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Summer Mini Catalog Countdown – Part III

Aloha, all!

     Day 3 of my Summer Mini Catalog Countdown brings me to the Stamp Set July Fourth.  If you're like a lot of us, you looked at that set and thought, "Great set for July 4th; but can I use it any other time?"  OF COURSE YOU CAN!!!  There's only one stamp in this set that limits us to July 4th – and it's the stamp that says July 4th!  Otherwise, those stamps have uses all through the year.

     Today I'm going to share two cards, both of which use the July Fourth set, but both of which are very different.  This first card is a card you can make with the July Fourth set and with any number of other sets to construct a fun birthday card.  I chose Pacific Point and Pumpkin Pie because the combination is so NOT Independence Day.  But those stars are from the July Fourth stamp set, and they look just perfect on a birthday card.  I added a few stamped images from the Stamp Set On A Pedestal because it trims up so nicely with a bit of a white edge, and because there are polka dots on the stamped images similar to the small stars that are in the star stamp from July Fourth.  And I didn't have to cut out those stars because they are made to fit the Star Extra-Large Punch.  The greeting is from one of this year's Hostess Sets Occasional Quotes, and the printed paper is from the Brights Patterns Designer Series Paper Stack.  So, lots of products on this card, but I think that the stars make it "pop."

     My second card is one that I shared in one of my recent newsletters.  It's a New Year's Card!

     New Year's Eve has become a great holiday for fireworks lately, and this card, with the Rich Razzleberry, Gold Stampin' Glitter and Brushed Gold Card Stock seems perfect for that time of year – a good 6 months on the other side of the summer holiday for which the stamp set was designed, and a nice, warm set of colors for those cold winter days (oh, yes, I do remember those cold winter days, even though I don't experience them much any more here in Hawaii!)

     Just two more days until this set goes away with the stamp sets I shared the previous two days!  Here's the ordering information, which you can use to order online at my website, or by calling me personally (808.854.6145) to place your order!

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Featuring Some More Retiring Colors

Aloha, all!

     I've been making a lot of cards lately using colors from Stampin' Up! that are going to retire effective with the new Catalog on July 1, 2010.  It's kind of like going through all the things that you really loved once and are getting ready for a big garage sale.  Sniff!  I'm going to miss them, but…  Well, life would get boring if everything stayed the same all the time.  And I'm ready to make some space in my craft room for some new papers!  I definitely will not be keeping the old because I'll want to love the heck out of the new.

     Meanwhile, I'm still going to enjoy the old, well, um, current-but-not-for-long.

     One of my all time favorite colors from Stampin' Up! is the Retiring Brilliant Blue.  The best time I had with it was in 2008 when my then 7-year old grandson, Quin, decided to make his Sizzix Snowflake using Brilliant blue (check it out on YouTube sometime!).  But I digress (been doing a lot of that lately!)

     The top and the bottom of this "cake" from the On A Pedestal Stamp Set was stamped with the Brilliant Blue Classic Stampin' Pad.  The greeting and the candle are stamped in Retiring! Only Orange Ink.  The word "everything" is stamped and then layered on top of the cake with Retiring Brocade Blue, and the whole center motif is set off with Brocade Blue Brads from the Rich Regals Brad Collection (while no one's made an announcement, I'm betting that these brads will retire also?).  I used Only Orange to mat both the center motif as well as the Brocade Blue card stock that makes up the background for the card.  I used a Stampin' Up! Exclusive Sizzix Texturz Plate to texturize the Brocade Blue.  It's all finished off with a bit of card stock cut to look like a piece of layered ribbon at the bottom right.

     Here's the layout for this card.  It's an easy layout and lends itself to all kinds of uses of Designer Series Papers and Cards Stocks and Stamped Images.  If you have real ribbon, the ribbon even looks better!

     Have fun with it!

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A Tote Box with Gift Cards

Aloha, all!

What makes this gift box with note cards special is that it’s made with TWO boxes made from the Sizzix Box #2 Die to create a little tote.  How cool is that?  I learned this technique at one of the Late Night Stampers Pre-Convention Stamp Camps in Salt Lake City earlier this month.  What a great idea for using this die!

Something else that makes it special is that I used Stampin’ Up!’s new Wood Sheets for the boxes.  I bought a couple of packs of the wood sheets to try them with various Sizzix Dies just so I could answer your questions before you decide to order some.  I’ll make some of my comments/findings at the end of this post.

For this tote, I cut two of the Box #2 shapes, and made all the folds EXCEPT the two for the top flap.  I left those intact so they’d stand up nice and straight.  After I put the two boxes together, I lined the inside of the tallest part with Designer Series Paper.  (All the DSP in this project are from the Razzleberry Lemonade set of papers–gorgeous set!)  Then I punched the top of one box with the Word Window Punch.  At the Stamp Camp, we then put the boxes together and punched the word window punch through the second box.  Can’t do that with the Wood Sheets because the two Wood Sheets glued together don’t fit into the punch.  I found that out the hard way, so had to use a Craft Knife to cut the handle out of the second box.  Won’t make that mistake again!

