Today's card is for this week's "learn a new technique" challenge on SCS ..... the technique used here is a viewmaster card .... you turn the wheel poking out of the left side of the card and the items in the thought bubble change. This was fun to make but you do need to concentrate when you are stamping your images on your wheel .... mine isn't perfect but it will do. I didn't want my card to be stark white so I have distressed it a little using tea dye distress ink.
You need to attach your wheel to your card using a brad so that the wheel can move around freely, I found these cut micro brads the other day while I was shopping so I decided to use one of those for this card as I thought that would be a little harder to see then a normal sized brad. I needed something in the top right corner of the card so had to use my photo corner punch didn't I ;) ...... I love that punch!
Here is a photo of what I put on my wheel ....... I have a feeling this girl will be doing a lot of spending ;) !
Recipe:
Stamps: Girl - Rubber Romance; Thought Bubble - Alias Smith & Rowe; Born to Shop - Stamp It (Aust); Credit Card - CC Rubber Stamps; Shoes & Say Charge - My Favorite Things; If shoe fits - Hampton Arts
Paper: Real Red - SU; Black; White
Other: Black Ink; Tea Dye Distress Ink; Photo Corner Punch; CM Circle Templates; Black Brads; White Micro Brad.
I love doing beach scenes so it wasn't a big surprise for me when I decided to do a beach scene for this week's challenge I do with a group of friends on SCS. This week's challenge was to make a *Hot* card ...... how we interpreted this was up to us ...... it could be hot like a sunny summer day, hot like red hot chillie pepper, hot like on fire etc .... I think you get the idea. Of course I decided to go with the hot like a sunny summer day. As it is winter here summer seems such a nice thought ..... I am sure once summer is here I will be wanting cooler weather .... you know how we can be at times ;)Most of the stamps used in this scene are from High Hopes stamps .... they have some fun stamps. For this scene I started by stamping the little boy first and masking him and then I stamped the beach scene. I then stamped the girl, the little boy and the crab onto a scrap of white card. I cut the girl out and removed her legs (ouch!) and cut the boy out except for his spade. After coloring everything I placed the girl in the water and attach the boy image over the original one using foam tape. The crab I attached to the lower right side of the card and the sun was stamped onto the top right hand corner.
For the verse I used I stamped it onto so saffron card and used my word window punch to punch out just the last two words and attached it to the card just under the boy. I also used my photo corner punch to create a photo corner for the left side of the card.
Recipe:
Stamps: Boy, Girl, Crab & Beach Scene - High Hopes Stamps; Sun - Posh; Verse - Krafty Lady; Texture Cube - Lucy's Stamps
Paper: So Saffron, Ballet Blue & Pumpkin - Stampin' Up; White; Black
Other: Black Ink; Celeste Blue Impress Ink; Marvy Marker #43; Word Window Punch & Photo Corner Punch - SU; Blue Brads; Foam Tape
This card is for this weeks featured stamper who is Jen70 on SCS. I am so pleased Jen is the featured stamper this week as she does a lot for SCS including hosting the limited supply challenge every week and she was the one who started the featured stamper challenge. I have such fun every week participating in this challenge ...... it can be hard deciding what card to case .... but it is fun all the same.
When I was looking through Jen's gallery this afternoon ..... I noticed she had a few cards with a similar layout so I decided that would be the one I would case. You can see Jen's card I used for inspiration here.
Here are the changes I made:
- changed the colors
- changed the images
- change the eyelets to brads (I wanted to play with new brads ;) )
- changed the ribbon
Recipe:
Stamps: Garden Whimsey - Stampin' Up
Paper: Real Red & Old Olive - SU; White; Orange
Other: Only Orange SU ink; Dark Moss Fluid Chalk; Red Brads; Red Grosgrain Ribbon; Creative Memories Cutting System; Foam Tape
Well it's the weekend again, so it is time for another of Beate's weekend sketch challenges. For this one I decided to use one of my Rubber Romance stamps ...... I don't think I have used this one before, so I thought it was about time I did.
I stamped the image onto my white card and also on to a piece of my DP and cut out the dress & bag and paper pieced it to the image. The edges of all my card layers have all been distressed using my distressing tool .... so easy! I need a piece of ribbon to match the cranberry crisp card so I colored my white grosgrain ribbon with one of my alcohol markers ...... I am sooo happy with how well it matches! I added some chocolate colored brads to to top section of the card .... boy is this color hard to get ..... I have been looking all over the place lately as I have found I have been wanting to use this color more & more and can I find any in a small size .... no ..... fortunately I have a few that I got somewhere mixed with a few other colors but they are almost gone ....... I shall keep searching!
