Color

My recent Papertrey order included Think Big #7 because, really, can you have too many big sentiments? Of course not, especially when they are just $5. I needed a few get well/thinking of you cards, so I pulled out a floral silhouette stamp from Clear and Simple Stamps and played with color.

First up: Monochromatic

The soft purple here is so soothing and calm. This would be a great card for someone who's going through a really stressful time, especially if there's no quick fix for it, don't you think?


Next: Happy Colors

This card, in contrast, has a lot of energy in the colors. Bahama Blue and Pear Tart are perk-me-up colors, and seem to imply that the illness is short-term and easily overcome.
I once received a sympathy card, handmade by a friend, that really should have been a birthday card. It's cheerful, perky colors shocked me in my grief and felt inappropriate. The friend's expression of sympathy in person was very appropriate, but I still remember that card.

Do colors affect you emotionally, beyond just a personal preference? Do you think about the effect of color and how it relates to the message of your cards, or is that too obsessive-compulsive for you?

Supplies
stamps: CSS, Papertrey
ink: Memento
paper: PTI
accessories: Corner Chomper

Stress Reduction, Colored Card Bases, and Pursuit of Missing Photos

First up, my new favorite toy in my craft room:

A stress-reduction sound machine. My favorite setting right now is Ocean. I bought this beauty on Monday, when my children were driving me up the wall with their bickering and whining. Summer's not half-over, folks, and now I'm so much calmer after spending a half hour in my craft room drowning out the bickering and Pokemon battle noises with this lifesaver. If you need one, I highly recommend you run to Target and get one.

Today's cards are on colored card bases and use my new Mehndi Medallion set from Papertrey. What a very cool set. Yippy!!!! Or should I say, "Ohmmmm." Yeah, that works better, doesn't it?

The pink card above uses the large, medium, and small medallions, although there are a few extra-small ones in the set that I haven't used yet. The inks are Memento, and the papers are SU's pretty in pink and chocolate chip, with a random white popped on dimensionals. The sentiment is from Clear and Simple Stamps.

The baja breeze (SU ink and cardstock) card is cleaner than the first, using just the large medallion, and has a slightly smaller white panel. The sentiment is another from Clear and Simple Stamps.

Okay, the mystery of the missing photos deepens. A number of you have had problems, and a few have figured them out. Others are still as baffled as I am; certainly the feed shows normally for me in both Google Reader and in my email, so why in the world wouldn't it show normally for everyone? It's a mystery.

Here's what I've learned...any one of which or all of which or none of which might be true for you. The answer could be something completely different, which is entirely possible because I am VERY much out of my element with tech stuff.

1. Some email programs have security settings that block photos from downloading automatically. I use Windows Mail and I get a bar across the top of emails asking if I want to download pictures. I click the bar, and the photos appear. For other programs (or different settings in Windows Mail), if you right click on the photo box, a drop-down menu might appear offering you the option of downloading photos. If neither of these work, check your security settings to see if there's some other way to get photos. At least two people have fixed the problem this way.

2. Some of you just started experiencing problems in the past week or so. I assure you I am doing nothing differently, so the mystery thickens. One reader suggested using Edit mode to add photos to the post, so I added the sound machine photo in Compose Mode and the card photos in Edit Mode as a test. If you have been experiencing this problem, PLEASE LET ME KNOW if you can see any photos on this post and tell me which ones. If this is the problem, clearly there's a code difference in how they load, and perhaps there was a browser or Blogger or Feedburner change that's invisible to me but affects the way the photos show depending on the code.

I read all the code on the photos on this post (what the heck does it all mean?!?!), and it's definitely different depending on the mode in which the photo was loaded.

Thanks so much for all your patience and help in getting this problem solved.

Mini-Tutorial on PTI's Framed

I've expressed  my difficulties with Papertrey's Framed set before. Getting a good impression was tough, and I ended up wasting a lot of cardstock trying to make it work. Grrr. I snooped around online looking for solutions, and one that came up repeatedly was using a giant gridded block. Well, my gridded block wasn't quite large enough, so I used a coupon and bought Martha Stewart's large block at Michael's.

This particular block comes with a detatched handle thingy. Not sure what it's supposed to be used for. It would not be good for stamping small stamps because you'd have a hard time seeing where to place it through the handle, and if it's supposed to be attached to the big block, well, I like my blocks simple. A handle will just get in the way.

Whatever. The giant gridded acrylic block is DA BOMB and is truly necessary for getting good impressions with the Framed stamps. If you buy the Framed set, definitely budget for a big grid block. I was getting good impressions about 50% of the time with my old, non-grid block. With the new grid block, I'm stamping about 90% good images. THAT is a number I can live with.

