Furry Distraction

Y'all.

Our hearts grew ten sizes yesterday.

How can such a small bundle of fur take over our lives so completely?

Love, people. Love. That's the most powerful force in the universe. This furball has his own gravitational field of love, pulling us in just like his big sister has done.

He's a baby and has a lot to learn, but oh, the fun times we'll have!

Daisy welcomed Cooper to the pack with a wagging tail and lots of excitement...and gentleness. She plays with him and sniffs him and follows him around. She let him drink from her water dish at the same time and basically seems to be telling us, "It's about dang time you got me a furry sibling!"

Cooper is a big boy...the largest pup his breeder has ever seen from her dogs. He weighs almost 18 pounds, three pounds more than his brother and five more than his sister. He's just eight weeks old. It'll be interesting to see how big he gets.

His temperament could not be more chill. On the trip home from Toledo yesterday, he showed he is by far the most laid-back puppy we've ever brought home, looking around, wondering what was up, happy to be held. When Daisy first approached him at home, he flopped onto his back and submitted immediately. The only bad sign...he is already trying to dig in the grass. George was not amused.

Time to google "keep dogs from digging in yard." We've never had a digger before.

If posting is spotty for the next few weeks, you'll understand why.

Mercy, grace, peace, and most of all...love,
Susan

Oh, Look! Flying Pigs!

As many of you know, I've held out against the whole die-cut craze because my elder son is going to college next year and I struggle mightily with G.T.H.I.A. Syndrome.

Got. To. Have. It. All.

This is why I won't count my ink pads...I don't want to know how many I have. In fact, I bought seven new ink pads today, and since they fit in my storage, it's all good. No guilt, no regret.

But there has to be a limit to the limitless accumulation of craft supplies. Right?

My friend Eva had different ideas. Today, we had coffee and went to Marco's, where she kept talking about dies, which made me wonder if she remembered I don't have a die-cut machine.

Oh, she remembered.

And gave me a Cuttlebug.

See the pigs flying all over the place? Aren't they adorable? Of course they are. The woman who said she'd never have a die-cut machine is eating her words...and they taste AMAZING.

Thank you, Eva. THANK YOU!!!!!

Of course I came straight home and started playing with the embossing folders and dies Eva kindly included with her over-the-top generous gift.

And made this.

Mostly white cards are hard to photograph. This card
isn't gray in real life. 

The fun banner die is from StampinUp, and the Hello was created using Papertrey's Simple Alphabet. I stippled Archival magenta hue on the edge of the card base and glued the embossed panel directly to the card. The banner is (obviously) popped up on dimensionals. The pink bling carries the pink from the edge of the card into the design and emphasizes the curve of the banner.

So thanks to Eva, I now have to go shopping to make sure the Cuttlebug gets used to the fullest extent possible. Let's see if I can exercise restraint.

What are the odds?

Not good, I imagine.

What are your recommendations?

Mercy, grace, peace, love, gratitude, and an attempt at restraint,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Papertrey Simple Alphabet
ink: Archival magenta hue
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: stipple brush, rhinestones, StampinUp Framelits Bitty Banners, Darice Butterfly Flower, dimensionals

From Meh to Marvelous

After seeing Sylvia Blum's card on page 20 of Take Ten, I knew I needed to pull out Papertrey's First Fruits and use bling in the gap on the wheat stamp.

Sylvia Blum's Fabulous Card

Using bling instead of twine or some other embellishment or a sentiment (as PTI's stamp is designed to do) is BRILLIANT.
See what I did there? Brilliant? Bling?

And of course, I love Sylvia's use of white-on-white and the clean simplicity of her card.

Anyway, the gap in the PTI wheat is far too wide for small bling, and I don't have a die for a banner and such, so I came up with this drab imitation of Sylvia's lovely card instead.

Meh.

White-on-white looked odd, so I opted for kraft, which looks drab with the brown bling and soft apricot ink. The apricot is not bright enough, and the brown bling and kraft don't provide enough interest or contrast.

I truly felt that I'd not done Sylvia's card justice.

So I changed up the colors and hit on a complementary color scheme that left me giggling with glee.

Marvelous! 

Note how much fresher the complementary color scheme is than the more monochromatic scheme. Archival saffron and StampinUp Baja breeze add interest, zest, energy to the same design. Using more white also pays proper homage to Sylvia's bright design much better than the kraft possibly could. 

I like this so much that I made a coordinating envelope!

So if you're ever looking at a card that feels blah or cliche, consider a change of color scheme. To add energy, choose a complementary color scheme.

Not a bad save, eh? And many thanks to Sylvia for her fabulous inspiration.

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Papertrey First Fruits
ink: Archival saffron, StampinUp Baja breeze, Hero Arts soft apricot
paper: PTI kraft, white
accessories: Copics, clear bling

A Highly Determined Christmas

While it can be a fun challenge to use non-holiday stamps on holiday cards, some stamps couldn't really be used for anything other than holiday cards.

The vocabulary word for today is determined. Highly-determined stamps are limited in their meaning...and often not very versatile. Stamps that are less determined can apply to more varied themes and designs.

Polka dots and most alphabet sets, for example, are not very determined. You can use them for all sorts of themes and purposes. Cross, charity ribbon, and leg-lamp stamps, however, are highly determined and automatically generate specific meanings in our minds.

Today's cards use a set from Hero Arts that's highly determined: Greatest Gift.

The main image of the stable and star can't really be used for any other theme than Christmas. It's also a fairly large image that will dominate any card featuring it, making it very difficult to work with (especially for us clean-and-simple stampers). So I challenged myself to use it two different ways.