Recipe:
Stamps: Girl - Rubber Romance; Verse - Papertrey Ink
Paper: Cranberry Crisp & Chocolate Chip - SU; White; Floral Crochet Pink - Sandylion
Other: Black Ink; Sepia Whispers Ink; Circle Punches; Paper Piercing tool & Mat; Distressing Tool; White Grosgrain Ribbon; Brown Brads
This week for my flashback Friday ..... I thought we would take a look at some things I created a few years ago using the sizzix. Way before the cuttlebug and all the other popular die cutting machines that are now on the market there was the "Sizzix" ...... it was the very first personal die cutting machine and boy have they come a long way since then. But when this machine first came out it was soooo exciting to be able to die cut what you wanted.
As I am sure you have all figured out by now ..... I am a rubber stamper!!! ..... I don't do scrap booking, although I have done and could if I wanted to, I just chose not to. So when I got my die cutting machine it was with the idea of combining it somehow with my stamping. One of the things a friend and I used to love to do is to create little mini cards out of the die but folding a piece of card in half and placing it just inside the edge of the cutting line so that when we die cut the card we got a folded die cut piece. All these samples in this post have been done using this technique ........ of course it would depend on the individual die where that found would be.
One of my favourite dies to die cut was the sizzix bath, it was fun looking through my personal catalog to discover what would look good in the bath. This is one advantage of having all the stamps you own stamped in some sort of catalog .... I would die cut the bath (or other die) and then look through my book to find what might work ..... it was amazing just what images would work. Above is a cute bee from Dawnstar Studio, the brush etc were from other companies that I just put with the bee to make it look more realistic.
This photo might look a little fuzzy sorry, it was taken years back .... I think I have improved a bit since then. This is another bath die, this time combined with a cute girl from Azadi, originally she was supposed to be in a ring swimming but with careful cutting and placement she looks like she is in the bath .... the soap was again an added extra for this one.
This is an old Penny Black Hedgehog stamp, I think one of the first ones ..... hedgies sure have come a long way since then too. This time I combined the hedgie with the sizzix tree die, I added some apples from the image to the tree to make it fit into this scene.
This little teddy from Stampendous (from way way back .... I think it is praying from memory) certainly looks like he can drive a car... what ya think? 
This little boy is from Printworks and is the little (or maybe big ;) ) brother to Sarah Jane ..... I used her on a card recently.... these stamps come as a 3 parter (new word!) .... you get the head, the arms and the legs and they are fun to create various poses ...... here Joshua makes a good train driver!
A bit of fishing anyone???? Sorry I can't remember the company of this one .... I think it comes from NZ from memory ......... he liked sitting on the boat trying to get in a spot of fishing!
This is just a small sampling of the fun things you can do with dies, I am sure not just sizzix dies, this is just what I am focusing on today. Hope you had fun looking.
As it is the beginning of August it's time for me to sort my rebus swap for this month and send the cards to the girls who participate in the swap. Our theme this month is "type of cookie" - yummy!!!!!, here is my card I stamped up ..... see how you go solving it and don't forget to leave me a comment telling me how you did! If you have a question and I need to answering on my blog ..... I will come back to this post to do it .... so please check back.
Last month we had a few people try and solve the "name of a motel" rebus I posted here. Here are the solutions for anyone playing:
1. Embassy Motel (Canberra Australia)
2. Innkeeper Motel (Illnois USA)
3. Eastgate on the Range (Toowoomba Australia)
4. Annalee Motel (Beaudesert Australia)
How did you do????
I saw this on Diaries of a Stamper's blog and as I don't have anything stamped to share with you all today I thought this might be fun!
For each question your answer has to start with the same letter that your first name starts with. For boy/girl names the name can't be the same as your own. I challenge you to try this out with YOUR name.
Your Name: Frances
Famous Artist/Band/Musician: Faith Hill
4 letter word: Four
Vehicle: Ford
TV SHOW: Family Feud
City/Town: Fremantle WA Australia
Boy Name: Frank
Girl Name: Faye
Occupation: Fireman
Something you wear: flip flops (ok so I have never called them that in my life)
Celebrity: Frank Sinatra
Food: French Fries
Something found in a kitchen: Freezer/Fridge/ Food (ok showing off now ;) )
Reason for Being Late: fainted
Cartoon Character: Fred Flintstone
Something You Shout: Fire (fortunately so far I can't remember shouting it but I have often wished I could when there is a long queue and I wanted to get to the end ;) )
It is sketch challenge time again, boy don't those weeks just fly by!!!!! I also combined this week's color challenge which is to use soft sky; blue bayou & cameo coral, two of these colors are from the new in colors avail in the US & Canada. This is the first card I have made using the new in colors ....... at present I am being very careful what I use it on seeing I only have a small supply of it, but I do love the colors and will be ordering more for sure!
Recipe:
Stamps: Baroque Motifs - Stampin' Up
Papers: Soft Sky, Blue Bayou & Cameo Coral - SU
Other: Coral Stamp It Inkpad; Prussian Blue Fluid Chalk; Neptune Archival Ink; Word Window Punch; tiny gems; Gem Brad.
