Your Day

Happy Halloween every one! It may be Halloween, but I don't have a Halloween card to share with you today. Today my smart aleck side comes out to play. First, a little background. I am in charge of what's called a RAK request list on a rubber stamping group I belong to. People send in requests for cards to be sent to people they know for various reasons. It could be someone they know who is ill, someone they know who is celebrating something, or just someone they want to surprise with some cards. One of the requests I got for November was from a lady who said it was her husband's birthday and she wanted to surprise him with birthday cards. So, I made this card for him



I think the image is Riley moose from Hanna Stamps. It was an image I received in an image swap so I'm not sure. Anyway, I thought the image would work for a guy card. Now for the smart aleck part; the inside of the card



LOL! I just couldn't help myself. See why it's such fun to be able to print your own card greetings?! The font on this card is Minya Nouvelle. I think her husband will at least get a chuckle out of it, don't you? Thanks for looking, and don't eat too much of your kids Halloween candy tonight!

I Know It's Barely November

I know Halloween is tomorrow, but I borrowed this Christmas set from a friend and I had to make a card with it before I returned it! I really don't even need to make any Christmas cards this year because I made so many last year that I still have plenty to use this year! But sometimes you're just in the mood to make a Christmas card ya know?



The stamp set I borrowed is Stampin Up's Season Of Joy. The flourish in the stamp set was missing so I used some flourishes from Autumn Leaves. I stamped them in white and a darker green. The flower was stamped a total of three times. Once in red, once in clear then clear embossed, and once in green. I used yellow stickles for the center of the flower, and the whole flower is popped up. If you had the five petal punch this would be a really good card to mass produce. I don't have the punch; my flowers and leaves were hand cut!
I'm so glad tomorrow is Friday. And it's Halloween to boot! I love Halloween! Thanks for looking!

Fall Fun

Do you remember the other day when I told you that I had that ribbon out for the scarecrow card and then I ended up not using the ribbon? Well, that ribbon was still sitting out on my desk so I decided to use it! The result is a card I really like.



I embossed a nestabilitie square die on the white cardstock to create a frame and stamped the little tree inside. This image is from Stampin Up's Tree For All Seasons set. Very minimal coloring involved.
I threaded the ribbon through the button and knotted it so it wouldn't pull through. I used my slit punch to mimic a ticket punch and added brads. It really is a fast card to make. I think the tree with the snowman under it would be cute with some "let it snow" ribbon and a snowflake instead of a button.
Well, thanks for looking!

Midnight Snack

I wanted to do some bleaching on cards because it's been a while since I have. I stamped my image with black ink on black cardstock and embossed it with clear embossing powder. Here's how it looks embossed.



I like to emboss when bleaching an image because the embossed lines hold the bleach inside so you don't have to be so careful.

Then I took a paintbrush and dipped it in the bleach and painted my image with bleach. I use really cheap paintbrushes that I buy at the dollar store for this technique because the bleach will just each the bristles away. Here's my image bleached.



Doesn't look that much different does it? Some cardstocks just don't bleach as well. I thought if I tried bleaching on some of the coredinations cardstock that it would bleach out really well since the core is lighter, but it didn't bleach out at all. Weird huh?
So then I stamped the image again on some Stampin Up green cardstock, embossed in gold and bleached it. This one bleached out great!



Really, it looks pretty as is, but once the cardstock was dry I colored the pears with some colored pencils and blended with some odorless mineral spirits. Here is the end result.



I went back to the black piece and decided I had nothing to lose by adding color to the pears, so I colored them with colored pencils too. The yellow pencil blended the colors well enough that I didn't need to use mineral spirits this time. I was surprised at how well the colors showed up on the black and I really ended up liking this piece better than the other one.





The greeting was printed out in a font called Pristina. I tried to airbrush the color on the greeting, but my air can was on empty and I only got a little bit of spray before it died. I added speckles instead! The pear image is one my sister drew years ago and was sold by Merry Stamper. Those images are now being sold by I Brake For Stamps, but I don't know that she has released the pear image yet. Thanks for looking!

