Monthly Archives: May 2012

May 12 on Twelve (or really, Fourteen!)

16 Wednesday May 2012

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So here it is, my 12 on Fourteen collage for May:

1. M making a picture for C and rubbing glitter all over it – that’s my girl!

2. G, “I don’t want to look at the camera.”

3. M on her scooter, coming home from C’s house, “I don’t want to look at the camera.” (They’re both done with pictures – WITL did them in!)

4. Flowers in a “beautiful vase.”

5. Flowers from M.

6. Flowers from G.

7. Gluten Free Ricotta Brownies – yeah. They’re good.

8. Potty training – going all on his own these days!

9. Hugs for Poppy.

10. Eat Carrots (that’s the name of her new bunny) saying goodbye to Poppy.

11. Blowing on supper – it’s too hot!

12. Jumping on Mama’s bed in new jammies from the Caribbean.

Well, there they are – hopefully next month I’ll actually remember on the 12th!

S.

Tuesday Techniques – Dry Embossing Other Stuff

15 Tuesday May 2012

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One of the fun things about dry embossing is that it works on a multitude of surfaces. Today I’m going to show you a bunch of items that are not paper and the great effects you get when they’re embossed.

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned my love affair with Sticky Back Canvas – if not, consider yourself filled in! Apart from being simply awesome on it’s own and fabulous with a bunch of other techniques, it looks amazing when it’s embossed.

Canvas

Ranger Foil Tape Sheets are super cool anyway – they’re thin adhesive sheets of silver metal – but embossing takes them to another level!

Foil

Vellum and Kraft Glassine are similar in that they sort of “crack” when embossed. The vellum turns white when embossed, and the Glassine has a coating that lightens. Great effect while still keeping the translucent properties of the materials.

Vellum

Glassine

I also like acrylic sheets. Although it’s harder to get a picture of how it looks when embossed, it’s really neat and leaves a great shadow when applied over another surface with foam adhesive.

Acrylic

Finally, Creative Imaginations has wood veneer sheets – honestly, real wood that’s thin enough to cut and emboss! What not to like about this look?

Wood

It was hard to pick what to use on the tag but the wood was calling my name – I was dying to see how it would look with the Dylusions Ink Sprays 🙂 And it looks awesome!

As always, leave me a link in the comments if you try any of the Tuesday Techniques – I’d love to see what you come up with!

S.

12 on Fourteen & a mini…

14 Monday May 2012

Posted by in 12 on Twelve, Mini Album, ScrapBook, Week in the Life 2012

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(note: This is a long one, with lots of pics – you might want a coffee, or wine, or…. whatever, to get you through!)

So…. You all know how much I love the 12 on Twelve photo taking adventure each month, right? I love that little collage of one ordinary day in pictures – no journaling, just snapshots of our life.

And this month I forgot all about it. Sucks. I was bummed. And then that little person in my head went, “knock, knock, knock. Hey dummy! You can take 12 pictures any old day!” Ummm, yeah. Duh!

So today is the day! Anyone want to join in? There’s still lots of time! And my camera battery is dead so I’m crossing my fingers and hoping against hope that absolutely nothing happens for half an hour! 🙂

I’ll have today’s twelve ready for Wednesday.

The other thing that occurred to me was that I haven’t shared any retreat projects with you yet – sorry!

My Week in the Life album is almost done, just a couple of papers left to toss in there and then I’ll photograph and share it. Still love that project and I’m so happy I stuck with the album and finished it (almost!).

The thing is, when that album was done, I had a handful of pics not in there. Either they were cute, but didn’t really tell a story, or I had better ones to tell the story of the day, so they got cut. But, as I said, there were some cute pics – what to do, what to do?

I made G a mini album with the extras and some more of the fabulous Clever Handmade Embroidery Board!

Out for Publication

Love Cards that I Love!

11 Friday May 2012

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And I love them because they are made with the brand spanking new Spring Seasonal Distress Ink Colours – Peacock Feathers, Squeezed Lemonade, and Shaded Lilac. Seriously though, don’t they sound awesome, even before you know what the colours are? Yup. They do!