First up, a red-and-white card.

Block stamps like this can be hard to ink and stamp cleanly, so I used my MISTI and was able to re-ink the stamp several times until the image looked perfect. The simple white matting and single piece of bling on the star keep everything minimalist, and the red unifies the design.

How very satisfying!

Next up, a blast of blue.

Here, the background was made using distress inks (salty ocean and tumbled glass) and inking tools for a gradation of bright blue. The manger scene is in simple black pigment ink (Memento Luxe) for opaque saturation. The popped panel and small bling add interest and keep it clean.

It's hard to make religious holiday cards without highly-determined stamps of the holy family, manger, or wise men. The exception might be a star card. Stars aren't as determined as mangers.

And I'm determined to go to bed now.

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Hero Arts Greatest Gift
ink: Hero Arts red royal; Memento Luxe black; Distress salty ocean and tumbled glass
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: rhinestones, craft foam, glue, Tim Holtz mini inking tools

Inspired by Rosemary Dennis

Well, that's a title I've used before. Rosemary Dennis frequently publishes her work in Take Ten, and the latest issue has a fabulous card by her that jumped right off the page and into my imagination.

Take Ten, fall 2017, page 102
If you can get this issue, get it!

Isn't Rosemary's card delightful?!? I love the pinks, the verse, the sequins. What a lovely, balanced layout.

Now, I (of course) took it in a little different direction after examining my stamps and settling on a set from Clearly Besotted called Christmas Poinsettia and Papertrey's Happiest of Holidays. Remember that when you substitute stamps, you might have to tweak the design to make the end product work.

Note that my card retains the tall sentiment and the basic layout of Rosemary's card, but my choice of the holly stamp eliminated the need to create the collage effect of the inspiration piece. That holly is a busy stamp...adding any other layers of background would have created visual chaos.

It's quite busy enough, I should say.

The sentiment, with its combination of a few too many fonts, adds to the busy feel of my card. PTI's Happiest of Holidays seemed like a great purchase at the time, but I've struggled to use it successfully. It certainly works here, though.

To bring some red into the sentiment, I stamped the sentiment in red on a piece of scrap cardstock, cut the banner portion out, and popped it up over the Memento Luxe espresso truffle banner. This brightened the whole card and unified the left and right sides through color...which is often the easiest way to unify a design.

Many, many thanks to Rosemary for giving me the inspiration to make a card a touch out of my comfort zone.

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Clearly Besotted Christmas Poinsettia; PTI Happiest of Holidays, Polka Dot Basics
ink: Archival leaf green; Memento Luxe espresso truffle, love letter
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: scissors, dimensionals

Winners, and a Card That Proves a Point

Since only two people participated in the challenge, I decided to send BOTH a little treat. Will Marianne and Elsie please email your snail-mail addresses to me (susanraihala at roadrunner dot com) so I can get your treats to you. I hope the rest of you will check out Marianne and Elsie's cards and leave a little love in the form of a comment...their cards are creative and delightfully inspiring!

Also, someone asked if Papertrey sold punches. Back in the days before everyone became die-crazy, Papertrey offered two punches to accompany their set Heart Prints. The punches are no longer on the website. Instead, the stamp set and a small die set are available. This makes me sad, but those of us who are holding out on die cutters just have to accept that we will never be as cool as those with die cut machines, and that's okay. We find other ways. Hearts really aren't that hard to cut out.

Now, today's point. Sometimes, I try to force a card to fit some sort of preconceived idea of what I want. And sometimes this works great. Other times, it takes a day or two of sitting on it for me to realize that I'm making the creative process harder than it needs to be.

Perhaps you can relate?

Anyway, I tried really, really hard to make today's card with three hearts...one large and two smaller...to follow the rule of threes and to create a visual triangle. The three hearts took full advantage of the spectrum on the Kaleidacolor Spectrum pad and the IDEA was so incredibly cool.

In my head.

In reality, the design simply would not come together. Very frustrating, until I decided to simplify. Then, it made perfect sense...from a simplicity point of view.

The large and colorful heart, used without following the rule of threes, combined with a fun black banner, was all the card really needed. I did follow the rule of thirds by placing the heart and sentiment along the imaginary line marking one-third the way down the card, though.

So glad I finally got there.

No new pictures of Cooper, but it's seven days until we pick him up in Toledo. I can't wait!

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan


Supplies
stamps: Papertrey Heart Prints, Hero Arts, Thank You Messages
paper: Papertrey white
ink: Kaleidacolor spectrum pad, Archival black
accessories: heart punch, dimensionals, scissors

Big Happy

Clearly Besotted's Happy Days set features the word happy in several display fonts and then accompanying words in a very clean sans serif font. It's a fun and versatile set for many different occasions.

Today, I'm focusing on another anniversary card. The heart background from Simon Says Stamp's Falling Backgrounds set was inked up with Hero Arts ombre pink-to-red pad. The pad is a standard size, and the stamp is almost twice as long, so I inked one end, flipped the stamp, and finished inking it. If you look closely, you'll see the fade from red to pink and back to red on the very bottom heart. Note that the reds form a visual triangle of sorts. Love that!

I must say, those Hero Arts ombre pads are delightful.

And if you're bored of seeing just Cooper, here's a picture of him flanked by his siblings. That's Archie on the left, and Izzy's on the right. Too much cuteness!!!!

Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan

Supplies
stamps: Clearly Besotted Happy Days, Simon Says Stamp Falling Backgrounds
ink: Hero Arts ombre, Memento Luxe love letter and black
paper: Papertrey white
accessories: craft foam, glue