RobinsCraftRoom.com

So Lucky I Live Hawaii!

Aloha, all!

     And, no, I didn't leave out a word in that blog post title!  People around where I live talk all the time about how fortunate we are to "live Hawaii," not live IN Hawaii!  But whether I live Hawaii or live in Hawaii, where I live brought me to today's stamp design.

     One of the online groups to which I belong – the LNStampers – has a challenge every week.  While I love to look at what everyone does with these challenges, this week's just perfectly met my need to get back into my craft room after several days away from home.  The challenge was to make a card that represents the place where I live!  Of course my craft room, being in Hawaii, looks out over luscious gardens.  My husband has a spectacular garden – people take tours of it rather than spend $$$ to go to commercial gardens! – and the thought of making a card to reflect what I see from my craft room was very appealing!

     The Stampin' Up! stamp set featured in this card is called Greenhouse Garden.  No greenhouse on our property – but lots of garden, and lots of hibiscus, along with other flowers and palms and vireyas, and – well too numerous to mention.  To construct this card, I decided I wanted some floral texture to the background layer.  I immediately thought of the Island Floral Sizzix Die.  I cut several of the smaller 5-petal flowers from that die and glued them together.  Then I ran the Peach Parfait card stock through the Sizzix Big Shot with the stacked flowers acting as a texture plate – my own homemade texture plate!  Then, rather than just use a plain old Garden Green brad, I decided I might as well carry the floral theme through and use the Flower Brads instead. 

     To stamp the flowers from the Greenhouse Garden Stamp Set is a 2-Step Stampin' operation.  You first stamp the solid background (in the light color – Peach Parfait) and then stamp the darker lines using the darker color (in this case, Poppy Parade).  I've found that, with this set, you really do need the Stamp-a-ma-jig to line up the second stamp with the first.  I also used the Stamp-a-ma-jig to place the stems from the same set.  I stamped and cut out another of the Hibiscus style flowers, as well as the smaller flower, again from the Greenhouse Garden set.  I carried the Garden Green color from the stem onto the mats for both the smaller layered unit as well as the larger card front.  The finish accent is some of the Poppy Parade 1/2" Stitched-Poly Ribbon featured in the Stampin' Up! catalog.

     Here are some recent photos of some of the flowers blooming right now in our garden.  The hibiscus was my theme for this card, but I just had to show off a Vireya (upper right) and one of our orchids (bottom right). 

     Here's the sketch for today's card, complete with the measurements that I used.  Don't forget that all my blog posts from 2010 that included layout sketches (all WITH measurements!) are in my 2010 Card Layout eBook that is now for sale!  For more information, click on the link at the top of the column to the right.  It's really a fun book – I use it myself all the time (go figure).

     Maybe you can use this to make a card that shows off where YOU live!  Join in the fun, but certainly have fun with whatever you do!!

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The Hilo FCE Fair is Saturday!

Aloha, all!

     While it may seem that advertising Saturday's Hilo Council FCE (Family and Community Education) Fair may not be related to stamping, it certainly is when I'm involved!  Believe it or not, there are several Stampin' Up! demonstrators and customers in this group, and there are many craft items for sale made from Stampin' Up! products.  Usually, I make greeting cards, including several Mother's Day cards, because the Fair is always the day before Mother's Day.

     This year, however, I branched out from all things Stampin' Up!  For one thing, I knew that this winter and spring I was going to be on lots of airline flights and would have lots of time when I had nothing to do, but was away from home.  So I focused on creating some crocheted coasters for my contribution to this year's fair.  From February to April, whenever I was sitting waiting for something, I had my crochet cotton at the ready!  I ended up with over 60 coasters ready for sale at our annual fundraiser.

     Today was the day for packing all those coasters up into packages for sale at the Fair.  That's where the Stampin' Up! products come in.  Believe me, no matter what craft you like to sell, for whatever reason, Stampin' Up! has something to help you make an absolutely spectacular presentation!  In the case of these coaster sets, I found Stampin' Up! colors and embellishments to (hopefully!) set these crafts off from the ordinary.

