Sara's Stamping Sanctuary: Card for today and Work Secret Santa Present Reveal

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Card for today and Work Secret Santa Present Reveal

I have my card for today - Color Challenge 143: Summer Sun, Old Olive, Certainly Celery. When I first saw this color combo, I was hesistant but willing to try. I saw a card that was bright yellow with greens that didn't really go together. Since I don't think I've skipped a Color Challenge in the 7 months I've been doing challenges on SCS - happy anniversary to me - I'll give it a go.

My goal: not make the Summer Sun glaring bright while keeping the olive and celery from fighting - this last part sounds like a refrigerator war.

Certainly Celery base. Gratitude is stamped in Old Olive - from Papertrey's Spiral Bouquet set.
Layer of Summer Sun cs and Certainly Celery Prints dp. Certainly Celery grosgrain is tied around it.
Image is from Petal Prints. Solid stamped first: Summer Sun which was inked and stamped off before adding the Certainly Celery to the stamp. Outline was inked in full strength Summer Sun and Old Olive.
Ticket corner punch was used on the corners and Bella Baubles in Pickle (here comes the food again) were glued in indents.
Interesting tidbit: This card started life intending to be vertical instead of horizontal. Everything was laid out (untaped) and I stamped the Gratitude. I didn't like the thought of it going up the card, so I turned the card and rearranged the layers.

This card is going to my demo - who let me borrow her Petal Prints. She also put up with me for 3 hours while I was doing a stamp camp of 1. I felt like I was taking FOREVAH to work on it. She's just wonderful and I'm glad she's my demo.

The project I'm going to reveal is part of my Work Gift exchange present. Since I've been really into making presents (and I had a cap of $20), I wanted to stamp on a candle as part of the gift. After I got the brand new candle home, I started looking through my sets and realized that there wasn't a set I NEEDED to use on this project. If I'm not inspired...

Thankfully, every time I walk down the embellishment aisle at Michaels, inspiration sits at ankle level - they have a candle all dressed up with brads and swirly clips. I want to do that! I'd run across a tutorial on a blog - I think it belonged to texasjodylynn, but I can't totally remember - on how to glitter large brads. Well, brads are expensive, and they have those prongy thingies that would be a pain to get into the candle... THUMBTACKS are like brads - cheaper (I got 80 for 80 cents at Walmart) and they only have the pokey part.

The great experiment starts. Tongs for holding thumbtack, Check; heat tool heating it for 15 seconds, check; open jar of Heat and Stick powder to dip thumbtack in when hot, check. If the thumbtack's hot enough, the powder will liquefy on contact. Then proceed to dip into glitter to coat. IT WORKED!!!

I made 12 of them and stuck them into the candle. Easy as that.