Buyer's Remorse

I have a lot of Papertrey Ink stamp sets, yet very few have sent me into buyer's remorse. This is amazing because I have many more regrets from other stamp companies. My regrets are my own fault for getting too excited about something novel without really thinking through how it will fit into my style and tastes.

Three that I probably should not have purchased from PTI are the monogram sets (two alphabets and a set of circle and square frames for monograms). They are perfectly lovely sets in the hands of other stampers, but for me, well, not so much. Y'all have asked me to share ideas for monogram cards, and frankly, I just can't do it. Sorry about that, but sadly, they're just not my thing.

But I bought the sets, so I have to use them, and today I'm showcasing the squares from the frame set.



Let's start with an elegant little number that uses the medallion from the Fall Elegance set, some brown half-pearls, and the ticket punch so loathed by Krystie Lee and loved by me.


Then I went with butterflies and bling. Hard to go wrong with butterflies and bling. The sponging turned out a bit dark, but I like it anyway. The sentiment is from Mixed Messages. Oh, the mask for this square was cut over a year ago. I keep masks together with sets so I don't have to cut them out again. When I saw I'd already cut a mask for this stamp, it was such a relief!


But my favorite is this one...a clean and simple treatment with fun colors and one little bit of bling. That flower is from Honey Bees, and the sentiment is from Mega Mixed Messages.

So even though I still regret the purchase, I am making the best of it.

And now on a slightly different note, please check out my post on Questioning my Intelligence about creativity. I'd love to read your comments on it.

Punch Drunk

Because of my mild obsessive-compulsive disorder, I like organization. In fact, I like everything about organization, from finding the perfect storage (cheap, efficient, not ugly) to keeping track of my many little supplies with inventories. It's a great thing to do when the muse isn't whispering in one's ear.

Take, for instance, my punch storage. The three white drawers are from Target, and I about went postal assembling the thing with its tiny, tiny screws. No more of those, thank you very much. Plastic drawers droop annoyingly under the weight of punches, so they fail to pass muster as well. Then, I found these stackable baskets at Target. Angels sang when I read the price of them (very affordable!), and the cute little handles flip in so you can stack them. It's mildly annoying to UNstack them to get at punches in the lower baskets, but it's better than the alternatives I've tried.

Now, the circle and square punches are in the white drawers, and all the others are sorted into baskets by theme, such as leaves/trees, flora, hearts and stars, and borders. Although where in the world does my Martha Stewart cupcake punch belong? None of my categories really fits it. And this bothers me.

I'm sure you're not interested in my bothers, so let's move on to my punch inventory. This is not ideal, either, but it works. At least, it does when it's up-to-date and I remember to take it to the store when I need to buy punches.


Since I was too tired to stamp today, I updated the punch inventory. This lead me to the realization that I have purchased a lot of punches lately. I don't seem to be able to control myself. I'm BINGING on punches.


I won't show you all the pages, simply because I don't want you to know just how punch drunk I am. Just believe that there are a lot of them, and let's move right along to a card that USES a punch.


I'm deeply annoyed by the fact that subtle colors don't photograph well. Or perhaps it's just that I don't photograph them well enough to do them justice. But really, this card is far more intersting in real life. And you can read the sentiment well, too. For the record, it's hi there .

Sigh.

And here's a question for you. If one can be punch drunk, can one have a punch hangover? If so, I think I have one. Just as long as I don't wake up with Mike Tyson's tiger in my bathroom and a tooth missing, it'll all be okay.

Right?

Supplies
stamps: PTI Day at the Beach, Mixed Messages
ink: VersaColor
paper: PTI white
accessories: square punch, dimensionals

One-Layer Wednesday 7: Repetition

Today's One-Layer Wednesday Challenge is REPETITION. This is a very good chance for you to use those little accent stamps that come in sets...you know, the little tiny stamps that you wonder how the heck you'll use.

Yeah, THOSE stamps.

Like the little leaf pair that comes with PTI's Father Knows Best Set.


Or the little concentric circle stamp in the same set.



See what I mean? Repeating those little suckers makes them pretty useful, in this case as a ground for the trees. Repeating the leaves or circles helps unify the design and glue the whole thing together visually. Plus, it's SIMPLE. Visually simple. It makes sense to the eye very, very quickly and makes the harmony-loving soul breathe a sigh of relief.

Or perhaps I'm being melodramatic. It's been known to happen.

My using those little stamps is just a suggestion (but it's pretty cool, isn't it?). Feel free to use repetition any way your muse moves you.

OLW7 Rules

1. One-layer cards are defined as one piece of cardstock folded in half. That's it.

2. Use repetition of images, bling, sentiments, small embellishments, or whatever...as long as it's simple, it's good.

3. Post a link to your card online using the OLW7 InLinkz button on the sidebar of Simplicity.

4. The most important rule of all: HAVE FUN!

Also, while you're making your one-layer wonders, you might--just might--mess one up. DO NOT PANIC! Just cut what's salvageable and make yourself a two-layer card. Like I did here:


It's still good, even if it doesn't qualify for the challenge. Lemons to lemonade. Glass half full. Always look on the bright side. It's a bright, bright, bright sunshiny day!

I know. I'll shut up now.



Supplies
stamps: PTI Father Knows Best, Birthday Basics
ink: first card, Memento pear tart and brown whatever; other two cards, Versacolor split pea and khaki
paper: PTI white, SU river rock
accessories: last card, dimensionals

May OLW Winners!

(This is the second post for today. To see today's card, please scroll down!)

