World Card-Making Day and a Felt Challenge

Tomorrow is World Card-making Day. Too bad it's not also World Landscaping Day, or World Go-to-a-wedding Day, because that's what I'll be doing. But more on that later.

Wendy Johnson and Melissa Phillips have both issued a challenge to create a card using felt. I always think of felt as being warm and snuggly, which is perfect for this week in NW NC... it has been in the 40's the past two mornings (note: if your car battery is on it's last legs, it's a good idea to change it before temps get in the 40's....ugh...).

I wanted to incorporate felt leaves into my card. My poor punches just couldn't handle the thickness of the felt, so I decided to punch the leaves from cardstock (PTI aqua mist) and have the felt popping out from behind. I then stitched the cardstock onto a brown card base. This gives the whole thing a nice poofy feel. I stamped "Happy Autumn" onto a kraft cardstock strip with white ink and embossed with white EP. The "Autumn" stamp is from one of the $1 sets at Target. "Happy" is from PTI's Paper Tray. I adhered the strip to the card front and felt (no pun intended) like it needed one last embellishement on the strip. Scott insisted I must add an acorn. I tried various buttons and brads but he was adamant about the acorn. So I drew an acorn, cut, colored and adhered it with foam tape. I added a little dimensional glaze to make it pop.

Ingredients-
CS: aqua mist (PTI), brown and kraft (paperandmore.com)
Felt: various old scraps from AC Moore or Michaels
Punches: Marvy
Stamps: "Autumn" (Target $1 set), "HAPPY" (PTI Paper Tray)
Ink: White pigment ink from Joann
Dimenional glaze (Ranger)
White embossing powder (Filigree detail)

Tomorrow evening one of my coworkers (and now a good friend) Mary is getting hitched. I made her a card that I'm pretty excited about.

Ingredients-

CS: black and white (paperandmore.com), aqua mist (PTI)

Vellum: (paperandmore.com)

Edge embossing punch (Martha Stewart)

Stamps: "Bring on the honeymoon"(Inkadinkado), "Picture Perfect" (PTI - favor it weddings), Old French Writing (Hero Arts)

Ink: black pigment ink from Joann

Bias tape

I love ribbon. And I love vintagy stuff. So I was excited by the little treat my mom bought for me recently at the local Goodwill. She said "I got you a bag of ribbon for a dollar." Well as it turned out, it was a bag of bias tape, made from some very neat vintage fabrics.

What is bias tape used for? I should know, I took a home ec sewing class in high school, and I do a little sewing still, but I don't remember what bias tape is for. Seems like it is for strengthening seams or hems. I think it would make some really great welting (piping) for pillows.

This weekend I used a little of the red on a Christmas card:

The tree is a new stamp I got at the Enchanted Cottage, a local stamp and scrapbooking store. I embossed it with the new white fine detail embossing powder from PTI on white cardstock. Then I inked over it with PTI Spring Moss. I stamped directly on the bias tape with a dot stamp from Inkadinkado's Tree set and sentiment from PTI's Take a Bough. Ink and small buttons are from Joann, PP is from K&Co, cardstock from paperandmore.com, and bigger button from the flea market.

PTI Blog Hop tonight!

Good evening! If you have landed here through the PTI blog hop then welcome to a relatively new blog! Tonight I'd like to share a little project I've had in mind ever since the Quilter's sampler stamp set came out. I used a PTI gabled box, vellum, and some imagination to create a little stone church with stained glass windows! This example is still kinda rough, but I think it would make a great packaging idea that could also be used as a Christmas decoration throughout the season. The light inside is one of those little battery operated candles ( I don't think a real candle in a paper box would be a very good idea!)

I created the stone look using my cuttlebug and a fiskars embossing plate. The evergreen swags are from Home for the Holidays.

Desktop Organizer

Greetings on a cool clear September Saturday morning. It feels like autumn today! I want to go pick a pumpkin, even though it would rot before Halloween. I also want to wear boots. And go fishing at the beach.

Anyhoo, I wanted to share my exciting little desktop organizer that I bought yesterday at Target. It has 4 triangular sections to store things in the opening on top, plus a small 3-section drawer on one side and a bigger drawer on the other. Another side has elastic strips attached in several places that can hold scissors, rulers, etc. The fourth side is my favorite. It's metal and came with 4 magnets, for use as a small bulletin board. Oh and it spins.

