You Mean Everything to Me

Here is another card from my card class last week. This was another must own set for me, the Always set. I think that it's odd that I'm drawn to it, first of all I tend to not like hearts. I don't know why, but I think when I look at heart stamps it makes me think of the "early" years of stamping and I conger up some ugly teddy bear and hearts in my head. Clearly a personal issue...moving on. I LOVED this set from the second I laid my eyes on it. I love the detailing of the images, I think it is so elegant.So for class we embossing the heart with white embossing powder along with the little flower images. The paper is from the Berry Bliss collection, another can't miss item.
Hope wherever you are it's better than here. We had blizzard like conditions yesterday, the kids got out early at noon yesterday, and with the windchill the temperature last night was -45. Mind you, the day before it was 45 degrees and raining. That's Minnesota for ya!
See you tomorrow!

Okay quick post today, a card from my card class last Thursday. Ruby Red cardstock layered with Pixie Pink, Very Vanilla, and a strip of Ginger Blossom. Flowers are the 5 petal punch with a glue dot and the new Chunky Essentials Glitter smooshed in.The saying is from a new set called Smarty Pants that I just had to own. The bottom is from a set called Background Sampler, the I must have missed as a retired set because I just realized it's not in the new catalog.AHHHHHHHHHHHHH! I'll have to investigate a little on that one. Happy Monday, it's a whole lot better than last Monday for me!

Tuesday How To (on Friday)-Make a mini Window Box

Amazing how time just flies on some weeks doesn't it. I had the best of intentions for getting this out on Tuesday, and you'll be able to tell by the pictures taken in different places over a couple of days that this seemingly simple project took a while to evolve. It's hard to come up with a fresh idea when there is so much information and amazing ideas floating out there in Bloggerville. These are easy sweet little boxes that are great for little Valentine's treats or party favors, whatever. So here we go:You will need: something for scoring (still need that Scor-pal), a piece of 4x4 colored cardstock, a 3x3 piece of decorative paper for the lid, a 1 3/8" square punch, and a piece of acetate (transpancey, window sheet, whatever you call it.)
Step 1 is to score the edges of the designer paper at 1/2", on all 4 sides. My brain works in the opposite fashion sometimes and you will see my paper lined up at the 2 1/2" mark-this will give me a 1/2" score on a 3x3 piece of paper.
Step 2: Score your colored cardstock at 1 1/16" on all 4 sides. Your box ends up being 2x2 and I've found you need to score just beyond the 1" mark so that your lid will sit nicely on the base.
Now take the designer piece and punch the square right in the middle. A 3x3 piece of paper is perfect for this punch as it will punch perfectly center when the paper is pushed all the way into the punch.
Now on the lid you will snip along one edge of each corner as in the picture.
Now add your 2x2 piece of acetate to the inside of the lid. You may have to trim it down just a hair. If you don't have acetate you could add a piece of packing tape, with the sticky part facing to the top of the lid and then sprinkle with glitter or microbeads for a fun different effect. (I will try to make one today and add to the bottom of this post).
Now you will cut the base piece the same way you did the lid by looking at the picture.
I missed taking a picture of the folding together process. This is where I'm hopin you've made a little box before or you can visualize that you put adhesive on the sniped corners and fold all the pieces up and tuck the box together. This is what they should look like once assembled.
Here is the finished product with 5 Dove Valentine chocolates inside. You could finish off by wrapping ribbon around and a cute tag, but I wanted you to be able to see inside.
Have a great weekend all.

Ugly Monday

Well, the kids are home today, it's snowing, it's 3 degrees outide, Lord knows what the windchill is and my BELOVED Packers lost in overtime last night, but I won't go there.
Like my new template? Good, cause changing it royally screwed up my blog. I lost my counter, my favorite blogs list, oh forget it....I lost nearly everything. I'm slowly piecing it all back together.
I won't make this a long ugly entry. But if you regularly visit me and/or know I linked your blog here would you leave me a comment and a link to your blog so that I can get everything updated?
Thank you. Onward and upward from here today!!!