Bad Hair Day

I've seen a few cards lately made with scarecrows and was inspired to pull out one I've had for years but haven't used for a while. It's from Stamp Affair and I think it's just the cutest scarecrow.



I colored the image with copic markers. I toyed around with ways to do the straw. I tried fringing some paper, but that just looked like fringe. I finally decided to try some dried grass and that works pretty well! All I did was draw a bead of glue around the edge and then cut some of the grass and laid it on the glue. I had some ribbon that said "fall fun" on it in green and purple with little orange pumpkins on it, and that is what inspired my color choices. However, once I started assembling the card I couldn't find a way to use the ribbon that I liked! I printed the greeting out on the computer using a font called Minya Nouvelle. Here's a close up the hair




Don't you think it's cute? Have you ever used something like this on your cards before? I once did a card that had a beach scene on it and I glued on actual sand. I like adding texture to cards in a fun way like this. Thanks for looking!

I'm Baaaack!

I finally got back to you with a card today! It's Featured Stamper day at Splitcoast Stampers and I always like to participate in that. I found a lot of cards in the gallery I liked.
here is the card I chose to CASE and now here is the card I made



I flipped the sketch around and used different ribbon, papers, and stamps. The ONLY thing I wish is that I had stamped the greeting lower. Otherwise I really like it! I've got to go and hold a ladder for my husband. He's cleaning the chimney out; getting ready for those cold winter nights! Yea! I hope you are all enjoying your sunday!

Group Stamping

I wanted to share this Halloween card I received from Pam. Pam is a wonderful new friend I met through this blog. She always leaves me such nice comments, and she's from Arkansas too! Anyway, she sent me this



Isn't it darling? Here's the inside



I love the funny sentiment which she said is from My Favorite Things tongue in cheek collection. She said she got the idea from Linsey Rickett. Thanks Pam for thinking of me and for allowing me to share it on my blog!

Well yesterday at the retirement home was fun. We had four men join us this time around! Doesn't he look like he's having a good time?



He told me when I took his picture to be sure and let everyone know he's single! LOL!
We made two different Christmas cards with them. I didn't take a picture of the cards we made as samples though. I just plain forgot to. Here are a couple of group shots.



The man in the sunglasses was a real hoot! He was constantly making jokes. I told him he was a trouble maker and this other lady whispered to me that he was a couple of cards short of a full deck!



They want us to come back next month, so I think that means they had a good time. I hope all of you have a wonderful Sunday! Thanks for looking!

Super Busy Saturday

I don't have much time today, so here's a quick card I made last night. I used a stamp from Unity Stamps for the verse.The red paper is some tissue paper I had. I crinkled it up and then smoothed it out some and glued in on some cardstock. The black scrolly vines are some Cuttle bug die cuts.



I didn't have much time after work to make a card for today. I was getting stuff ready for the Christmas card making we are going to do at the retirement home later this afternoon. We have come up with two different card designs for them. I think they will like them and will enjoy making them. I plan on getting pictures this time!
After we cut out all the cardstock for the cards my husband and I took our dog to the park and she found something really interesting to dig,


so I had to give her a bath when we got home and then it was time for dinner and the night was getting away from me!
Hopefully I will have time to stamp this weekend and I hope all of you do too! Thanks for looking!

Lots of Dots

Yea! It's Friday! I made a really bright card today, so you'd better go get some sunglasses to look at this one! Are you ready?




To make the background piece I cut out some white glossy cardstock and then wadded up some wax paper. Smooth out the waxed paper and lay it on top of the glossy cardstock, cover with a piece of plain copy paper and iron. When you remove the wax paper you can slightly see a pattern on it. But you bring that pattern to life when you brayer color over it! The wax paper resists the ink to create the pattern. It's a really old, but fun technique I haven't done in a while. Sort of looks like tie dye!
Anyway, I may have gotten a bit carried away with my white gel pen making all the dots, but it was fun!

