Donna's Last Open House

Alas, Donna is moving out of Florida to become a Georgia girl!! Today was her last event. She couldn't leave without giving us one last technique class on how to make ribbon roses. NOT easy! First I rolled and twisted the ribbon from the left, then I rolled and twisted it from the right and made a mess of them both (the examples below are Donna's rose). This is a 5.5 inch by 8.5 inch card. The ribbon was 1/2 inch grosgrain.

The Never-ending Flip Card

The directions for making this card are in the April 2008 issue of "Scrap & Stamp Arts" which may be still available by ordering from the publisher: www.scottpublications.com.

Ever since I purchased the magazine, I've been looking at this card and still have not figured out how to make it come out correctly (with apologies to Loretta Rodger, the creator).

I finally was able to get a four-sided version done after working on it for over a day, off and on, because I got so frustrated! This is the front (easily done):



Then open it to see this, which Loretta called the first flip(again, easily done):



The second flip was very confusing to me and I ended up cutting through the leaves to make it "work".



And this is the third filp (back of the card), again easily done



In order to mail it to my mother-in-law, I had to make my own envelope (6.25x6.25 inches) which I made from an old calendar page. I'll need to make a mailing label and remember to add a long white strip at the bottom for the Post Office's encoding.

Secret Pen Pal Cards

Before Christmas, I was trying to plan the next card making session of a gross of cards to send to Love Letters in Altamont Springs, FL. Not to be griping about making the cards which I love doing, but sometimes just trying to come up with ANY card is mind straining! Especially when trying to get it prepped for maybe six friends to come (I have to also clean house for this event!!) and assemble so many cards.

A friend had given me several discontinued wallpaper sample books she picked up at Lowe's, one of which had numerous Disney characters. I made about 40 quick cards using some rickrack and other trims I had left from making the Little Dresses for Africa previously. Then it occurred to me that maybe the local hospital which is about a mile from my house would accept some cards on an on-going basis for the Pediatric floor. When I went to visit a friend, I went down a floor and asked about doing it and was able to leave the cards I had taken with me. So from now on I believe I will just make about 30 cards a month and hand deliver them to some local kids (and I won't even have to clean house!). This is an example of those cards:







Today, I looked through my stash of stamps and found this really cute beaver that I had bought at Michael's some months ago. This was in the dollar bin and is an acrylic stamp that I stamped then scanned into my computer photo program so I could size it to what I needed. I printed out this beaver as four 3x5 photos on letter size paper and, after I unclicked the 'fit to page' feature, as many times as I needed, then colored them with pencils before cutting them out. I used pieces of Whitman's Samplers' cushioning to make him stand out from the card. The hugs & kisses circle is a download from a digital scrapbooking freebie site that I receive automatically every day as an email.

Amy's Wedding Invitation

A friend's daughter is getting married in October. When I received the invitation, I just had to rework it into a gift card for the couple. I even had enough pieces to make another card.

Technique University

These two cards were made using white paper flowers that we dyed using daubers and three different shades of pink inkpads; the other flowers were dyed using the brush end of three diffent shades of yellow paint pens. We then stacked them on a brad and attached to the card.

These cards were made using baby wipes! The wipe was folded into fourths, placed in a glass dish large enough to place the largest stamp in. Using three shades of blue, drops were placed randomly on the wipe, the lightest shade was used to fill in the white spaces creating a multi-colored inkpad.

The cattails were created using a large grass stamp then adding trimmed down petals from a punched out daisy. The background was done by folding a baby wipe into fourths lengthwise, then folding about an inch over, dropping several drops of reinker on it and wiping across the card. The three colors used on this card were yellow, blue, then green.


My favorite technique was this scratch & sniff creation! We used a mixture of clear (or white) embossing powder and lemonade koolaid (or strawberry). The color was stamped on then the mixture was stamped on and embossed with a heat gun. When you scratch the lemons it smells like lemons! The same thing happens with the "ice cream" - it smells like strawberry.

The outside of this card was stamped with Versamark ink then highlighted with a glue pen and glitter.

The pop-up tree wasn't that hard to make using the Sizzix die. The assembling was a little tricky if you don't know the trick!

Love Letters

Today a group got together at my house to make cards to send to Love Letters in Altamonte Springs, FL. Together we made 150 cards featuring a train (Sizzix),running across tracks using the Hearts wheel from Stampin' Up, "Bringing you a train full of love!" on the outside, and "Have a wonderful day from your Love Letters Pen Pal" on the inside.

New to Me Techniques

Today I attended a workshop with Donna & Emily where they taught a group of us how to do bleaching and embossing two different ways,



paper "felting" using paper napkins & plastic wrap;




how to make a paper pleated 'skirt' to use on a card



We also made two pop-up cards that hold gift cards inside using a die from Sixxix and sold through Stampin' Up. When I figure out how to keep it open to photograph, I'll post a picture here.