I wanted to give the inks a test run, see how the colours dried and blended, so I made two super simple cards using the Hero Arts Lotus Background (one of my faves!) and an Ali Edwards for Technique Tuesday set – Love Always Wins.

For the first one, I simply added ink randomly to the stamp, misted with water to allow the inks to blend, and stamped onto watercolour paper. Once it was dry, I added the sentiment and some twine:

For the second, I wanted to see more of the true colour so I swiped each ink pad over the stamp to make three lines of colour. I lightly misted with water to get some slight blending and again stamped onto watercolour paper. Another awesome sentiment from Ali Edwards and some twine and I called it done:

So…. simple, but I love the colours and the texture of the watercolour paper added just enough interest!

Have a great weekend, see some of you at The Paperie tomorrow for the sale and Taffety’s baked goodies!

S.

Things on Thursday…

10 Thursday May 2012

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1. The Paperie is having a *huge* day on Saturday! It’s their anniversary so almost everything will be tax free, the May club kit is going live (and I have it on good authority that it’s amazing this month!), there will be a fabulous bake sale, and there will be a Mother’s Day card Make ‘n’ Take! You should definitely all go – it’s going to be a great, and yummy, day!

2. Speaking of the bake sale at The Paperie, the person doing it is none other than Krista! Along with being a talented scrapbooker, she’s also an incredible baker! I bought some things from her shop, Taffety, at Christmas and they were to die for! For instance, I am not a caramel fan, too sweet and sticky for me, but she made these Salted Caramel Shortbreads and I think I ate the whole container myself – oops! She’ll have those there on Saturday, along with Red Velvet Cheesecake Brownies, and more. Yummy!

3. Check this out. Goes along very nicely with yesterday’s post and is an awesome technique that I have to try!

4. And speaking of the Spring Seasonal Distress Inks  – they could not be much better. An awesome yellow, a beautiful lilac, and the most incredible teal, called Peacock Feathers! Going to be my new fave for sure!

I swiped each across Specialty Stamping Paper, then pressed down the ink pad at the top to show the more intense colour. Love! Check out this great video showing how these colours fit into the existing palette.

5. One of the best tools I have in my scrapbooking arsenal was free. You can go to the Ranger website and, for most of their products, you can download label sheets and Colour Charts. I use these all the time and people are always asking me where I got them – here they are! The charts are great for knowing what colours you have left to buy and for knowing what colour ink to use; the labels make is super easy to  find the ink colour you’re looking for!

Have a good one – back tomorrow with a couple of easy cards using the new Distress Ink!

S.

Tuesday Techniques – Dry Embossing

08 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by in ScrapBook, Tuesday Techniques

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Today’s technique is super simple but I will be expanding on it over the next couple of weeks. Let’s talk about dry embossing!

You will need:

Supplies

An embossing machine (I use a Cuttlebug), embossing folders, ink, and a blending tool.

First, put your tag or paper in the folder:

Before you ask, I cut a slit in the top of my folder so the tag would fit the way I wanted. Hey, Tim said it was ok so I’m going with it!

Second, run the tag and folder through your machine, using the sandwich specified in your user’s manual.

For the Cuttlebug you will need the A plate, B plate, embossing folder with paper, then another B plate.

And this is what you get on the other side!

Next, use your ink blending tool to add colour to the tag, concentrating on the embossed areas. As you can see below, the embossed pattern really stands out once you start layering colour:

Finally, finish up your tag and enjoy! I always make sure to add brown to the edges and blend colours for more definition and depth.

Pretty, hey? I think the embossing just adds another layer to the texture and interest of the tag.

Next week, I’ll show you some different materials that you can emboss!

Make sure you leave me a link if you try this out – I’d love to see what you make!

S.

G and his funny sayings…

08 Tuesday May 2012

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G (while eating ice cream from Bergs): Ummmmm, deee-licious!

(on a side note, we started toilet training today – so far, not as horrific as I was expecting, only one major cleanup! Fingers crossed for tomorrow…)

M and her funny sayings…

08 Tuesday May 2012

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M: Daddy, I love you. So much, to the stars and back!”

