Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day! The forecast was for rain, but it has "fined up" as they say in Canada's easternmost parts.

DH is making a picnic and we're off to do some kiddy stuff to celebrate the day. We sang Happy Birthday to Canada this morning - 142 years old. We stand on guard for thee!

No card today. I did a bit of stamping last night and colouring. I'm making a waterfall card for my dad with the Under the Stars set. He loves the outdoors, so it's appropriate.

I wanted to post where I got the Four Little Birds stamp I posted recently (and I will try to post the sources of things if I can remember them). It's available in Canada from Shamrock Rose Treasures . I just looked at her website and she has the most beautiful journals with covers from the Book of Kells. Gorgeous! There are also covers with prints of manuscripts by Mozart and Beethoven and lots of stuff like that. Double gorgeous! I think I'll hold off since I just ordered some new BasicGrey from Paperworks Co, some tsumugi paper and other fancy stuff from California Paper Goods (chugging its way northeast as we speak), and I have a cart on the go at A Muse. I'm trying to resist that. Hey! Just remembered it's a new month! I will have to revisit that cart. They have the farmer and the field on sale and I have a card in mind with a really dreadful pun...... C'mon, you know you're thinking it too! I emailed A Muse to see if they have that stamp, and they said they would consider it since it's not one they have. Cross your fingers for me that they make it :-)

Thanks for stopping by. Happy Canada Day!

Big thank you!

Here's a fun little card I made for Mother's Day, but am only just now getting around to posting it. I fell in love with this image (Four Little Birds, by Stamps Happen) and it was perfect for painting with my Twinkling H20s. I pretty much followed the colouring style on the stamp itself, I liked it so much. Ornithologists might beg to differ, but I think of these as pretty little Eastern Bluebirds. We had a pair nesting down the road from us at our old place. They're really lovely, though not as vibrantly blue as the Mountain Bluebirds that nested at my childhood home in the West.

My mother loves birds, has lots of feeders, and a pair of binoculars next to practically every window in case she needs to watch a bird at short notice. I thought she'd like this card, and indeed she did.

This image had a lot going on and a beautiful shimmer from the twinklings, so I kept the layout pretty simple, and sized it to go in a small open ended envelope (SU). Inside I stamped "Happy Mother's Day". There are a couple of embellishments (sheer ribbon and Adirondack acrylics in Lettuce), image on black and brocade blue and that's it! I really liked this card and it was one where I used the stamp right after I got it. (I normally like to let them age, or cure, for some time.)

Thanks for stopping by!

PS. To Nimmy: thank you so much for your lovely comments on my blog. They always make my day! Yes, this is really me, thought I don't know how proud I should be about ranting on about B&E Fairies, etc. I'm just grateful you think I'm real and not crazy! lol Thank you once again for all your kind and supportive words - they really mean a lot. If you were my neighbour, I'd have you over for colouring all the time, and as a special favour, I would labour hard and make you a great card the next time you went for poutine. BTW, thanks for the chip wagon referral - I will have to google it and see if we're anywhere close to the fabled fries.

A Musing little card

I was cruising through blogland and stopped at Paper Trufflez, one of my favourite blogs. I followed the links to this challenge leading up to A-MUSE-APALOOZA, which was to make a card with ribbon as the inspiration.

I've had these A Muse stamps for a while, just waiting for a good time to ink them up. I really love this little stamp store, and the image struck a chord with me ;-)

I really like the A Muse style of stamping, which keeps things simple, lots of open space, and a little glitz here or there, a ribbon and some nice pattern. I tried to do that here, with the ribbon (wide grosgrain) as my starting point. I picked this nice stripe, which was languishing on my desk, rejected from a previous project. I trimmed it to fit here, added a lime scalloped stripe for the sentiment, added a bit of shadow and red glitter pen for accent (will probably go back in with stickles but I didn't want to wait for it to dry and it would have gotten my scanner messy).

This was fun to make. I've been doing a lot of manly cards lately so it was fun to just get out my stamps and play. It's also a bit of a change of pace for me, since my brayer didn't get involved and no chalk inks touched this paper. Anywhere. I couldn't resist the teensiest bit of colouring though. It was fun! I think I could get A Ddicted to this kind of thing!

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies: Stamps: A Muse; Paper: BasicGrey (Gypsy - stripe and lime), Memory Box duplex cardstock (I believe it's Forget-me-not); Ink: Van Dyke Brown (Nick Bantock line, Ranger); Other: Stampin' Up wide grosgrain ribbon in Real Red, Fiskars scallop edge scissors, Prismacolor pencil crayons.

Bon voyage

First of all, please accept my apologies for the terrible scan! (Do I say that every time or what!) I will have to break down and get a photo tent, or a photographer. I had a hard time scanning the colours and still picking up the letters on the brads (which spell "dream"). In real life it's quite rich. In fact, DH first saw it and said with some feeling that it was really nice. His usual observations are not normally so positive, tending to focus more on crooked pieces and cards that don't open (which by the way was the intended design feature, as anyone who has made a pocket card knows...). If this gets a gush (relatively speaking of course) from DH, it must be a good one (despite the total lack of stamping!).

