Monochrome Butterfly Grid

I've had readers ask if I eyeball stamp placement or have a strategy for getting things in the right place. The answer is simple: gridded acrylic blocks and a practiced eye. I use the grids on acrylic blocks religiously, especially for sentiments (which I generally pre-stamp on the edges of scrap paper to verify the straightness thereof), but sometimes, with clear image stamps, I just eyeball it.

The problem is, you rarely see my crooked efforts because I don't post them. So, for the record...I stamp crookedly sometimes, even when I'm extra careful and using a gridded block or stamp positioner. And I don't generally get upset about it. I am human, not a machine, and I make mistakes. It's only paper.

Repeat.

It's only paper.

And now for a butterfly grid that happened because I have a gridded acrylic block and am not afraid to use it.

Oh, yeah. LOVE the fact that Memento now has three graduated shades of orange--light, medium, and dark. I wish they did that for all the colors.

Hello, Memento folks. Are you listening?

Hope you all had a lovely weekend!


Supplies
stamps: Papertrey Ink Beautiful Butterflies
ink: Memento
paper: PTI white
accessories: orange rhinestones

Can a Stamper Have Too Many Butterfly Stamps?

No. Absolutely not.

As soon as I saw PTI's Beautiful Butterflies, I knew I had to have it.

Had.

To.

Have.

It.

Because really, a girl can't have too many butterfly stamps, and none of mine were solid, block images anyway. And ever since Audrie sent me the Tattered Angels glimmer mist, I've wanted to use the marker-and-mist technique to make shimmery butterflies.

And now I can shimmer those butterflies to my heart's content.

YAY!!!!

You'll notice that this layout is basically the same as my last butterfly card...only without the text border stamp. Using the technique and a more involved sentiment is enough. No border needed.
To get this watery effect, ink the image with markers (I used two shades of pink from Memento), spritz the inked stamp, let the colors blend a bit, and then stamp it to heavy paper. This technique works mainly with solid images, and don't be afraid if the stamp seems downright drippy. I found that if it wasn't watery enough, the stamped image looked blotchy (like it was sponged), not swirly and soft. Here's a technique where precise tends to look wrong...loose and free are the what you want.

Sorry for the late posting. We lost power yesterday around 5:00 PM and didn't regain it until 1:00 PM today (Saturday). In our area of Ohio, over 450,000 were without power this morning. That was some storm...80 mph straight-line winds and some serious thunder and lightning. Everyone is fine, though. Our only losses were a patio umbrella and the contents of our fridge and freezer.

Fortunately, my stamping area gets AM sunlight, so I got some quality stamp time this morning when there was nothing else to do!

I hope all who were in the path of the storm (there were lots of us!) have electricity and no serious injuries or property damage. Let us know how it was in your area!

Fresh Zig Zags and Baby Stamps

The chevron trend is one that I've happily skipped, but there is a chevron-patterned hexagon in the Happy Hexagon set, so I decided to get a little happy with my favorite color combination: Pear Tart (*giggle*) and Bahama Blue.

This was fun, and relatively easy to line up, although if you look closely, there are a few wider gaps. Most people wouldn't even notice, though, so I declare placement with this set is pretty easy.

SusieH asked if I'd found a baby set I like yet. The answer is, sadly, no. Honestly, I have pretty much given up, especially because I've entered that time of life when my friends are finished having children, but their children are not yet old enough to have children of their own. Eventually, I'll have to start searching again, and hopefully by then SOMEONE will have released a nice block-image stamp set for babies that isn't too cutesy or cliche. In the meantime, I have a few baby-themed stamps for emergencies.

What are your favorite baby stamps? What style of baby stamps do you like best?



stamps: Papertrey Happy Hexagons, some other set I forget which
ink: Memento
paper: PTI
accessories: none

Getting on Trend with $5

I have a confession. I'm a trend lagger. When some new trend comes down the pike, I tend to lag behind, to wait, to stand back, to hold my elbow with one hand and press my forefinger to my lips with the other and cock my head in puzzlement.

Should I jump on this trend?

Is it me?

Is it worth the money?

What should I do?

Hem.

Haw.

Hee Haw.

By the time I decide to commit, the trend is soooo yesterday. Doesn't matter. I either like it (chandeliers) or I don't (owls); I'm either happy to have bought into it (text backgrounds) or regret the purchase with a chagrinned sigh (lamps).

Which brings me to hexagons and the glory of $5 stamp sets.

Papertrey is offering more of these petite sets that allow you to play with a trend without a major commitment. A $5 set is sort of a friend with benefits, if you will. You don't have to marry a trend anymore. You are free to play around with it, satisfy the urge, and move on without guilt or shame.

I love $5 sets.

And the tiny set Happy Hexagons (seriously?) has satisfied my urge regarding this bee-inspired shape. I've played around with it and am so glad I bought it. Plus, it pushed my order into the free shipping range, and that was SO WORTH IT.

The stem is from Faux Ribbon and the leaf is from Green Thumb, both also by Papertrey. The petals are Memento's new Moroccan orange. Happy, indeed.

What trends have you thoroughly enjoyed? Which have you regretted investing in?

More Thank You Cards

These three cards started out as one layer and became two layers when I stamped one just a little high on the card. I decided to fix it by layering, and liked it so much better that I cut down the other two as well.

Sometimes, one layer just isn't enough.







Yesterday's post provoked a question about the pink I used on the shell card. It's VersaMagic Malted Mauve...which is sort of a muddy pink that always makes me think about sea shells. I know I've used it before for shell stamps, and I used it above as well.

Don't forget to check out  Cheryl's blog for this week's One-Layer Wednesday Challenge!!!!

