Masculine Birthday Card

This is a masculine card I prepared for our Create-A-Bunch club. I found the paper at Pat Catan's in Ohio when I visited in April and thought it would be perfect with large eyelets. This is also the card that uses the oval from the George and Basic Shapes Cricut cartridge amended with the Gyspy that I mentioned in my post on Saturday so that it would fit into the Spellbinders Fancy Tags die.



The ribbon is from Michael's, the eyelets are Antique Brass that I got through The Angel Company and the sentiment is from The Angel Company's Thinking of You stamp set.

In case you were wondering, this is what the unaltered oval from George and Basic Shapes looked like.

Best Dad

This is a card I made for the Taylored Expressions sketch challenge this week.



My card uses The Angel Company's Just Like Dad paper collection, and Taylored Expression's Boys Will Be Boys stamp set.

Finally got my Gypsy to work!

I'm so excited! I got a Gypsy for Christmas (to go with my Cricut), and only this week got it to work. Partly because I didn't have any time to devote to it, but mostly because every time I started, I got frustrated because the manual writers knew too well how the product worked by the time they wrote the manual, and are forgetting that most of us that have purchased the product have no idea how to make it work. I had lots of trouble with vague wording like "Cricut device" as used in "plug the Cricut device into the computer". My assumption was that Cricut device is the Cricut cutter (since I knew that had to be updated), but they meant Gypsy. When I wrote technical support to ask, and to say that no combination of cords seemed to work to plug the Cricut cutter into the computer, I got these wonderful trouble shooting tips: "plug the go into the wall, and then plug the g into the computer" What????? I can only assume that they didn't feel like writing out the word Gypsy, so they used "g", except that the second word in the sentence was supposed to mean "g" for Gyspy, not go.

When I finally figured out that the Gypsy was what was supposed to be plugged into the computer the direction was "when on the welcome screen, plug the Gypsy to the computer". Except that apparently when you have a new Gypsy, you have two welcome screens. The first is where you calibrate the machine with the stylus and then accept the terms and conditions. Then there's a second welcome screen that you get every time you turn the Gypsy on after that. So since I hadn't done anything with the machine except turn it on and plug it into the computer, without calibrating the stylus or getting the next screen, my computer kept saying it "couldn't find the device". After I accidentally bumped the Gypsy and went through he calibration and acceptance, the computer was able to find the device just fine from the second welcome screen. Ugh!

But now it works, and I have spent a little time playing with it. I created pages of stars for some cards we were going to make in the CBL class, without wasting a bunch of paper (outside of the fact that I got more stars than I needed, so you'll probably see lots of cards with stars in the next bunch of posts. Good thing it's getting near to Fourth of July.)

My favorite thing though was changing the shape of the oval that came with the George and Basic Shapes cartridge. I got the Spellbinders Fancy Tags die cut set, and found that I didn't have an oval that would go inside the one tag. I was able to change the shape of the oval to match the tag (.85 inches wide by 1.75 high). Very cool! I will have to play with it more, but now that I got it set up, I love it!

We all Punch? for Ice Cream!

Last month, I went to Rita Kegg's awesome Angelic Impressions gathering. Rita created all kinds of projects for us to do, from simple and quick cards, to things that took a little more time, but were still easy enough. We spent two creative days at beautiful Punderson Manor in Ohio, and this was the first time I've ever attended any gathering where I finished all the projects before I left!

Before the gathering, I told Rita that I would do a demonstration on punch art. I created a display board of several ideas, and then demonstrated three things. One of the things I demonstrated was an ice cream sundae in a bowl. I made an ATC card to be traded that was blank, and after the demonstration, everyone made their own ice cream to put on it, and Rita incorporated the ATC into one of the cards we made.

But even before that, I created this card that my Create-A-Bunch-At-Lunch class made.



Here are the pieces you need to punch out to make the ice cream sundae: a 1 1/2 inch circle with a crescent punched out of it by the same punch for the bowl, 2 pink 5/8 inch circles, 2 white 5/8 inch circles, 1 light brown 5/8 inch circle and 1 dark brown 5/8 inch circle. The toppings are made by putting three of the 5/8 inch circles a little more than half way into a scalloped square punch and punching. Chirstmas Red Stickles were used to make the cherries.



The circle surrounding the sundae is a Nestability die, the background is embossed with the Cuttlebug Swiss Dots embossing folder, and the sentiment is from Taylored Expressions, stamped in Noir Palette ink.

This is the card Rita created for the gathering made from my ATC trading card.



Check back later for more punch art ideas from my display board.

Mother's Day Flowers

This is the card I created for my Create-A-Bunch Club to make for Mother's Day. My sample also used the Rock 'N Roll technique, but because we were running short on time, they didn't bother re-inking the edges with darker colors. My inspiration for this card came from a t-shirt I saw at Kohl's.



All stamped supplies on this card are made with products from The Angel Company and all ink is Versa Magic. The lightest layer of the card background is the Damask Backgrounder stamp using Wheat ink with Sage as the edging; the second background layer uses Script Background inked with Perfect Plumeria ink; the greenery below the flowers is from the Be of Good retired hostess set, stamped in Hint of Pesto and the flowers are from the retired Fanciful Flowers set inked with Maulted Mauve with the edges rolled in Perfect Plumeria. The Happy Mother's Day sentiment is from the Trendy Greetings stamp set and is inked in Hint of Pesto.

I think this card has the most stamping layers of any card I've ever done, and is the closest I'll get to collage, since I usually don't pull collage off very well.

Rock 'N Roll Technique on Thank You Card

This is a card I made using the rock 'n roll technique, where you load up your stamp with a lighter colored ink, and then use a second, darker, ink around the edges. This card shows the technique particularly well since I used a light blue ink for the interior and a brow ink for the edge.

This card did double duty. I used it as my project for the Madison Mingle in March and then again with my Create-A-Bunch Club in April.



The card uses The Angel Company's Damask Backgrounder stamp and the sentiment is from the Thinking of You set. The ink is Versa Magic Sea Breeze and Gingerbread.

Little Art Girl

In March, a friend and I went to Ohio to visit another friend and attend the Adventures in Stamping Expo. We did LOTS of shopping and took some classes, and I helped my friends prepare for the Copic class they were giving. Amazingly enough, we also had some time to play. Not a lot, but at least a little.

While we were playing, I stamped off this image from one of my friends' stamps and colored her in. This girl reminds me of so many I know, including myself, that love to sit and draw. I haven't decided what I'm going to do with the image over all, perhaps nothing. I may just keep her in my art room as a reminder.



My little art girl is colored with Copic markers. her hair is E27, E25 & E23, her skin is E00, E000, E0000 & E11, the jeans are B34, B37 and B00 with the the colorless blender 00 to lighten, the cuffs are B34 & B91, her shoes are C3, C5, C7 & C9, the shadows are C00 and C02 and the pencils and cup are Y35, and &38.