The flowers are actually iron on appliques I found at my local Goodwill store for 50 cents! I got a whole package of 7 in different colors.
Tomorrow my friend and I are going back to the retirement home. This time we are making Christmas cards! We have two card designs planned for them, and will let them make as many as they want. It should be fun, and this time I'm bringing my camera so you can see how happy they are with their creations! Have a happy Friday, and thanks for looking!

Card Winner

The winner of yesterday's card is #9, which makes Suzy the winner.
Suzy, I wasn't able to get your e mail to let you know you won, so if you will please contact me at usyungs@gmail.com with your address I will get this in the mail to you!
Thanks to everyone for the comments. I so appreciate them.

blog candy

I'm letting you all know about this wonderful blog candy being given away by rach at http://papercraftsbyrach.blogspot.com/

And if you're a fan of Magnolia stamps, be sure to check out the blog candy being given away at Crafty Krafts!

I'll be back in a couple of hours to let you know who random.org picks as the winner of my card giveaway.

Season Of Thanks

Well it is getting to be time to doing Thanksgiving cards, so I decided to play around with some different ideas. This card is using the Stampin Up set Harvest Home. I watercolored it using an aqua brush and inks picked up from the lids of my stamp pads. I haven't watercolored in a while and rather enjoyed doing it. I'm not sure it would be a good card to mass produce though because of cutting out the leaves.



I'll be back in a bit to post the winner of yesterday's card. If you haven't commented on it yet, you have until noon today. Thanks for looking!

Fall Unity Tree

Well yesterday I said I'd like to do the same Unity stamps tree in Fall colors so that's what I did. This time though I changed the little things that bothered me about yesterday's card, and I didn't use that crappy Martha Stewart rub on stitching! This one I used black rub on stitching from DCWV.



I was thrilled with how my ribbon tied so perfectly with the shiny side showing on both ends! I punched the leaves out of some designer paper. I just really like the way this turned out.
And since it's give away card day, I made a matching enevelope to go with it!



The envelope has got some lick-n-stick envelope sealer on the closing flap so it can be sealed and used. You have until noon tomorrow to leave a comment on this card and tomorrow I'll have random.org pick a number to choose who gets it. As always, thanks for looking!

Punched Leaf Tree

Hey, let's see how many of you can guess what this is.




Give up? It's part of a milk jug. The part that is usually punched out where your fingers go through the handle. If you see any milk gallons that still have them attached, break them off and save them. They are great to use as bone folders! LOL! No kidding though, they're terrific for scoring and creasing your cardstock. I see a lot of them on the floor in the grocery store or in the parking lot.

Now, on to today's card. I really like how it turned out even though there are some parts of this card I wish I'd done differently.



The tree is from a Unity stamps set called Friendship Love Miracles. I stamped it in Close To Cocoa ink and cut it out with a nestabilitie circle. Then I used a little leaf punch I got at the Dollar Tree and punched out several leaves to glue on to the tree. I then cut out a scalloped circle and pierced holes in each scallop. I picked out some coordinating designer paper and cut out four 2" squares and mounted them on a piece of cardstock. Then I picked out some white rub on stitches by Martha Stewart. This is where my trouble started. The stupid rub ons rubbed on, but then some of them didn't stay on! So aggravating! I went back and rubbed more down to fill in the missing spots, but only succeeded in pulling more off. Grr! I finally gave up and just filled in with a white gel pen. Let's say I'm not too happy with the Martha Stewart line right now!
I punched out a scalloped border and mounted it on the bottom. I wish I had extended it out to the ends of the light green cardstock, but I only went to the ends of the two squares. You don't notice it as much with the ribbon tied around the bottom though.
I mounted the tree on pop dots. I really like it and want to do another in fall colors!
Okay, remember that tomorrow is card give away day, so be sure to come back and see what it is. Thanks for looking!

Wish

I spent the weekend doing a lot of CASING. Today's card is one I took from a card by Lauren Meader
First off let me show you Lauren's card:



Now my card:



I used a stamp set by Papertrey Ink
and stamped it in some Versamagic chalk ink. Then I used a quickie glue pen to fill in the dandelions and I flocked it with some white flocking. I love the way this looks!
I printed the greeting at the bottom on the computer using a font called Miss LeGatees. I didn't have any pastel colored buttons that worked with this, so I went with pale blue rain dots.
I chose the word "wish" because that's what people do when they blow dandelions!

