Monthly Archives: November 2014

Pals Paper Arts PPA226 challenge

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It’s colour challenge at the Pals Paper Arts this week:

PPA226 Nov 6

These colours scream autumn but I didn’t want to be predictable. Plus, I had the chance to play with some of my sister’s stamp sets at the crop weekend and wanted to make it worth her while having lugged them over from the UK. So I chose Perfect Blend for this challenge. To really push myself, I also decided to incorporate DSP, not something I do very often. I like to look at the DSP and even think about using it on anything but an envelope liner, but usually I put it back and go more CAS.

perfect blend mossy meadow, cajun, soft suede

I used a mossy meadow base for this one and a strip of DSP from Colour Me Autumn in Cajun craze, crushed curry, mossy meadow, old olive, soft swede and whisper white. I’m pretty sure that 6 colours on a card is a record for me! I stamped the coffee cup in soft suede and added the sentiment in Cajun craze. I then popped up the cup on stampin’ dimensionals.

Normally I would line the envelope, but I’ve already got DSP on the card. Maybe it would be good to match, but I was already outside of my comfort zone, so I kept pushing. perfect blend mossy meadow, cajun, soft suede env

I dry embossed the envelope flap with the Folder Arrows TIEF – I’ve seen this done a couple of times in the last week or so and decided that it was time to try it out. I love the texture.

Holiday Tag Swap

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I also signed up for a holiday tag swap this weekend. Just make 8 identical holiday tags and swap them with the other 7 swapees and you’ll end up with 8 different tags. I had a really hard time with this one for some reason. It’s just a small card, but I struggled. Finally after a number of prototypes I produced this:

Stampin' Up! Holiday Home and Festival of Trees

This has a night of navy base upon which I stamped the top of one of the trees in the Festival of Trees stamp set in silver. Then I used a mask that I’d cut out previously and dabbed versamark on the bottom of the card before sprinkling the heat and stick powder. After heating this until it went glossy, I poured on the dazzling diamonds glitter. Very pretty stuff.

Then I punched out a 1 inch circle of whisper white and adhered it in the sky before using the embossing buddy and stamping the santa in versamark. This stamp is from the Holiday Home set. I embossed in silver and apart from matting the tag in smoky slate and adding some ribbon from Michaels, I was done. I just have to make another seven…

 

Cookie Recipe Swap

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The crop has a cookie recipe swap for eight people. I took the last place but my sister is helping me out. We couldn’t decide between recipes so we’ve decided to overachieve and do two. The basic swap is just to make 8 copies of your recipe. Embellishments will get you extra raffle tickets which sounds good. As does making some cookies to share. So we went a little crazy. Tish Boyle’s Coconut Macaroons are outstanding – I become one of the most popular people at work when I take some in. And for my friend Julia’s son’s engagement party, we tried up chocolate chip cookies on my sister’s recommendation from Mel’s kitchen cafe and they were the best that we had ever tried. So, as I said, we did both.

I printed the recipes on Very Vanilla card in my printer and then used the oak leaf from the For All Things set to decorate. I used Hello Honey, Cajun Craze and Mossy Meadow. I feel like a rebel because I’m crossing families! I found that I needed to stamp the Cajun Craze off once and the Mossy Meadow twice to ensure that they didn’t obscure the instructions. I then matted half in cajun craze and half in mossy meadow because I couldn’t decide on my favourite.

macaroons

choc chip cookies

If you make either of the cookies, let me know how you like them!

 

It’s all in the packaging

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As I keep mentioning, Caro and I are off to a crop. It’s tomorrow morning and we can check in at 8am which is just less than 12 hours away. By the time you read this – we’ll be there. We’re excited and almost ready – I just need to pack up all my stuff (!) and make some biscotti. My tags for the tag swap are in progress – thank goodness that the swap isn’t until Saturday!

However I have packaged all my stuff for my secret pal (and I haven’t told her about my blog so I can share this) and I’m really happy with a die cut that I found in Michaels. It’s made by Sizzix and is a milk carton box. For the most amusement I realise that I should’ve put cookies in it, but they aren’t air tight.

milk carton boxes

The paper on the left came from Hobby Lobby which at 60 pages for $19.99 was a pretty good deal. It’s made by the Paper Studio and it called Oh So Glam and all of the papers have gold foil on them. The paper on the right is retired Stampin’ Up! and a bit lighter weight and doesn’t really cope well with this kind of box – as in the edges ended up with holes in them. Of course if I’d got the heavier Under the Tree DSP I’d be fine, but that hasn’t made it to my house. Yet.

A Wreath for Hand Stamped Sentiments

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I’ve been a bit preoccupied lately (jobs and visitors will do that to you) and haven’t done a challenge in a while. I’ve also been finding it hard to make things that I like. Coincidence? 🙂

So this morning I went looking for a good colour combination and found it at Hand Stamped Sentiments.

I left the cardstock in the appropriate colours out on my table and looked at them from time to time. I eventually decided that I wanted to use Stampin’ Up!’s Wondrous Wreath stamp set along with the matching framelits. First I stamped on very vanilla card stock which looked great, but probably not terribly innovative. So then I decided to emboss in clear on the soft sky – forgetting that of course the subsequent stamping wouldn’t work. So then I decided to approach it backwards.

soft sky wreath embossed

I first cut out the middle of the wreath using the framelit – this makes it much easier to line things up. Cutting it out later is definitely harder. Then I stamped the second layer of leaves in garden green – this is a tad tricky because you don’t have the first layer to help you line up. I looked at my previous version and figured where the garden green leaves should be relative to the middle cut out. Then I took the real red and stamped the berries, trying to line them up with the garden green leaves. After this I stamped what should be the first layer of leaves – or at least the layer with the most leaves – and stamped in versamark. I sprinkled the clear embossing powder over and used the heat tool. As an aside, I can’t decide if the heat tool, the big shot or the stamp-a-ma-jig are my favourite tools. Certainly I’d hate to craft without any of them.

Since the design of this stamp set means that the second layer of leaves is right on top of the first, this means that I have embossing powder over both the soft sky and garden green leaves. After heating, everything is lovely and shiny.  Using the wonderful wreath framelits to cut out the word Joy I found that the garden green was just a bit, well, drab. So I grabbed my versamark pad and pressed it over a piece of garden green and sprinkled clear embossing powder all over it and heated it. I then cut out the joy and now it’s not drab. It’s shiny and stands up to the wreath. Here’s a close up. I failed to get the shine on the wreath itself, but the joy does glisten.

soft sky wreath embossed closeup

I popped up the wreath with dimensionals and adhered it to a soft sky base. I did my Susan Itell inspired envelope and lined it with the backgrounds DSP in soft sky.