Stampin' Up Challenge

This Sunday, Donna and Emily are having an Open House with some 'make and takes'. They have challenged us to bring a card using Stampin' Up supplies to this event for a contest. My two cards are shown below. The cardstock is from the In Color line; I used Rich Razzleberry, Bermuda Bay, and Crushed Curry. The printed papers are from the same color group in the double-sided Designer Series group. The organza ribbon is no longer available from Stampin' Up but can be purchased at craft stores. The stamp is from "Merci" and I used Marvy glitter gel pens to outline the design after stamping with black ink.

Purple Dotted Tissue Box Card

This is another card I made using a piece cut from a tissue box for the background. I needed one more birthday card to get me into January. I also had to make four more Christmas cards today. Somehow I miss counted, again! (p.s. after reviewing my Christmas Card address file a couple weeks ago - in January 2010, I discovered where 15 cards went!!! I had made them then immediately mailed them to the Holiday Mail for Heros in Capital Heights, MD!!! I didn't miscount just had a senior moment that lasted for a couple months! LOL!!!) After everything goes on markdown after Christmas, I'm going to stock up on envelopes by buying the dollar store boxes of cards and discarding the cards. Hopefully I can buy about 15-18 envelopes for about 50 cents a box.

Another Card from a Recycled Item

Recently I purchased an edger punch made by EK Success. The pasteboard backing for the package was beautiful!!
Here is a card I made using it. The cardstock is from Stampin' Up which matched perfectly.

Recycling can be so much fun. I've checked out the new tissue boxes and can't wait to use some of them again

Florentine Peacock

This card is made from a 3-D download I found at http:community.webshots.com/user/dOnpen designed by Penny Wessenauer (http://s27.photobucket.com/albums/c191/dOnpen/). These downloads are free and can be saved in your computer's photo program as a .jpg. For this particular card, there are two separate sheets to download; one for the front and one containing a variety of sentiments for the outside and inside of the card plus some trim pieces. This card was a total of six layers. I used the cushioning from a box of Whitman's Sampler for the large pieces as that mashes down when in an envelope. For the smaller pieces I used regular pop-dots. Anything going through the mail thicker than 1/4 inch requires extra postage.

Go take a look!

Eyelash Yarn

Because I will be going to a Christmas Card Gallery hosted by Donna and Emily with Stampin' Up in about two weeks, I decided to see if I could use up some of my supplies to make room for new stock which I know I will want when I see the new catalog.
The Stampin' Up products used here are Perfect Plum and Pale Plum cardstock, Perfect Plum ink pad, and the scallop punch. The coordinating eyelash yarn was given to me by my cousin, Barbara, who knits neck scarves as gifts. The layout idea is from the Sheet Load of Cards website.

Black & White & Red All Over

After my sister, Janice (Arts & Craps), showed me the anniversary cards she has been making using black and white paper with red accents, I had to try it for myself. Not being as creative as she is (I copy other people's designs with very few original ideas of my own), I came up with two versions shown here. The paper is from Making Memories Black Tie paper pack, the ribbons from Offray, the red hearts from Creative Living Network, and the metal dots from Colorbok. The 'flowers' are from various packs of discontinued stackable prepunched kits. I also dotted the top swirls in several places using Stickles Candy Cane from Ranger.

Another Kleenex Card

While going through the piles of scraps on top of my work table today, I rediscovered the Kleenex 'paper'. This is one card I made using a light teal card with a dark brown strip with rounded corners, then rounding the corners of a 3x4.5" piece cut from the side of the small tissue box. The ribbon is from a spool I had purchased for $1 at Big Lots some time ago.

Two Variations from Topper to Cards

Yesterday at the Card Gallery, one of the work stations had a cellophone bag for candy and a Valentine's style 'topper' to make. As I have no one to give that sort of gift to, I cut out enough hearts for both sides and turned the 'topper' into two birthday cards after I got home. The orginal 'topper' without the bag is first, then my version turned into two different birthday cards for #10 envelopes::

Perfect Plum Loop-de-loop

This card was made using Perfect Plum cardstock and ink pad from Stampin' Up, two sheets of paper from a Mat Stack which I've had for a few years, and the base and small and large loop-de-loop templates stacked from the Fold-it Ribbon Swirls template from Hot Off the Press (#HOTP 7332). I sponged the back of the paper with the Purple Plum ink pad as I don't have any two-sided paper. Then I used the sponge again to highlight the edges of the loops.

Templates

These three cards are made using the same elements; i.e., Bo-Bunny's Back to Basics Concord Dot Reversible Heavy Weight Paper (#12CDD677), pretty matching paper,jewel brads, and Around the Block Lace No. 2 Frame Tape (#06057). The flowers were made by using Hot Off the Press' Fold-it Ribbon Swirls (#HOTP 7332) and Fold & Stack Flowers (#HOTP 7336). The paper I used for the flowers was not printed on the back and as I was unable to find a coordinating double-sided paper, I used a sponge and ink pad to create my own.

Newest Cards

These are two of the four cards some friends and I got together and made last week. I'm trying to learn how to take a photo and load it from the camera (Kodak Easy Share C643) to the computer then to the blog instead of scanning it into my computer which causes it to sometimes be too large for the blog to upload and some of the embellishment depth is lost.

These two cards were scanned into my computer then uploaded. I can't tell the difference...maybe the first ones are more blurred? Anyway, do you recognize the silver/grey background I used?