On another note, I was given this award from Rhonda at Bumblebee Creations

and I'm supposed to pass this on to six others, but I am going to just let it rest it here for now because I know bloggers are busy blogging for us! Thanks Rhonda!
Have a happy Monday, and thanks for looking!

An Autumn-E card

Today is featured stamper day at Splitcoast Stampers and the featured stamper today is Emily aka: Ink-E. I picked this card that Emily made to CASE



I just loved the simplicity of it and the watercolor effect on those trees is just gorgeous. I pulled out my watercolor paper and my watercolor crayons to try to duplicate the look. I used Stampin Up's Lovely As A Tree set and the words are from Unity.



Now I'm off to the park to enjoy some of these beautiful trees in person! I hope you are all having a wonderful Sunday as well. Thanks for looking!

Tie A Yellow Ribbon

This month at Splitcoast Stampers, the dirty dozen have made cards inspired on songs. I decided to play along because I couldn't get this song out of my head unil I made the card!



Obviously my song is tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree. There are a lot of trees in neighborhoods all over the country that have yellow ribbons tied on them. Families who are missing their fathers, brothers, sons, nephews, etc. This card will go to my best friend for her to send to her nephew who is currently away serving our country.

I stamped the image (from Stampin Up's Lovely As A Tree set) on watercolor paper and colored it with colored pencils and blended the colors with odorless mineral spirits. I cut a slit on either side of the tree trunk so I could slip the ribbon through and tie it. The greeting is computer generated with a font called Tall Paul. I then scored two lines before and after the greeting. Thanks for looking!

Plum Tree

Thanks so much for all the wonderful responses I got yesterday on the tutorial for how to print on your cards! I am so glad that you liked it.

I was running short on time this week (aren't we all?), but I didn't want to miss having a post today. Don't want to spoil my streak! I've posted every day (sometimes more than once!) since I began my blog! Anyway, I wanted to make a card but I didn't want to think too much about what it would be, so what's a girl to do? CASE! I went to a folder I have on my computer where I save pictures of cards that I really like and I picked out one to try my hand at. This one is based on a card by Michelle Giraud aka: Flaxy Chick
Here is Michelle's card




I went to pull out my brown cardstocks when I spotted that plum ribbon I bought on clearance at Target still on my desk and thought maybe this would look pretty in plum colors. Plus, purple is my favorite color, so here is my card




I did stamp a little word "enjoy" and cut it out in a little oval to put on the side, but it just didn't look right so I left it off. The moon also got a little torn area from where I pulled off my mask, but I don't think it's that noticeable. Did you notice it before I mentioned it? I got this whole card finished when it dawned on me I forgot to use the ribbon! So, I made another one a little different from the first one, but it has the ribbon!



Both cards use the Stampin Up set Lovely As A Tree, and the beautiful quote stamp is from Penny Black. I used an Ellison texture sheet called Distressed on the yellow piece. I really liked Michelle's use of double rows of piercing, but I left it at one row, and didn't pierce at all on the second card. To keep my piercing even, I laid one smaller size Nestabilitie circle die in the center of the circle and pierced around the edge.
I hope you are all enjoying your Saturday! I plan on looking at some more cards in my favorite's folder to CASE and stamp while my husband watches football! Thanks for looking!

Printing Your Own Greetings

I have a lot of people ask me how I print greetings on my cards; how I get them where I want them. I thought I'd take a moment today to tell you how I do it. Printing greetings is not only a money saver because you don't have to buy simple word stamps, but it's also a way you can personalize your card better. You can make it say anything you want! There are a ton of cool looking fonts out there for free, and you can match your project by printing in virtually any color.

So, let's get started. My card today is a little smaller than a regular A2 size card. When folded, it measures 4" across and
is 4.5" high. I know I want my greeting to be centered in the top portion of the card. I've already stamped my image, colored it, and have it matted and pretty much ready to mount on my card. The image is from Stampin Up's Give Thanks stamp set and I've colored it with copic markers.



