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Inspiration from a Photo

Aloha, all!

     Here I am on a Monday again, and this Monday I'm already traveling on my way to the Stampin' Up! convention, which begins on Wednesday.  For now, though, I'm in the Portland, Oregon, area visiting my grandson and whichever of his relatives happen to be around while he's with me.  I'm sure you'll see some scrapbook page samples later this year with him in it!

     But Monday also always brings a challenge from the Late Night Stampers Stampin' Up! Yahoo group.  I don't always get it done on Monday, but I have a whole week to do it.  This week (and last), though, I planned well enough ahead to be right on time!

     For this week's challenge, our fearless leader gave us a photo and said, "Be inspired!"  Hmmm.  These are the tough ones.  Unless I, myself, look at a photo and think, "Ooooh, that reminds me of a Stampin' Up! design!" I usually draw a blank.  I did with this one for awhile, too.  Then, when I was working on last week's challenge, I decided to use the same layout to at least get started with this challenge.

     And here is the finished product!  The "live" color of this card is Certainly Celery, and matches the celery color in the photo pretty well.  Sunlight and flashes change colors a bit, and I'm a papercrafter, not a photographer.  So I'm leaving the picture of the card as it is!  For the accent colors I used two of Stampin' Up!'s newest colors, Island Indigo (the blue vase) and Calypso Coral (the flowers).  The other colors in play here are Whisper White, which you see a lot in the photo, and Daffodil Delight.

     Once I had the thought of flowers in a vase, I went to the Ornament Punch which is my favorite punch for making vases.  Just snip a bit of the bottom off, and you have a vase!  To make the Daffodil vase stand out a bit, I texturized it with the Finial Press Embossing Folder.  As I've done in the past, I arranged my punched piece in the embossing folder so that the design is centered on it as I wished.  It's a really easy technique!  For the flowers, I used the smallest flowers in the Boho Blossoms Punch.  To make sure I didn't waste card stock, I just cut a 3/4" strip of the card stock and stuck the end into the punch so that just that flower was punched.  As I punched each flower, I clipped the end clean and started over again.  It's a pretty quick operation, and you could even tear off the end pieces if you wanted.

     To get the flowers' little petals to stand up, I laid each on the soft Paper Piercing Pad and pushed the eraser of a pencil into the center of it until the petals came up to wrap around the earser.  I then laid the flowers where I wanted them, moved each vase a tiny bit, and marked the start and end of each stem with the very same pencil (who knew it was a doubled-ended tool!).  I sketched the stems between the pencil points with a Certainly Celery Stampin' Write Marker and adhered the vases and flowers to the card (the flowers with Mini Glue Dots and the Daffodil Vase with Stampin' Dimensionals. The finishing touch for this card are some Basic Pearls – just right the flower centers, and a nice finishing accent for the Indigo vase.

     You'll almost recognize this sketch from last Monday.  But the measurements for the rectangular layered element are slightly different.  Another difference with this sketch is that the 3 layers in the rectangular element are the same distance apart.  In last week's sketch, the top two layers are closer in measurement than the bottom layer.  Lots of ways to do this, and I'm going to cover this is a section of my new eBook, about which I'll tell you more at the end of the summer!

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Use those Christmas Supplies all year long!

Aloha, all!

Now that we’re getting so very close to Christmas, I was thinking that I’m about to say, "Goodbye," to all those wonderful products that I’ve been using the past few months for making Christmas cards and gifts.

NOT!!!

Here’s just one example of a project I just made that’s totally NOT Christmas, but makes use of not one, but TWO, of Stampin’ Up!’s products featured as holiday products.  The Old Olive Designer Series Paper that forms the larger border for this card is from the set, Merry Moments.  But it is totally not looking Christmas-y at all.  And the Ornament Punch is a – VASE!.  How cool is that!

I’m pretty much booked up for the next couple of days with activities related neither to the holidays nor to my paper crafting.  But as soon as I get back into the Craft Room (hopefully Wednesday afternoon) I’m going to pull out some more of those holiday products and show how you can use them even after December is gone!

Oh, and the vase is made from Perfect Plum Textured Card Stock, punched with the ornament punch, with just a teensy bit sliced off at the pointed end.  I wrapped the top of the vase with Linen Thread.  The stamp is from the set, Eastern Blooms, one of my favorites for stationery sets.

If you’ve been thinking about making some last minute purchases from the Holiday Mini Catalog, you’ve just got a couple of weeks!  Many of the products featured in the mini won’t be in any future Stampin’ Up! catalog.  If you have any questions about anything in the Holiday mini, feel free to call (808.854.6145) or e-mail me, and I’ll either answer you right away, or get an answer for you as quick as I can!

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Playing with the Sizzix Big Shot!

Aloha, all!