Kat

Tuesday How to-Make a Shattered Glass card

Well it's later in the Tuesday than I planned but I have this week's installment of Tuesday How To. This week is how to make a Shattered Glass card. One of the oldies but goodies as far as technique. And I have a feeling some of you may have never seen it before. Here is what you will need:
Glossy cardstock
Painter's Tape or masking tape (I prefer painters as it comes of easier)
Classic Ink Pads
Sponges
You begin by ripping off pieces of the tape so that both edges are rough. You don't want one side to be straight like in the picture as it will ruin the effect later.
Now start overlaying the pieces on your glossy cardstock in a random pattern.
Keep randomly placing until you are happy with the result. You want spaces of differing sizing all over you cardstock.
Now choose a color palette to work in. It works best if you have a couple different colors. I used Old Olive, Ruby Red, and Chocolate Chip. Now sponge all over your card stock until you are happy with the result.
now peel off your tape to reveal the pattern below. (Sorry, I was a dork and started cutting up my cardstock and forgot that I had to take a picture.That's why there are 2 pieces in the picture.)
Now you can stamp over the top with the desired image. I used the leaves out of the Embrace Life set. I stamped them with Staz On so I didn't have to worry about smudging as I needed to finish the card.
Here is my finished card. I continued with the random pattern by cutting my cardstock up so I would have a blocked pattern. I used the photo corner punch to pull out just a little of the Ruby Red. I covered a chipboard piece in Ruby Red and backlayered with a circle of Old Olive and then added a rhinestone brad. The thank you sentiment is from Much Appreciated. This is a 100% SU! card.

WSC30 Challenge from Beate

Well Friday I did get a chance to do Beate's weekend challenge, but I worked the weekend and didn't have a chance to post. I struggled with the layout, I'm not going to lie. It's simple, but not my sort of thing, this is the best I came up with.This is my version using my new Target Dollar spot treasures. I just had to open them up. I even had to dig up a piece of Cool Caribean paper from last year to do one of the flowers. I have to say there is a lot going on on this card. One time I think it looks kind of cute and other times I think "YUCK". But good or bad, there it is.
Here is my SU! version of this card. The flower is cut out from a piece DS paper and then covered in versamark and embossed with Iridsecent Ice. I just couldn't make it work with the strips jetting out from the flower, I just compromised with leaves (2 petals from the 5 petal punch.) Neither of them are fabulous, but I told myself I was going to try to do some more of the challenges out there as they make you push yourself to do different things.
Thanks to the Florida gals that sent sunshine, it's sunny here today. (High of 8, with wind chill -10, BUT SUNNY). This is Minnesota, and I will take the sunshine whenever I can get it this time of year.

Dollar Spot Treasures

If you don't live near a Target store I'm not sure if I'm happy for you, or feel terribly sorry for you. I call it my "happy place." Unfortunately, my happy place can be a very expensive place. I swear to you, I can wander aimlessly around that store for hours, looking, touching, smelling. And with the addition of the dollar spot in the last couple of years-DARN THEM. I can drop $20 in the dollar spot, no problem. Case in point, look what I found there this week. I've bought scrapbooking stuff there before, but this stuff was particularly eye catching. All the pretty Valentine paper, matching ribbon, brads, and glitter glue. And look at those adorable flower brads that match the other paper. And I didn't even take a picture of the 10 tin mailboxes I bought that were all the rage last year. I have my own idea for that in coming weeks. Plus I don't mind letting the boys do there own cards and projects with this stuff. (Isn't that awful that I hoard the "good stuff" from my children. Bad mommy, bad mommy.)
Here's my very quick card I made with my new supplies. The stamped heart is from a new level 3 hostess set called Time Well Spent. Oh...and...the little faux brads are metal self adhesive dots that I bought in the JoAnn Fabrics dollar section.
Have a happy Friday. Could you Florida girls send a little sunshine here, I haven't seen the sun for about a week now, and I'm feelin' a little "postal". (Thus explains my shopping spree's, looking for pretty things.)

