Happy New Year!

I feel like so much has happened since my last blog entry. I guess I will have a lot to talk about. Pardon me if my post runs on and on!

I recently returned home from spending Christmas with my family. It was wonderful (as usual). I am truly blessed to have the family I do. My holiday was very relaxing, but I suppose it is time to get back to work as well as get back to creating some new cards and projects!

Speaking of new projects, I have two new classes coming up in January, so be sure to look for them. My 10 in 10 Valentines day class is Thursday, Jan 24th from 6:30-8:30, and my Clearly Hero Arts class is Wednesday, Jan 30 from 6:30-8pm. The Hero Arts class will highlight their new 2008 images, but it will also focus on working with clear stamps (how to use them, care for them, etc).

Today I am posting my version of tea "pots" that I gave to some friends for Christmas. I found some cute mugs at a store that reminded me of flower pots. I filled them with the foam that florists use and then covered the top with moss. I then took some bamboo skewers and painted them with ink from my VersaMagic Tea Leaves reinker. I am a big fan of VersaMagic ink because it seems to dry on everything, and the colors are gorgeous. If you have never used this ink on vellum, you should really try it! But, I digress.... I cut flowers from various colors of cardstock and then taped them to the bamboo skewers. For each "flower," I cut two shapes at the same time so that the edges would match. I attached the skewer between the two shapes so that the top of the skewer would be obscured by the cardstock pieces. I then attached two tea bags to each flower (one in the front and one in back). I used one gummy glue dot to attach each tea bag. I didn't want to go crazy with the adhesive because I wanted the tea bags to be easy to remove without tearing the paper wrappers.

What else? Oh! I was tagged by Julie to list 7 interesting things about me. Here goes:
1. I attended 6 elementary schools growing up.
2. I know all of the words to Don McLean's American Pie.
3. I have seen The Nutcracker in both Manila and London.
4. I am the shortest adult on both sides of my family (5' 4").
5. I am a Scrabble geek.
6. I broke my arm trying to climb a tree by jumping off of a pair of stilts. My brother said I couldn't do it. He was right.
7. I recently won tickets to Spamalot by submitting my favorite Spam recipe. (I made it up in my head, but let me know if you want my Spam Stir Fry recipe- I am curious how it tastes.)

Finally, I had a chance to check out the Annie Leibovitz exhibit at the Corcoran Gallery of Art last Sat. It was FANTASTIC! It is only going to run through Jan 13th, so you need to hurry if you want to see it. There is also an Ansel Adams exhibit currently running at the Corcoran, so it is really worth the trip (IMHO).

Merry Christmas from DC!

Sorry it has been a while since my last post, but I really haven't done much in the way of crafting this month. The few items I have made will be given to people soon, and it seems rather rude to post pictures of their gifts before they open them!

Instead of crafting, I have been trying to get ready for Christmas, and I have been trying to do a few Christmas events to get in the holiday spirit.

Today my friend Chrisi and I drove into DC to see the National Christmas tree as well as the Capitol tree. We also stopped by the National Botanical Gardens to see their lights and mini railroad set-up. I had no idea it existed, but I recommend going to see it if you are in the area! I am including some pictures of our outing. Sorry if Christmas lights aren't your thing.


Today's card is a quick and easy Christmas card. The branch is by Stampendous, the ornament is from Memory Box, and the saying is by Hero Arts. I colored the ornament with Prismacolor pencils and then added some gold and green Spica markers on top of the color pencils. The Spica pens are translucent so I often put down a bottom layer of color and then use the pens on top.

I am leaving tomorrow to be with family for the holidays, but I promise to post some more pictures soon. I have a TON of new Impression Obsession stamps to play with, so watch out for some new IO samples as well.

I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a new year filled with peace and happiness.

Prima Paintables Part 2

I said I would post more of my Prima Paintables samples, so I thought it was about time to actually make good on my promise. I still need to photograph my Twinkling H20 card. Twinks do not scan well at all.

The snowflake card was made using a Twinkling H20 wash on the background. A wash uses very little of the Twinkling H20 paint so there wasn't any sheen or glimmer to the background. However, the color turned out very nice. Once again, I am learning that pale blue does not scan well. I colored in the snowflakes using my Copic markers and then finished with clear rhinestones and a bow. It was a very quick and easy card!

The floral card was colored using watercolor pencils and a blender pen. When you use a blender pen instead of a paintbrush and water, the finished result isn't as "watercolored" as other methods. However, you have a lot more control over where you want the color to go.