Step 1

Mount the frame onto the gridded block as shown. Leave more lines at the top so you can align it properly over the card to stamp. Once the stamp is stuck, turn the block over and press the trapped air out from under the center flashing (the part of the stamp that doesn't stamp) to minimize ink transfer where you don't want it.

Step 2

Ink the stamp. I use Memento inks in the dewdrop pads for better ink control. When I get ink on the flashing, I use my finger to wipe it off before stamping.

Step 3

Holding the block above the cardstock, center the image so the grid is evenly spaced between the top and sides of the cardstock. Lower the grid to the paper as evenly as possible, press firmly straight down, and lift straight up from the cardstock.

Note: I always stamp clear stamps on a large stamping pad I bought at JoAnn's years ago. I get much better impressions when using this pad. Also, I use a post-it note to hold the card closed. PTI's cardstock doesn't want to lie flat on the fold, and with it sticking up, you'll get smudges. Mark's Finest Snow Storm heavy cardstock does a better job of lying flat when scored and folded and the crease burnished.
 
*****

And that's it! Getting the right tool to stamp this big frame has made all the difference. Here are a few finished cards I made to give you a feel for the set.
 
First, use the rectangle frame on a portrait-oriented card with the sentiment sticking out. The strong vertical of the flowers and frame is balanced nicely by the strong horizontal sentiment.  The flower is from StampinUp's Stem Silhouettes and the sentiment is from PTI's Signature Greetings.
 

Here's the same idea with the square frame on a landscape-oriented card. The flower silhouettes are from Clear and Simple Stamps, and the sentiment is from PTI's Signature Greetings.

Next, I stayed entirely in the frame with a simple winter scene. The trees are from PTI's Masculine Motifs, the bird is from Through the Trees, and the sentiment is from Faux Ribbon.

And finally, my favorite card I've made with this set. The butterflies (Martha Stewart punches) are punched from light blue vellum, the branch is from PTI's Out on a Limb, and the sentiment is from Clear and Simple Stamps limited edition Thank You set. The bling is olive from Hero Arts. Don't be afraid to stray outside the box just like my wandering little butterfly!

Little Things: Day 7

What a week! Thanks so much to everyone who has played along and answered the questions. It's been so much fun reading all the comments! Over the next few days, winners of the second half of the week will be announced, so keep your eyes peeled...you might be a winner!

Today has two LITTLE THINGS: scallop scissors and dimensionals. I know, I know. Scallop scissors are so old school, so boring, so out of style. But when you use them to round the corners of a raised panel and/or the card base, you get a very subtle yet oh-so-nice rounded edge that can make a huge difference on CAS cards.

By using little snips of SU dimensionals (the best I've ever used) to pop individual flowers and by using the scissors to snip the corners, this very CAS card is so much more finished-looking!

And yes, I did use Smooch in the centers of the flowers for a little flat bling. The branch and flowers are from PTI's Out on a Limb set, and the sentiment is from a limited edition Thank You set from Clear and Simple Stamps.

Today's give-away will go to two lucky winners. Each will get a pair of Fiskars scallop scissors and a package of SU dimensionals. Please note that I have ordered the dimensionals and will not mail these prizes out until my order comes in. To enter this drawing, please leave a comment on this blog post. Email entries will not be included in the drawing.

Scallop Scissors and Dimensionals Give-Away Question
Share a fun LITTLE THING that resides on a shelf in your home. It can be anything...a book, knick-knack, photo, game, CD, candle, food, towel, trophy, iPod dock, whatever. As I'm typing this, I noticed the Inukshuk that George and I brought home from our 20th anniversary trip to British Columbia. It's such a cute statue...even has a belly button!

Happy Birthday, Reenee!!!

Today, I am honored to participate in a Clear and Simple Stamps Blog Hop celebrating owner Reenee's birthday. All this was planned by Nicki (the other owner of CSS) on the sly, and it's so exciting to be in on the surprise. I do love a surprise party!

The Birthday Hop has lots of cards by awesome designers! There are prizes! Please see the details below!

I guess that last sentence didn't need an exclamation point, but it looked lonely without one.

Anyway... Happy Birthday, Reenee!

My clean and simple card uses two Clear and Simple Stamps sets: Kind Deeds (the silhouette) and Banner of News (the banner and sentiment). I used Memento Grape Jelly to stamp the silhouette and banner, and Tuxedo Black for the sentiment. The banner is popped on dimensionals.

