Winter Box

Hi everyone! I'm really getting into this winter season. I'm so so happy that it is raining here. Southern California is always in a drought-state, so any rain we can get is welcomed. We really do live in a desert, so it doesn't rain much ever. But enough about the rain already.

These stamps are from the Winter Wonderland collection over at the Paper Garden Projects store. Aren't they just the cutest? I got these cute little boxes from the Dollar Tree store. This was a super easy project. I measured the box. Each side was 2-3/4" square. I cut a strip of the striped paper from the Frosted Winter paper kit and used a dark red piece of paper from the same kit for the lid. I'm sure there must be an easier way to make the lid from one piece of cardstock, but I couldn't figure it out. Just one of those days.

I stamped the images on white cardstock as well as on colored cardstock. I paper-pieced the images on the white cardstock and then cut out the whole image and adhered it to the box with tacky glue. I accented the snow and colored the faces with Copics. I added some dimension to the box lid with some Liquid Pearls. See? Wasn't that easy? Oh and I tied it off with a simple bow. Ta da! Try one for yourself. This would be a great way to wrap a box in a unique way for that special gift for someone.

Oh and the secret word is CRUNCHY!

Have fun at the blog hop!!

It's Winter

It's winter and what better way to celebrate than to make a card. Hey, any excuse for me to make a card is good in my book. This card uses the Frosted Winter paper kit from Paper Garden Projects. I love, love, LOVE the papers and embellishments in this kit. I especially love the colors. The stamp I used is one from Eat Cake Graphics in a set called Winter Wonderland at PGP. There are three stamps in the set and this is just one of them. Images were colored with Copics. The snow was done with white opal Liquid Pearls with glitter sprinkled on while the liquid pearls was still wet. Card is 5x7. Cuttlebug swiss dots embossing folder used for the blue background piece. Come back tomorrow to see the next cute project I made with the other two stamps from this adorable set. See you then!

The Knitted Purse

I've been on a hat kick lately. Ever since I took the knitted hat class at Yarning for You in San Marcos, I've been making hats like crazy. This is one I started and about two-thirds of the way through, it became a purse. Why? Well look at that sucker! How many people do you know who have a melon big enough to fit in this hat?! It was a huge calculation error on my part. I cast on 99 stitches (!) for a size large hat. Well, let me tell you something sister, that is one LARGE hat! So as I'm about to frog it, (rip it out - RIBBIT), Cindy says I should make a purse out of it. So instead of wasting all that time and effort that I had already put into it, I made a purse.

When it is closed up, you can definitely tell it used to be a hat. It's just shaped that way. Instead of going through the rest of the decreasing rows to make the top of the hat, I continued knitting even and added the second color for the top of the purse. The darker color yarn is what was left over from making Tony's beanie that I didn't take pictures of, darn it.

I made the I-cord with the same yarn as the hat. There are two I-cords that I wove opposite in the gusset. The gusset was made by doing a pattern my niece, Danielle, showed me. You knit the row, but you do a yarn over with each stitch. That means there are double the amount of stitches on the needles. Then the next row, as you knit it, you drop off the yarned over stitch. That makes a big opening in the row. That is what I used to thread the I-cord through. I'm sure there are better ways, but I am a beginning knitter and that is what I thought to do. Here is what the purse looks like all opened up. You can see that I threaded the I-cords opposite in this picture. I didn't really know what I wanted to do with the ends of the I-cords, so instead of just tying them together, I stacked some buttons and tied it off. It gives it a little weight and interest, I think.

I do have to line the purse. Since it didn't start out as a purse pattern, the bottom of the purse here is a ribbed pattern meant for the bottom of hats/beanies and is stretchy. I'll sew a nice fabric liner and put it inside so the purse doesn't stretch out.

I'm going to be making baby hats and booties for my next projects. Two people I know are having babies, so I'm thrilled to be able to knit something for them.

PGP blog hop today!!

Take a stroll through the blogs of all the Paper Gardeners and enjoy some wonderful Holiday inspiration. While you visit, subscribe to each Gardener's blog and take note of each designer's name and their special treat listed in their blog post. once you finish your garden tour, send an email to custserv@papergardenprojects.com with the list of designers and their special Holiday treat. Everyone who sends the correct list of designers and treats will be entered in a random drawing to win one of 3 prizes. You need to send an email to the address above; please don't leave your list as a comment. You have until midnight (EST) on Nov. 24th to make your list and check it twice... The first prize is a festive collection of Holiday paper crafting goodies. The prize includes:

• The Classic Christmas Prism Cardstock Collection
• A Penny Black Jolly Follies clear stamp set
• Green self-adhesive rhinestones
• May Arts red grosgrain ribbon
• May Arts tan twill ribbon
• May Arts white rickrack ribbon
• A collection of coordinating dew droplets and buttons

The second prize is a $7 gift certificate to the Paper Garden Projects store.