S.

Weekend Review

07 Monday May 2012

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I spent this past weekend, from Thursday night until Sunday evening, at The Paperie Spring Retreat. It’s held twice a year at The Wilds on Salmonier Line and there are normally about 70 women scrapping, talking, laughing, drinking, eating, laughing, creating, demoing, laughing…. We have a great time though we do come home pretty tired (notice I didn’t mention sleeping in that list above!)

This year The Paperie added 5 demos given by the Creative Team – mine was on Alcohol Ink and everyone loved the Marbled Technique I showed you a few weeks ago:

Fun with Alcohol!

Thanks to Peggy for the pics while I was demoing! And a side note: see that girl in blue, leaning on her elbows? That’s Colleen – go check out her blog too, she’s pretty awesome!

Anyway, a very special and exciting product came in right as The Paperie girls were packing for the retreat, so they brought it out to sell and asked me to demo that too! The Dylusions Ink Spray from Ranger!

pretty……

To say I was excited that these finally arrived is an understatement! I went a little crazy, to be honest – Krista called them “scrappers crack!” 🙂 But they’re just so pretty:

Seriously though, the colours are unlike anything else I’ve tried, and Ranger has perfected their misting bottles – from Dylusions to Perfect Pearls Mists to Adirondack Color Wash, they spray beautifully, never clog or leak, and just simply work right.

Graham, I wish you were here – you and I could have a fun and messy blast with these babies!

I was so excited to get my hands on them that I made the covers of my Get Messy album immediately:

front cover…

back cover…

The colours look fairly muted and pastel here, but that’s because I kept blotting and drying the cover. When the mists were originally sprayed, they were super bright and intense – maybe I’ll try to put together a blog post showing them.

Even without my newfound love in hand, the weekend was amazing! I did crash today – thank goodness for nap time! – and I have a feeling tonight will be an early one as well.

I’ll be back tomorrow with a new Tuesday Techniques Series – I hope you all want to learn about fun things to do with dry embossing!

S.

Some crafty goodness…

04 Friday May 2012

Posted by in Cards, Classes, ScrapBook, Techniques, Yearlong Album

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…as promised! Here it is!

Last weekend we had a birthday party to attend and I had to teach the Yearlong Class at The Paperie that day as well. Unfortunately, I had no card made for the party before hand. Oops! Luckily, as I was teaching one of the two bonus cards we made…

… Cathie mentioned the Distress Stain splats would make good monsters. Ummm, yes, they totally would! And I had coloured googly eyes at home – awesome! Here’s how that 3 minute card turned out:

Monsters!!!

So yeah, I totally *love* it! And I think Pine Needles might be my new favourite colour – see that fantastic greeny blue guy? He makes me happy… 🙂

The other card we did on Sunday was made using The Crafter’s Workshop Mini Fragmented Flower Stencil and mists.

I get a lot of people asking me how to mist properly and I always say to press on the nozzle. Seriously.

It seems to me that a lot of people are scared they’ll get too much colour or spray in the wrong place or something and they gingerly press down on the nozzle. Slowly. And that’s guaranteed to get you splats and drops, not mist. So just give your mist a good, solid press, people – go for it! And if you’re worried about too much colour, place your paper in a box, aim the mist at the back of the box, press down, and just let the mist drift down on your page. It’s much finer this way, but you’ll have more control about the intensity but since it’s mist, it will go where it wants, for the most part – you have very little control there, my friends!

All that being said, I thought we should have some misting practice in class! I used Adirondack Colour Wash in my sample – I love the colours and intensity of these. The trick with mist and stencils is to go light. The more mist, the more liquid, the more seepage under the stencil. So, go light and get a great impression! And use colours that will blend nicely together! And if you don’t think you have enough colour down, trust me, you do – do not spray again, it will be fine! 🙂

Anyway, simple cards, both done in about 5 minutes each, but fun techniques that can be used for a bunch of different things! If you want to see more techniques with Distress Stains, check out my Paperie Picks post from last week.

Have a fabulous weekend everyone – I’m at the Retreat and I know I’m having a great time!

S.