Fun with Embossing Powder Day

Well, that's what it turned out to be today.

A coworker and I are going to a scrapbooking event next Saturday and she asked me to decorate some chipboard letters for the front of her engagement album. No prob, she gave me the letters yesterday and asked if they could be purple, teal and silver. The purple and teal letters were inked with Brilliance Moonlight White before being sponged with Taken with Teal and Elegant Eggplant inks. They were then embossed with a combination of UTEE and glitter. The silver letters were done with 2 layers of embossing powder.

Ink: Versamark, Taken with Teal, Elegant Eggplant, Brilliance Moonlight White. Accessories: Raw Goods chipboard, embossing powders.

I miss having time/energy to just go down to my Dungeon and just play, so while I was there, I felt the need to experiment. A teacher at the school left a box of manilla shipping tags out for anyone to take if they wanted. Hmm... 10 tags for $2 at Rubbernecker or however many I want for free???

My first tag card is using PTI's With Sympathy. The sentiment and swirly vine were inked in Versamark ink and embossed clear. I then sponged PTI Lemon Tart, Summer Sunrise, and Dark Chocolate over the tag to make the embossing stand out. The hole in the tag is filled in with an antique copper snap and I added some smaller snaps down the edge to coordinate.

Stamps: PTI - With Sympathy. Paper: PTI - Lemon Tart, Summer Sunrise, Dark Chocolate, manilla tag. Ink: Versamark, Lemon Tart, Summer Sunrise, Dark Chocolate. Accessories: clear ep, snaps, dimensionals, cropadile.

Now for my other card. Same color scheme (I like the way the yellows cover the tag), but I went a little wacky.

I stamped a rose stamp I got from Rubbernecker in Versamark, embossed it in clear, and sponged the tag with PTI Lemon Tart, Summer Sunrise and Dark Chocolate inks. I decided I didn't like the way it was looking, so I grabbed my SU markers and colored in the leaves and stem with Old Olive and the petals of the rose with More Mustard.

I STILL didn't like it - too much color, too defined, I don't know, I just didn't like it. So I grabbed my spray bottle of water and spritzed the tag down. After 2 sprays, I was finally happy and I took my embossing tool to it to dry it.

I still can't use that hand-held sewing machine to sew a straight line - and to think I wanted a sewing machine for Christmas. The button is threaded with a very thin piece of Lemon Tart cardstock.

Stamps: Rubbernecker - rose. Paper: manilla tag, PTI Dark Chocolate, Lemon Tart, Summer Sunrise. Ink: Versamark, Lemon Tart, Dark Chocolate, Summer Sunrise, SU - Old Olive & More Mustard. Accessories: hand-held sewing machine, dimensionals, spray bottle, clear ep, button.

I think it's time to organize the Dungeon. I have too much stuff and it's all over the place. Time for an overhaul. This definitely needs to be photographed as well - befores, middle of the mess, and afters.

Wishing everyone a warm weekend (because I'm not having one),

A mid-week challenge

And a quickie post because I have to be to work in an hour and I have a headache.

Today's Thursday and the challenge today was to use stripes - striped paper, striped ribbon, striped stamps, create your own stripes, etc. Which is right up my alley because I have a LOT of designer paper in all sorts of patterns: stripes included.

I also have stamps that I haven't used before. Which isn't as big of a shock as it would have been last year - I've been so tired. So I felt required to show some love. Flowahbella is stamped in Dark Chocolate Palette ink and colored in with Copics.

Stamps: Stamping Bella - Flowahbella. Paper: More Mustard, Really Rust, Chocolate Chip, white, My Mind's Eye dp. Ink: Dark Chocolate Palette. Accesories: adhesive pearls, dimensionals, Copics.

Grandma's doing better - she's out of the hospital and in rehab at a nursing home. Hopefully she'll be able to get enough strength to go home to Grandpa soon.

Wishing everyone a good rest of the week,

Work Takes Over

Again.

Seriously, 'tis the season for daycare teachers to get sick (or really busy.) So while my hours have been cut, I'm one of the first people they call to pick up hours.

Speaking of work, I have a work-related project to share. Daycare has it's own little portable on the grounds of an elementary school and up until this school year, all the kids have been in it. This school year, the oldest kids (3-6 graders: my group) were moved over to a room in the elementary school. Everyone over at the school has been nothing but nice to us, so I thought I'd make a little treat to show my appreciation.

Beate had a tutorial a while ago about how to make boxes to hold the Ghiradelli squares. These boxes are adorable - and easy to make.

Stamps: PTI - Heart Prints. Paper: dp, Select White, PTI kraft. Ink: Raspberry Fizz. Accessories: tacky tape, corner punch, dimensionals, sponge.

I like to cook. I don't seem to do it very often, but I like to cook. I just got a recipe for white chicken chili and it calls for ground cumin - I have whole cumin seeds in the house. Well, I could fork out the $5 for a bottle of ground cumin (which is silly because I have the whole seeds) or I could get something to grind them up. So I picked up an inexpensive coffee grinder when I was at the store yesterday.

Problem? My new coffee grinder is identical to the one in the house used for coffee. I don't think the coffee drinkers will appreciate cumin-flavored coffee - and I really don't want coffee-flavored spices. I added some SU rub-ons to the body of my coffee grinder to make it stand out.

Accessories: SU rub-ons.

Papertrey Ink's 2nd anniversary is coming up this weekend - and they're having this huge bash to celebrate. Nichole's blog has been filled with contests to win some of the new products they're carrying. Friday's challenge was to create a card using the colors Ocean Tides, Summer Sunrise, Pure Poppy and Ripe Avocado.