Here I am attempting the "detail inset", used to great effect by more accomplished photographers and bloggers than I. So this is what it feels like to ape one's betters....

This card is the living proof that I have almost enough stuff in my stash to make any possible card (lacking only aeronautical flight charts). The two hours I spent last night looking for this collage sheet is proof that I need a better organizing system (maybe I will add this to the photographer's job description!). I usually go by the system "I know where I put it", which failed me in this case. I only have a few collage sheets, so they don't get their own "spot". I hunted high and low (literally) and finally gave up, hoping that sleeping on it would trigger a memory. No luck. I decided tonight (card needed tomorrow) that I would have to look in every single spot (again) and it worked. I found them (mysteriously) in a stamp drawer. Hmmm. I blame this on fairies who come in and mess up my house at night. Apparently they also rearrange my stamping stuff (give me back my clear ruler please!). I am waiting for them to make dinner while I'm at work.

Back to my card. One of the people on my team is leaving on Friday for a big trip he's been planning for a few years. It's very ambitious. He's a pilot and they are flying a small aircraft over 3000 km. He's very excited about this, needless to say. When I saw the aircraft image on this collage sheet (Crafty Secrets), I realized it would be perfect. I also used the tag and post card elements, and the words "trip of a lifetime", "far off places", and "enjoy the journey" are on the inside. The brads are letters that spell out dream. The background is an aeronautical flight chart. (Sidenote here with kudos to DH who was dispatched at last minute for printer ink and it took him 3 stores, and then he even printed it for me. When I called him a Prince Among Men, he said, "Well I prints, anyway." Not just princely, but funny too!) Thanks to DH, I was able to print the flight chart (which I found free! Yay NavCan sample page!!! Usually they are at least $16.50 to buy - yikes! - and didn't I swear off atrocious punctuation and run-on sentences???) and use it for the background. I'm assuming the recipient will recognize it for what it is. He must have a zillion of these things for his trip.

He'll be flying over some wilderness areas and so I will also make him a kit: bear repellent (bottle of barbecue sauce with new label), a mosquito swatter (piece of 2x4), and face cream (Watkins bug bite ointment). I'll do a bit of a presentation tomorrow at lunch. We're sending him off in style, going out for lunch at the chip wagon across the road. Yummy poutine, here we come! (For those non-Canucks, and possibly Canucks outside central Canada, poutine is a tasty concoction of french fries, gravy and cheese curds. If you can stand the guilt, it's delicious!)

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies: Adventures & Travel collage sheet (Crafty Secrets), fibres (Making Memories), Concho letter brads (Colorbok); Ink - Memories Artprint Brown (edging); Paper: Really Rust, Basic Black, Bordering Blue.

Card for farewell

Hello! It's been a long time since my last post! Things are whirling along here, busy busy busy. I haven't been doing nearly as much stamping as I'd like, and haven't had time to post anything.

I thought I'd post this one, but the photo didn't turn out great. It's hard to take pictures of black cards!

I stamped this with my mother, who's visiting. We'd hoped for more stamping time, but we've been having fun doing other stuff. (Yes, I will grudgingly admit that other stuff can be fun too....)

A colleague asked me to make a farewell/congratulations card for someone leaving for a promotion. I will make a sentiment to that effect for the inside. I left the outside all-purpose since I didn't have a "Farewell and Congratulations on Your Promotion" stamp. (Must be the one stamp I don't have.....)

The focal image was stamped in stazon on very vanilla, twice, and coloured with prismacolor crayons. I cut out a few squares and popped them up. The image is mounted on some lovely gold metallic navy, and black. The image behind is black treated with Perfect Pearls and embossed in my Cuttlebug. (Tip: don't use the Perfect Pearls cube direct to paper....) The cardbase is black, stamped with some good background stamps from Australia (Stamp It). They are those nice images that aren't really images but look good in the background. There's a sort of mesh with key, and a flourish. They were stamped in chalk ink to show up on the black.

I know I say it every time, but this looks better in real life. It's a bit shimmery, but not too shimmery, and will be just the perfect thing for us to wish this fellow well. We'll really miss him. He's one of those top notch guys to work with.

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies: Stamps: Stampers Anonymous, Stamp It; Ink: black stazon, French Blue and Alabaster fluid chalk ink; paper: very vanilla, basic black, navy gold metallic, brushed silver; other: perfect pearls and perfect pearls ink, mister, pewter brads (Making Memories), Cuttlebug textiles folder.

Supportive Card

A friend of ours is walking in the Weekend to End Breast Cancer for the second time (wow!). We're going to one of her fundraisers soon so I wanted to bring her a card for encouragement. I had already used Causabella for her last walk, so I thought I would do something else. I thought of the marvellous bra cards I'd seen on splitcoast and various blogs. These are too numerous to mention individually, so consider this a great big thanks to all of you for your inspiring posts, most especially Frances in Australia for her easy-to-use template.

