Stamping Word Nerd Has Fun

Giggle! I got FOUR shipments this week, one each from Stampin' Treasures, A Muse, Clear and Simple Stamps, and StampinUp. This postal joy comes to me courtesy of relatives who gave me money for Christmas!

I love Christmas. And my relatives.

Anyway, I'm madly trying to play with it all at once, which, as you can imagine, doesn't work very well. Today, let's take a look at the damage I did with the new Hero Arts crossword puzzle background:



The new crossword puzzle stamp had to be MINE, not for artistic reasons but simply because I am a highly-trained word nerd. It's only logical I own it AND PUT WORDS ON IT.

Sorry about the shouting. I'm just a tad geeked out here.

The stamp is huge, just shy of 5.5 x 4.25 inches. Using the whole thing in black on a standard card is, shall we say, not visually attractive. There's just no place for the eye to rest, especially since the stamp leaves no border. I need to try it on a 5 x 7 card, but for now, I've experimented with cutting the image down. I like the result.

The alphabet here is Hero Arts Bird Branch Alphabet. I have about a dozen aphas that will fit this puzzle, but it would look really cool to use a pencil and fill in the squares by hand. Except I hate my handwriting. Does anyone other than Dawn McVey and Becky Higgins like their own handwiting?

This card is going to the troops, so I turned it into a Miss You/Love You card. But can you see the possibilities? Any words you want!!!! (I'm trying not to shout, but it's coming out italics.) Filling in empty spaces with tiny shape stamps allows you to balance out the design. OH MY GOSH!

Sorry.

I need to practice with arranging the words and filler images to make a pleasing composition. There's a bit of trapped white space under the word you, and you would look better right under miss. But this isn't bad for a first effort!

CAS Design Tip: Trapped white space is essentially a hole in the design. See how that 3x3 grid under the word you is completely enclosed by words and hearts and a solid square? It's even got a black square in the center to reinforce the idea of a hole! That's a design no-no. White space needs to have an escape off the page.

And now for a comment about the cool caribbean card base. I tried putting this on a white base, and blech. So blah and unappealing. The cool caribbean makes the red pop prettily and makes the whole card more fun.

Wow! Thanks if you made it this far, and have a great weekend!

Inspired by Joan B

Joan B is a wonderful stamper, full of fun ideas and delightful creativity, plus her Dear Paperlicious articles are ROTFLMBO funny. Check out Joan B's extremely cool masculine valentine card on her blog Paperlicious. Then come back here and see my take on it....






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Welcome back! Here's my version of Joan's fabulously creative and masculine valentine, which, once it got processed through my brain, isn't so masculine anymore. Masculine is just so hard.


So to speak.




Hope you like it! And thanks, Joan, for the inspiration!

Supplies
stamps: PTI Mega Mixed Messages and Polka Dot Basics
ink: real red, Palette Noir
paper: PTI white, SU real red
accessories: ribbon, flower punch, small circle punch, dimensionals

And the Winner Is...

Number 156, which turns out to be Susan (peebsmama), who wrote:

I'm really grateful for so many things. But today, I'm grateful for the fact that the weatherman called for snow and we didn't get any. After the 2' feet we've received recently, we needed a break :-) Thanks for the opportunity to win this set. I love trees. And lately I've been loving PTI. I just purchased three new sets from them.
January 12, 2010 6:50 PM

Susan, email me your snail-mail address, and I'll send you your very own Through the Trees!

Punch-A-Tree

It's your last day to comment on the give-away post. Comments close at 9:00 eastern time tonight, and I'll announce the winner shortly thereafter.

I bought a punch of a tree trunk and bare branches a few months ago and finally pulled it out Tuesday night to make something. My first two cards did not go so well. Trust me. Bleck.

And on a side note, methinks I need a tutorial on using Flower Soft. I own five jars of the stuff and haven't made ANYTHING with it that I would show you, even for comic effect. Just sayin'.

Then, I got the bright idea of punching the tree and flowers and making a spring tree. YES!


The tree trunk is punched out of brown Bazzill cardstock, and the flowers are punched from SU's pretty in pink and regal rose. I put a small half pearl in the center of each flower, using my craft knife to lift and place each one. I can't believe I used so many pearls on one card, but OH MY GOSH...it was so totally worth it.

Still, I do think the tree looks like a 1950s flowery bathing cap on a hat stand. Am I alone here?

Supplies
stamps: PTI Mixed Messages
ink: Palette dark chocolate
paper: Bazzill brown; SU pretty in pink, regal rose; PTI white
accessories: punches, glue pen, self-adhesive half pearls

Rescuing a Card

Sometimes, you make a mistake and something beautiful happens.

See. This image was going to look like the last card on this post. Only I stamped it crooked.

NO PROBLEM!

I cut it out straight using a clear quilting ruler and craft knife and used it on this card. It needed a little something, so I used the twine from PTI, which is a dream to use and lends a natural touch to all that white cardstock.

Next time you think you messed up your card, remember you can almost always rescue it by cutting an image out or by covering up the mistake with an embellishment or layer.

There are no mistakes in stamping...only opportunities for creativity!

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts (Woodland Leaves and Grasses), PTI (Out on a Limb)
ink: Versacolor Atlantic
paper: PTI white
accessories: watercolor crayons, dimensionals, twine

CAS49, Inspired by Krystie Lee

Note: Don't forget to comment on the Give-Away Post for the upcoming tree set from PTI! Deadline is 9:00PM on Thursday, January 14...if you're online for PTI's release, be sure to check here to see if you won before you place your order!


CAS49 is Cut It Out! The challenge is to make a card with a cut-out element. The new A Muse release really caught my eye when Krystie Lee started posting her sneak peeks on her blog, especially here and here, and I knew I had to play with her ideas 'cause, you know, she's a genius. Here are the results:

Krystie got all subtly artsy with her coloring, but since I'm not artsy and don't have copics (except red which totally would ruin the soothing vibe here) I left my shells plain and simple. I cut them out with my Cutterbee scissors, which are truly amazing.

The top card's shadow is one-fourth of a whole stamp, which consists of four different sized blocks. I just masked three of the blocks so only the rectangle that best fit the shell was inked. The simple square shadow stamp I used on the other two cards looked weird as the backdrop for the oblong shell.

The two shells and shadow stamps are from Hero Arts, the sentiments are from PTI's Simple Little Things, and the sand dollar has no marks (given to me by a friend). The colors are so softly nautical. I'd love to have a bedroom decorated in these soothing colors!

Supplies

stamps: Hero Arts, Papertrey, unknown

ink: VersaMagic Sea Breeze, SU sahara sand

paper: PTI white

accessories: dimensionals

Oh.My.Gosh!!! And a Give-Away

Second post for today (scroll down if you want to see today's card).

HAVE YOU SEEN IT?!?!!? Nichole's done it again. I'm swooning here. TREES!!!! THUD!

Introducing Through the Trees

I'm so glad I have gift certificates to Papertrey right now.

I'm going to order two of these and send one to a random commenter on this post to celebrate the goodness of this set and my reaching 60,000 hits. The deadline for the drawing is Thursday, January 14, 2010, at 9:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. Just tell me something you're grateful for today. One entry per person, please!