I created a gatefold card out of Ocean Tides cardstock and stamped butterflies on it (not that you can really tell, they seem to have disappeared.) The white panel was cut with a Classic Rectangle Nestability die and punched with SU's spiral punch. All the stamps come from PTI's With Sympathy set.

Stamps: PTI - With Sympathy. Paper: Ocean Tides, Pure Poppy, Summer Sunrise, Select White. Ink: Ocean Tides, Ripe Avocado, Pure Poppy, Summer Sunrise. Accessories: ribbon, tacky tape, rhinestones, glue pen, spiral punch, rectangle nestabilities.

I've had a hard time concentrating on most stuff over the weekend. I found out on Friday that my grandmother had another stroke and was taken to the hospital. She's already had 2 relatively minor ones (at least), so everyone in the family's pretty worried. Mom flew out there and it seems like Grandma's going to be okay.

Wishing everyone a good week,

*Gasp* A mid-week post

It's weird - I have time to stamp in the mornings again. And I also have time to post my stuff. So - hopefully - this will be an incentive for me to post more than Sunday nights.

If only this extra time in the mornings didn't come with the loss of work hours. But I'm okay.

It's a Color Challenge day and today's colors are Pacific Point, Baja Breeze, and Garden Green. Okay... this is going to be interesting because I don't own PP and BB inks. I have a small amount paper, but no inks. Then I remembered that I'd experimented with these colors earlier - and found the combos.

Stamps: PTI - Heart Prints. Paper: Pacific Point, Baja Breeze, Garden Green, Select White. Ink: Garden Green, Brilliant Blue & Tempting Turquoise (Pacific Point), Bashful Blue & Sage Shadow (Baja Breeze). Accessories: ticket corner punch, brads, dimensionals, stickles.

The other 2 cards I made on Sunday when I was playing with my new stash of PTI.

Stamps: PTI - Made of Snow, Heart Prints. Paper: Raspberry Fizz, Aqua Mist, Select White. Ink: Aqua Mist, Raspberry Fizz, Dark Chocolate, Palette Noir. Accessories: rhinestones, dimensionals, ribbon.


Stamps: PTI - Snowfall Additions, Made of Snow. Paper: Raspberry Fizz, Select White. Ink: Brilliance Moonlight White, Aqua Mist. Accessories: brad, ribbon.

That's all for today.

Hoping you're warm wherever you are,

New Cards

It's been awhile since I've posted pictures of cards I made, so I figure I'm due. For some reason, I'm in a very simple card kick at the moment: white base, an image and a small accent and sentiment. It's weird for me.

I made this card last weekend, but never took a picture of it at the time - I'm not quite sure why. It's super simple.
Stamps: SU - Garden Whimsy. Paper: PTI Select White, My Mind's Eye dp. Ink: Ocean Tides. Accessories: corner rounder punch, Basic Black marker, dimensionals.

Angel sent me some Riley images what seems like forever ago and I never used them. I pulled them out and colored them in with my Copic markers, then made cards out of them.

Stamps (image really): Hanna - Riley. Paper: PTI Select, Basic Black. Ink: Pumpkin Pie. Accessories: Copic Markers, brads, ticket corner punch, dimensionals, ribbon.

And now, for something completely different. A man with a tape recorder... Oops. Channeling Monty Python for a second.

But seriously, to take a step in the completely opposite direction, I made a card for the Featured Stamper Challenge on SCS. Here is Lori's Card

I changed: Colors, left the punched stuff off, added more brads, have shimmer primas instead of felt flowers.

Stamps: SU - Fabulous Flowers, PTI - Mixed Messages. Paper: Ripe Avocado, Spring Moss, Select White. Ink: Ripe Avocado, Spring Moss. Accessories: dimensionals, mat pack, brads, glimmer mist, primas.

Hoping for a good week (for me and everyone else),

Spending Moratorium

It turns out that the budget at work is lousy, so hours are being cut. Mine included.

I was planning on doing another buying moratorium this year like I did last year around Lent.

It's going to start really soon. And it stinks because I just got the new Stampin' Up! catalog today from my demo and there are stamps that I want from other companies too.

I'll figure something out.

Copics on Parade

I've been having fun playing around with my new Copic markers. On Saturday, I stamped a page of Stamping Bella images and sat in front of the tv and colored. Some of the images look better than others, but that's part of learning.

I made cards with my newly colored images. Each image is colored differently.

Stamps: Stamping Bella - Eloise Greengrass, MFT - Essential Sentiments. Paper: PTI Select White, Basic Black. Ink: Palette Noir. Accessories: Nestabilities, Copic Markers.

Today's challenge was to play with Tacky Tape and glitter. A sticky, messy business, but I actually came out of it glitter-free (well, as far as I can see.) I layed out my tape (relatively straight thanks to some graph paper I had on my table) and added 2 colors of Martha Stewart glitter. I'm a bit frustrated that I didn't get full coverage - there are bits of Tacky Tape still able to get stuck to other bits of paper, the table, etc.

My image is from Cherish by Clear Art Stamps. It was stamped twice - I colored just the rose on one of the images, cut it out and popped it up with a dimensional. It's all colored with my Copic markers. My black layer was hand-trimmed.

I rushed through this card - it needs something else: a ribbon for the bottom, a sentiment down there, another heart. I just don't know.

Stamps: Clear Art Stamps - Cherish. Paper: Regal Rose, Rose Red, Basic Black, PTI Select White. Ink: Palette Noir. Accessories: Tacky Tape, Martha Stewart Glitter, dimensionals, Copic Markers.

Hoping that the roads aren't total skating rinks,