Blog Hop Details

You should have arrived here from Jen Tapler's blog, and from here, click over to visit Sarah Martina. The complete hop list is below if you need to start at the beginning. Make sure you go to the CSS's Facebook Page and/or their Blog (links below) and leave a birthday greeting for Reenee to qualify for a PRIZE.

BLOG HOP PRIZE:
Two surprise packages of CSS goodies made up of some of Reenee's favorite products! Each package will be valued at $50. In order to qualify for the prize, participants must leave a birthday wish for Reenee on the Facebook and/or Clear and Simple Stamps blogpost. They will pick {2} winners - one winner from FB and one winner from the CSS Blog.

COUPON CODE:
For Tuesday, March 8th, 2011, only, you can use a 15% off coupon good for shopping at CSS. Just enter birthday15 in order to receive the discount. This coupon will not be valid with other offers and is good for one day only. I'm totally using this!

BLOG HOP ORDER:
Clear and Simple Stamps
Kim Howard
Cristina Kowalczyk
Heather Pulvirenti Jen Tapler
Susan Raihala You Are Here
Sarah Martina
Dana Grothaus
Beth Matson
Tracy Schultz
Viola Mahr
Ryann Salamon
Simone Pursiful Sue Berker Eva Dobilas
Ayana Posadas
Maria Levine
Stephany Zerbe
Ashley Newell
Regina Mangum
Lori Tecler
Clear and Simple Stamps {FB}

HAPPY HOPPIN'

Birthday Cards for Children

I pulled out Oh Boy, a clear set from Clear and Simple Stamps, to make some birthday cards for children. The focal images on these three cards are from that set.

First up, a train. So cute! I used the birthday sentiment from Papertrey's Birthday Basics set to ground the train, a variety of markers to color it, and a pair of brown brads to balance the image (echoing the wheels) and the sentiment with a visual triangle. Don't you love the smoke coming from the funnel? Too cute!

Next up, a puppy. This is my favorite image in the set...so very cute, and easy to color, especially if you leave him mostly white, LOL! I stamped the pup and masked it, then stamped the swish, which is from Hero Arts
(Friendship Messages, I think is the name of the discontinued set). The sentiment is from Papertrey's Mixed Messages.

Finally, a paper airplane. I colored it with two shades of red Copics (remember, I won three red Copics from Sue Berker's blog...very cool!). The sentiment is from the Oh Boy set.

I love this set for children's birthday cards!

Dee asked me what I do inside cards, and the answer is, usually, not much. I enjoy writing notes and leave myself plenty of space, but for birthday cards, I always add a stamped sentiment to the inside, usually one from Papertrey's Birthday Basics. I'd really like to start adding a little something to the insides of cards...perhaps a little image to coordinate with the outside of the card. We shall see.

I'm blown away by the sheer number of comments on the Give-Away post, and have loved reading what y'all have to say! Thanks so much to all of you who have commented. Remember if you haven't commented yet, you have until Sunday night at midnight.

One-Layer Wednesday 37: SentimentS *UPDATE*

No. That isn't a typo. This week's One-Layer Wednesday Challenge is to use more than one sentiment--at least two SentimentS--on one card!!!!! NO IMAGE STAMPS ALLOWED!!! If your sentiment stamp has an image on it, you must mask out the image. We're usin' words this week, folks. Nothing else. Check out the rules below for what constitutes a sentiment.

Here's what I did with a limited edition set from Clear and Simple Stamps that they kindly sent me for Christmas. It gave me the idea for the challenge because HELLO I have a bazillion sentiment stamps, most of which are prefectly lovely and deserve to see ink. The CSS set is nothing but Thinking of You sentiments in different fonts and sizes, and even one in French! How completely cool is this!

Here's the same thing in pinks and purples.

Golly, that was fun! And so was continuing to play around with this idea of using LOTS of my other sentiment stamps. I've made about ten more cards with nothing but multiple sentiments. Once you start playing, you'll find all sorts of cool combos! And of course word-only cards would be great for guys, don't you think. Only let's not give them the pink and purple ones, shall we?

OLW37 Rules

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

2. This week, you must use more than one sentiment on your card. I'm keeping the challenge's definition of sentiments loose: greetings, dictionary definitions, single words, little poems, quotations, etc.: basically, anything that is just words.

3. Keep in mind your card has an inside, too, so the second sentiment (or third or fourth or fifth...) can go inside. The possibilities are endless. You could cut away part of the front to reveal a second sentiment inside; you could overlap, stack, or artfully arrange some of your 16,000 happy birthday sentiments;, create a word collage with all your Hello stamps; etc.