With all the Christmas Cards I’ve been making, I’ve hardly made my Sizzix Big Shot crack a sweat at all.  That’s going to change over the next couple of weeks.  December will be here in just two days, and I’m going to be into making Christmas Cards and gifts big time!  Except that I just looked at my schedule, and I’m not sure when I’m going to have time to breathe this week!  I’m sure that I will, though.  And I’m sure that I’ll take some time to make stuff

So–with the Big Shot this current weekend, I made my card for the weekly Stamping 411 challenge.  I used the Movers and Shapers die with the insert piece that coordinates with Stampin’ Up!’s Ornament Punch.  The stamp from the Delightful Decorations set is actually stamped inside the card.  The window through all those layers was made with the Sizzix.  I actually used the Sizzix Movers and Shapers die twice–once to cut through the top two layers and then through the card itself, with the bottom three layers attached to it.  While the Sizzix can cut through many, many layers, I thought that this required a bit more finesse that just chopping through everything.

The papers are all from what’s become one of my favorite Designer Series Paper set of late, Holiday Lounge.  I just never thought of using Taken with Teal and Ruby Red as "my" Christmas colors.  But they’re working on me.  The poinsettia is from the stamp set, Berry Christmas.  I added some Rhinestone Brads to give that necessary "bling" to this card, and some Whisper White Taffeta Ribbon.

Don’t forget–November 30th is the last day of the big Stampin’ Up! Thanksgiving week sale!!  If you need to stock up, now’s the time to do it!!

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Holiday Lounge – Gorgeous Paper!

Aloha, all!

If you’ve been reading my blogs and other commentaries around the web, you know that I’ve been trying to get myself out of the Red and Green "mold" of the Christmas season.  Today, I spent my time with Taken With Teal and Sahara Sand–can you BELIEVE that these are Christmas colors????

Yes, they are – and Stampin’ Up! has included these colors, along with Whisper White and Ruby Red, as part of their 2009 Designer Series Paper set, Holiday Lounge.  I decided that Taken With Teal could make its case as a "green" and Ruby Red was, well, a "red."  So I bit the bullet and bought a set of the papers.  AND I’ll have to buy more

The reason I’ll have to buy more is that I spent a lot of time today making Diaper Fold Gift Pouches with many of the papers in the set.  And now I want to make MORE!!!!

The project at the beginning of this article is one of the Diaper Fold gift pouches that I made with this fabulous paper.  What fun it was to make!  And what fun it was to videotape my project so that you can follow along and make your OWN Diaper Fold gift pouch. 

I’ve also included in my "Techniques and Tutorials" section some tutorials that you can print out, along with some other ideas on how to use this great project for other types of gifts.

Just a reminder for those of you on my newsletter list–there are SPECIAL DEALS throughout the 2009 Holiday Season!  Just look at the last article in ALL my newsletters for November and December 2009–don’t miss out on a GREAT deal!! Sign up for my newsletter now

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Back in Town with a Christmas Card Program!

Aloha, all!

After a wonderful time with my son and his family in Washington, I’m finally back and into all that great "stuff" in my craftroom.  But where to start!

OK–here’s where I start.  Last week I introduced a "Twelve Weeks of Christmas Cards" program for those who are on my newsletter list.  Each week until Christmas week (and I’ve got a sneaky suspicion that there may be one extra!) I’m sending out a brand new card with a supply list and detailed instructions on how to make the card.  And it’s FREE! If you’d like to get in on this program, just sign up for my newsletter by clicking on "Sign Up for My Newsletter" just to the right!  Oh, and besides the instructions, I have coupons for free stuff for those who order some of the supplies to make the cards! 

These are the first two cards of the program, both made with the same Designer Series Paper set, stamp set and Stampin’ Up!’s new Ornament Punch.  The Stamp Set – Delightful Decorations – and the Ornament Punch are in the Holiday Mini Catalog.  And ALL are just so much fun to work with.

So–sign up for my newsletter now!!  And get all those greeting card instructions for FREE!

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Another Peek at Christmas Cocoa

Aloha, all!

After I posted yesterday, I went looking for another challenge card that I’d made last week, but hadn’t posted here.  Darned if I hadn’t used the same Designer Series Paper – Christmas Cocoa Specialty – that I used in yesterday’s challenge card.  This particular challenge was one that I did for the group, SUDSOL, during one of their online Chat & Challenge sessions.  The sessions are a lot of fun.  The host of the C&C (as they’re called) welcomes everyone and posts a challenge sketch or picture and then those of us out here in Internetland go try to come up with our own design to meet the challenge.

In yesterday’s card, I featured one of the sheets with snowflakes on it.  This card uses the flocked paper that’s part of the set (the white on red on the bottom strip) and papers that coordinate with it.  To set it off, I stamped an ornament from a set that you’ll be able to buy from the 2009 Holiday Mini Catalog, beginning September 1st.  The set is Delightful Decorations, and there is a PUNCH TO MATCH!!!  The punch is the Ornament Punch, and you’ll be able to buy it in September also.  (And lest you think it has limited use, in the next week or two I’ll be demonstrating some other things that fellow Stampin’ Up! Demonstrators have been doing with it, and none of it Christmas related!)  Oh, and I popped the ornament up a bit with Stampin’ Dimensionals.

Don’t have your Holiday Mini Catalog yet?  Give me a call (808.854.6145) or e-mail me, and I’ll get one right out to you!

Are you an SU Demo who might like to join a great online group?  Click on the blinking picture to the right and get a free two-week trial with Simply Unique Demonstrators Sharing OnLine (SUDSOL).

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