Snowy Evening

I happened to notice our porch light last night. It was so pretty with it's chilly top hat of snow and the icicles adding that special touch of winter wonderland.

We had between 12 and 15 inches of the white stuff over the last few days. It is hard to measure when the wind has blown it all around. There are some serioud drifts. The county maintainer was out and cleared the country roads and our driveway, but they are already blowing shut again. Ah well, tis better to be snowed in than snowed out.

Framed

The image inside the frame is stamped on a scrap of polished stone background paper. It was embossed with fineline black embossing powder. I have no idea who is the maker of the stamp.

The frame stamp is from PSX (Personal Stamp Exchange) which has not been in business for a number of years. It was stamped on black cardstock and embossed with fineline gold embossing powder. Pop dots were used to raise the frame over the picture.

The lovely border stamp is from another out of business company called Stampa Rosa. Again fineline gold embossing powder was used.

This basic design has so many possibilities. Any type of frame would work. What about paper that had been textured in Cuttlebug A2 embossing folder? Frame a picture of your kids and send the card to grandma? A picture of your dog or cat? A border of textured paper or layers of scrapbook papers? Oh my, I think I need to get to my studio and create!

Snowing at our houses

Above is a picture of my jeep this morning, there

is far more snow on it now.

My flower pot with a silly bird decoration.

It made me chuckle to see the snow piled up on top of the birdie.

Creative Impressions

Creative Impressions

Do you need some extemely creative embellishments for

your latest project? The place to go is Creative Impressions.

Thye have everything your little heart could ever desire.

(and more)

The leaves on the two fall cards are felt from Creative Impressions.
With great restraint, I only left their warehouse with the butterfly set,
the dog set, the western set, the leaf set and a snowflake set.
This is not including the brads. Oh the brads. I could have come home
with a trunk load with no problem whatsoever. All so very yummy.

The leaves were stamped with images from Rubberstamp Avenue.
They were stamped with Distressed Inks by Ranger.
After stamping I misted heavily to cause the inks to spread out.

Those pearls, those beautiful adhesive backed half pearls.
Those little goodies are from Creative Impressions too.
They really add that finishing touch to an elegant card.

Watercolor Flowers part 3

These are not exactly watercolor flowers. This was part of an experiment to see what I could do in black and grey. Of cours after you get the image stamped then you have to come up with some type of a card design. That is often far more difficult than the stamping part.



The grey background on the card on the left is a a stamp from B & J Art Stamps. The black flower image is from Hero Arts. The unusual thing about this design is that textured white background. It is paintable wallpaper. One roll will last you a long long long time. It can be used plain or you can try multiple ways of coloring it.

This grey background image is a stamp from Yvonne Albritten Designs. I can not find a website for this company, so I have no idea if they are still in business. The black flower image is another from Hero Arts. This time the textured background is silk wall paper. I have this particular wall paper in cream and white. It was found with some slightly frayed ends in the sale bin. What a bargain!

These are both simple designs. Feel free to copy and tweak to make them your own.

Happy stamping and God Bless

More watercolor flowers

More watercolor flowers. The stamps are by Hero Arts. They have a whole series of these stamps.

Another method of coloring on the stamps is watercolor crayons. Depending on your brand of crayons, you can mist the stamp and color directly on the rubber or color on the rubber without misting. You will have to mist again after coloring.

Felt tip markers can be used too. Color on the rubber and "huff" on it with your warm moist breath. After stamping you can "huff" again or mist.

I have even carefully inked my stamps with dye based ink pads, stamped, misted and stamped again. Ink with the lightest color first to prevent the dark color (in this case the green) from bleeding onto you light ink pad.

STAMPER HINT - you stamped in a dark ink, forgot to clean or did not clean your stamp well. When you use the stamp again on a light ink pad you can see that dark image on the ink pad. GASP!!! the pad is ruined!!! or is it?? Nope it's not ruined. With a little bit of effort you can clean your light ink pad. Using a paper towel, repeatedly dab the dark ink on the pad. Use clean parts of the paper towel with each dab and eventually you will have all that dark ink lifted from your pad. You may have to reink, but that is far less expensive than buying a new ink pad.

Watercolor flowers

Using a stamp to create a soft water color appearance is far easier than it appears. There are several ways to achieve this "look". I will try to explain all the methods that I have used and in the next few days show you the results.

First you need a stamp. I love the Hero Arts line of florals. These are rather bold stamps and work well for this technique.

1. Mist your stamp lightly.

2. Color directly on the stamp with water soluble

oil pastels. I found the Portfolio Series at

Staples to be inexpensive and they work well.

3. Mist the stamp again.

4. Stamp on paper of choice. Now if the image is too dark mist and stamp again, without

recoloring.

5. You can mist and stamp to create a shadow image as well.

Play with the technique on scrap paper until you find the amount of color applied and the water misting that works best for you.