Wild and Crazy Night

Sometimes living just outside of DC has its perks. Sometimes you have the opportunity to do some really cool things. On Sunday night, some friends and I drove into DC to see the celebrities arrive for the taping of the Kennedy Center Honors. I was amazed that we were allowed to stand in the lobby and watch people enter the building. We were about 20 feet from the door and had no one in front of us so we had a really nice view of the celbs. We had a chance to see all of the honorees (Steve Martin, Diana Ross, Brian Wilson, Martin Scorsese, and Leon Fleisher) as well as Cameron Diaz, Steve Carell, Martin Short, Smokey Robinson, Aretha Franklin, Vanessa Williams, Terrance Howard, Jordin Sparks, Yo-Yo Ma, and Lyle Lovett. Of course, there were also a gaggle of Kennedys and other politicos in attendance. Perhaps the highlight was when Robert De Niro tried to sneak by the photographers next to us. It might of worked if one of my friends hadn't yelled "De Niro!" That got the photographers whipping around! In any case, he walked a couple feet in front of us, turned, and smiled at us. Bliss.
I kept saying to my friends before I went that I really wanted to see Steve Martin. I just love him! I said that if I did see him, I would post a card on my blog in his honor. So, for todays card, I am including a party scene where all the characters have arrows through their heads. If you aren't familiar with Steve Martin's early comedy bits, then this card is probably morbid and very odd. However, I have to admit it amuses me. That is just the sense of humor I have.
Over the years I have collected a large assortment of whimsical characters from Claudia Rose and Rubbermoon. I find that I use them more if I create little scenes where they can all hang out. Because the stamps are whimsical, I never worry about the scale of the images...I just go ahead and put them all together. I then put little things into their hands for further embellishment. Putting items in their hands provides me a chance to use some of my other fun stamps such as balloons, flowers, martinis, presents, etc. I always feel like I get my moneys worth when I use so many stamps in one card!
As for my previous post, for some reason the photos don't enlarge like my other blog photos do. I keep getting a prompt to download them if I want to see a lager version. After many attempts to fix this problem, I have given up. I will post the other Paintables samples soon. Perhaps they will enlarge better.

Prima Paintables Demo

Today at Angela's Happy Stamper we are having our annual holiday party, and I am really looking forward to it! It is always so much fun to hang out with friends and my stamping "family." There will be food, demos, make-and-takes, and a fantastic stamping supply fundraiser for military families stationed in Germany. If you have a chance, stop on by!

I am in charge of demoing some of the new Prima Paintables papers. I wanted to post some of the samples so that anyone attending the demo will have a visual reference to remind them of what I was teaching. Plus, my mom wanted to see some samples, so....

The first sample was made by using some Copic markers. The Paintables papers are printed watercolor paper sheets. It seemed a waste to make a card that didn't use watercolor of some sort. However, I really liked the way the Copics worked on the paper...very vivid!

The second picture is also made by using the Copic markers. When I finished, I thought there was a lot of blank space around the images. To fill in some of the space, I outlined all of the images with a light blue pen. I forgot that light blue does not scan well, so you can only see the marker in some of the places on my picture. Oops!

The third card was created using watercolor crayons and a waterbrush. I applied the crayons directly to the card and then smoothed the color with the brush. The advantage of working with a waterbrush is that you don't have to keep rewetting a paintbrush with water. Nice! I finished the card by embellishing it with a few faux pearls on the flowers.

The fourth card was made using Tombow markers. I scribbled the markers onto acetate and then

picked up some color with a wet paintbrush. I then painted in the images with various earth tone shades. I cut the piece apart and then taped the pieces to a card. I finished by adding a circle punched saying layered onto a popped up yellow circle.

I really enjoyed working with the Prima Paintables. It is a lot like working with a coloring book. You don't have to think about what kind of ink to use that won't bleed when you color and the watercolor paper allows you to add all kinds of inks, sprays, watercolors, and other mediums. I will post some more samples soon.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! The card today was made using a solid pumpkin stamp and watercolor crayons. I damped the stamp with a wet paper towel and then colored it with yellow, orange, and green watercolor crayons. I spritzed it with water and then stamped it onto some heavy cardstock. I repeated the whole process three times and then finished the card with some gold brads. Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday.

Procrastination

I am SUPPOSED to be doing a ton of things to get ready for Thanksgiving tomorrow. Am I doing any of them? No. Am I checking out stamping blogs instead? Yes. Sigh. I thought I might as well upload a card to ease some of my guilt.

Today's card is an iris folded ornament with bow. I chose a rather nontraditional color palette (purple), but I thought the finished card turned out well. I copied the ornament pattern onto cardstock (a copy machine works well for this). I then used an exacto knife to cut out the ornament pattern. I flipped the card over and stamped a Hero Arts Christmas saying in purple ink. Unfortunately, I think the stamp has since been discontinued. It was important to do the stamping BEFORE I did the iris folding because once you add the folded papers, the card is too bulky to stamp. I also added a piece of gold paper to the top of the ornament and edged the top loop with a gold Krylon pen before doing the actual iris folding. I followed the iris folding pattern and added different patterns of purple paper till the ornament was complete. I have several bits of advice when picking papers for iris folding.

