A Friendship Give-Away: Paying It Forward

First of all, I want to thank Beth for naming me the Featured Stamper this week over at Splitcoast. Yippy!!!! I feel so honored and humbled and blown away by all the cards in the FS gallery!

Second, as I mentioned last week, kind reader Marty sent me a Crop-A-Dile Corner Chomper, which is a super-fantabulous contraption that rounds corners with 1/4" and 1/2" diameters. She also sent me the sentiment about friendship below.

I paired it with an envelope stamp from Just a Note, a clear set from Hero Arts, and a fun heart-shaped rhinestone I picked up at Michael's. And of course I chomped the corners using the 1/4" side. I placed the envelope at the end of the quotation so that the quotation would remain the focal point, with the envelope as an accent.

Now, for Christmas I bought myself a 1/4" Round-It-All, mainly to round corners on book covers made with mat board. The Crop-A-Dile renders my Round-It-All redundant, so I'd like to give the Round-It-All away as "a little mulch" for our friendship here on Simplicity.

All you have to do is leave a comment telling me A) how cute my card is, and B) an example of something you have done to provide mulch for one of your friendships.

Comments will close at 9:00 PM EDT on Wednesday, May 4. This drawing is open to everyone, regardless of country.

Birthday with Paper Tray--Variations on a Set

Here's another layout with Papertrey Ink's Paper Tray set. This one is going to my sister for her birthday. Oh, it makes me giddy!

Design Discussion: My goal was to have three (not two or four...three!) lines staggered so that when I put bling in the exact middle of each line, the bling would form a visual triangle to help anchor the floating lines. And yes, I did use a ruler to position the bling because I'm AR that way. By starting on the left with the middle-height line, then the highest-height line, then the lowest line, I wanted to bring the eye down to the sentiment, which I stamped in black first...but it was way too bold. The Memento London Fog looks so much better!

I rounded the bottom corners with my new Crop-a-dile Corner Chomper. Thanks, Marty! You are such a sweetie!

Supplies
stamps: Papertrey
ink: Memento
paper: Papertrey
accessories: rhinestones, Crop-A-Dile Corner Chomper

OLW51 Three of a Kind

When I read the OLW51 post Wednesday on Jennifer's blog, I collapsed in hysterical laughter. By entirely freaky coincidence, late Tuesday night when I could not sleep, I made a set of one-layer cards that vary the color but use the same stamps and layout. There are two each of three colors for a set of six. This is one of the options for Jennifer's OLW this week!

So there you are. I'm psychic.

These three cards are part of my NEW RESOLUTION. That's right. I finally settled on a follow-on for my Ues-Every-Image-Stamp resolution. Now, I'm going to use every set to make at least four different layouts. If the set has reasonable sentiments (as in, NOT kind thoughts, cherish, or puppies poop rainbows), I can only use those.

Doesn't that sound like a cool challenge? Well, it sounds cool to me.

The idea came to me when I realized how little I'd used this set (Papertrey's Paper Tray). It's a fabulous little set, one of the first Papertrey sold, and perfect for the graphic, clean style I love. So many sets have little stamps, like the line in this one, that aren't exactly images (more like elements) that I almost never use. Also, while most sentiments in the set are ones I don't use that often, the Happy Birthday, Thank You, and With Sympathy stamps just haven't been used enough.

The new resolution encourages me to make use of sentiments and those little elements in sets without mandating it. I don't want to be told what to do...even by myself, LOL!

So, I'm psychic and resolute. And I laugh at pears. Now you know everything about me.

My Problem with Pears

For those who missed the link in the previous post: Fruitful Silliness

PTI Fruitful Gets a Workout...Even the Pear!

I wanted to make my mother-in-law a set of notecards for Mother's Day, so I pulled out Papertrey's Fruitful set and made a super-simple set using a classic clean-and-simple layout. I varied the images, sentiments (from Everyday Classics), and colors for a set of 10, but I'll only show four because I think you'll get the idea.

Some I rock-and-rolled.

Some I just stamped.

Most have normal fruit.

One does not.

Yep. I used a pear. My mother-in-law was not an English major and therefore is unlikely to have my weird aversion to pear images. In fact, I bet she walks past them in the grocery store without giggling in a helplessly juvenile fashion. I bet she eats them without a single naughty thought entering her head.

And since she doesn't read this blog, we can leave it that way.

OLW Reminder!!!!

Remember to check out OLW51 on Jennifer's blog later today.

Chatter and a Card

Chatter

Someone asked what flower punch I used on the second card on this card. It's from StampinUp.

Someone else who shall remain nameless (okay, it was Marty!) sent me a RAK. The package included a stamp I almost bought a month ago but didn't because a little voice whispered in my ear that someone really nice would send it to me soon. You'll see it on a card soon. Marty also sent me a Crop-A-Dile corner rounder that is absolutely the coolest corner rounder ever! Be still, my heart. I don't deserve friends-I've-never-even-met-in-real-life who are this kind and generous!

Someone else entirely asked about my stamp index, which I referred to in a recent post. This subject--my stamp index--is a source of grave frustration to me. I've had four iterations of index since I started stamping. Not one has met all my needs.

Below is a picture of the THREE binders that housed my Version 4.0 index. The pink binder houses Papertrey stamp images. The brown binder contains Mark's Finest and StampinUp images, as well as a punch index. The green binder holds Hero Arts images, as well as images from miscellaneous companies. 

Three binders. They are pretty colors, but three binders are two too many and not easily portable. One thing I love to do with my index is take it with me when I travel. Plus, dividing everything by manufacturer seems artificial, especially when today's card is so very representative of how I work: mix and match. So I'm reworking the index and will share the new one when I'm done, which at the rate I'm going should be sometime in the year 2020.

I have a lot of stamps.

Still, it won't really take until 2020 to finish because I'm obsessive.

But you knew that.

Didn't you?

Sure you did.

A Card

As you can see, I combined a sentiment from Papertrey's Mega Mixed Messages with a flower stamp from StampinUp's Happy Harmony set, thus proving my point about the silliness of segregating stamps in my index.

The ground on this is washi tape, and I--SURPRISE--actually like the tape on this card, which was vaguely inspired by a card I received from Krystie Lee. Her card is much prettier, but as I have it and will not show it to you, my card will not suffer in comparison...unless you scroll down her blog and find an aqua, orange, and celery one-layer card with a button on one flower and a sheer white ribbon around the bottom.

Her card, however, has no bling.

So there.

The Great Cover-Up

Often my experimenting goes awry. Sometimes, the results are not salvageable. Mostly, however, I can save the card if I think about it hard enough.

Today's card was salvaged in a great cover-up. Go, me!!!

I tried using washi tape as the ground for these trees from SU's Trendy Trees set. It just didn't look right, so I pulled it up. I'd always pulled up washi tape without a problem, but this time, it pulled the top layer of the paper with it. Darn it all.

So I cut a piece of old olive cardstock and drew a pencil line on it. Then, I cut along the line using mini-scallop scissors, being careful to line up the scallops with each cut. (Remember when using deco scissors to NEVER, EVER, under any circumstances close the scissors completely before you cut all the way across. It messes up the cut!)

I glued the old olive strip onto the card, effectively covering up the disaster. No one will ever know.

Well, no one would know if I hadn't just told the entire Internet.

I decided the green was too heavy, so I layered white twill on it to lighten it up. Rounded corners on the bottom further lighten the green and echo the rounded foliage of the trees and the scallop edge.

And THAT is how you cover up a mistake, save some pretty two-step stamping, and make someone's birthday cheerier.

Someone once said that there are no mistakes in stamping, only opportunities for embellishment. More often than not, that someone is right.