On Good Intentions, Precise Placement, and Another Punchy Color Combo

Fact #1: I have an obscene number of ink pads, so I decided to purge a bunch of them. I've pulled my two distress ink pads (bought in a moment of weakness when I thought, gee, you can distress!), almost all my Colorbox pigment inks (seven petal point packs, each with 8 pads...HELLO!), some SU pads (some discontinued, others just not my style, like plum), and a whole bunch of Memories and Ancient Page inks (why did I have 14 shades of brown waterproof dye ink pads?). Oh the joy of moderation! I still have plenty of inks to choose from, and yet I feel so much lighter and happier!

Fact #2: This morning, I received an email from Hero Arts announcing their new mid-tone ink pads.

Conclusion: Oh, bother.

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Several people commented that my precise placement of the happy birthday sentiment on the OLW75 card is beyond their abilities. Pish posh. Unless you have a tremor, you just need a gridded acrylic block. Being obsessive compulsive helps, but it isn't necessary.

And yes, I occasionally ruin a card with a crooked sentiment via a hand slip or loss of concentration, but if you center the sentiment on the block and on a line, you'll get it right most of the time. I often pre-stamp on the edge of scrap paper to make sure the sentiment is perfectly straight on the block line. If you're feeling nervous, practice on copy paper cut to card size, but after a few successes, you'll seriously wonder how in the world you ever felt intimidated.

A gridded acrylic block is your best friend! Use it and be straight!

Well, you know what I mean.

If you don't believe me, I can do a tutorial. Just let me know.

And if you do have a tremor, use your computer and an ergonomic mouse pad with a hump to support your wrist. You can do it, too. It's all in the tools.


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And now for some more precise stamping, this time of a triangular nature.

Polka dots and triangles represent the Design Truth that angles love curves. Or curves love angles. Either way, the round dots and the isosceles triangles love each other. They're happy together.

And so are hot pink and orange.

I'm shivering right now, but looking at this card makes my heart all warm and cozy.

THAT'S a great color combo on this cold winter's night!

One-Layer Wednesday 75: Odd Birthday

This week's One-Layer Wednesday is to make a birthday card for a guy. I figured since this week's challenge is an odd number (insert delicate shudder here), we might as well make cards for those odd humans with an aversion to flowers and a fondness for tractors and beer.

Guys are so hard to make cards for, and so I look for inspiration wherever I can find it. I found mine in a fab congratulations card by the amazing Carly Robertson. (I think it was published in Papercrafts but can't find it now!!!!) Her card repeats the congratulations sentiment five times in five colors, and then she tied a ribbon around the bottom. I immediately saw how versatile the repeated sentiment could be.

Here's my version:

Carly's card was on white card stock with bright colors, but I went for guy tones on a flax card base. The guy I made this card for isn't exactly a ribbon guy, so I went with the medallion from PTI's fall set from a few years ago.

And Carly's pretty idea becomes a card perfectly suitable for a guy!

You may take your own inspiration from wherever you wish, but definitely file away Carly's idea for future reference. Seriously versatile and easy, people!!!

OLW75 Rules

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

2. Make a one-layer birthday card for a guy. Remember to keep embellishments to a minimum.

3. Upload your card somewhere on the interwebs, and then link back to it using the InLinkz button on the sidebar of Simplicity.

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


Re: OLW74

I tried to comment on every single entry in OLW74, but a few blogs simply weren't working. I tried several times, so if you didn't get a comment, I'm so sorry!!!!

And the Winner of the Cuttlebug Folders Is...

Carol Lucas!!!!! Congratulations, Carol! Send me your snail mail address and I'll send out your Cuttlebug folders ASAP!

Thanks to everyone who commented!

The Power of Punchy Color Combinations

Yesterday's Sharpie-colored banner cards showed the value of bright, punchy colors on a white card base. Bright, happy colors make bright, happy cards...color definitely affects the mood of a card, perhaps more powerfully than any other design element, and in these cold, gray days of Ohio winter, I find myself drawn to brighter colors more than usual!

Sharpies are extremely vivid, but so are some of the Memento inks...and it's certainly quicker to stamp in color than to color in stamped images. Hero Arts' banner set gives you options for coloring in (as yesterday's cards showed) or for stamping images in color.

To keep this high-contrast color combination from being too cluttered or visually confusing, I used one strongly-patterned banner stamp repeatedly. Mixing and matching patterns with these colors would have been jarring, indeed.