I used two colors on the flower and one green on the stem.

The words are computer generated, punched out and edged with a gold leaf Krylon pen.

The flower image was cut into an oval using a Coluzzle template and it to was edged with the Krylon pen.

Scotties Everywhere!

Guess who owns a Scottish Terrier? Yup, we do. MacDuff is such a sweet little rascal. These stamps from Viva Las Vegastamps looks just like him and the phrase is perfect for a dog lover.

We have here the same paper and stamps with three different layouts.

This Old House

Old farmsteads are beautiful, interesting and great material for dramatic photos.

This is card has scrapbook paper attached to the card base. The edges were sponged with dark brown ink. The phrase was stamped with VersaMark and embossed with fineline black embossing powder.

The edges of the photo were also sponged with dark brown ink.

This is an easy basic card. I usually print up the photos in wallet size after cropping them in Paint Shop Pro.

Iris Fold Heart

Iris folding is relatively easy and the results can be stunning. This design was made using washi paper that was folded and the edges gilded with a Krylon gold leafing pen.

The gold edging on the black frame and the washi strip is gold wrapping paper cut with a deckle decorative scissors. Now is the time to buy your gold gift wrap to use in paper crafting. All the Christmas gift wraps are hitting the stores. (well, I will admit some stores have had this Christmas product on the shelves since July, who do they even wear it out putting it away and then dragging back out again six months later, just leave it out year round?) This website has some patterns and instructions for iris folding, click here. Here are some good instructions at this site as well. There are several videos also available here and here.

Just for You

A very easy fast card. Yes, really it is. The only part that is stamped is the phrase. Scrapbook paper is glued over the card front. Now I will admit that I am strongly considering trying to use some of my flourish stamps to copy the flourishes on this paper. I do like the look.

The phrase is stamped on coordinating scrapbook paper and embossed with fineline white embossing powder. Note the sponging on the card base and the phrase banner. It adds depth and softens the entire design.

Cowboy On Leather

Great cowboy image from Rubber Stamp Avenue ! If you are going to buy from this company I highly recommend the sheets of rubber. Each sheet has it's theme so all the stamps coordinate. Also get on the email list as she has some fantastic sales. You will never regret buying from Rubber Stamp Avenue. Great product at a resonable price and a lot of variety.

This card was made almost exactly the same way that the Wolfie card from a the post a few days ago was made.

You will note that I have a real thing for the western stamps. Not Indian, but cowboy/cowgirl type western.

Handmade Paper

Several years ago I attended a retailers conference. Arnold Grummer was there and I took a class from him on making paper. I was hooked and spent several summers making paper. Anything that grew in my yard became part of my paper. I still have a very nice stash of handmade papers that make very lovely cards. This card is simply folded in half with a piece of jute tied in the fold.

Handmade paper is a lot of work, but very much worth the effort. I may have to make some more paper this summer.

Wolfie

The wolf face image is from a company called Bear Rubber. I have not been able to find them on the web. There is one Bear Rubber Company on Etsy that make custom stamps and may have these images.

I stamped and embossed the image on cream leather. A Coluzzle template was used to cut the leather in a circle. The Coluzzle swivel knife will not cut completely through the leather, but makes enough of an incision that you can easily and cleanly cut with a sharp scissors.

The eyes have been colored yellow with a felt tip marker. The edges of the leather have been sponged with sepia ink (Ranger Archival, one of my favorites) The leather circle was then attached to corrugated cardboard. The cardboard was inked with the same sepia ink as well.

The decoration on the right side of the card was done with various punches, hand punches and decorative scissors. The turquoise half balls are plastic and from "I have no idea where I got them." You know......the stuff that has been waiting in your craft area for years.......the stuff that you bought because "someday" you just might need it. That is where those little half balls came from. If you can't find any, try clear embossing powder on a punched out circle of turquoise paper, or a glitzy turquoise embossing powder. (you know......punt, LOL)

More Photo Cards

Both of these photos were taken this summer in southern Cheyenne County in the Nebraska Panhandle. So much of our homesteader heritage is on the backroads of western Nebraska. These were tough intelligent men and women who believed in the American dream. If you work hard you will succeed. Of course they didn't have the government and it's multiple agencies stomping them down either. Not to mention all the wacko activist groups that now impede every capitalist venture as well.

I have a little word of warning to you all. I know that many of you think I am a total nut. But here

it is: The government (aka Obama and the corrupt that put him in office) now own our banks. The farmer and rancher for the most part have to borrow from those banks to operate every year. Those notes can be called in at any time and if that operator can not repay that note the bank will seize the collateral, which is ALWAYS the land. When the government (Obama and cronies) control the land they will then control the food source. If you desire to totally control all aspects of a nation, you control its food source and the distribution of that food. They have it. The banks and the unions.