4. Keep embellishments to a minimum and do NOT use any embellishment that constitutes an image, like flowers, buttons, or skeleton leaves. Glitter, rhinestones, and simple ribbon treatments are acceptable if you simply must use them.

5. Post your creation on the internet somewhere and link back to it using the InLinkz button on the sidebar of Simplicity.

6. Most important rule of all: HAVE HUN!!!!!!


Clear and Simple Stamps has offered a give-away for this challenge! If you make a card and link it, and then go comment on their Facebook post about the give-away, you could win the LIMITED EDITION Thinking of You set I used on the cards above! How totally cool is that?!?!?!?!

Supplies
stamps: Clear and Simple Stamps Limited Edition Thinking of You
ink: Memento
paper: Papertrey Ink
accessories: gridded acrylic block to line everything up nicely ;-)

Inspiration Week: Day 4

Inspiration is all around us, if we open our eyes to see. I've already mentioned this week that I keep a little notebook in my purse to write down ideas I encounter as I go through daily life...my brain is a very busy place, and if I don't write things down those things disappear forever or until I happen to bump into them again, an act of serendipity I'm unwilling to trust. So I write things down, sketch them out using my primitive drawing ability that only I can understand.

But that's okay. It's recorded, and I can come back to it easily. Inspiration is largely private and personal. Where one person sees a really cool card, another may only see, let's say, a set of hotel toiletries:


These were in the bathroom of our hotel room in Madison. Aren't they pretty!?!? The colors and crisp, clean design caught my eye immediately, so I snagged them to take home to my craft room. No need to write them in a notebook.

After a number of failed efforts at duplicating this super-simple design that left me banging my head on the table in despair (don't let anyone tell you CAS is easy...it's NOT), I finally hit gold by using a limited edition Thank You set from Clear and Simple Stamps. BTW, I felt entirely justified in having a bazillion stamps while trying to figure this card out.


I love words (*snort*) so making cards with just words really appealed to me. But the sentiment I chose to put under the large Thank You (because the length of the line worked best) says from the heart. So I added a heart to the envelope flap. Because I could. (Note that these little cards are 4.75" x 3", to fit into the envelopes I already had.)

The second inspiration piece today was a photo in a decorating magazine. I really loved the color combination here, a sort of orangy reddish shade plus a very clear green (left to my own devices, I would have paired that orange-red with olive green...so NOT original or fresh!).


Adding cream and two shades of brown means this card has five colors on it. FIVE. Ordinarily, using five colors on a card would make me break out in hives, but with inspiration like this bedroom decor, it really was quite easy.


The stamps here are PTI's Floral Frenzy, which has this wonderful two-part sentiment, so I also stamped the inside of my card. I really need to start paying more attention to the inside of cards.



Today's Give-Away

Today is the grand opening of Shady Tree Studio. Nancy used to work at Cornish Heritage Farms, and when it closed, she felt the push to start her own company. Happy Day for all of us!!!!

I'll be placing an order today for Naturally Imagined (how appropriate!) to get started with Nancy's line. I love the look of that set and how easy it is to color...no large empty spaces to fret about blending. Plus, the sentiments are wonderful.

I'll also give a $15 gift certificate to Shady Tree Studio to one random lucky person who comments on this post by answering this question: Where, outside of nature and the world of papercrafting, do you like to look for inspiration for your stamping?

A Fun Challenge

Sue Berker offered up a challenge to me in the comments on this post to use the heart or the apple from A+ Darling, a set by Clear and Simple Stamps. She knew I had it because I won the giveaway on her lovely blog. Here are the results.

I had a total BLAST making cards to showcase these adorably simple, tiny little stamps. Thanks, Sue, for the wonderful blog candy!

(Note: The first two cards are standard 4.25x5.5. The last is 3.5x4.5.)

Supplies for Love You
stamps: Clear and Simple (heart), Hero Arts (sentiment), Papertrey (stem and leaves)
ink: Palette Noir, Colorbox chalk
paper: PTI white
accessories: scallop and circle punches, dimensionals, rhinestone

Supplies for Heart Happy
stamps: Clear and Simple (heart), Hero Arts (sentiment)
ink: Palette Noir, Colorbox chalk
paper: PTI white, SU real red
accessories: rhinestone, dimensionals, scallop scissors (to round corners slightly)

Supplies for Teacher
stamps: Clear and Simple
ink: Palette noir, Colorbox chalk
paper: PTI
accessories: rhinestones