The third prize is a $5 gift certificate to the Paper Garden Projects store.

So put on your walking shoes and go for a garden tour (or just stay in your jammies - we won't tell). Here is the garden tour guide list:

Mellissa (Mel)

Tracy

Debbie (you are here)

Amber

Lorelie

Tangii

Tricia

Cathy

So here is my project. I love House Mouse and I love making cards with those cute little mousies. I decided to make a Christmas card and the thought of a window card just popped into my head.

I stamped the image onto a laser transparency sheet with black StazOn ink. I believe StazOn is the only ink that stamps clearly on transparencies. You can use Versafine but you will have to emboss it because it will take FOREVER to dry, if it dries at all. Water-based inks don't give me a clear enough image, so I use StazOn.

Since I was going to use my Copics to color this image, I had to color on the back of the stamped image. If I colored on the front where I stamped the image, the alcohol from the image and the alcohol from the Copics would've just blurred and combined and made a mess of my pens. Besides, if you color on the back of a stamped image, you can color without worrying about covering up any of the fine lines of the image. Nice!

I used my Nestabilities to cut out the green scallop for the front. Then I adhered the front cardstock and then temporarily adhered a piece of cardstock for the back of the front of the card. Using the next size down of the Nesties, I cut a hole in the front of the card. Remove the center hole and use it for another project. Remove the inside cardstock that has been temporarily adhered to the inside front of the card. Adhere the transparency to the card front, centering the image in the window. Now completely adhere the inside front of the card. This makes a transparency "sandwich" and makes the inside of the card clean. Then I adhered my green scallop to the front around the opening window.

I then stamped the sentiment to the front using some rickrack and some pearls. I also used some Copic Spica pens to the sentiment to make it a little sparkly. I think every card needs a little sparkle, don't you? Oh, I almost forgot - I also stamped the little candies and the other sentiment from the stamp set on the right front inside of the card.

I hope you liked my project and I'll leave you with my "Name" and "Treat" for the blog hop prize:

Debbie - Shiny Ornaments

Collect all the participants info and email it to Cathy, the owner of Paper Garden Projects - custserv@papergardenprojects.com . She'll enter you into the drawings. :)

Supplies: Stamps - House Mouse Christmas clear stamp set Paper - Basic Grey Eskimo Kisses Pearls - Lush Green Velvet Ribbon - Sage Green Copic Spica Glitter pens - Red, Green, Black (from the A set) Copic Markers - R14, R29, E21, E33, E47 and Colorless Blender (for fixing mistakes)

Thanks for stopping by. I hope your enjoy your Walk through the Paper Gardeners' websites. See you later!

Brick Wall Technique

I decided to try this Brick Wall technique after I saw Nicole's gorgeous card. She used the technique from SplitCoastStampers. It looked easy enough so I thought I'd give it a go.

Sure thing, the technique was easy enough, I just had to find an image I was happy with. Whenever I need a tall-ish image, I go for this one. It's about 5" tall and works well to fill up the front of a card. The stamp is from Ink Blocks. I don't even know if they are in business anymore. The finished size of this card is 5x7.

The image was stamped on printed paper and then colored with prismacolor pencils. I drew the brick pattern on the back of the image, cut it out, ran it through the Xyron and then mounted it on the brown cardstock and finished it off.

That makes it sound so simple and fast, but it really took me a couple of hours to make this card. It's hard to make a fast card. At least it is for me.

Thanks for stopping by today!

CPS Sketch #141

Whenever I lose my crafting mojo, I head over to a sketch site and do a sketch challenge. Today, I headed over to the Card Positioning Systems Blog to participate in their current sketch. I'm so happy it was a simple one! I just needed to get a card done, not have angst over how I'm going to interpret a sketch.

I used two of the images from the House Mouse clear set: cute little mousie and the candy stamp. I stamped the mouse first, then masked it and placed the candy along side the mouse on the right and left. Simple. I need simple.