     There are quite a few Stampin' Up! products used in making the toppers for the coaster sets.  See how many you can spot in this photo:

Here they are: 

1. The Greenhouse Garden Stamp Set .  Love those Hibiscus flowers in that set!  I stamped them using the
2. Lovely Lilac Classic Stampin' Pad for the petals and the
3. Elegant Eggplant Classic Stampin' Pad for the accent colors in this 2-Step Stampin' Set.  All this was stamped on some
4. Whisper White Card Stock that was die cut with the
5. Stampin' Up! Exclusive Top Note Sizzix Die.  I layered that on top of some
6. Lovely Lilac Card Stock and a few sheets of
7. Lavender Lace Card Stock (depending on the color of the coasters).
8. I tied everything together with rick-rack from the Orchard Ribbon Originals Set (tied through holes punched with the Crop-a-dile, of course) and added a butterfly accent using the
9. Beautiful Wings Embosslits, exclusive from Stampin' Up!  Love that little butterfly!
10. Oh, and I added some texture to the background card stock using a Sizzix Texturz Plate from the Stampin' Up! Backgrounds I exclusive texture plate set.

     Now everything's ready for the Fair!  Here are many of the coaster sets all lined up and ready for purchase!  I can't imagine packaging these coasters up any better than I could have using my wonderful Stampin' Up! products!

     To purchase one of these elegantly-presented (if I say so myself!) sets, just come to the FCE Craft Fair on Saturday, May 8, 2010, at Aunty Sally's Luau Hale from 8 to noon.  Oh, and there are other clubs and items for sale, too.  Though I say that reluctantly, we are all great groups of people working to make East Hawaii – and the world – a better place.

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Wow! It’s a Brand New Look for Robin’s Craft Room!!

Aloha, all!

You would be hard put to find any similarity between that wonderfully neat new desk in my new blog header and the rat's nest that is currently in the real craft room.  But I LOVE IT!!!  Thanks so much to Michelle Laycock who took my ideas about what I wanted and came up with something totally unexpected, and totally delightful!  Now I want to get out the Greenhouse Garden Stamps and make some Hibiscus cards to celebrate!  But that will have to wait until I finish up this week's (ugh) chores.

For now, I'm going to recycle a card I made last fall.  I just love the Hibiscus flowers that I can make with this stamp set!  And a fitting "Thank You" to Michelle for her fabulous job for me!

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A Hawaiian Thank You!

Aloha, all!

There was a question yesterday on one of my Yahoo groups about whether having My Digital Studio would mean that we’d spend less time with paper and ink and real embellishments.  As far as my greeting cards go, the answer is a definite, "No!"  Although I’m a computer junkie, I still love my paper and ink!

So, now it’s time to send a Thank You to my son and his family for their hospitality earlier this month, and a stamped card is the only kind that will do.  For this card, I used the lovely 2-Step Stampin’ stamp set, Greenhouse Garden.  I am hooked on that hibiscus!  And, as you can see with this card, you can make a whole bouquet and now repeat a color set.  OK, so there are only three flowers in this bouquet; but I was on a roll and could have done lots more–just would have needed a larger card

If you look closely at the three flowers, you can see that I tilted each flower a bit differently.  And that top (darker) layer, doesn’t have to be "just so."  You can stamp it a bit differently with each flower to make it look like you have REALLY unique flowers!

For those of you who haven’t made use of Stampin’ Up!’s 2-Step Stampin’ sets, you should really try it.  Of course, a Stamp-a-ma-jig is an absolute necessity for this operation.  If you’d like a copy of my 2-Step Stampin’ Tutorial, just call (808.854.6145) or e-mail me and I’ll be happy to share a copy with you!

Meanwhile, I’m going back to My Digital Studio, and will have some brand new "stamps" and "papers" to share with you tomorrow!

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Convention Swaps!

Aloha, all!

Long ago I decided that I was NOT going to do swaps for this convention.  For one thing, I just didn’t have that good an experience at last year’s convention with my swaps.  For another thing, I was getting ready for my Convention Late Night Stampers demonstration, and we have a new puppy (check out his blog!), and DH has not been feeling well.  So swaps were not in the picture.

BUT, I found by Saturday that I was just about caught up (well, so I thought, but more about that in a moment).  So I decided that I would, indeed, make some swaps.  Not many, you understand.  Who knew what might come up at the last minute.  But I did get my craft room cleaned up from all the stuff I’d been doing the last couple of weeks, and came up with a design.  As I mentioned last week, I just love the Hibiscus in Greenhouse Garden.  We have so many of those lovely flowering shrubs throughout our Hawaiian garden, that I knew that this stamp set would be a keeper (meaning, I will NOT get rid of it when it retires.)

