One More Twinkling Card

Note: For those who read Simplicity in your email, you may need to scroll down for yesterday's post. I had problems earlier in the week with scheduling (NOT my fault!) but Saturday's was scheduled to post at the wrong time (entirely my fault). My apologies for being a dork.

Our town trick-or-treated last night. I wore a costume to a costume party. There is, however, no photographic evidence. I like it that way.

Halloween and the last week have kicked my butt. I'm whipped. Rode hard and put up wet. Drained to the last drop.

May I please have some cheese to go with that whine? Or perhaps just another fun-size Almond Joy?

Anyway, here's another (and the last for a while...I think) of the Twinkling H2O cards that came out of my last frenzy of play.

I love this bird-in-a-tree stamp from Penny Black. It's a tree. What's not to love? NOTHING. The sentiment is from PTI's Mixed Messages. I highlighted the berries or whatever you want to call them with a Sakura Stardust pen. Hopefully you can see that on the picture. It's just a little extra shimmer.

Can you have too much shimmer?

That was a rhetorical question.

Supplies
stamps: Penny Black, PTI
ink: Palette dark chocolate
paper: PTI aqua (whatever it's called), SU chocolate chip, Arches hot-press watercolor paper
accessories: Twinkling H2Os, Stardust pen

OLW26 and CAS90

This week's OLW Challenge is on Jennifer's blog (see link in the sidebar!), and I FINALLY got to play along. The challenge is to use a black, red, and white color scheme. Jennifer's card is amazing with its use of white paint to create a shaped faux layer on colored cardstock! I didn't get quite so technique-y, though I did draw lines. I think they turned out rather well.

If you haven't played the OLW26 yet, get cracking! There are some amazing cards already posted...some white like mine, but people have gotten really creative and made oh-so-lovely cards using red bases!

My second card works for CAS90 as well as the OLW! That, like, NEVER happens for me. CAS90 was to use checks or gingham, and as soon as I saw that Monday morning, I thought of this border stamp from Mark's Finest Papers. Took most of the week to get to play, but I finally did, and I love how funky and cool this turned out with the OLW26 color scheme! It has a totally different feel from the more elegant Christmas card, doesn't it?

Hope you're all having a safe and festive Halloween. George and I are going to an adult/kid costume party on our cul-de-sac. G and I are not particularly fond of Halloween in general or costumes in particular, but we do want to spend some quality time with the neighbors.

Yesterday, I was volunteering at my boys' school and so many teachers were dressed up as witches. When I passed Nick's third grade teacher in the hall, I asked what was up with that. She said it wasn't such a stretch for the teachers to be witches. "What else would we be? Angels?" she joked. I told her that next year they ought to all dress as angels, just to be ironic. I thought she was going to hurt herself laughing!

I love teachers.

Supplies
stamps: Mark's Finest Papers
ink: Palette noir, SU real red
paper: PTI white
accessories: black half pearls, black pen and L-shaped ruler 

Proportional Matting

Question from Yesterday: DonnaK asked where I buy Twinkling H2Os. I bought mine at Marco's Paper, a brick and mortar store in the Dayton area. But you can find them at the big craft stores (Michael's, Hobby Lobby, JoAnn's) and buy with a coupon!

Now on to today's post, which hopefully Blogger will post in a timely fashion....

Today's Tip is one of those that, on the one hand, seems like a no-brainer, but, on the other hand, makes life so much easier!

After getting sick of doing the same math over and over, I made a simple, handwritten index card, which I posted on my bulletin board right over my workspace, with a list of dimensions for cutting stamped panels to matte evenly on a standard 5 1/2" x 4 1/4" card. It lists the sizes for cutting panels in quarter-inch increments. (Those of you who live in countries where "standard" is different can easily adapt this idea for yourselves.)

I typed it up for those of you using American measures. Hopefully, you can save it and print it for your own use.

If I cut a 4 1/4" x 3" stamped, panel, for instance, all I have to do is move up a quarter inch to get the measurements for a 1/8" matte all the way around the stamped panel. For a thinner 1/16" matte (as on yesterday's card), it's easy enough to just add 1/8" to the dimensions of the stamped panel.

I hope this makes sense.

And here is a happy CAS card that utilized this little chart.

Design Discussion: Please note how I rooted the flowers in the open space provided by the sentiment. I just love the way that looks!!!!
Supplies
stamps: Shady Tree Studio
ink: Memento
paper: PTI white, SU brilliant blue
accessories: dimensionals.

Personal News: My son Jack, who has high-functioning autism, was released from private occupational therapy Wednesday! After four years, he's finally functionally appropriate for fine motor and hand-eye coordination! YIPPYYYYY! He continues to receive OT through our school district, but this is a wonderful milestone for him to meet...and one less regular therapy session to cart him to! His developmental pediatrician saw Jack yesterday and is blown away by his progress. Jack truly has blossomed in the past six months. He's even one of the best readers in his regular 2nd grade class! Needless to say, we're on Cloud 9 around here right now, and I just had to share!!!

Using Twinkling Paper in a CAS Layout: Part Three

This is the second day in a row that Blogger has not posted my scheduled post on time. My apologies to all who get Simplicity by email because this means a day's delay in delivery of the feed. Not sure what is going on since everything is scheduled correctly, but I am sorry.

Two questions came up in the comments from yesterday's post.

1. Susan asked if I stamped the images and then punched the squares, or punched and then stamped. Ordinarily, I do stamp first and then punch with the punch positioned upside down so I can see exactly where the image will be. This time, however, I punched first, expecting to leave the squares plain. Once I arranged them on the card (but before I glued them down), I decided the cards needed some random stamping to make them more interesting. As I stamped (over a piece of scrap paper), I thought about how the squares would be arranged and tried to place the images so they would look random and give a sense of movement when placed on the card together.