Then I colored the image with Prismacolor pencils and when I finished I added some glitter to the candy. I wanted the hat to have some dimension, so I used some liquid applique with glitter on top. I heat set it so it would puff up. I used my QuicKutz Revolution to cut out some flourishes out of sparkly white cardstock. I ran the flourishes through my Xyron sticker maker. Simple! I added a few ribbons and was done. Whew! Oh, the paper I used was from the Basic Grey "Eskimo Kisses" 6x6 pad.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Fourth Friday Fun Challenge

There is a new challenge over at the Paper Garden Projects blog: the Fourth Friday Fun Challenge. Each fourth Friday, there will be a new challenge. This one is all about the bling! You can use glitter, rhinestones or pearls. Anything to make your card blingy. If you've been on my blog long enough, you KNOW I love bling. I love anything that sparkles. The first card here was done with a stamp from the PGP store that is, unfortunately, sold out. I stamped with Memento black ink because I decided to color it with Copics. Memento ink is water-based and Copics are alcohol-based, so that's why I chose the ink I did. If I used Versafine, which is an alcohol-based ink, the Copics would've made the ink bleed and the ink would've gotten all over the tip of my Copic pen. Choosing ink is very important when you stamp. I colored the whole image with Copics and then patterned the background. I learned this in the Copic Certification Class: bunch up a napkin and then put some blender solution on the bunched-up end and blot onto the area you want patterned. The more blender solution you use, the more pattern you see and the more color it (the napkin) "lifts" from the area. This is a great way to add texture to animals for fur, for grass, sky, whatever. For bling, I put Stickles on all the green stars. I also used the Copic Spica (speeka) pens on the rest of the image. That part is hard to see, but it really is there. This card was fun to make. I love this witch. She looks like a lot of fun, doesn't she? When I first saw her, I knew she had to have green hair! This image was colored with Prismacolor pencils. Can you tell I popped-out the hat and sleeves? I wanted to make it really pop, but it looked weird when I popped it out further than it is. For the bling, I used rhinestones. I didn't have the orange ones I wanted, so I colored the clear ones. did you know you could use your Copics to color rhinestones? Yep! You can color pearls, too. I color them while they are still attached to the glue strip on the manufacturer's packaging that way I don't get the ink on my project. Here I used two different orange pens to color the rhinestones. Now that I look at it, it may be a bit over-bling'ed. Is that a word? It is now. Over-bling'ed. haha! So, back to the Fourth Friday Fun Challenge... There is a prize! Here is what you get for this challenge: Just look at all this BLING! Woo hoo! So make up your blingy card and follow the directions HERE on the blog post. Good luck and I hope you win some bling! As always, thanks for stopping by. I really appreciate it.

Trick or Treat

Halloween is almost here and I'm not done with my cards yet. Yikes!

I love, love, LOVE this set of stamps that I got from Paper Garden Projects. The stamps in this set are so darn cute. I wanted to make a card without using all the stamps in the set. I only used two of the stamps here: the door frame with light and the hands holding the candy bowl.

I also wanted to stamp on non-white cardstock. I used a light brown cardstock and stamped with Versafine black ink. All stamps were colored with Prismacolor pencils. I used the stamp-a-ma-jig to position the hands in the doorway.

I added some crystal lacquer on top of the light to make it look like glass. For the sentiment, yes, I have stamps that say "trick or treat" but I wanted something different, so I dug into my alphabet box and came up with these cute little stickers. I'm not really a sticker person, but in some cases, I think they look cute.

I'll be posting other cards soon, including one for the Fourth Friday Fun Challenge over at the Paper Garden Projects site.

And now it involves knitting!

I have been so out of the crafting loop lately, it's not funny. Since I had surgery in June, I haven't crafted much. Have had no desire. That's bad because I have so much crap, er craft supplies, that I can't afford to let them sit. For long. Since I've been back to work (end of Aug.) I've been taking knitting lessons from a coworker, Cindy. She's awesome. Very patient and supportive. No, I didn't start out with a scarf. My first project was a vest made from Noro yarn (from Japan) and at $20 a skein, not a cheap first project. More pics on that in a little while. I have completed all but the one front panel of the vest. I've also completed two scarves. This first pic is me sitting outside on the not-so-warm concrete bench outside at work. I'm working on a beanie for Tony. This is my first project using five needles. It really is a pain to use that many needles, but I do like that the beanie will have no seams. The pattern is very simple using a seed stitch, K1, P1 over and over and over for 10"! I'm up to about 6" now, so not long before I can change stitch patterns and start decreasing for the top of the beanie. I'm thinking of making some knitted "dreads" for the top of the beanie. That might be cute, but maybe Tony doesn't want cute. This is Cindy. She's got some homespun yarn here and she is winding it into a ball so she can knit with it. She got a very cool scarf pattern and it calls for bulky yarn, and boy howdy, this is bulky. It's some kind of wool with alpaca mixed in. Turns out after she knit a bit, this yarn is too bulky and hard to really tell what the pattern is, so she opted for another homespun yarn for the body of the scarf and will probably use this for the fringe. Pics later. So that's what I've been up to these past weeks to a month. Knitting. Oh, I do have a card to post, but will post it a bit later today. Just wanted to get the blog moving again. Thanks for stopping by today!