All the cards are 3" square gift cards.  Four of them fit nicely into one side of the tote, and I put the envelopes in the other side of the tote.

Now for my comments about the wood sheets:

The good:

• They cover a whole Bigz XL Die, so there’s little chance you’ll cut one wrong.
• Our punches cut them nicely.
• They really do have a pretty wood grain.

The less good:

• They are textured wood on only one side.  So, for a project where both sides will show–as in the above project–the other side is a white plastic-type paper.  You may or may not be happy with that effect on your finished project.
• They fold nicely on the straight of the grain, but do not fold so nicely against the grain.  I had to cut or file rough edges of wood grain off in several places even where the scores were very good.
• They are thick, and will not work well where you have lots of folds.  For example, I could not use wood sheets for both the cover and inside of a Matchbox made from the Sizzix die.
• While you can stamp on them, the ink from my classic stampin’ pads did bleed a little into the wood grain. 
• I understand from others that they do not do well with heat embossing.  They’re too heavy and the wood grain is too fragile for dry embossing.

My bottom line:  I made a nice, wood-grain looking card using Creamy Caramel Card Stock and the Woodgrain Background Stamp stamped in Chocolate Ship.  Until I find another "a-ha" use for the wood sheets, I’ll just stick with what I’ve made from my test packages.

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90 Candles???

Aloha, all!

Yesterday I shared the front of the card that I made for our friend, Marian’s, 90th Birthday.  Today I’d like to share what I did with the inside.

For starters, I used the Sizzix Pop Up Three Tier Cake die to make this simple but lovely cake, featuring the Razzleberry Lemonade Designer Series Paper. 

The Sizzix Die cuts one candle for the cake, but I just put a couple of scraps of paper over the candle part of the die and cut two more for the top.  Actually, I had envisioned myself making NINETY such candles and affixing them to the cake.  But I could see right away that that was going to be (1) hard work (which I shouldn’t shirk, of course) but (2) kind of sloppy looking.  Can’t have that!

But I definitely could STAMP that many candles!  That’s what’s on the strip on each side of the inside of the card, on both the top and the bottom.  Using the candle stamp from the set, On a Pedestal, I stamped 90 candles in a variety of colors–Rich Razzleberry, Crushed Curry and Melon Mambo, mostly the former two colors.  But the Melon Mambo made a nice accent.

A couple of comments about the Three Tier Cake Die.  The instructions call for 7/8" wide strips of paper to go around each layer.  I’ve found it a lot easier to use 1" wide strips when I’m making this as a Three Tier cake. When you close the card, it always folds very neatly AND pops up very neatly.  When I’ve used the 7/8" wide strips, sometimes when it pops up, the card stock that makes up the top of the layer pops up over the edges of the strips.  Another thing that I’ve been doing with this die, no matter how fancy I might want to make the tiers, is to fold the card closed as I make each tier and before I start decorating.  Trying to make these pop up dies do too much at once is a bit of a challenge.

Tomorrow we’ll look at those medallions on either side of the cake!

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Happy Birthday to my Favorite Son!

Aloha, all!

No, I don’t play favorites.  He’s my ONLY son!!  But he’s still my favorite, especially now that he’s married and has provided me not only with a grandson, but with a step-grandson.  How cool is that!! 

For his birthday card this year, I figured that candles had to be the key, for this is his first (of many, I hope!) 39th Birthday.  I settled on a candle in one of the new stamp sets in the 2009-2010 Stampin’ Up! Idea Book & Catalog is On a Pedestal.  Believe me when I tell you that this is not a set that I would have had on my "must have" list for the new catalog.  So why, you might ask, do I have it?  Because it was a bonus given to those who attended a regional seminar this past spring with their first $400 order after the regional.  Having that kind of an order was no problem with my great customers and my own "need" for all things new in Stampin’ Up!  The Occasions Mini-Catalog (just past) helped with the order, too.

So–On a Pedestal has been sitting idle in the Craft Room every since March.  And now I had this July Birthday card to make.  The little candle was perfect for making a couple of rows of candles that add up to 38.  The candle on the "cake" is number 39!

To make this card, I stamped the rows of candles on Very Vanilla and cut them to fit on either side of the center motif.  The "cake" in the center motif is made up of 4 of the stamps in the On a Pedestal set.  I stamped the plate and the cake image in Brilliant Blue, and Brillian Blue cardstock is the main background color card stock for the card.  I punched some Real Red cardstock with the Scallop Edge Punch and adhered that behind the Very Vanilla layer that had the stamped image.  The "flame" (lots of quotation marks in this description, huh?) on the center candle is from the Fire Circle Rhinestone Brads set, and the brads along the scallop of the cake plate are Real Red from the

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