2. Sue asked why the Merry Christmas image looks better centered while the Happy Autumn looks better on the right. My best guess on this has to do with the fonts. Happy Autumn has initial caps (first letters capitalized) with very strong contrast in height from the caps to lower case, plus a descender of the letter y. By putting the sentiment off-center, that height variation is complemented by the asymmetry. If that sentiment were centered, I think it would look weird because the only "off" thing would be the capitalization because the squares are so evenly lined up.

I LOVE the font of that sentiment, BTW.

The Merry Christmas sentiment, on the other hand, is in all caps. Visually, it's very balanced, as are the squares. That makes it look better centered.

That's my theory, anyway.

Now to today's card....

I thought it would be helpful for new stampers to see a card as it develops, particularly how I place things and how I decide what to do next.

Let's start with the shimmery paper. I stamped my image (shown), then stamped the sentiment (not shown). I cut them out using a quilting ruler and craft knife. I like that because the quilting ruler is transparent with a grid. You can easily get even borders and make sure your stamping is straight if you cut this way.

I also make sure that the proportions of the cut panel will fit on a standard card. This stamped panel is 3" x 4.25"...leaving an even matte when you put it on a standard 4.25" x 5.5" card.

Here's the stamped and cut panel.

Next, I put the panel on an almost amethyst card, but it looked very blah. So I cut a black matte sized 1/8" bigger than the stamped panel (3 1/8" x 4 3/8"). The black really helps anchor the whole thing. So I glued it all down.

The card still looked a little plain, so he next step was to bling it up a bit. I added lavender Stickles to the berries on the branch and attached a sheer white ribbon knot with a glue dot. The shimmery sheer ribbon (from Michael's) is a perfect complement to the shimmery paper. And, well, Stickles doesn't need a reason, does it?

Congratulations to Simplicity reader Amanda B! She won 6 FREE STAMP SETS from Shady Tree Studio's new release. Dang, I wanted to win that one!

Tomorrow, I'm going to post my little chart for matting proportions. It's such a simple little thing to make yourself, but I use it all the time when I go more than one layer, so I thought I'd share.

Supplies
stamps: SU Garden Silhouettes, Hero Arts sentiment
ink: Memento black
paper: Arches hot press watercolor, SU black and almost amethyst
accessories: Twinkling H2Os, Stickles, sheer ribbon

OLW Widget

Please scroll down to see today's card post.

To make it easier for you to find the OLW for the week (whether it's on Simplicity or Styles Ink!), I added a widget at the top of my sidebar with a direct link to the current challenge. Jennifer came up with a great one this week, so be sure to check it out!

Using Twinkling Paper in a CAS Layout: Part Two

Today's cards are a variation on yesterday's use of squares punched from shimmery paper colored with Twinkling H2Os. I used a slightly larger punch (1" rather than 3/4") and six squares rather than three. Each square was stamped with small images appropriate to the color scheme.

For the blue and lavender paper, I used Hero Arts snowflakes and sentiment stamped in Memories soft silver ink. The ink dried very quickly on the shimmery paper, too. I alternated blue and lavender squares to add interest here.

The red and gold paper became a fall card on a PTI vintage cream base. The leaves (Hero Arts) and sentiment (Mark's Finest Papers) were stamped in Palette dark chocolate, and as above, I alternated the colors.

I can't decide if I should have put the Happy Autumn sentiment in the center or not. I rather like it justified right with the edge of the squares. Perhaps I need to put a couple of brown pearls beside the upper left square to balance it, or perhaps the asymmetry works well enough alone. Indecision may or may not be my problem, but I usually err on the side of CAS in cases like this.

I do know that the Merry Christmas sentiment--with all the letters in caps--looks MUCH  better in the center.

Tomorrow's Twinkling card will be something completely different from yesterday's and today's cards. Not a punch in evidence, LOL!

Using Twinkling Paper in a CAS Layout: Part One

Painting an image with Twinkling H2Os (or any watercolor) like I did for yesterday's card is tons of fun but time-consuming. And 'cause y'all know I'm a quick-and-easy stamper at heart, I wanted to show how you can create shimmery paper and use it to make a variety of quick CAS cards. [Note that this technique would work with regular watercolor paints, reinkers, etc.]

I started with a watercolor paper block of Arches hot-press paper. Blocks are sealed on all four sides so all the pages are attached to each other. This means the paper wrinkles less than it would if it were a loose sheet. I use a butter knife to cut the paper off the block after it's totally dry.

Hot-press paper is smooth; cold press is textured. Hot press is MUCH easier to stamp on later, so I mostly use it.

First, I painted plain water on the area I wanted to paint. Then, I started with one color on one side, and while it was still wet, I painted the other color on the other, blending them together in the middle. As you can see on the red/gold side, I got some blooming of the paint, which isn't terribly pretty, but I just worked around that section when I started using the paper.

The two cards I'm sharing today are very minimalist...the CAS-est of the three days of Twinkling Paper I have planned. I used a 3/4" square punch to punch three squares of twinkling paper and stamped a single, small sentiment on the third square. Very shimmery. Very graphic. Very minimalist. *happy sigh*

The cool colors of the lavender and blue are so soft and required a clean, smooth, white base of PTI cardstock. You'll see the red/gold paper above shown on a card tomorrow, but below, I used squares punched from cold-press cardstock treated the same was as above. I used the same cold-press watercolor paper for the card base.

The close-up shows the texture. For stamping a small outline stamp like this, the cold press is okay. But these were scraps saved from a botched attempt to use the cold press with a large block stamp. Ick. Very splotchy and ugly, even though I used a stamping mat and lots of pressure. After salvaging the unstamped areas with a punch, I felt so much better about myself.

Aren't small square punches absolutely the BEST!?!?

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts
ink: Palette Noir and Dark Chocolate
paper: PTI white, Cold Press and Hot Press watercolor paper
accessories: Twinkling H20s, square punch

Twinkling H2O Poinsettia and Free Stamp Alert

Painting images with Twinkling H2Os is worth the effort. My green Peace card made me happy, but this poinsettia makes me even happier.

