Thursday, September 3, 2020

Come join me as I play "Craft Roulette"

Hello, CardMonkey friends!  I hope your summer was healthy and restful. Are you ready to jump into cardmaking season?  Yes, it's hard to believe that we'll be mailing out those Christmas cards in about 3 months.  Meanwhile, I have some fun for you...

What is your favorite TV game show?  

For me, it's Wheel of Fortune, one of television's longest running game shows that combines the old paper game of "Hangman" with the roulette wheel's game of chance. Spin to find your fortune, and guess a letter to complete the mystery sentence.  

Next question:  What is your favorite thing to do in your free time?

For me, no doubt, it's crafting, and specifically cardmaking. I love the feel of paper, the quick satisfaction of completing a card in one sitting, and the joy it gives not only to me in creating the art, but also that it delivers to the card's recipient when it makes it into the mail. (I'm bad at that!) 

So imagine if you could combine the two loves -- game show and crafting. Well, imagine no more!  Mary Gunn, a long-time crafter and paper genius, has created an online fun game show called "Craft Roulette."  It runs weekly on Fridays at 7:30 p.m. Eastern/6:30 Central, and you can find it at www.craftroulette.live. 


Click the picture above to be taken to a brief FUNN intro about Craft Roulette. 

Why my buzz about "Craft Roulette"?  If you'll tune into the show on Friday, September 4 (7:30 p.m. Eastern time), you'll see that I have been selected to be a Guest Crafter on that day's show.  What this means is that I'll be put to the instant craft test, making a project, with the selected colors, theme and random bit, within the show's hour.  My work will be shown along with that of the expert Mary Gunn -- founder and head professor at Funn University!  

I've been playing along on Craft Roulette since Episode #23, when the spins of the wheel took me to purse, car or truck, coral color, and masking technique.  Here is my project -- a Taco Purse Truck!





And on Episode #24, the wheel selected for us a basket, that had winter colors, that should include a wreath, and some tearing. 
I made two projects for this one, a card, as well as a torn paper basket.  Here they are:  


               
     
Finally, during Episode #25 when CTMH Consultant Katy Taylor was the Guest Crafter, the wheel picked a building or house as its element, fall colors, a collage of some sort, and rock-and-roll stamping technique.  I made a pop-up box card, as well as a standard A2 card:  


                         



You'll see both of the Episode #25 cards featured on Friday's episode, along with all of the other fabulous projects other players have entered. We previewed them on Monday on Mary's blog, and I will say, they are just terrific.  Come get inspired.

Tune in on Friday, September 4 at 7:30 p.m. Eastern (6:30 p.m. Central), and every Friday, at www.craftroulette.live, and play along.  Hope to see you there!!  And thanks, Mary Gunn, for the FUNN invitation to join you live.



Tuesday, April 21, 2020

One Sheet Wonder - A Tutorial

My darling "frontline," Emily
Oh my friends, I've been meaning to keep up with this blog, but time always slips away from me. Let me try again. 

This time, I am doing so because I have a wonderful group of women who have frequently come to my card classes that I hold at Creative Inkling (222 N. York Road, Hatboro, PA 19040). Typically, my classes are held on the third Wednesday of every month, from 6 to 8 p.m.  Just as I announced a second class --  this one to be held on a weekday afternoon -- the world suddenly shut down due to Coronavirus/COVID-19. 

Social distancing became the norm, and we all started
wearing masks. And while the shop and retreat at Creative Inkling was shut down by mandate, Edie and Kelsey Malin (part of the wonderful full-time crew at CI), got special permission to use the studio space to make/donate face masks for care providers throughout the country. 

My card classes have kept up ...and even increased, as so many of us have been looking for a creative outlet and safe social connectivity.  We now do our classes on ZOOM, a live internet platform. And we typically hold these classes on Wednesday evenings, from 6 to 8 p.m.  As I catch up, I'll be showing off some of the cards that were designed for these classes.  

Okay, that intro behind us, our next class is tomorrow night (Wednesday, April 22) at 6 p.m., and it's FREE!!  That's because you're going to be doing most of the work -- and the supplies will come from your stash!  We're learning "One Page Wonders", aka, "One Sheet Wonder."  

And you're invited to follow along!  

A "One Page Wonder" is where a papercrafter has created a template that uses just one sheet of 12" x 12" designer paper (that's one-sided or double-sided) that allows a crafter to cut and create pieces of that paper to serve as components in making as many standard-sized (A2) cards as possible.  The cards come out "naked" (unadorned, or non-embellished), and ready for the crafter to make the cards her own. So much depends on the paper that is chosen for this project. But let's get started; feel free to leave comments or questions and I'll be happy to address them.

Here are my "naked cards" for the April 22 class:


And here they are, all "dressed":


Here is my template for this class:

(Feel free to copy/paste, open/print, and have fun with my free template!)

Instructions: Start by cutting the 4" wide column on the left. Mark on the back of each piece which card (#1 - #11) and which piece (A-D) this piece represents. You can mark in pencil or on a Post-It Note, just in case you decide to flip over the paper and use the reverse side of it instead of the front. The adventure is YOURS!