I use Microsoft word, but I'm pretty sure you can follow the same steps with whatever word processing program you use. So, I lay my image on my card where I want it to go and get an idea of where my words will go. I can see on this card that I will have to have my greeting in the top 1.5" of the card.



So I go to word and click file and then page setup. You will get a window that looks like this: (Forgive the photos. I just snapped a picture of my monitor instead of doing print screen)



The first thing I do is click on the PAPER tab and I enter the dimensions of my whole sheet of card; in this case 8" wide and 4.5" inches tall.



Now I click on the MARGIN tab. Here is where you have to think for a minute. I knew I wanted my greeting to be in the top 1.5" of the card, so I set my bottom margin for 3". I don't want the greeting to be right up at the top, so I set my top margin for .25". The fold of my card is in the middle which is 4", so that becomes the left margin, and I set the right margin for 0 because I can tell word to automatically center my words.



Now I just have to click okay. I get a message telling me that one or more of my margins are outside the printable area and I get a choice to fix or ignore. I ignore this and trust my measurements.
Now you've got your paper ready to type your greeting!
Choose your font (in my case it's Bradley Hand) and don't worry about size of the font right now. Go over and click the button that tells word to center your text.



Now type your greeting. You can highlight your text at this point and increase or decrease the size of your greeting. I just know that I don't have room for my greeting to go over one line, so I increase it to where it goes across the card, but doesn't get so big it takes up more than one line.



Once you've got it the way you want it, you're ready to print! If you don't feel sure you've measured right, print it out on some plain copy paper first and then you can hold your card up to it and see if the placement is right. Once you've done this a few times you won't have to do that. When you click on the print button, you may get another warning telling you that some parts are outside the margins, but choose to continue anyway and print!



And here's the finished card



I hope that's helped those of you who didn't know how to do this. As always, thanks for looking!

Tiptoe Through The Hollyhocks

A while back I traded some images with Catherine at Inksomnia for some of her Sarah Kay images. This is the first chance I've had to color one of the images and make a card with it.



The image bothered me because there were only two little clumps of hollyhocks and the whole picture looked unfinished. Fortunately I had a stamp with almost the exact same kind of flowers so I stamped a couple and added them to either side, so now it looks like she and her little orange kitty have walked to the hollyhock portion of their garden. The little stamp I added is from Stampin Up, but I do not know which set it came from. I use it a lot though for scenes.
This image was colored with copics, and I chose the colors based on the colors in the striped paper. The ribbon is actually a plum color, but it looks pinkish gray in the photo for some reason. I got the ribbon on clearance at Target; 15 yards for $2.00!
I'm so glad tomorrow is Friday. I really need to clean my house this weekend and I want to get started on Thanksgiving cards.
Thanks for looking!

Improvising

A friend of mine was telling me that she thought she was going to have to order the Stampin Up stamp set Snow Swirled. This is the stamp set she's talking about



The thing is she has another stamp set that is similar so she really didn't want to buy another one that was almost like the one she had, but she really liked that other tree. I told her to improvise with the stamps she had. She told me to do it. So I did!
The first thing I did was create a template.



Then I positioned the template over the cardstock I wanted the tree to be on, and I gathered some of my flourish stamps to use. These are from Autumn Leaves.



Then I stamped in two different colors of green in a random pattern all over. Then I picked a little flower burst stamp to use, but small snowflakes would work well too.



Take off the template and reveal your own one-of-a-kind snow swirled tree!




And here's the cards I made. My kitty was keeping company while I made these. :)






I thought the first tree was a little big, so I made another template that would allow me to use a regular A2 size card and still have room for embellishments to show. The measurements for this one are 3" across the bottom and 4 1/8" for the sides.



I added some little rhinestones in the center of some of the flowerbursts. I ended up liking this card so much that I joined a Christmas card swap on one of my rubberstamping lists and made five of them!
So, what do you think? Did I convince her to improvise? Did I convince you? Thanks for looking!