I love how the petals, which were painted each separately, have varying amounts of paint for a variagated effect. It adds dimension to the rather stylized image.

How-To Tips: To get this effect, use a piece of Bounty paper towel (Bounty doesn't leave lint) and lots of water with the paint. Fill an embossed area with very wet paint, then touch a corner of the paper towel to the paint. The towel sucks up the excess water and leaves more pigment on the edges and less in the center. Each petal has its own intensity because basically it's impossible to get them all the same anyway. If one looks too light, add more paint, blot, and see what happens.

This poinsettia almost GLOWS with shimmer and warmth!

Free Stamp Alert!!! Shady Tree Studio is offering up to one lucky winner its entire October release of six new stamp sets!! Check it out HERE!

Supplies
stamps: Papertrey Peaceful Poinsettia
ink: VersaMark
paper: cold press watercolor paper
accessories: dimensionals, gold EP, Twinkling H2Os (hot cinnamon, gold)

Hero Arts Pre-Made Cards

A while back, StampinTreasures sent me some free stuff, including a few colors of Hero Arts' pre-made cards and envelopes. The cards are made of two-sided cardstock...colored on one side, white on the other. The two-sided aspect is very classy, and it's fun to play with colored card bases every now and then! 

Design Discussion: Using the border stamp like this helps ground the circle so it's not just floating on the card. Of course, sometimes, I like floaty. Floaty isn't always bad. But in this case, the stamped panel needed to be achored. by stamping the text border in soft blue ink, it's there but not intrusive or busy.

I used three different sets of Papertrey Ink stamps: Honey Bees (flower), Text Style, and Everyday Classics (a limited edition, sentiment). This layout gave me an excuse to use my circle and scallop punches, which are wonderful additions to a CAS-stamper's tool box but too often neglected by me.

What tools are languishing in your tool box?

Supplies
stamps: Papertrey
ink: Palette noir, VersaColor Atlantic
paper: Hero Arts card, SU brocade blue, white
accessories: circle punch, scallop circle punch, dimensionals, rhinestone

OLW25 Birds and Bees, Flowers and Trees

Jennifer's OLW25 Challenge was so much fun! I used my brand new Washi tape to make the ground for this Hero Arts flowering tree and bird...so I got three of the components onto the card!

The Washi tape isn't as easy to design with as I thought it would be, and this is definitely the best card I've made with it so far. I'm not giving up, though. More on Washi tape later...when I've figured it out.

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts
ink: Palette dark chocolate, SU markers, real red
paper: pre-made card (5 x 7)
accessories: red gemstones, Washi tape

Photography by Lateblossom

Disclaimer: I am not a photographer. At least not in the sense that my husband is a photographer...he's good and uses a Nikon D-90 SLR and keeps it set on manual and knows what all those knobs and symbols and settings actually mean. I don't use Photoshop, I don't have a light tent, and my camera is a digital point-and-shoot. But I think my photos look good enough for government work, so if you're interested, here's how I do it.

What I Have:

1. Nikon Cool-Pix 10.0 Megapixels, 5X optical zoom

2. Table-top Ott Light, which gives full-spectrum light for (mostly) true colors

3. Two pieces of cardstock in a color to compliment the card being photographed

4. Picasa 3 photo-editing software, downloaded for free HERE


What I Do:

1. Select cardstock to match the card I'm photographing.

2. Set up the cardstock, Ott light, and card as shown in this photograph:

This is what a low-budget set looks like.

3. Make sure the camera is set to Macro (the Tulip icon). This setting allows you to take close-up pictures that are much clearer than if you leave the camera on the default setting. Also, make sure the flash is suppressed (the icon of the slash through the lightning bolt). The flash creates harsh shadows that are hard to edit out, and the Ott light gives plenty of light when aimed at the card as shown.

4. Snap the photo. I rarely zoom all the way into the card. Here's the unedited photo for this card.

5. Download the photo to your computer and open it in Picasa to the Edit function.

6. First, crop your photo so there's a pleasing margin around it. Cropping is the first option under the "Basic Fixes" tab to the left of the photo.

7. Then, click on the "Auto Contrast" function (also under the "Basic Fixes" tab). About half the time, this will give you fine results with no further tinkering. The other half of the time, you'll need to undo the "Auto Contrast" because it will make the card look over-exposed or too dark. If that's the case, click the "Undo Auto Contrast" button and then click the "Tuning" tab.

8. Under "Tuning," you can slide bars for fill light, high lights, shadows, and color temperature. I just dink around with each until the photo looks bright and the colors are as accurate to real life as I can make them.

9. Once everything is as good as it's going to get, I export the photo to a folder I titled Resized Photos. (To Export, just click the Export button under the photo.) When you use the Export function in Picasa, a box called Export to Folder pops up that allows you to choose the folder to export to and gives you the option of resizing. I size mine to 640 pixels, which seems to give good clarity on the blog without being so big that it takes forever to upload. The Export to Folder box also has a watermark option. This is NOT a fancy watermark function. I just add a simple "copyright Susan Raihala" line. (Watermarks are a whole 'nuther kettle of fish!)

10. Click "export" and your photo is ready to upload to your blog or to SCS or to wherever in the World Wide Web you want to upload it. Here's the final result:

This card, which I LOVE!, was embossed with gold EP on cold-press watercolor paper and painted using Douglas Fir Twinkling H2Os. The stamp, by Rubber Stampede (c 2003), is lovely embossed and left alone, but the colors and shimmer of the Twinkling H2Os really make it festive.

I hope this tutorial helps those of you struggling to get decent photos. For those who want outstanding photos (and not just of cards), I encourage you to study Pioneer Woman's photography blog. That woman has the magic touch for Photoshop, plus you get to see her photos of ranch life. It's enough to make this city slicker want to run away from home and become a cowgirl.