I chose one entry at random (using Random.org) from each of the four OLW challenges in the month of May. Here are the winners:

OLW3...Mim

OLW4...Birgit

OLW5...Emily Leiphart

OLW6...Jess Holland

Congratulations, ladies! Please email me at susanraihala at woh dot rr dot com with your snail mail address so I can send you HERO ARTS cards and envelopes, and package of bling!


Thanks to Stampin'Treasures for the prizes!

A Little Thank You Scene

I realized I hadn't used this SU Good Neighbors set yet and have had it for months and months. So I made this card.


In retrospect, I wish I'd stamped the sentiment in Memento Grape Jelly, like the roof, rather than black, but otherwise, I really like this little scene. The scalloped grass is a border stamp from PTI's Faux Ribbon set; I just curved it on the acrylic block. The bright yellow bow (made with my Bow-Easy: thanks Bahb!) is a fun stand-in for a sun, don't you think?

For the bling (have I mentioned lately how much I love bling?), I had to color some tiny clear rhinestones with my Bic Mark-It because all my green bling was too big. Those markers really are AWESOME.

Really. And I think Bic should pay me for saying that. But they don't.

Have you checked out all the OLW6 cards yet? I haven't because a dozen people posted their cards yesterday, and I was too busy keeping my family busy to comment. But I'll get to them this afternoon, because oh, my goodness gracious sakes alive! Y'all are a talented bunch of people! As for the prize drawings, I'll post the winners in a separate post in a little while. Remember, if you didn't post for OLW6, there's still time until tomorrow morning when I post OLW7, which I'd better get to work on because I really don't know what it is yet.

Thank you all for the warm fuzzies. You keep me going!

Christmas Thank You Cards

The very sweet girlgeek101 sent me a package of goodies a while back, and I've spent a lot of time admiring the supplies, deciding just what to do with them. She included a few lovely textured cards with coordinating red envelopes. They begged to be made into Chistmas thank you cards.


Honestly, PTI's Signature Christmas and Signature Greetings sets, which combine type with Dawn McVey's incredibly pretty handwriting, are go-to sets in my stamp collection. They are so easy to work with in a CAS format! I used the border stamp from Peaceful Poinsettia, and then a touch of gold stickles was all these cards needed to kick them up a notch.

And now on to other business....

The drawing for the four give-aways in the OLW challenges will take place in the morning after OLW6 closes at 6:30 eastern time. Many, many thanks to all of you who have played along with these challenges. I had no idea that so many stampers would post and have so much fun. Just goes to show I don't know diddly.

As for my craft room clean-up, things have stalled since the ribbon purge. Honestly, I filled a gallon ziploc baggie full of ribbon to donate to our church preschool, and it was soooo satisfying! But now I'm wondering what to do next. Don't worry. Something will occur to me. Eventually.

Some of the lots of stamps I'm selling are still available. Please check this post for information.

Finally, it's Memorial Day in the United States, the holiday when we cook out on the grill, have picnics and parties, and get out of school and work. (Well, some of us do.) No matter what you do today, please remember the sacrifice of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who gave their lives for our freedom.

Taking a Few Lumps

Have you ever wondered why you buy some of the craft supplies you buy? I mean, something seems so totally hip and cool on blogs and in magazines, and you're, you know, HIP and COOL, so you click a few links, add your credit card info, and magically, a few days later, the Person in Brown brings a box to your front door. You open it and ooooh and aaahhhh and giggle in delight, and find a place to hide it in your craft space so your DH doesn't know you got ANOTHER doo-dad, and then....

What?

Are you supposed to use it? Well, probably. So you pull it out weeks or months after stashing it and realize...

WHAT WAS I THINKING?!?!?!

Yeah, you know EXACTLY what I'm talking about. That's why you come to my blog. You know I understand. I empathize. I will make you feel better about yourself by revealing that I've got it worse than you.

Since I can't set a good example, let me be a dire warning.

Buttons are a real moral dilemma for me. I love the IDEA of them, and they look so cool and hip and textural and miraculous in photos on blogs and in magazines, but in reality, they are too thick and lumpy to mail easily. Sometimes, they even get crushed by the postal sorting equipment. How embarrassing. What do you say? "Yo, Grandma, I spent $40 on supplies for your 100th-birthday card and it arrived BROKEN because I'm too cheap to spring for a padded envelope and extra postage."

Not good.

But did I think about that before I joined Krystie Lee's PTI button swap a while back? Nooooooo! All I thought was DANG, that's a ton of buttons in all those gorgeous PTI colors and they're VINTAGE, so how much cooler can that be?!? They MUST be mine! They arrived, and I made a special trip to Hobby Lobby to buy containers to store them in because, you know, I had to integrate them into my Color-Coded Embellishment Drawers because I'm AR/OC that way.

And now I have to use them. And they are lumpy and bumpy and cost a fortune to mail. For those of you who can afford to send every card in a bubble envelope, buy buttons and use them and live long and prosper. For those of us who are too cheap or too broke to buy bubble envelopes in bulk, well, DON'T BUY BUTTONS.

Of course, if you listen to me, then you won't be able to make really cool and hip cards like this one.


Oooohhhhh. Aaaaaahhhhhh. *giggle*

Whatever.

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts cloud background, PTI Everyday Button Bits
ink: Ancient Page Neptune, Palette dark chocolate, SU pumpkin pie
paper: PTI white, SU pumpkin pie
accessories: PTI buttons, dimensionals, floss