Also note that the banner is small enough that a repetition of five fits perfectly on the standard card base in a landscape orientation...where yesterday's portrait cards fit three. Odd numbers really do work best--generally speaking--especially with clean-and-simple designs.

Happy Tuesday!

Sharpie-Colored Banners and Crafty Chit-Chat

It's been a while since I colored anything, and I decided the Hero Arts banner set needed some bright color to pop off a white background. So I made this little set. So much fun!!!!

I'm a little late on the banner bandwagon, but these certainly are fun, not to mention easy to cut out! Obviously, I didn't bother with shading much (the orange happy birthday flag was a feeble attempt at using a colorless blender, with less than satisfying results).

To attach the string, I used 1/8" scor-tape. Then, I placed the dimensional close to the tape so the top edge wouldn't stick down to the card.

A Note on New Year's Resolutions and Purging and Grab Bags

My crafting resolution this year (and probably for next year, too) is to use all my image stamps again. This idea just wouldn't leave my brain, so there it is. Here are some of the advantages to using every image stamp in your hoard collection.

1. You get your money's worth out of stamps, and it alleviates the guilt of all that money you spent.
2. You stretch your creativity working with older images trying to make them fresh.
3. You find out what stamps work for you and your style...and what stamps don't. This makes future purchases wiser and allows you to purge the useless from your collection, freeing up space for those future purchases.

I've done this once (it took 2.5 years) and am so thrilled with the results that I want to do it again. Feel free to join me if you want!

Speaking of purging.... I was lamenting the possibility of ever getting my craft room satisfactorily organized out loud on Facebook when my online friend V-Grrrl told me what an artist friend of hers did when her art studio became oppressively overcrowded. She boxed  up stuff and sold it on her website as grab-bags!

I am all over this and spent two hours yesterday sorting through stuff...and I'm not finished! These grab bags (or more properly boxes) will go on sale on Simplicity soon (probably next week). Among the items I'm including are ink pads and reinkers (SU, Memories, Ancient Page, Colorbox, VersaMagic), SU markers, cardstock (SU, Mark's Finest, DCWV, even a little Papertrey), punches, a 12-pack set of watercolor crayons, and embellishments like hardware (SU Hodgepodge Hardware, random brads, paper clips, photo turns, etc.), DMC and craft floss, ribbon, buttons, Perfect Pearls, flock, doilies, googlie eyes and such.

A lot of these are items I use but come packaged in absurd quantities.

Will I use 100 googlie eyes in my lifetime? No. Will I use 20? Certainly.

Others are perfectly lovely products that I have a huge selection or duplicates of...such as the watercolor crayons and ink pads. I have over 500 ink pads. This is a ridiculous quantity for a Clean-and-Simple Stamper, not to mention hard to store. Shedding some will give others a chance to try inks they haven't tried. Don't like it? Toss it. Love it? Go buy more!

Finally, each box will contain as many stamps as I can stuff in them. Almost all of these are high-quality brands such as Hero Arts, Northwoods, StampinUp, Memory Box, Papertrey, and such. Yes, I'm getting rid of a few Papertrey sets.

I'm thinking of pricing boxes at $30 (for medium priority flat-rate shipping box through USPS, domestic only) and $40 (includes large priority flat-rate shipping $14.95, domestic only), but each box will contain as much stuff as I can stick in it. You'll definitely get your money's worth!

Now, I know lots of you are like me...you have more stuff than you know what to do with and don't need someone else's excess stuff. BUT there are plenty of people who

a. are just starting out and would love a chance to get a lot of stuff at a huge bargain, or
b. are in a rut and want to jump-start their creativity with random stuff bought so cheap that if it doesn't work for them, they won't feel bad at all, or
c. are Ebay experts who want to repackage the stuff for profit.

I hope y'all have fun with these!

More With Hero Arts

Here's another card with the Hero Arts set To/From Petals, and the fab button is another from Audrie. It has "stitches" around the edge of the button, which adds fun texture that works great with the stamped image.

I used a glue dot in the center of the cut flower, then used tiny dimensionals to pop up each of the petals...an easy way to add interest. I originally intended to add a sentiment, but there just wasn't room.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend. Don't forget about the Cuttlebug folder give-away on this post.

Email Hacked

My email account got hacked. If you received a weird, forwarded email from me containing a link, please delete it!