Drumroll, Please

The winner of the Prismacolor Gold metallic marker is Cassandra, who wrote:

Embossing powder is what I use, mostly because I don't have any of the other products (quite amazing for me really). I love what you have achieved on Snow Swirled, my favourite SU set, so will give the smooch a go. You weren't wrong about a long post, should have grabbed my cup of tea first.

October 19, 2010 1:00 AM

The winner of the gold lame Smooch is Heather T, who wrote,

I don't really have any helpful advice to give as I am currently searching for a suitable marker/product for adding gold and silver. Thanks for your helpful advice.

October 19, 2010 10:41 PM

Cassandra and Heather T, please email me at susanraihala at woh dot rr dot com with your snail mail addresses so I can mail your goodies out to you!!!!!

Thanks, everyone, for participating in the Gold and Silver post. What a great resource your comments have created!

Bee Happy

In my previous life as an academic intellectual, I despised puns. Now, however, I'm starting to like them. Or at least not despise them. And sometimes, I can actually use one without feeling like grading the card in red ink with a big, fat F.

Such is the case today with these adorable bees from Hero Arts. LOVE them! (By the way, in my previous life as an academic intellectual, I never used all caps or exclamation points, either. My goodness, how the snob has fallen!)

I made this card from bits and pieces I found in my tin of bits and pieces...punched and/or stamped pieces that have been sitting in a tin for months (or years) just waiting to be used. I'd made about five or six of the heart circles with the gemstones long ago, and, at another time, had stamped, colored, and punched the bees. When I dumped the tin out last week, bees fell next to the heart circles and INSPIRATION!!!!!

(More all caps and exclamation points. Have I no shame? No, not really. This blog isn't, after all, the Publication of the Modern Language Association or the Journal of Medieval Studies. How many of you would be here if it were one of those revered and respected scholarly journals? Yeah, I thought so. Typographical shouting and punctuational enthusiasm add charm to my current life as a stamp-obsessed, stay-at-home-mommy blogger. Go, me!)

Tomorrow, I'm posting about photographing cards, which seems really strange because I don't feel my photos are anywhere close to the quality of, say, Julie Ebersole's or Joan B's. But for those of you who are novice photographers with limited equipment and next to no photo editing skills, well, I'm here for you. Or will be tomorrow.

Don't forget about OLW25! There are some amazing cards already posted to Jennifer's challenge, and I'm hoping to play sometime today. I have the perfect stamp!!!

There I go again. Let's hear it for egregious punctuation!

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts, Papertrey Ink (sentiment from Honey Bees)
ink: Palette Noir, SU markers in amethyst and celery
paper: PTI white, SU amethyst
accessories: heart and circle punches, rhinestone, dimensionals, scallop scissors to round the corners a bit

One-Layer Wednesday on Styles Ink

Jennifer Styles has this week's One-Layer Wednesday Challenge up, and it's a great one! Click to her post HERE for details!

A Wooden Snowflake and Some Chit Chat

Today's card uses the sheet of cherry wood I bought on sale at Michael's a few weeks ago. The wood sheet doesn't work well with fine, detailed punches (such as the smaller Martha Stewart snowflakes, which sort of fell apart), but this big snowflake certainly looks great!

Yesterday's post about gold and silver certainly got you talking! Thank you all for suggesting other ways to add gold and silver to cards. Your comments reminded me that I have PearlEx powders (haven't touched them in years!), metallic acrylic paints, Sakura Stardust pens (have those and love them!), and of course loose glitter and Stickles. Sheesh. I feel like I am on metallic overload here!

Eleftheria asked my opinion of glitter glue. I LOVE it and have many colors of Stickles. With Stickles, sometimes I have to poke a pin into the bottle to unclog it, but that's okay. It's well worth that minor annoyance to avoid the mess of loose glitter, which really drives me nuts. Some of you said you prefer the white and clear Stickles over the colors, but I admit I use the colors pretty regularly, too. Glitter is a problem for me, though, because so many of my cards go to the troops, and we're not supposed to send glitter to them.

It's also neat to see that there's quite a mix of experienced stampers and newcomers among my readers. In response to requests, I'm going to do a Tips on Heat Embossing post for those who are frustrated with that, and also a tutorial on making wash backgrounds with Twinkling H2Os. If you have any other requests, please let me know on this post.

Supplies
stamps: Mark's Finest Papers
ink: VersaColor
paper: PTI white, cherry wood
accessories: Martha Stewart large snowflake punch

Silver and Gold: A Product Discussion

WARNING: This post is long. Very long. It also contains a LOT of information. And opinions. Personal opinions with which you should feel free to disagree. There are two cards below, so just scroll down if that's all you want to see.

With the winter holiday season fast approaching, we're seeing all sorts of shiny stuff on cards. Today, I want to talk about adding metallic color and shine to your holiday projects. I can only talk about products I've used (which are so numerous that it's sort of embarrassing). Please weigh in with your opinions/experiences in the comments so we can make this post a nice resource for everyone!

In my rather overflowing hoard of supplies, I have the following ways of adding Silver and Gold color to cards:

1. Metallic embossing powder (plain and glitter). Embossing powder (EP for short) gives a raised surface to stamped areas and is what got me hooked on stamping 8 years ago. Nothing is cooler than watching that stuff melt on a card! These can be used with metallic pigment inks, embossing ink, or plain VersaMark ink. And since VersaMark ink comes in pen form, you can add EP wherever you want to an image, not just to what you stamped. But it requires a heat gun and can get messy, especially if you accidentally blow powder all over the place.

Not that I've ever done that. No sirree. Not me.

Bottom Line: EP and a heat gun are necessities for serious stamping, but only in silver, gold, black, white, and clear. All other colors are luxuries. BTW, you want those colors for the EP, not the gun. Doesn't matter what color your heat gun is. And yes, I have about twenty other colors of EP. Which I hardly EVER use. But you can make a LOVELY CAS holiday card with a single image embossed on pretty paper. Oh, I get goosebumps thinking about it!