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts (Antique Engravings, and some sentiment set whose name I can't remember)
ink: VersaMagic and Brilliance
paper: PTI
accessories: dimensionals

I Need Thank You Notes and to Get Some Things off My Chest

In cleaning my craft area yesterday (and no, it's not organized yet, just surface clean), I discovered that I had very few thank you notes in my stash. So I went to work by pulling out Hero Arts' Antique Engravings (a clear set), Papertrey's Text Style, and a Thank You sentiment from Clear and Simple Stamps.

Same layout, different card stock and colors, and completely different looks....









Which do you like better...the soft and natural one or the happy orange one? I vote orange, myself, but there are situations when the softer one might be more appropriate.

Either way, I LOVE stamp sets that have at least three images in different sizes so making visual triangles is as easy as 1-2-3. Antique Engravings has five butterflies and three shells...but only two hummingbirds, both oriented to the right and the same except for size. I'm always annoyed by this hummingbird shortcoming when I pull out this set, but I suppose they can only put so many stamps in one set.

Yesterday after my stamping time, both my recent orders arrived. I placed both orders on Friday, so that was amazing service from Creative Play Stamps and Papertrey. Yay!!!

The order from Creative Play Stamps contained eight of the new Memento dew drop inks and a free dauber. Yay!!! I'd already picked up four of the inks at Michael's a few weeks ago. Here's my Memento storage drawer, all stocked up.

Aren't these so tidy and pretty lined up like this?

I'm not sure about some of these new colors, though. They are so...dark. The olive grove and northern pine are particularly dark, as are the new blues and the purple. Pistachio is nice, and so is the gray flannel, a good alternative to black for sentiments on some cards as it's darker than London fog and more substantial. Morocco is a bright, clean reddish orange. There's now a good medium brown, too.

But there's still no medium blue or pink, and no aqua shade at all. Espresso truffle looks like a dull black and I'm not exactly sure I'll ever find a use for it. I'm also not sure I'll be buying the markers for most of these as the markers are generally a few shades darker than the pads anyway.

My second order was from Papertrey Ink...and my first order with the new packaging for the stamps. Which is to say no packaging. Which brings me to a deeply personal rant about clear stamp storage.

When you're mildly obsessive, standardization in industries is a delight. I love Microsoft products not because they work well (sometimes they don't) but I can find my way around MS programs no problem. I never feel lost or disorganized with them. Clear stamp storage has no industry standard, and that drives me nuts.

I have an extra stash of jewel cases for storing stamps, so it's not a problem for me that PTI is no longer including storage with sets, but I want to go on record and say I HATE CHANGING STORAGE SYSTEMS MIDSTREAM. I have dozens and dozens of PTI sets in jewel cases. In January I bought some pretty green boxes to store them in...boxes that fit the jewel cases perfectly and still have a little room to grow my collection.

I DON'T LIKE jewel cases for storing clear stamps because the stamps stick together, little ones fall out of the opening in the case, and the case hinges break or pop apart annoyingly.

BUT changing now to DVD cases (which I also don't like for different reasons) would be horrifyingly expensive and time-consuming. Plus, it would take way more space and render my cute green boxes obsolete. I invested in jewel-case storage, not because I like jewel cases but because that's what PTI gave out and I would rather buy stamps, not storage, thank you very much.

I kinda prefer the Hero Arts clear folders, but not by much. They have images on them, so you know where to put the stamps and can see at a glance if one is missing. I never could get the PTI image stickers on neatly, nor would stamps fit in the larger sets where their image was. The Hero Arts's system is also delightfully simple and compact...it doesn't take much space to store them. I throw them in the drawers with my wood-mounted stamps and can always find them.

But stamps can fall out (especially small ones). And Hero keeps coming out with different sizes of folders...very annoying to store in an obsessive-compulsive fashion.

I feel better for having said all this, and really, I know this is completely a First World Problem not worthy of anyone's time or whining. PTI is free to improve whatever they want whenever they want, and no doubt the new storage system is vastly superior to the jewel-case system. But for now, I'm going to make do with my cheapo jewel cases and pray for patience.

Because the PTI sets I ordered are drop-dead fabulous and I can't wait to ink them up!

A Fishy Carolina Birthday

First of all, thank you all who left comments or sent emails regarding the last post about Karen. Sincerely, thank you.

Second, a happier event is upcoming this July...my uncle Darius's birthday. He's a HUGE University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) fan, something that this Duke graduate in no way holds against him. In fact, I'm far more civilized about his aberrant loyalty than I am about my husband's...Darius doesn't rub my nose in it when Duke loses like George does.

Ah, what does the Bible say about a house divided? George and I just celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary in Hawai'i, so I guess a house divided by shades of blue can, indeed, stand.

But during basketball season...just barely.

Anyway, Uncle Darius has a birthday coming up, so I wanted to make him a celebratory card with a whole lotta Carolina blue. Darius is also the proud owner of a condo at a North Carolina beach, where he enjoys throwing his grandchildren in the surf every summer. Plus, I just got back from Kaua'i and feel fishy myself.

So I used my A Muse stamps to make this punny Carolina blue card:




To make the kelp and solid fish look watery, I slid the ink pads over the stamps. If you look closely, you'll see the streaky effect. I liked it. The stamped panel alone on the blue looked weird, and a dark mat looked gloomy. A white mat gives some dimensional interest and keeps the whole thing nice and light.

The focal point fish is supposed to be Darius. He will smile.

Every now and then, there's a perfect opportunity to customize a card for a particular person by using specific images or color combinations or themes. What is the last card you customized? What did you do?

Supplies
stamps: A Muse
ink: Memento
paper: SU bashful blue, PTI white
accessories: Memento Markers, dimensionals