie's house with a combined Ink It Up! and Song of My Heart Stampers meeting. We just barely fit, but it was fun! This is her beautiful stamp room--don't you just love how she has the clothesline strung up? Clever girl! Thanks for hosting, Cyndie!

We had three Make N Takes, provided by Jessica, Patti and myself. Mine was a Shabby Chic version of the Big Shot corkboard shown here, using the new Sweet Pea DSP stack and the other two were cute valentines using the glittered DSP Sending Love.

I'm going to do a whole post on Julie's amazing composition notepad purse and the fantastic, clever addition to made to a project she saw online.


Jessica had some fun games, door prizes, and a business-knowledge quiz for us. We had to guess what product was in each of the ten numbered brown paper bags, just by feel. Then I got up and gabbed everyone's leg off about Leadership. I went chronologically through the event from soup to nuts, and I hope I gave everyone a little taste of how incredibly fun it is to go to a Stampin' Up convention. After that pep talk, we are rearin' to go to Regionals in April. Ginger (who took all these fabulous photos of the evening) promised she would organize a chartered bus again!

As always, a highlight of the meeting (besides swapping) is getting to see all the amazing stuff people brought to show, like this Love Banner by Jessica, made from the new chipboard Board Books in the Occasions Mini. WOW! I'll be making several posts focusing on different projects from the meeting, so stay tuned!  And be sure to ask me how YOU can join the fun and come to our next group meeting!

Leadership Swaps 9--more personal favorites

Leadership Swaps 8--some particular favorites

No particular order here, just a couple of favorites of the more than 150 I swapped for at our Leadership Conference last week. This time last week, I was on a plane flying from seventy degrees to zero degrees! Not that I'm whining about that or anything. 

Big Shot Flower Folds Fabric Brooch Pins

So I know you're all wondering what was the first thing I tore into when I got the first Sale A Bration boxes of the year, right? Well, actually, it was the Milk Carton die from the Mini catalog, because I wanted to make it at Kathy N's workshop last night. BUT here is what I was itchin' to play with and finally got to do this morning!

Everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE at Leadership conference had these cool pins made with the Flower Folds die for the Big Shot, and I felt totally left out! This die has been on my list since I first got a sneak peek of it on the Hawaii Incentive Trip, but somehow it never actually made the final cut. Well, I ordered it the minute I got home, and here's what I have come up with so far just from fabric from my stash.

Love the red crinkly silk and the black tulle, with a Clear Rhinestone brad (or two! or three!) in the center. I also made some black lace and tweed ones, some with tulle and some without. The top two here are flipped over so you can see the backing. The pin backs just came from a fabric shop.

Then I branched out. Had to make a turquoise one to go on my coat since I am cuts about that color. Then I made some pink and white shabby chic style ones for my daughter, on barrettes. The buttons are from the Sherbet collection and also a Summer Sun corduroy buttons. Ooh, ooh, and you can Shimmer Spray the flowers and/or the buttons if you want!

Ok,,,, so I mastered the basics. Then I got brave. I wanted to try the melted-edges technique I saw at the conference, using the heat tool. And I spent a long time on it and the crazy stuff would NOT melt... and then I realized the material was pure silk (a scrap given to me by my dear cousin Corinna, who used to be costumer to the Santa Fe Opera) and only synthetic material would work! DUH.

So here are two silver and black fine tulle ones that I successfully melted. They look awesome! You would never know they took all of ten minutes to make from fabric to finish. I can't wait to put these on my tote bags, coats and scarves. The possibilities for these flowers are limitless... not just pins and barrettes and purses, but CARDS and scrapbook pages, dresses, sweaters, gloves, pillows, banners, aprons, quilts, baby hats and headbands, prom dresses, wedding favors and so much more!

Call me today to order your Big Shot (get two free SAB choices when you order in January through March) and the Flower Folds Bigz XL die. You can thank me later.

Only a BEST friend would send you this card

Are you tired of those sissy 'friendship' poems that always sound good but never actually come close to reality? Well, here is a series of promises that actually speak of True Friendship. You WON'T see cutesy little smiley faces; just the stone cold truth of our great friendship. Taken from my Dad's clean humor website: www.grif.net

 1. When you are sad, I will jump on the person who made you sad like a spider monkey jacked up on Mountain Dew!

 2. When you are blue, I will try to dislodge whatever is choking you.

 3.  When you smile, I will know you are plotting something that I must be involved in.

 4. When you're scared, we will high-tail it out of here.

  5. When you are worried, I will tell you horrible stories about how much worse it could be until you quit whining, ya big baby!

 6. When you are confused, I will use little words.

 7. When you are sick, stay away from me until you are well again. I don't want whatever you have.

  8. When you fall, I'll pick you up and dust you off-- After I laugh my behind off!

Scrapper's Sketch of the Week: 1/13/10

A variety of events has conspired to force me to drag out the sewing machine this week, and while it is out, I know I will be doing one of my favorite-but-little-used techniques, sewing on cardstock. I often use my machine to paper-pierce in a highly efficient manner, too! Either way would work for this page. If you don't have a machine, or like mine, yours is covered in dust from neglect, you can also do this with paper piercing.

This page celebrates circles, with all sizes of them sewn onto the background cardstock (solid color is best here since the end result will be busy). There's also three circular photos and a circle embellishment. The rectangular focal point photo and journalling, plus the solid headline, provide some rest for the eyes. 

To get different sizes of circles traced easily and quickly so that you can punch or sew around them, use the Circle Scissors Plus with the drawing attachment. You can also trace different sizes of household objects in the right shape.  

Happy Scrappin!