2. Watercolors (Twinkling H2Os, gouache). Twinkling H2Os are dry pots of shimmery watercolor paint. They are easy to use and give huge shimmer to whatever you paint with them. You can paint solid stamps with them and stamp directly on the paper, and the results will be shabby chic and happily unpredictable. But being afflicted with a touch of AR/OCD, I mainly use Twinkling H2Os to create wash backgrounds to stamp silhouette stamps on, as I did HERE. You could also stamp and emboss an image and paint it with the Twinklings just as you would color them with markers or paint with regular watercolor.

Gouache is opaque watercolor paint that comes in tubes. If you want to try it in gold or silver, I recommend the artist's series from Windsor and Newton (about $6+ per tube), and use it just like you would use tubes of watercolor paint. DO NOT buy the cheap student-grade versions. They are not worth the effort.

Bottom Line: Twinkling H2Os and gouache are luxuries. You can live without them, but your life will be a little less shimmery.

3. Metallic inks (ColorBox, Memories, Brilliance). I like (but do not love) the Memories soft gold and soft silver inks. They dry quickly and give a subtle shimmer to stamped images...but they are not really as shiny as I like. Colorbox pigment metallics pretty much never dry (at least in my experience) and tend to smear days after stamping, especially on slick paper like SU whisper white. They might do better on PTI's cardstock, but I've not tried. Because of the smearing, I heat emboss Colorbox metallics. But if you have metallic EP, which is opaque, you can't see the ink anyway, so what's the point of using metallic ink? Never did understand that. Also, I have Brilliance metallic inks (galaxy gold and whatever the silver is called) and have never felt they stamped dark enough to be worth the money I paid for them or their re-inkers. I recently read that StazOn metallics work great, but I haven't tried them myself.

Yet.

Bottom Line: In my experience, metallic inks are largely a waste of money, but I'm hopeful of one day finding one that works like I want it to!

4. Metallic markers. These are super-easy to use and easy to find. I have used and loved Sakura Pen-Touch metallic ink markers, Marvy Uchida opaque paint markers, and Prismacolor Premier metallic markers. All three brands are permanent, opaque, and nice and shiny. These are DA BOMB for adding a gold or silver edge to a CAS card, as I showed in this tutorial HERE.

Bottom Line: Metallic markers are absolutely, positively a necessity! Nothing can finish off a CAS holiday card as perfectly as edging with a metallic marker! The best news is that they are not at all expensive and last a good long while.

5. Gold leaf. You can achieve stunning effects with gold leaf, but it's expensive. If you're into techniques, have lots of money, and want to give it a go, enjoy. If you're at all timid about techniques, you might drop dead of sticker shock or end up throwing your $80 agate burnisher out the window in frustration. (Gold leafing is not hard, as long as you don't use the loose gold leaf sheets, but it's a bit persnickity.) I did a tutorial HERE on gold leaf, if you're interested.

There are cheap imitation gold leafing kits out there. I've never tried them and have no idea how well they work or how pretty the end result might be.

Bottom Line: DEFINITELY a luxury.

6. Smooch. Here's a new one to me, and yes, I live under a rock. My last DT package from Mark's Finest contained a bottle of gold lame Smooch. It looked so shiny--very gold--in the bottle. Because it was new, I just had to play with it. The result is two cards for today.

First up, a card with an SU stamp set called Berry Christmas and a sentiment from Hero Arts. I stamped the wreath of dots with Memento Cottage Ivy because it's waterproof. (I learned THAT lesson a long time ago when adding Stickles to SU classic ink. What a mess.)

Smooch is very opaque, so I just painted it over the green dots randomly on my card using the built-in applicator, which has a fine point and is pretty rigid. This stuff is so SHINY it reminded me of gold leaf. I'm channeling my inner crow, I think. Anyway, I outlined the stamped panel with a metallic gold pen because for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to use the applicator in the Smooch to get an even line of gold around the edge of a piece of paper. As you use it, the applicator runs dry and you have to dip, while markers give continuous flow.

My second card uses another Christmas set by SU called Snow Swirled, and a sentiment from MFP's Greetings of the Season. I used VersaColor Cardinal ink on this. When it's dry, it won't run.

Once again, I used the Smooch on the image, topping each dotted swirl and the snowflake on top. The applicator is great for adding small dots of gold...much easier than, say, a brush-tip applicator would be. LOVE how this looks, but if you look really close, you'll see a few sloppies. I was trying to be very careful, too. Here's a close-up.

The overall effect is really nice, though, and more practice will no doubt make perfect. Smooch dries within a few minutes.

Bottom Line: Smooch is a luxury item, not a stamping necessity. It's not expensive, so you can give it a try for yourself without spending more than $4.50 a bottle. It's cool and comes in 8 colors, but if you have to choose between a metallic marker and Smooch, I'd recommend the marker. Smooch is a nice addition to the markers, though, because the applicator tip allows more control than the big-tipped metallic markers and much less blotching than I've gotten with the extra-fine metallic markers, especially for really small areas, as on the Snow Swirled card. I plan on buying a bottle of the silver for use on snowflakes.

Conclusions: There are LOTS of ways to add gold and silver to your holiday cards. I've left out a few, like Glimmer Mist, because I've not played with them yet (although thanks to a couple of very generous readers, I have four bottles of Glimmer Mist just waiting to be used!). To my way of thinking, the top two necessities for beginning stampers are heat embossing and metallic markers. These yield consistently good results, especially for CAS cards, are relatively easy to use, and are inexpensive (especially if you buy a heat gun with a coupon). The other silver and gold options are well worth playing with if have the time and money (though only the gold leaf is actually expensive).

Give-Aways

As a thank you to anyone who actually reads this whole long and rambling post, I'm giving away two products highlighted today! I have an extra Prismacolor Gold broad tip marker in my stash, and since I was accidentally sent a second bottle of the gold lame Smooch, I'm going to give the extra away! The two winners will be chosen randomly from the comments on this post.  You must comment by midnight Wednesday, October 20th, to be considered for the give-away, and winners will be announced on Thursday!