Tuesday How To Returns-Paper Beads

I don't even know how many months it has been since I've posted a How To, but here we go.
How to make paper beads!For supplies you will need a piece of designer paper (cardstock is to heavy, a ruler, a pencil, a bracelet (or wire and clasp if you are beader already), extra beads, and modge podge or similar adhesive. My bracelet is from Jo-Ann Fabrics, and my (CHEAP) beads are from Micheals. I am not a beader-a medium I have long resisted, so I bought cheap just to see how this would all turn out.
Your designer paper will need to be cut to 3" by 6". This will give you plenty of beads to finish your project.
Turn over to the side that you do NOT want to show. With pencil make lines at every one inch. Along one side, make tick marks and every 1/2 inch in between lines.
Now use your ruler to make triangles extending from the center 1/2" line to the opposing 1" mark.
You will now cut out those triangles so that they look like this.
On the side that will not show you will brush with modge podge, or I used a Martha Stewart adhesive that is that same sort of thing. I like it because it has it's own brush like a rubbber cement bottle.
Now at the far end you will start rolling it up like a cresent roll. The adhesive will squish out a bit and that ok, just use your finger to kind of smooth it all around the outside. This will make it stronger and finish it off better.
Your rolled "beads" should look like this. Leave them to dry (mine didn't take very long.)
Now you will string them on your bracelet alternating with the other beads to create a bracelet.
And here is your finished project. Could have potential for a little girls party, or something silly to make a downline meeting or something. Something fun and different.

All right here are my other two swaps, these are using the new Embrace Life set. I really wanted to use just the leaf image from it somehow.I stamped the image in Chocolate Chip onto a piece paper from the Ginger Blossom paper. It doesn't really translate in the photo but the paper looks kind of suede like. Here it just looks like River Rock. Anyway, I colored in with Old Olive and then added a flower from the pretties kit. The taffeta ribbon finishes it off, and the embrace life is actually embossing with white powder. This was my favorite of my cards, I think it looks simple and elegant.
This set (well this image) screamed cherry blossoms to me. Up in here in Minnesota it is one of the truly spectacular parts of the spring time. When every thing else is just starting to go from cold yucky blah to alive and beautiful. Thats when the trees start to bloom and the air is filled with this slightly sweet smell....big sniff....ahhhhhh.
Well I wanted to create that on paper. The image was stamped in Staz On onto watercolor paper. I then colored using my watercolor crayons and aquapainters. The embrace life in this one is just stamped with white craft ink.
Wish me luck, I'm heading up to make tomorrow's tutorial, I think I have a big idea-gosh I hope it turns out!!!!!!

Spring Solitude Swaps

I had to finish some swaps for my stamping group this week. We had to make 2 designs of 2 different sets, one hostess and one out of the catalog. As demo's we were allowed to preorder some sets and play early. So I'm going to share my hostess swaps with you today. I picked the Spring Solitude set which also comes with a matching wheel.So not anything much exciting about this card, just a little 3x3 Thank you card. I made the little branch in this set look like a little tree and added the little flower from Little Pieces. The polka dot paper is from the new Ginger Blooms set of designer paper.
This card is kind of fun. The floral image is stamped on a piece of acetate (transparency)then the circle pieces are mounted behind it and then layed on top of the white. I'm such a dork, I forgot this set comes with the wheel and I actually wheeled with the Petals wheel on the apricot. It too, is great match for this set so I guess I'd like to think I was showing versatility.
And last I just had to share with you a picture of my design team. These two go everywhere I go, including the stamping room, which also has our spare bed in it. They faithfully lay while I create. The importance of the picture is that they are laying together. The lighter dog is Quincy, who we got shortly after we were married and he will turn 10 in a week and a half. The other little Ewok is Ozzie, whom I bought last April. Well lets just say that Quincy wasn't exactly crazy about his new little brother, but as much as he would hate to have you believe it, the little guy is growing on him. I've been catching them sleeping next to each other more and more. So there you have it, those are my supervisors, pretty cute aren't they?

Embracing Life

One of my goal is to get back to posting a Tuesday How To. I'll start again next week, but I thought I'd review one from last year. For the original tutorial click hereThis is just a quick shot to show you you will need a Versamark, black embossing powder, and watercolor crayons.
Here is the image before blending with the Versamarker. You really need to read the original post to get the whole idea here.
Here is the finished card. The middle flower is from the Pretties Kit and the flower is from the new Embrace Life set. Have a good day.
Paper: Purely Pomegranate, Black, Whisper White
Ink: Versamark, versamarker, watercolor crayons, white Craft ink
Accessories: Pomegranate ribbon

Happy New Year

I plan on working on some new stamping projects today, and hopefully I will get something posted, but I just wanted to say Happy New Year to all. Thank you for the visits and the sweet comments you leave. Blogging has been a blessing, "meeting" new people and being constantly inspired by strangers. I am grateful to all!!!
Good luck in 2008!
Kat