So I had what I thought was a pretty ingenious idea. I have these watchmaker's tins that I bought from Lee Valley Tools last year. I was going to use them for spices but after an "incident" with some paprika I decided the lids were not quite tight enough for spices. But they work fine for storing embellishments like flowers, brads, etc. So my idea was to add magnetic sheeting to the backs of the tins and stick them onto my little organizer! I used my Fiskars large Round n Round squeeze punch to cut circles from the magnetic sheets. The circles happened to be the perfect size to cover the entire back side of a tin. Which is good because if you've worked with magnetic sheets before you know they aren't the strongest magnets in the world. I was able to fit about 12 tins on organizer. Yipee for storage!

Then I had another pretty good idea. Two in one day... must have been the French toast I had for dinner. Well the organizer has a picture frame slot over each drawer. I had one sheet of magnet left, which happened to be just the right size such that when cut in half, each half fit in the photo slot. I removed the clear acrylic sheets they included in the slots to protect your photos, and slid in my magnets. Voila! A spot to stick a few of the smaller spellbinders dies.

And thus I went off to bed, tired from my own brilliance. Ha.

Happy Monday

I can't believe September is already half over. So far I've accomplished a random assortment of activities, including some landscaping work and cleaning up some of my flea market finds. Remember the rusty old watchmaker's cabinets I got in Hillsville?

I've been working a little each night on the three cabinets, sanding, priming and painting. I found this really great spray paint at Big Lots (don't get me started on the fabulousness of Big Lots... that's a whole other post). Kilz brand spray paint in "pistachio cream" for $1.50 a can! Unfortunately I'm a moron and only bought 2 cans, and now they're out and I can't find it anywhere else. So I got the little cabinet completely finished, but the largest cabinet could really use another coat. I think I'll just let it be and hopefully I'll have enough stuff piled on top and around it that it won't be noticeable. Here's the little cabinet after it's makeover:

Those are actually the same knobs... I just discovered the wonders of Brasso. :) Good stuff.

I also have a card to share. At work last week we threw a little shower for my coworker Mary who is getting married October 4. Her wedding colors are black and white, with flowers in autumn leaf colors. We decided to go with a fall leaf theme for the shower. We had an autumn leaf tablecloth and napkins. I made this little shower card to go with the theme:

The picture came out a little blurry. The "Bliss" sentiment is attached with foam dimensionals and embossed around the edge using my Scor-pal. I lined the envelope with some of the leaf paper to match.

Ingredients:

CS - stash; PP - K&Co Autumn Harvest; Flower brads - Heidi Grace; Stamp - "Bliss" from K&Co Weddings;

Swirly splotchy inky cards

The other night I tried out a technique that I'd seen in a recent issue of Stamper's Sampler. I started by smearing ink onto pieces of watercolor paper, then spritzing the inked papers with water. I let the water droplets sit on the paper for a few seconds before blotting with a paper towel. I let the papers dry completely before stamping them for cards. I think they turned out pretty neat.

The buttons are from my recent excursion to the Hillsville flea market and the rick rack is from the parents' attic.

Other supplies:

CS (Martha Stewart);Watercolor paper from Wal-mart; Ranger distress ink (peeled paint & antique linen), other ink by Colorbox; stamps: Birds Galore (Inkadinkado), Paper Tray (PTI).

My sister found the little metallic beads when she was in Germany this summer.

Other supplies:

Kraft CS (paperandmore.com);Watercolor paper from Wal-mart; Ranger distress ink (peeled paint) other ink by K&Co and Colorbox; stamps: Birds Galore (Inkadinkado), Faux Ribbon(PTI), Old French Writing (Hero Arts), Swirls v1 (Autumn Leaves).

Flea Market Finds

This is an old shutter that I will use along with 2 other old shutters to make a room divider. I don't have a picture of the other 2 shutters (I got them at the flea market 2 years ago), but they are also green and have cutouts of a tree on them. This one was only $10.

My other exciting find was a set of 3 watchmaker's cases. I thought these would be perfect for rubber stamps. I have already started sanding them and plan to paint them white to match the craft room. A man wearing daisy duke cuttoff jeans sold them to me.

A closer view...