February Is the Month of Love

And so I'm starting it off with a Valentine that uses a totally cool embellishment Audrie sent me...the tiny key charm!

The heart with the key hole is from a Martha Stewart punch, and the text heart stamp is from StampinUp. I layered the punched heart using tiny dimensionals. The key is attached with a couple of small glue dots. I used a craft knife to tuck the edges of the glue dots under the key, so they barely show.

OLW77
Jennifer will be posting the OLW for this week. Thank goodness she's back and I don't have to do the odd numbers anymore! I will comment on all the cards for OLW75 and OLW76. Sorry it's taking so long.

Grab Bag Update
All but one of the large papercrafting grab bags are gone. All the scrapbooking bags are still available. Don't think that just because they have a small album or two that you have to use all the stuff for scrapbooking. There are plenty of stamps, card stock, ink, and embellishments in those boxes as well! For instructions on ordering, please go to the For Sale tab.

Use-My-Stamps Resolution and a New Inventory Plan
As I announced in January, my new crafting resolution is to use every image stamp I own. Again. Someone asked how I was going to keep track of which stamps I had used, and I realized that I didn't have a good answer for that. The first time around, I simply checked the stamps off in my stamp inventory, but as that inventory is hopelessly out of date and completely useless now, I didn't know how to track everything.

Soooo, now that I've purged a whole bunch of stamps, I decided it was time to do a new inventory, this one based on how I organize my stamps. I'll do a post soon with photographs of the new stamp storage categories and an explanation of the process for doing the inventory WITHOUT giving myself stamper's elbow. It'll be slow but methodical!



Supplies
stamps: SU (not sure of the set, though...I broke it up!)
ink: SU real red
paper: SU real red, PTI white
accessories: Corner Chomper, key charm (thanks, Audrie!), Martha Stewart punch

Let Your Trim Shine!

As I held the fabby pink pom-pom trim sent to me by Audrie, I thought, "Wouldn't it be cool to let it be the only color on the card?" While searching through my drawers for a stamp to pair it with, I found the Hero Arts old phone set and inspiration struck.

The trim is attached with a strip of 1/8" of ScorTape on the bottom of the popped panel, which allows a bit more space for the thicker trim. Not a card to plop in a regular envelope and mail (I'll include it in a package or put it in a padded mailer), but definitely fun!!!

What are your favorite trims to use on cards? Lace, beads, rickrack, ruffles, twill? Or are you a flat purist?

Source for Gridded Blocks?

Kristen asked what brand of gridded block I used on the precise stamping tutorial. It's from Papertrey. I would link to it, but it's been unavailable for over a year, so I'm not sure what happened to PTI's supplier on this, and a quick google search turned up nothing but out-of-stock notices. If anyone knows another source for the same block that is in stock, please link in the comments!

I have a large gridded block from Martha Stewart (bought at Michael's) that is nice, but it's too big and heavy for sentiments. The PTI one is 2.5" x 6", which is a very useful size for aligning things on cards. Perhaps Martha has one in a more appropriate size. Anyone know?

No Fear

Some people are afraid that when they stamp, they will stamp crooked or off-center images, or that images won't line up precisely.

That's a valid fear. We stamp by hand, and anything done by hand is likely to be a little off. I encourage you use my Two-Step Method of Overcoming Stamp Fear:

Step One
Say, in a loud and firm voice, "IT'S ONLY PAPER!!!!" Repeat until you believe it.

Step Two
Use your gridded acrylic block with confidence.

This tutorial will point out how to do Step Two. For Step One, you're on your own. I don't do videos and it would be really boring anyway.

So.

Here's what I started with: ink, stamps, a card base, and an acrylic block with grid lines. The stamps are from Papertrey's Simple Little Things set (an anniversary set from years ago...awesome sentiments!).

1. Put the sentiment stamp on the block carefully, making sure it is perfectly centered and aligned on the grid.

When I mounted the happy birthday stamp on the block, I made sure the sentiment fit with the exact middle of the block and straight over the central line. You'll notice that there is the same amount of space between the left edge of the sentiment and the nearest vertical line on the block as there is between the right edge of the sentiment and the nearest vertical line. Don't let the flashing of the stamp fool you, either...there's more flashing on the right than the left, which makes the stamp look slightly too far right to be centered. Focus your attention on the actual image, not the flashing. It helps if your stamp is stained...clean, new stamps are a pain in the tookus to line up because they are so hard to see.

(Flashing, in case the term is new to you, is the part of the stamp that isn't supposed to stamp, in other words the stuff that sticks to the block, not the stuff that touches the paper.)