I hope a lot of you are preparing your garden plots because otherwise you are going to starve. Maybe not today or next year, but it will happen. Look at how fast and how far we have degenerated already under blundering ill-mannered corrupt Chicago style White House. If the current trend continues and the American silent majority remains cowed and silent, this is our future. (yes, Homeland Security already has my picture, I was at a TEA party and will continue my protest and attempts to educate until they shut me down)

OK, rant over.

Sharing the journey

Such a simple card, yet so elegant.

Scrapbook paper is glue to the front of the card base. The edges are sponged with dark brown ink to add depth and interest. The maroon strip has a deocrative accent cut with the Create A Cut paper cutter. If you don't have that product you can draw two parallel on the back of the paper and use those as cutting guide lines.

The phrase is by Viva Las Vegastamps. It was stamped with VersaMark and embossed with fineline black powder then layered on the same maroon paper as the decorative accent strip.

The little pearly dots are Liquid Pearls by Ranger. This particular color was white opal.

Tri Fold Shutter Cards 2

The papers for these cards came from a DCWV stack. I love stacks for this type of card as the paper coordinates.

The tutorial for this card is on Split Coast Stampers, as great resource for stampers. I was going to tell you to do a search, lucky for all of you that I went into Split Coast and tried their search. It does not work. So here is the link to the Tri-Fold Shutter Card. Here is how I found it, I opened up the home page for Split Coast Stampers and left clicked on "Resources" at the very top and to the right side. This brought up a list of all their tutorials in alphabetical order. They even have a picture of the project to help you find the correct one.

The directions call for you to cut a piece of card stock 5.5 x 11 inches. With scrapbook paper that leaves you with a 1 x 12 inch strip. I drew a line down the center of the BACK of the strip and cut with the ripple decorative scissors. Those strips are the border trim on either side of the cards. From two pieces of 12 x 12 scrapbook paper I got 4 cards and the trim. Nothing was wasted.

Using laser printer acetate:

1. talc the acetate

2. stamp the Butterfly and Flourish (Heartfelt Creations, HC217D) and emboss with fineline

black embossing powder

3. Carefully cut out the image that you have just stamped and embossed on the acetate

4. Now stamp on acetate and emboss the single plain butterfly from the set, using EK Success's

Paper Shaper large butterfly, punch out this butterfly. Clever Heartfelt designer, Emma Lou

Beechy has sized the butterfly to the size of the punch.

5. I carefully applied glue from a glue pad and glittered the back of the butterfly. You could use

markers, or punch another butterfly from some glitzy paper and attach to the back, there are

are all kinds of options, use your imagination!

6. As this is a slick surface, glue does not hold very well. My solution is to rough up the butterfly

and flourish image on the butterfly portion. Both on the front and the back where I will be

attaching this gives it more "tooth" and the glue will hold much better. You can rough these

areas as they will not show on the finished card.

7. Attach punched out butterfly to butterfly and flourish image. After the glue has dried attach

it all to the card.

A few notes here: flowers and smaller butterflies are for the most part punched from glitter papers.

Why use laser printer acetate? The Laser Printer Acetate or transparencies is designed for a laser printer which uses heat to apply the ink. So you can use you heat gun to emboss the embossing powders with out warping the acetate.

What about inkjet printer acetate? These transparencies work fantastic for regular stamping. There is a rough and a smooth side to the acetate. Stamp on the rough side with most inks. As always, try the ink out first by stamping a small image in one corner to see how the ink and the transparency interact. Some inks will run or not dry. You can NOT apply heat to these acetate transparencies as you can the laser transparencies.

Grizzly Bears

This bear stamp by Art Impressions really caught my eye when I was browsing at Ben Franklin 2 in Lincoln NE. The pine boughs are by PSX (Personal Stamp Exchange, a company that is no longer in business).

With the card on the the left, I stamped the pine bough with Distressed Inks by Ranger. (I used a 4.25 x 5.5 piece of white cards stock which was attached to the card base after the design was completed) The next step was to sponge various shades of green Distressed Inks around the outside, making it darker towards the edge. The final sponging was just a touch of black ink on the very edge. Note that the entire surface is colored with sponged inks.

The grizzly was stamped with VersaMark and embossed with fineline black embossing powder. I then tore out the image and sponged with several shades of brown Distressed Ink finishing up with the very edge sponged with black ink. This gives a burned vintage appearance.

Now for the fun part. I placed the torn grizzly image over the pine boughs to determine exactly where I wanted to make my cuts. A straight edge blade was used to carve out the pine boughs and the grizzly image was then inserted under the cuts. The pine boughs are now cradling the grizzly image. I did put a dab of glue under the grizzly in several places, so it wouldn't fall off the card. The final step was to glue the entire piece to a card base.

Same bear, pine bough, inks, and embossing powder, just a little different order to the steps. The bear was stamped and embossed first. Then the two shades of green pine boughs and the final step was the sponging of brown inks around the outer edge.