So, as I write this, my swaps are not done.  But, once again, life has gotten in the way.  BUT all the adhesives are adhered, and I WILL finish these before convention opens on Wednesday.  I may be finishing them as I wait in line at Memento Mall.  But I will be swapping!  Here’s a copy of the finished card, and the condition of all the various parts. 

Oh–and what I used for the swap:  Greenhouse Garden, Teeny Tiny Wishes, Sizzix Scallops #2 die, Modern Label Punch, Sizzix Stampin’ Up! Movers and Shapers Punch Windows die, Circle Scissors Plus, Regal Rose and Garden Green (well, isn’t that appropriate) card stock, and a Stampin’ Up! Sizzix Texturz plate. 

Later this week, I’ll share some of the cards that I received in return from my swaps.  They will all be wonderful! 

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Simple Pop Up Card – Part IV

Aloha, all!

Finally the card that started this whole thing.  Ever since I first saw the stamp sets, Paradise and Greenhouse Garden, I envisioned them all in a bouquet.  Then, when I decided on a Pop Up for my demonstration project, I wanted this bouquet to be the inside of the pop up card.  I used both the Paradise and Greenhouse Garden stamp sets for the outside of the card, along with a greeting from Heard from the Heart.

This was the first of the pop up cards that I made.  Because I thought it would be like other pop up cards, and not stay closed by itself, I made a "belly band" to go around the outside of the card.  Let me tell you, with this kind of pop up card, unless you add lots of embellishments inside, it’s going to stay closed very nicely, thank you!  The ribbon on the belly band is a sample from the "Orchard" ribbon originals.  It’s Elegant Eggplant, and I used that color as an accent throughout this card.

Now the inside:

I just love the hibiscus from Greenhouse Garden (I even used it for my one swap card for convention!).  So I made it in three different colors,  Then I used several different greens – Old Olive, Garden Green, and Hunter Green – to make the foliage accents, with a final touch of Elegant Eggplant for the spike towards the left/middle.  A little "Thank You" tag just completed this lovely bouquet.

To make it even a bit more "outside-y", I added the background stamp,Woodgrain, over the whole of the inside of the card.  I even added a bit of a "flower box" just under the bouquet.

Now for a bit of a treat that I’ll also share with those on my newsletter mailing list.  I will send each person who orders at least $100 online between now and September 5th (yes, the new mini will be in effect starting September 1st!) a duplicate of this card. 

Stay tuned next week for information on how you can get a copy of the tutorial for making the basic pop up card!

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A Hawaiian Touch

Aloha, all!

One of my favorite flowers in my husbands spectacular garden is the Hibiscus.  We have at least half a dozen varieties, and they never cease to catch my eye when I happen upon them.

A stamp in one of Stampin’ Up!’s brand new stamp sets, Greenhouse Garden, is a 2-Step Stampin’ Hibiscus.

In 2-Step Stampin, you first stamp the background stamp in a light or medium range color.  Then you stamp the foreground stamp in a darker color.   In the first Hibiscus, I stamped the flower itself in More Mustard, then I inked the stamp that contains the stamen as well as accent lines for the petals, in Really Rust.  You really do need a Stamp-a-ma-jig for this particular stamp set.  Some 2-Step Stampin’ Sets have a very "loose" design, and, as long as you hit the paper in the vicinity of where the stamped image should be, you’ll have a nice looking picture.

After I stamped the first flower, I realized that the Hibiscus that we have in our garden have more variety in the coloring of their leaves.  The photograph at the right is a flower that blooms pretty regularly for us.  So my next try, in the photo at the left I did on Stampin’ Up! Watercolor Paper.  I stamped the petals in Summer Sun.  Then, while the stamped image was still wet, I used an Aquapainter and blended in some Really Rust, working from the center out.  Finally, I stamped the stamen in Really Rust.

Once I get everything done that I need to do for Convention (my gosh–it’s just 10 days away!!) I may try some flowers that are a bit more colorful!

Meanwhile, if you’d either like to buy some of the great Stampin’ Up! products I’ve been showing off; OR visit our garden, just give me a call (808.854.6145).

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