This card is for my Monday challenge I do with a group of friends on SCS. This week our challenge was to create a masculine card with PINK! We could use just a little bit of pink or a lot of pink as long as it had pink in the card and it was masculine! Arghhhhhhhhh!!!!! Yes that was my first thought for this challenge ......... male I can do, easy ............... I have tons of male themed stamps (can always do with more though ;) ) A pink male card well that was a scary thought!
Anyway ......... a few weeks ago when I went out shopping with a friend to get some Basic Grey papers for last weeks challenge, I thought I would also look out for some papers that had pink in them but also had male colors in them too ........... I found a few different ones many striped, so I got a few different ones because at that stage I still didn't know what card I would be creating.
I sat down on Friday afternoon to create my card so I had the weekend to do other things I might want to do, I went though my papers and found this matching pair which I thought would work ok. I already had an idea of sorts some of the images I might use but that was still flexible at that stage ....... the next thing was to work out the layout to use ........... I decided to use one of the sketches I had already used the week previously as I had done a few at least one - two daily what with the DD challenges etc. And decided to go with Beate's weekend sketch #12 from last week. Once I worked that all out I knew what sizes I wanted my main image to be so went with the train. My DH is a very into model railways ............. this may be his birthday card which is still about 6 weeks away ....... so this card serves two purposes ........... the challenge and his birthday!!!!!!!
Anyway creating a "Male card with pink" didn't turn out to be half as scary as I thought it would be :)
Recipe: Stamps: All Aboard, Totally Tabs, Rough Texture Wheel - Stampin' Up; Happy Birthday - Hero Arts
Papers: Always Artichoke, Chocolate Chip - Stampin' Up; White; Joyful Stripe & Joyful Dots DP - All My Memories
Other: Chocolate Chip SU Ink; Tab Punch; Photo Corner Punch; Brown Brads; Paper Piercing Tool & Mat; Brown Grosgrain Ribbon
Late last night I got to thinking about the collage grid card I had created for this weeks featured stamper challenge for SCS. I liked the colors I had used but thought wouldn't a red & black card look great using this technique and of course thinking red & black got me thinking about an oriental theme for the card ............ of course I had to stop everything I was doing at the time and get working on it ....... so I grabbed my draw of oriental stamps and set to work.
I still wanted to do that whole image thing in 2 of the panels which I did using my cherry blossom stamp. Once all the little squares were attached to the black card it was time to work on the embellishments ...... as there was such a black space in the middle square I thought that would be a great place to put one of my little charms I got at the last show really cheap which I attached using a black brad rather than gluing for a change. I then decided to place a couple more brads on either side of the word "eternity" in the bottom square ....... the last embellishment took a little figuring out as to what to do and then I remembered my mizuhiki cord so got out some black cord and tied a knot to place on the top right square ..... I think it turned out ok!
Recipe:
Stamps: Budda & Lady - 4th Generation; Cherry Blossom - My Stamps; Dragon - All Night Media; Bamboo - PSX; Eternity - Lucy's Stamps; Girl - Acorn; Script - Unknown
Paper: Real Red - SU; Black
Other: Black Ink; Black Brads; Mizuhiki Cord; Charm
Hehehehehe! That's this week's featured stamper on SCS, Deb aka 88Keys ......... what fun it was to look through her gallery to select a card to CASE this afternoon. I decided to go with one of her collage cards ......... this seem to be a very popular card that Deb creates as I think I counted 5 or 6 in her gallery. You can see the card I cased of Deb's here.
This was a fun card to create and was simply a matter of stamping the image using black ink onto colored card and then punching it out ..... I used my 1 3/8" Marvy square punch ..... if you don't have a punch you could use a cutter, however a punch ensures that all your pieces are the same size.
You can use any stamps you like to punch out, I randomly just selected some stamps I had on my table and then a few other nature related stamps. I also like the idea that Deb used of having one image appear whole on the card so I recreated that with the flower from Natural Beauty.
You could just attach all the pieces to your card and leave it at that, but again I liked how Deb had used various embellishments to dress her card up so I did too. I wanted to do something on mine which Deb hadn't done on hers ....... so I added the photo corner to the bottom left hand corner. My metal dragonfly I used was originally silver which would have been out of place on this card so I used my black alcohol marker to age it, it didn't make it black black, it just took the silvery look off it which I really like.