Now, please share your favorite ways to add gold and silver to your holiday cards!

Thank You Notes for Kids

As my boys grow older and more, well, literate, I expect them to write thank you notes for gifts they receive for birthdays and Christmas. This year, I decided to make them their own thank you cards with Time to Chill from Mark's Finest Papers. The penguin and polar bear images are just so gosh darn cute!

These are flat-panel notecards, not folded cards, so I edged each one in silver metallic marker and also edged the flap of the envelopes. For the bear card, I sponged silver ink onto the bottom so the adorable bear would have a place to stand.

The penguin got a grey nose courtesy of a Copic marker.

Hopefully, these cute creations will make writing thank you notes a bit more fun for the boys! What are your favorite holiday sets for kids?

A Little Blog Digression: I've been having problems with Blogger not posting when I schedule posts. I'm sorry yesterday's post was so late to the email subscribers. Hopefully, this post will go on time!

Also, there is a very interesting thread on SCS HERE about blogs and DTs. My general opinion on the whole subject is that bloggers should do what they want on their blogs and readers should read the blogs that appeal to them. Bloggers' and readers' needs are subject to change at any time. I am very much a CAS stamper and don't plan on changing that any time soon, but I do want to try new things (such as combining CAS and vintage/shabby chic, which is lots of fun for me!). I also want my blog to be a place that is welcoming and fun and, above all, USEFUL. Hence, my question about reviews.

I've been given and have bought a whole bunch of new product lately, which will filter onto Simplicity as I can play with the new stuff and find ways to use it that make me happy.  I'd like to do product reviews but also don't want anyone to feel like I'm pushing anything. One commenter said she didn't want me pushing stuff if I was paid to do so. LOL! I've not been paid a DIME for anything stamp related, even the DT. I do get free product, though, and most of it is absolutely fun to use. The few things that MFP has sent that are not my style, I simply don't use. The only thing I have to use as part of the DT is the stamps, and there hasn't been a set yet that I couldn't make work for my style.

This blog is very therapeutic for me. Y'all are so nice and kind and generous in your comments,  and you spur me on to have fun daily with this amazing, diverse, and creative hobby. Never in a million years would I have thought I'd blog about stamping, and yet here I am posting my 611th post. And it's all because of you. BIG HUGS!

Taking the Easy Way Out and Proud of It!

Okay, I've started to feel much more confident with my coloring lately, and I admit that I don't feel like a bumbling idiot doing it anymore. Also, the results can be hugely wonderful on CAS cards (consider this cardinal!).

But I still LOVE taking the easy way out and using outline images like this:

Oh, yeah. Uh-huh. Doin' the happy dance!

How-To Tips: This card is 4.25" square and uses Shady Tree Studios stamps. Not all outline stamps are this easy to put multiple ink colors on...markers give a blotchy effect on clear stamps that is sometimes what you want, and sometimes not. Definitely not on this card because these stamps are so crisp and clean. So I used the dew-drop Memento pads to put grape jelly on the flowers and bamboo on the stems and leaves and ground. One impression, and PRESTO! You're done. Well, you still have to stamp the sentiment, but you get the picture.

Take a look at your outline stamps and give this a try!

Question: Would you like me to put product reviews on Simplicity?

OLW24 Hosted by Jennifer Styles!

Jennifer Styles is hosting the OLW this week, and I took a few minutes to play along. Literally just a few minutes, because for once, a card popped into my head and all I had to do was make it. The challenge is to make a winter holiday card without using a white, cream, red, or green base.

I confess I had to make this card twice, because my first choice of ink colors didn't quite work with the blush blossom cardstock. Is your blush blossom ink more orange than blush? Well, mine is. So I tried again with the VersaColor cinnamon and old rose, and BINGO!

Design Discussion: These stamps are from Art Impressions. I picked them up years ago for 90% off at a scrapbook store going-out-of-business sale. I've tried to make things with them a few times, but nothing really worked like I wanted it to. This time, it came together so easily! One layer, visual triangle of snowflakes (which I had to use a positioner for because the flake is crooked on the wood block and it bothered me), monochromatic color scheme, bling: these all worked for me!

Note: This also works for the Hope You Can Cling To challenge at SCS. Many thanks to Lydia for telling me about it!

October MFP Blog Hop: Snowman Country

Welcome to the MFP October Blog Hop! This month, we’ve added TWO MORE STAMP SETS!!! The link list for the hop is below...and...LOOK for a NEW LINK LIST TOMORROW!!!

We have 6 New Stamp Sets: Seasonal Poinsettias, Time to Chill, A Walk in the Woods, Greetings of the Season, Thankful for You, Snowman Country. For your convenience, all 6 stamp sets are available for purchase TODAY!

For your chance to win BLOG CANDY, (a set that will be released NEXT month), visit and comment on each of the following design team members' blogs TODAY. On Saturday, (October 16, 2010), a winner will be chosen from those participants who visited all the blogs listed for today. (There will be four different winners, one winner for each day of the blog hop. You DO NOT have to comment every day. However, the more days you comment, the more chances you have to win!) If you miss a day, you can go back and comment on each day's blogs, as the winners will be chosen Saturday morning!

Happy Hopping!

10/15 FRIDAY Snowman Country

Emily
Karen
Patty
Roxie
Vicki
Liz
Claudine
Dawn
Joanne T
Nicole
Marilynn
Peggysue
Susan  You are here!!!
Judi
Connie
Mark’s Finest Papers


Snowman Country has some wonderful stamps for decoration and gift-giving! I used the snowman and tree to make a largish shadow-box that could be hung on a tree or wall. It's 5.5" x 4.25", and uses Scotch brand 3D tape to create the layers and depth. I made each layer separately and added the glitter before assembling. Cutting out the stamped images is really easy because the lines are nice and heavy.