The card base is Blush Blossom, and the bra is made from a pretty rose petal patterned paper. I sponged in a bit of cleavage using blush blossom and creamy caramel, accented with a bit of versamark dazzle for shimmer. Word of caution when sponging: you are only one dab away from going from saucy to bad rash. (Yes, you may correctly infer that this is card number two.)

I accented the paper piecing with some sheer ribbon, which I ruched myself. (This was a royal PITA! Basically, I used a long straight stitch and gathered it up. But it's really cheap ribbon so it doesn't sew or gather nicely. And I used up my bobbin thread so sewing machine #2 is now out of commission - see quilted teddybear post for demise of #1 - until I can remember how to wind the bobbin. Luckily in-house sewing machine support will be here in a few weeks if I can't figure it out.)

I did persevere on gathering the ribbon because it just looked so amazing. How I suffer for my art! The ribbon is held in place with sticky strip. I had planned to use the same kind of ribbon for the straps, but the final length of gathering didn't go well for me (thread snapped, and I almost did too) and frankly I didn't have the patience to baste by hand. So, paper straps it was!

The final accents were a little pink breast cancer ribbon and a flower with rhinestone centre for the middle, which nicely hides the ribbon ends. I love how the ribbon pushes up on the edges of the flower making it look like it's nestled right in. It's a Pretties kit flower that was hanging around in the box, already dyed, just waiting for a home on a project. I love it when an orphaned embellishment finds a good home!

I used my Karen Foster snap stamps to spell out "a message of support" inside, being one who is unable to resist a pun, especially a bad one. Also there had to be some stamping on here somewhere!

Thanks for stopping by. I do feel I must say that in real life the colours are better. I really must get myself a light box. And find the thingy that goes with the camera into the computer. And find the tripod. (You can see why I use my scanner, which is attached to the computer already!)

Supplies: Paper: blush blossom, spring petals (Pamela Woods - creative imaginations); ribbon - Michael's; Pretties kit flower dyed with riding hood red, rhinestones.

Quilted teddybear

A colleague at work recently celebrated the birth of his daughter. I was asked to make a card to circulate at the office for well wishes.

I wanted it to be quite large for all those signatures, and a special card. This colleague is also a stamper, so no shortcuts or he'll know!

I started with a "quilted" background panel in the Parisian designer paper from the last catalogue. I had sewn a few lines when my sewing machine jammed. This put the kibosh on the card for the moment.

...time lapse (picture madly bustling family, as in a movie on fast foward, scuttling hither and yon doing laundry, groceries, going to Sparks, to the park, going to work, making dinner, going to T-ball, doing dishes, but definitely not stamping) ....

Ahh, back to the stamping desk. I dug up my other sewing machine and (importantly) remembered where DH spotted the foot pedal. I got that all fired up and tried out different designer paper in bigger squares. The previous effort used 3/4" squares but they were too weeny and fussy for such a large panel. These are 1 3/8" squares and suit much better. For some reason I had to sew on the paper upside down for the zigzag to look good. It's a better machine and probably has some fancy locking stitch on the "wrong" side. (Apparently, those who actually use their sewing machines for fabric - yes, some people really do - sew on the wrong side so this feature does make sense.) Anyway, I had to re-sew one and was able to start in the same hole so it doesn't show. (I felt inordinately clever about this. Don't give me a hard time as I seldom feel clever about anything, never mind inordinately clever so I plan to bask in the feeling for some time to come.)

The bear is stamped in chocolate brown and embossed in espresso. I watercoloured him with reinkers. What a fun technique! It gives such rich colours. I did find that the chocolate chip broke down a bit and went a bit red, so will plan to test colour combinations on scraps first. I accented him with some Walnut Stain distress stickles. The sentiment is also embossed in espresso and accented with some adorable button brads from my stash. (Thank you, AP!) The quilted panel is on a larger RHR panel, to fit on the card base. I punched the border for an accent. I really didn't want to mess around with calculating extra squares, and where the middle should be, etc. (remember I'm only a pretend quilter), so I made my quilt exactly 3 squares high by almost 5 squares wide (I had to cut off the extra little bit hanging over the edge, I told you I'm not a real quilter). Anyway, if you have the strength of character or a weakness for exactitude, you could calculate your measurements and get squares to fit your panel exactly. I accented with some ribbon, which in hindsight should have emerged through a perfectly placed eyelet, but I only thought of that after I had the slot punched. Oh well, I don't think anyone at the office follows Debbie Olson, so they'll never know the difference.

All in all, I'm pretty pleased with this card. Several people have commented on how heavy it is, so it must be nice! hahahah :-)

Thanks for stopping by!

Supplies (all SU except pen, brads & stickles): Stamps: Full of Life, Favourite Teddybear; Ink: chocolate chip craft; Paper: watercolour, whisper white (for quilt), Bella Rose dsp (for quilt), Riding Hood Red, Pirouette Pink, Chocolate Chip; Other: walnut stain stickles, reinkers (Kiwi Kiss, Choc Chip, Creamy Caramel, Close to Cocoa), Pretty in Pink taffeta ribbon, slot punch, sewing machine (2 sewing machines, to be exact), black micron pen for balloon strings.