• Think thin. Thick papers make your card too bulky
• Add a variety of textures. I often mix up papers such as mulberry papers, vellums, and smooth scrapbook papers
• Use scraps, but make sure you have enough. Iris folding is a great way to use up some of your small scraps. However, make sure you have enough of each color before you start. I found out the hard way how hard it is to finish a card if you run out of a certain paper. You can never make it look right...trust me!
• Having trouble picking colors that work well together? Go monochromatic. I picked all purple papers, so I knew they would go with each other.

I finished the card with some gold Krylon pen and a purple bow. I wrote these instructions as if everyone was familiar with iris folding. If you have never done any iris folding, there are a lot of great books out there as well as a wonderful tutorial on Splitcoast Stampers.

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday! Wish me luck that there won't be TOO much traffic for my drive.

Stamping Friends

As Thanksgiving and Christmas approach, I tend to focus a lot on friends and family. I am truly grateful for all the wonderful people in my life. However, it is also this time of year when I start to miss people the most.
I was going through a box of cards and found one that I had made from a set of Outlines stamps my friend Deedee gave me. Seeing the card made me nostalgic for New Mexico and my stamping buddies Deedee and Michael. It seems so long ago that we stumbled into China Phoenix having no idea what this "stamping" thing was. Little did we know what we were getting ourselves in to!
I also miss the holiday party the three of us would have every year. We would exchange gifts and do some "challenge" stamping. We would each bring some stamps we had never used or didn't know how to use and throw them into a bag. Each person would have to draw several stamps out of the bag and make a card with the stamps they picked. You could either stamp the whole image or use only part of it. Trust me, it was always a challenge, and it was always fun! I still remember the time I drew out a cowboy, a skeleton, and a bathtub. Yikes!
To make the card today, I stamped the tree onto green and purple papers and embossed in gold. I then cut up the pieces of the tree and reassembled them as I wanted. I colored in the patterns with green and purple markers then punched a star out of gold paper. I finished the card with a gold Krylon pen and some gold glitter glue. It is hard to see from the picture but I popped the Christmas Wishes saying up with some glue dots.

Sunrise

I was inspired to make some pins by my recent trip to Hampton, VA for a stamp convention. When I went to my first stamp convention back in 96, tons of people traded pins before they went into the show. Ever since then I have packed my bag of trade pins and sought out those who were also trading. Unfortunately, every year since then I have found less and less people who were also trading. Is it a lost venture? I came home this year with only 3 pins. Sigh... Okay, I will stop being melodramatic.

It would have made sense to post the pin that I made this year as a swap. However, I handed them all out to people and told them about pin swaps in the hopes that next year more people would participate. Looking back, it might have been a good idea to take a picture BEFORE I handed them out! I made a mini version of my Impression Obsession bat martini card and added a pinback. Very cute (if I do say so myself).

When I trade pins at a show, I try to create something nice but also something that isn't too expensive or too hard to mass produce. The pin I am including today is not something I would trade at a show. It was easy enough to make, but the glass and frame would have been to costly. To make this pin, I used one of my favorite Rubbermoon stamps and colored it in using Twinkling H20s and a waterbrush....easy! I then placed it between two pieces of glass and surrounded it with a metal frame from Ranger. The frame comes with a loop on the top to make it into a necklace. I clipped off that part and put a pinback on the back so that it could be worn.

Merry Chrismoose!

The weather here in Virginia went from the low 70's to mid 40's so fast this autumn. One day I was wearing sandals and the next I was searching for a jacket and scarf. Sigh. In any case, it started me thinking about Christmas and Christmas cards. Can you believe it is only two weeks till Thanksgiving?

So...for today's card, I decided to post something in honor of Christmas. I love the stamps by My Favorite Things. What fun! I saw this set, and had to have it. I am sure that many of you have had that same problem when seeing new stamps!

To create the card, I stamped the moose onto 120lb watercolor paper with black Versafine ink. I allowed it to dry and then colored the image with watercolor crayons and pencils (moose with pencils and background with crayons). I colored the entire background (even the holly leaves) with a green watercolor crayon and then smoothed it with a waterbrush. I then went back with markers to color in the holly (over the green crayon). I found it easier to highlight the holly in with darker colors rather than trying to color around each individual holly leaf.

The image of the moose is actually bigger than what I have on my card. I decided to cut it out smaller so that I wouldn't have as much coloring to do. I find that going through my stamps and picturing how I would use just part of an stamp rather than the whole image helps me get the creative juices flowing. It also makes my stamps so much more versatile. My moose stamp has holly around him, but if I were to just cut out the moose, I can use him year-round.