2. Start stamping at the top of the card.

Notice that there are grid lines in all the tutorial photos about an eighth of an inch inside the edges of the card. Both lines are parallel to the edge of the card and evenly centered on the card. When you want to center something precisely on the card without measuring and drawing pencil lines, just use the grid lines!
3. Use the first stamped sentiment to place your second one.

Notice how the horizontal line on the grid above the sentiment lines up exactly under the first stamped sentiment. You can even check the vertical lines that pass through the sentiment letters to see if you're lined up properly. And ALWAYS check the lines on the edge of the card, too. THEN stamp your next image.

4. Repeat five times down the card.

When you make a mistake, remember Step One of Overcoming Fear. It is entirely normal to screw up, drop the block in the wrong place, smudge a letter, drop an ink pad on your card, or any number of other mistakes. We are humans, not machines. Screwing up is annoying, but IT'S ONLY PAPER. Cut another card base and try again. You'll get there.

5. The centering works just as well with images as it does with sentiments.

Asymmetrical images like the flowers below can be a tad awkward, but close enough works here as precision with the asymmetry isn't quite as critical.

And that's it for precise placement. Practice makes perfect. I made lots more mistakes and ruined lots more paper when I first started trying. Now, it's rare that I screw up. But it does still happen. And I yell darn it and start over again.

Because IT'S ONLY PAPER!!!!!

To finish this card, I embellished the flowers with pink bling and orange Smooch. It seemed like the right thing to do.

Then I rounded the corners of the bottom of the card and snapped a formal picture.

Thanks from the bottom of my heart for the prayers and good thoughts regarding my son. I really hope we know more by the end of the week.

More Fun with Watercolor Crayons

Hmmm, watercolor crayons are BOSS, as my 12-year-old would say.

It may not be deeply creative to make a sun of my big Hero Arts starburst stamp, but it makes me deeply happy anyway.

I used three different shades of yellow-to-yellow-orange crayons to make my sun and then plugged the hole in the middle with the biggest yellow bling I had. The sentiment (also Hero Arts) is stamped in SU's More Mustard because black and brown didn't seem sunny enough. The bottom corners are rounded to add a little extra something.

A little chit-chat...

The grab boxes are packed and almost ready to go. I'll post details on purchasing them on my For Sale tab page some time Friday, I hope...but it might not be until Monday. I'm sorry to limit sales to the United States, but filling out customs forms and such for boxes with so much different stuff in them makes my brain hurt. 

On another note, we've been having medical issues (though fortunately not of the life-threatening kind!) with our eldest son, requiring all sorts of visits to the doctor and school and worry. I'm going to take a bit of a break from blogging over the weekend to rest my brain, and if you're the praying sort, we'd really appreciate the extra prayers!

When I come back on Monday, I'll have a tutorial on precise placement for those of you who asked for it!

Shabby or Chic?

Using the large Hero Arts starburst flower...same layout, different looks!

First up, shabby. It's loose, it's organic, it's unpredictable!

To get this effect, I colored the stamp with light and dark blue watercolor crayons, spritzed with water, and stamped. I used a somewhat spiky sentiment (discontinued Hero Arts) with serifs and script combined.

Next up, chic. It's crisp, it's clean, it's fun!

The gray and four different shades of orange and yellow bling give this a fresh, modern feel, which is reinforced by the graphic sentiment.

You can probably guess which version I prefer, but the watercolor one made me happier than I thought it would. I just think it's unbearably cool that this stamp can look so different.
Which version do you prefer?

One-Layer Wednesday 76: Color in Winter

Winter's dominant color scheme is gray and white (at least in Ohio), but every now and then, a pop of color reminds us that spring and summer WILL come. I've seen pops of red (cardinals) and blue (blue birds) out my windows this month.

This week's OLW is to make a one-layer card that uses white, gray, with a pop of one bright color of your choice. (If you must, you may use black for the sentiment.)

Think of the card's colors as a recipe: use a gallon of white (or gray), a quart of gray (or white), and an ounce of a bright color. Feel free to use gray paper and white embossing!

OLW76 Rules

1. A one-layer card is defined as a single layer of card stock folded in half. No other layers allowed.

2. Use white, gray, and a pop of bright color. (Black is allowed for sentiments if necessary.) Remember to keep embellishments to a minimum.

3. Upload your card somewhere online.

4. Link to your card on the sidebar of Simplicity. If you're linking to your blog, make sure you link to the post, not to your blog's main page.

5. The most important rule of all...have FUN!!!!

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts
ink: Memento London Fog
paper: PTI white
accessories: rhinestones