World Cardmaking Day is coming!

World Cardmaking Day is right around the corner on Saturday, October 3rd! What is World Cardmaking Day, you ask? Oh my! It's where all the cardmakers in the whole world get together and make cards. Not only do we make cards, but we follow a schedule of fun challenges. You can even win prizes. Way cool prizes! The challenges are put on by various stamp companies and suppliers. Each hour, there will be a post telling you where to go and that post will tell you what the challenge is. That post will tell you how long you have to complete the challenge and where to post your entry. It's going to be great fun. Check out the prize package offered by the Paper Garden Projects Store. Yowza! All the groups will be updating their links closer to the date and time of the challenge. Each challenge will tell you how long you have to complete the challenge and when the prizes will be awarded.

Bombshell Day

I've been cleaning the craft room today. All day. And I'm still not done, but I decided to take a break and put a few cards together. I made a pile of already colored images and am making cards from those images today. This is an image from Bombshell Stamps. I love this image and I don't usually like western-type stamps. Not only is this image fun to color, but it's easy to cut out, too. I used other Bombshell images for the corners of the card. I stamped the images on black cardstock and stamped with Versamark ink. Then I embossed with Cherry red and cherry scented embossing powder. Sexy, eh? I colored this image with Copics, but I colored it so long ago that I don't know which pens I used. I love Copics almost as much as Prismacolor pencils.

Talk Like a Pirate Day today!

You know what they say about best intentions? Well, there you go. I didn't get around to making a new card, so here are a couple of old cards I made with pirate themes for today's big day.

Thursday cards

Howdy. Can you believe it, I made some cards! My sister sent me some images of some new stamps she bought so I decided to sit down and color some earlier this week. This little fairy girl is so cute. She is a lot of fun to color, too. I can see her in Halloween colors, too. I colored this image with Prismas and a blending pencil. I used lots of Stickles on the wand and swoosh as well as her crown, wings and doodads on her skirt. I had forgotten how much I love Stickles.

These chickens are so darn cute. I thought about making this a happy birthday card, but changed my mind and used the Odd Bird Planet sentiment, You Rock, instead, that way it could be used as congrats or yahoo or whatever. Image was colored with Prismacolor pencils.

The cutest cupcake catepillar I've ever seen. How cute are those cupcakes? I used plenty of Stickles on this image as well. I used clear rhinestones colored with a black marker for his eyes. Image colored with Prismacolor pencils.

Thanks, Donna, for all the images. I love them and will be coloring those cute kitties soon.

OBP Blog Hop

Today is the day for the Odd Bird Planet Halloween Blog Hop!! Say that three times fast. We thought we'd share some fun Halloween images and cards with you today. You can start here or you can start at the beginning of the hop with Karrie's Blog,or just hop around any of the participants blog's here: Karrie Me Diane Godelieve Kathi Laura Marnie Teresa Tiffany Tracy Hop around and check out some cool Halloween fun. It's right around the corner, you know. Yay!

Happy Birthday, Tony!

So today is my son's 29th birthday. I can't believe he is 29 already. Why is it that he gets older and I don't? Of course, he expects to have one of Mom's handmade cards, so I made him one with a cool cat on it because he is a cool cat himself. When I make cards, I stamp the image on a piece of white cardstock intending to cut it out and mat it to the front of a card. While coloring this image, I decided it was going to be a peek-a-boo card. I don't know if that's the technical term (probably not) or just my term, but it means that the image on the inside of the card peeks through the hole in the front of the card. I had a bit of a problem cutting out the hole. If I had pre-planned this card (yeah right), I would've positioned the image so that I could've used one of my big punches, but I didn't do that. I tried to use my Martha Stewart circle cutter, but seeing that I put cardstock on the front and inside of the card, it didn't cut through all three layers for the whole circle so I kind of faked it. In order to make the hole look ok, I used my scalloped nesties to make a border for the hole. I cut the scalloped border twice so the inside and the outside of the hole matched. This is the view of the inside of the card sans the personal birthday greeting to Tony. Probably too mushy for you to read. lol This first picture is with the card sitting on the table in the tented position. Here you can see the whole image through the hole. I got the order of my photos mixed up so the first and last ones are switched. I didn't feel like moving them, I'd rather go make more cards. :) I colored this image with Prismacolor pencils. I'm loving getting back into making cards again and also coloring with my Prismas. It's so relaxing for me, even if I have to sit in the craft room mess. I still have a small area on the craft table for coloring. Thanks for stopping by today. I appreciate it.