Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours! We had a wonderful time with my daughter Emily, her hubby Josh and their kids Charlotte and Evan. I overdid it on dinner -- whew, so many sides, so many pies! -- but we're now enjoying leftovers, yum!!
Today, I was supposed to go to a Christmas card workshop at my friend Anita's house, but really, I just need time in my own craft room to focus on cards I need to make. Of course, I got few done because the mess is distracting. But maybe tomorrow .... if buying a new washer and dryer doesn't interfere. There's always something, isn't there?? Here is the next card I've made to focus on "trending colors" as shown in HGTV Magazine's December 2015 issue:
The trending colors are: Hot Pink, Gold and Black. For this card, I used Close To My Heart's "Blessings of Peace" stamp set for the dove and sentiment. I stamped the dove on White Daisy CTMH cardstock in Versamark and sprinkled it with gold embossing powder. I then embossed it by warming the powder with my heat crafting gun. The hot pink paper is from my stash, and the black/white striped is from CTMH's new La-Vie En Rose paper line. The bling is also from CTMH, as is the gold adhesive stripe across the middle (that doesn't photograph well).
These trending colors are shown in the magazine like this:
The reasons for which I am eternally grateful, and thankful on a daily basis, are too many to count. While I try to always thank the person who holds the door open for me, who helps me with a retreat, or just makes my day better, I have not been as good about expressing thank in the way I do best: with a card.
I'm trying to better with that. So I've made a few of these cards to keep handy in my stash to send to those who just brighten my day in some way:
This card was mostly scrap-lifted from a design on Close To My Heart's Creative Insider, plans that help consultants come up with projects for their workshops. I made a few modifications to it -- really, not enough to call my own -- but let's talk about it.
Next, I lined up all of those itty-bitty lines of expressions for stamping. Here, I'll let you in on a secret discovery I recently made. You're going to hate me and love me at the same time for telling you about this tool:
I used a stamp positioning tool called a "MISTI", which stands for the Most Incredible Stamping Tool Invented. OK, not so humble, but maybe right. It's changed how I stamp and made my life so much easier!
This is what MISTI looks like: It is the size of your Galaxy Samsung Tablet, but it has a magnetic bottom, a layer of foam, positioning grids on the bottom and on the lid. To work a MISTI, you arrange your stamps (stamping side down, or exposed) along the lines of the grid so you can center the lines as well as keep them straight.
What I do is put my A2 card onto the MISTI and decide where I want my stamps to be on the card, generally. I put the lid down on top of the stamps, and the lid will left up the acrylic to be generally where you want them. Then you can rearrange them to be straight/centered, etc. You ink up the stamps right on the acrylic lid and fold (hinges) the lid down onto your paper.
Miss a bit of inking? You can re-ink and re-strike, with nearly perfect alignment most of the time. Have several cards to make at a time of the same design? Just insert a new A2 paper, reink and drop the lid. Easy-peasy. Here is a video that the makers of MISTI have on their website:
MISTI is not inexpensive: $50 base price, and you'll need add-ons like magnets, grid paper, and cleaner. You can buy it from the inventor/manufacturer, My Sweet Petunia, at the link provided. Trust me on this one: This is my favorite tool of 2015 so far!
Back to the card: I lined up the 3 sentiments on the MISTI and finished off the white card using Eggplant. Then I decided to stamp the word FRIEND using Versamark (glue) pad, and sprinkled the stamped word with Princess Gold embossing powder. I then heat set the embossed word, waving my warmed CTMH Craft Heater tool about 3/4" above the word until the embossing powder melted to a nice shine.
I used Bazzill Gold Foil paper (scrapbook.com) to line the sentiment (white) paper, then layered that atop a banner-trimmed piece of Eggplant paper. I topped the Eggplant piece with a strip of CTMH Sangria paperthat I love, and topped that with a piece of CTMH Gold Shimmer trim. The accents are Bling Assortment in Gold from CTMH as well.
Voila! Done! Such a sophisticated card, on trend and heartfelt.
First, let me apologize for my inactivity on my blog. It seems I have gotten wrapped up in the work of creating and the joys of sending -- along with babysitting and caring for family -- that I've neglected my dear friends here. Forgive me?
Just after my last post (in May, egads), hubby and I traveled to Florida to visit my parents.
It is so wonderful to see them aging in place, as well as can be at 85 and 87. This spring, Dad completed a 9-week course of daily radiation to treat aggressive Prostate Cancer, which thankfully was fully encapsulated within the prostate and hadn't metastasized at all. Mom has neck/back disc compression issues that have left her feeling a bit dizzy and imbalanced, so she has been taking physical therapy. Neither Mom nor Dad had been in their gorgeous pool in 2015, "life got in the way." I'm glad to say our visit was good, and John and I got my parents in the pool every day of our extended weekend.
Mom's birthday was not long after our visit, and I knew that I wanted to break out some new techniques to make her a card she'd love. (Who am I fooling? She loves anything we kids make for her, always has!) Here is Mom's card:
To make this card, I used the pretty stamp set from Altenew called Painted Butterfly. This is a multi-layer stamp set where you can use any/all layers to create lovely artistic butterflies. Look here:
First I stamped the outlines of the butterfly (highlighted here with light blue circles), stamping them in Versamark watermarking glue/ink and sprinkling them with Ranger fine black embossing powder, available from Close To My Heart. I stamped the images onto watercolor paper from Canson. I then heat-set the powder with a craft heater. This stabilizes the impression and makes it able to accept water or alcohol inks without smearing.
I then took the first layer stamp (highlighted here in pink), laid it on my acrylic block and literally painted the stamp with watercolor paints onto the stamp, and stamped the paint atop of the embossed outlines. Where needed, I filled in the color by pushing the paint with a water pen. When the image was dry, I cut the image into a card-sized rectangle, using a Lil' Inker Dual Stitched Rectangle die.
I created the inside of the card using the same method, and stamped both the front and inside of the card with a birthday sentiment from the "Card Chatter - Birthday" collection from Close To My Heart. I added a few sparkle gems from CTMH, mounted the images on a vertical A2 card I created from Gypsy-colored cardstock from CTMH, and voila, happy birthday, Mom!