Next, from the balance of the paper -- across the top -- cut the 4" horizontal strip, and then the pieces in that strip. Again, mark your pieces. 

The next major cut is down the right hand column, where the strip is 5.25". That piece has 5 sub-pieces; cut and mark those next.

Finally, you're left with a strip that's 2-3/4" wide. Cut that one down into its four pieces, and mark them. You should have very little scrap. Don't throw it away -- you never know how you might use it to embellish a card.

Matting: It's your choice:  Whether or not you mat your paper pieces is entirely up to you, and your scrap bin. You can mat each card in the same color (as I did) or you can switch it up to accent or match a color in your selected designer paper. OR you can use the paper pieces as they're cut, with no matting. It's entirely up to you!

Let's get down to the nitty-gritty:

Card 1 (pieces A, B, C):
I matted and arranged my pieces all across the top of the card, and I used the card as a side-opening vertical A2 card, with a sentiment on the bottom right. 

If you'd rather, you can make it a horizontal card, with the pieces on the left-hand side and sentiment on the right. 


Card 2 (pieces A and B):
I matted each of the two 1.75" pieces and placed one on each of the top and bottom. I created the card as a side-opening vertical card, with the sentiment in the center. The sentiment is diecut. 

You can just as easily make this a horizontal card, with the greeting also in the center of the card.  
I scribbled a black line, just because I wanted to. 

Card 3 (four pieces, A-D):
This card uses the most designer paper, with four pieces, and the pieces are lifted over each other like glass shutters, just because. No other reason!  Go ahead, experiment with your pieces, too, and let me see what you do! 

The white sentiment stands out nicely on the medium to dark paper. 

Card 4 (1 piece, A):
Here's the first horizontal card in this series. The piece is just one 1.5" strip across the top, with a large sentiment (die-cut) across the bottom. This card uses almost the least amount of designer paper. Can you guess the one that uses less?

Card 5 (2 pieces, A and B):
If you guessed this card as using the least amount of paper, you would have guessed correctly. Each piece is only 1/2" wide, but look how effective those slivers can be. Initially, I planned on making this a vertical card, but I liked this big sentiment with it.

Card 6 (one big piece, A):

So if you can decorate the edges, you can do the opposite, right?  Here, this card fills the center "hole" with paper as an accent piece to a Cricut-cut shadowed label. The sentiment was stamped using a Stampin' Up! greeting, and embellished with hand-drawn squiggles and cuts from a scrap of paper on the top.

Card 7 (one slanted piece, A):

With this card, I covered most of the bottom with a slant-cut large piece of designer paper, leaving plenty of room up top for the large Cricut-cut poppy and a Happy Retirement die cut. (In looking at it more, perhaps that poppy could be slightly smaller, what do you think?!)  


Card 8 (slanted the other way, one piece, A):
So again, let's do the opposite of what we've done previously. With this card, I made it a top-fold so the card base was cut lengthwise. That's supposed to look like a large ladybug because, well, I had the sentiment die, and I have no clue what occasion I'd send this card to cover.  "Fancy That"???  Who even says that any more?  It came in the sentiment pack. Can someone tell me -- maybe a thinking of you?

Card 9: (Two pieces, different sizes, A and B):

This balance of cuts is actually one that I would typically prefer, even with a slightly deeper bottom piece if the sentiment was smaller. This one I also used as a top-opening card, because it stands well with the wider base. 

I'm really loving this paper, aren't you?  It's by Stampin' Up!  

Card 10: (one large piece, A):
Again, here the paper is the focal point on this card with a large (4"x 4") piece of designer paper. Use this as a focal point for a larger sentiment on a label. This one was cut on a Cricut, but label dies are very popular. Dress it up with a few snips of your mat cardstock, a flower, a leaf and a gem.

Card 11: (one large piece, A):
Once again, this is a card that I initially intended to be a vertical card with a small sentiment on the lower right, but I fell in love with how this thin Thank You die looked on a horizontal card. I just changed it up, added some more of those squiggly lines, and tah-dah, I'm done! 

I hope you enjoyed this lesson in using a "One Page Wonder". Break it out whenever you need a quick dozen or so cards for your stash. 

Hey, are you interested in our upcoming card classes?  Drop me a line at cardmonkey@comcast.net, and let me know. For the time being, they are 100% online so they're available worldwide!  They're free to watch, but if you want a kit with all you'll need to make the four cards in each class, it's $25 including shipping in the U.S.

I do have a favor to ask:  If you have some prayers to drop on a frontline hero, please say a few for my daughter, Emily, who's pictured at the top of this post. She works not only as an Nurse Practitioner in a specialty surgical practice during the day, but she also works as an RN in the evenings in the ER of a local hospital -- the job she held before putting herself through night school ($$$) to earn her MSN/NP.  She is exposed to COVID every day, and then goes home to her babies, my two grandchildren. She does all she can to protect them from any exposure to her germs -- stripping outside, putting her scrubs directly into a "sanitize" cycle, and a hot shower. But they need her ... as do I.  Please pray for her safety, and that of her co-workers and fellow heroes.  Thank you.