This second project was SUPER-simple! The mug image acts as a tag for a coffee bag, which was very simply stamped with the checked border to add a little sumthin' to it. A bit of bling and some baker's twine finish the simple yet festive packaging. These would be easy to mass produce for hot chocolate mix (or my favorite Russian Tea mix) as gifts for neighbors and friends.

I sure hope you enjoyed this month's blog hop!

October MFP Release and Great News on the OLW Challenge

Today, I'm not officially on the hop (will be back tomorrow), but I'm including the list for today's hop for those of you who are enjoying the fun!

Happy Hopping!

Thursday: Thankful for You

Nancyruth
Lois
Vicky
Jeanne
Anne
Emily
Karen
Patty
Roxie
Vicki
Liz
Claudine
Dawn
Joanne T
Nicole
Marilynn

Mark’s Finest Papers 

Thankful for You focuses on traditional images of Thanksgiving. The corn and wheat are lovely in their detail and ideal for CAS cards. To start, I made two kraft base cards, layering kraft on kraft just as I layered white on white with yesterday's sympathy cards. The images are simply colored using a more mustard SU marker.

The next two cards have white bases and are one layer. This time, instead of coloring, I just stamped the images in mustard and used ribbon in different ways to balance the images. And of course, they needed bling.

Can you imagine life without bling? I can't.

I'm thankful for you, Bling. You make me happy. Very happy. Excessively happy. Indecently happy.

I'll stop now. I hope you enjoy the cards.

Make sure to check in tomorrow because I don't have cards...I have some other cool stuff you won't want to miss!

OLW Challenge
Jennifer Styles, whose amazing talent has graced the OLW challenges so very regularly, has offered to be my partner in crime. She will post the OLW challenge for this week on her blog. She'll continue to post it until November, when we will start alternating each week after that! Yippy!!!!!! I'm so grateful to her for stepping up like that so everyone can continue to keep their one-layer creative muscles flexed each week. EDITED TO ADD: Jennifer will have the full post up soon. She needed to take a picture of her card this morning and get it uploaded.

October MFP Blog Hop: A Walk in the Woods and Greetings of the Season

Welcome to the MFP October Blog Hop! This month, we’ve added TWO MORE STAMP SETS!!! The link list for the hop is below...and...LOOK for a NEW LINK LIST TOMORROW!!!

We have 6 New Stamp Sets: Seasonal Poinsettias, Time to Chill, A Walk in the Woods, Greetings of the Season, Thankful for You, Snowman Country. For your convenience, all 6 stamp sets are available for purchase TODAY!

For your chance to win BLOG CANDY, (a set that will be released NEXT month), visit and comment on each of the following design team members' blogs TODAY. On Saturday, (October 16, 2010), a winner will be chosen from those participants who visited all the blogs listed for today. (There will be four different winners, one winner for each day of the blog hop. You DO NOT have to comment every day. However, the more days you comment, the more chances you have to win!) If you miss a day, you can go back and comment on each day's blogs, as the winners will be chosen Saturday morning!

Happy Hopping!

10/12 Wednesday: A Walk in the Woods and Greetings of the Season

Nancyruth
Lois
Vicky
Jeanne
Anne
Peggysue
Susan  YOU ARE HERE!
Judi 
Connie
Claudine
Dawn
Joanne T
Nicole
Marilynn

Mark’s Finest Papers 

A Walk in the Woods is perfect for sympathy cards, which unfortunately we all need to make from time to time. My approach to sympathy cards is to keep the colors muted; use simple, natural images; and leave off the bling.

For these two cards, layered white on white, I used khaki and bark VersaColor inks and popped the stamped panel. The layering allows the space for the images to be clearly defined withouth distracting from the simplicity. I also like how stamping the image off the panel implies incompleteness...a feeling that is so real to those who are grieving. Part of them is missing, and (for me, at least) the cards acknowledge that in a symbolic way.

And now for something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!!!!!!!! Here's a Christmas card with the quintessential winter image of a cardinal on a pine branch. As soon as I made this, I thought how much my grandmother would have loved it. I always made her Christmas cards with cardinal stamps because they were her favorite bird. She would have loved this cardinal, and I'm going to frame it in her memory.

How-To Tips: The cardinal's red is colored with Copics (thanks to blog candy!) and the rest is colored with Bic Mark-Its. I cut out the cardinal with his tail sticking out a bit to add a little interest because I didn't want to add any embellishments to this striking image. It's so lovely and detailed, it doesn't need embellishment in such a simple setting. 

One-Layer Wednesday Break

For the last six weeks, my ability to comment on OLW submissions has been extremely intermittent. I feel  just terrible that many of you have taken the time to upload cards and link to them without my being able to thank you properly with a comment. Life has gotten extremely busy, I'm not writing as much as I want for my other two blogs, and something has got to give. Actually, several somethings have to give, LOL!

For the next two weeks, we won't have an OLW challenge. In November, I'll try to resume them but instead of weekly, we'll try every two weeks. In the meantime, I hope to be able to go back and comment on the last month's entries and make time to appreciate just how talented and dedicated you all are!

Some time Wednesday I'll try to put the Gratitude Collection InLinkz stuff on the sidebar in place of the OLW challenge. Remember that the Gratitude Collection will continue through the end of November, so you can link any thank you, thankful for you, and Thanksgiving cards there.

Also, rest assured that my daily posts here will continue. I've got a bunch of card pictures already loaded onto my computer and ready to go. Also, I had promised someone to do a post on the book ornaments I posted a while back, as well as one on taking photos (a subject I feel totally inadequate to discuss, but hey, that's never stopped me before!). These will be coming up, too.

I am really sorry about this but know that y'all understand.

October MFP Blog Hop: Seasonal Poinsettias and Time to Chill

Welcome to the MFP October Blog Hop! This month, we’ve added TWO MORE STAMP SETS!!! The link list for the hop is below...and…LOOK for a NEW LINK LIST TOMORROW!!!

We have 6 New Stamp Sets Released today: Seasonal Poinsettias, Time to Chill, A Walk in the Woods, Greetings of the Season, Thankful for You, Snowman Country. For your convenience, all 6 stamp sets are available for purchase TODAY!

For your chance to win BLOG CANDY, (a set that will be released NEXT month), visit and comment on each of the following design team members' blogs TODAY. On Saturday, (October 16, 2010), a winner will be chosen from those participants who visited all the blogs listed for today. (There will be four different winners, one winner for each day of the blog hop. You DO NOT have to comment every day. However, the more days you comment, the more chances you have to win!) If you miss a day, you can go back and comment on each day's blogs, as the winners will be chosen Saturday morning!

Happy Hopping!

10/12 TUESDAY: Seasonal Poinsettias and Time to Chill

Nancyruth
Lois
Vicky
Jeanne
Anne
Peggysue
Susan  YOU ARE HERE!
Judi 
Connie
Emily
Karen
Patty
Roxie
Vicki
Liz

Mark’s Finest Papers 


Time to Chill has some wonderfully whimsical images as well as some solid snowflakes. I used the polar bear cub and penguin stamps on a set of notecards I'll show you next week, but for the Hop, I really wanted to show off one the single snowflake stamp. It's amazingly beautiful and so easy to make a clean and simple card with.

Here, I paired it with one of the sentiments in the set for a fabulously easy (and easy to mass-produce!) Christmas card. My colors were pastels from Memento inks, for a little different touch from all the Christmas red and green. A single small gemstone accents the center of each flake.

Seasonal Poinsettias has a lovely, medium-size poinsettia stamp that simply begs to be colored, cut out, and popped up on a card. And of course, the color scheme takes us back to the traditional red and green. The ribbon border is from Mark's Finest Satin ribbon, and the center of the poinsettia is accented with gold Stickles.

See you tomorrow with some more clean and simple cards!

MFP Autumn Word Collage

Yesterday, I challenged you to look at word stamps differently, and today, I'm sticking with the word-stamp theme. I've made word collages before, and as I sat staring at all the word stamps in the autumn sets from Mark's Finest Papers, I felt the itch to make another.

*squeal*

This collage includes stamps from the three different sets: the upcoming October release Thankful for You, and the already released Autumn Fun and Thankful Mums and Pumpkins. 

How-To Tips: These sorts of cards are sooooo much easier with clear stamps, though they can be done using a stamp positioner for rubber. Start with a focal point word or phrase that's bigger (in this case Autumn Days). Then work out from there. The sentiment that looks really light is darker IRL...photo-editing skewed the colors too much when I got it dark enough, but trust me, it's readable on the card.

I tried making this a white-on-white card but it didn't work at all. The cherry cobbler matte helps anchor the whole thing.

Tomorrow starts the Mark's Finest release. All the new stamp sets...all SIX...will be available tomorrow. Can't wait to show you all the goodness I've been working with! A couple of the sets didn't really appeal to me initially, but as you'll see from my projects, I ended up LOVING THEM ALL! There's a ton of CAS potential in these sets, and I hope you enjoy my projects and the other designers' work on the Blog Hop.

Words, Words, Words

One of the many great things about Mark's Finest Papers stamps is the sentiments. Most of the sets have a large selections of individual words or or sentiments or sayings/quotations. This card combines three individual words from one upcoming set (Seasonal Poinsettias) and the sentiment Merry Christmas from another upcoming set (Greetings of the Season).

Ordinarily, in the interests of CAS, it's best to keep fonts very consistent, with no more than two fonts (a basic main one, with perhaps a single key word in a showy font). But when you make the words the focus, you can flex those rules. By keeping everything else on this card super simple and using two colors for the two parts of the sentiment, the five words are clean and interesting, rather than confusing. The shape of the card also helps keep things easily understood; it's 7.25" x 3.75" and fits in an envelope that I bought at Marco's.

How-To Tips: To line up the words nicely, you REALLY need a gridded acrylic block. Draw a pencil line down the middle of your cardstock, center the word on the block, ink and stamp centered on the pencil line. WAIT a few minutes before erasing the pencil line...you don't want to smear the ink. If you use a slow-drying ink, you'll want to wait even longer or heat-set with a heat gun.

I have a blast playing with words like this, and if you tend to ignore the individual words in sets, I challenge you to find a fun way to play with them!

Supplies
stamps: Mark's Finest
paper: white, SU real red
ink: SU real red, Memento bamboo 
accessories: wide grosgrain ribbon, dimensionals

Basic Grey Meets Clean and Simple

When I received a DT package from Mark's Finest Papers, it included a pack of 6x6 patterned paper from Basic Grey called Indian Summer. What lush, rich, autumnal papers! Most of them are, well, the antithesis of clean and simple, but I took on the challenge of using them on CAS cards. I think I did it!

First up, just taking a few strips of pretty paper and adding a sentiment can make a lovely card.

Next, a simple square of lush beauty can stand all by its lonesome with a pretty sentiment.

I cut the strip along the white vine lines on this paper, to give a bit of organic feel to it. Then, I added the punched ferns and a tiny button. This will have to be hand-delivered with the button, but it's cute, no?

And along the same idea of cutting along lines in the paper, this fab graphic curvy paper totally ROCKS in all that white space! I curved the sentiment on the acrylic block to fit the curve of the paper. Clear stamps are just wonderful, aren't they?

Here's one with a colored card base...a new pink from Mark's Finest. It's lovely, as is this sentiment. And that knot is the immovable knot that is soooo easy and so flat.

And finally, a design I used last year, but with this wonderful, organic paper. It's hard to see in the photo, but the bling is a square gem, also from BG.

All the sentiments are from sets by Mark's Finest (a few are from the upcoming release, some are from available sets).

Yesterday's post yielded some excellent comments, and if you haven't read them, I encourage you to check them out.