Changes I made:
- Changed the colors
- Used different stamps
- Added photo corner
Recipe:
Stamps: Natural Beauty; Looks Like Spring; Ageless Adornment; Baroque Motif - all Stampin' Up
Papers: Sage Shadow - SU; Black
Other: Black Ink; Black Brads (various sizes) Olive Brad; Photo Corner Punch; Silver Dragonfly; Ric Rac
As I was going to be home alone again yesterday as everyone else had places they had to be, I decided I would get out of the house for a little while ....... so I went up to one of the local scrapbook shops that I like as I wanted to get some more Basic Grey papers .......... I was lucky enough also to find the new 'Infuse' range tooo so of course I had to get some.
Of course I had to use some of it for Beate's weekend sketch today and also one of my new cat stamps from Pink Cat Studio .......... isn't it just the cutest!!!!!!!!! I had lots of fun creating this one. I didn't have the right color pink ribbon I wanted to use so I did my little trick of coloring it with my alcohol marker ...... I love doing this!
Another thing I did last night was finally sort though all my Christmas stamps and get some sort of order to them. It has been a nightmare trying to find a particular Christmas stamp for many years as I have 3 large containers full of them and more often than not the one I would want would be in the very last container and right down the bottom. Last time I was at the scrapbook store I was at yesterday, I noticed they were giving away pizza boxes when you purchased 10 sheets of papers ....... at the time I didn't want 10 sheets of paper as I had already been to another scrapbook shop that morning where I had gotten more than enough ......... but I did want the boxes ........ so I ended up talking the owner to sell me some. Yesterday when I was at the store I was able to have another 2 free, so I thought it was about time I got to it and sorted those stamps. I have most of them now sorted by company in the pizza boxes .......... I didn't have quite enough of these ....... but I did have some I had gotten stuff from the states which take 2 rows of stamps so used those too. I might have to still do a little bit of work on some of the miscellaneous ones ........ but this should work out much better than I had it before ........ and I might actually enjoy getting a Christmas stamp out to use .......... which is a good thing considering I will have to soon think about making these if I am going to have enough to send out this year.
Recipe:
Stamps: Cat & Verse - Pink Cat Studio; Lattice B/G - Cornish Heritage Farms
Paper: Rose Red - SU; Pink Prisma Card; White; Infuse - Basic Grey
Other: Black Ink; Blush Rose Fluid Chalk; Pink Prima; Brads; White Grosgrain Ribbon
This afternoon I took a little time to catch up on some book club books I had sitting here and had not gotten around to doing as yet. This is one that I did, the theme for this one was "buttons", as you can see I think I have covered that theme ok ;) ........... I decided to use my Hampton Arts lady ....... I picked this stamp because there is also included in the set the row of buttons stamp you can see I used here. I also searched through my button boxes and found some small & tiny brown buttons which I thought would also be great for this card ........ the tiny ones I used on the photo corners and the small up the left side ........ hopefully the owner of the book will like it.
Recipe:
Stamps: Lady & Buttons - Hampton Arts; Scratches - Tim Holtz
Paper: White; Chocolate Chip
Other: Chocolate Chip Ink; Amber Clay Fluid Chalk; Photo Corner Punch; Tiny & Small Brown Buttons.
Ok so I have joined the band wagon and play this fun game that is doing the blogs at present. What you need to do is type your name + needs into your search bar and google it. So of course for me I just type Frances needs and pressed enter and here are some of the results ........
- Frances needs help to find old friends
- Frances needs fluids
- Frances needs a bed and a dresser (I don't I have a perfectly good one already ;) ..)
- Frances needs to take risks (maybe but I prefer to be cautious!)
- Frances needs to lose weight (ok how did they know ;) ......)
- Frances needs your help!
- Frances needs feeding! (nah just eaten already!)
- Frances needs her mother!
- Frances needs $3 million more .......... ohhhhhh I wish ;)
Try it yourself and see what comes up for your name!
This week we are back with our regular Flashback Friday feature. Today I am going back to 2003 and a challenge I was given by a friend was to create something using this shaped CD case she sent me. After a little thought about what I could do with it, I decided as it looked a little like a shell shape I would turn it into a shell pop up card.
For the outside, I was lucky as I had a large shell stamp which was a similar size, I may have had to enlarge it just a tiny bit and then change the shape slightly so that it would fit exactly onto the CD case ......... no one is that lucky to have a stamp to fit perfectly!
The inside it was just a matter of tracing the shape onto card and create an underwater scene. What was to be the pop up piece had to be of a size that it didn't get in the way of the middle section that the CD normally fits onto as the pop up wouldn't last tooo long! It was a fun challenge!
Recipe: Stamps: Shell - Commotion; Verse - PSX; Mermaid - Stampendous; Underwater scene (back) - alota; crabs & starfish - Stampendous; Rock - Stampscapes; "I'd like to see "verse - alota
Paper: White
Other: CD Case; Tria Markers
Deb M in BC asked: Do you use sticky notes to make masks? You had mentioned that you keep your masks for the next time, but I find when using sticky notes, that they lose their stick with multiple uses.
Answer: Actually it depends what is handy at the time and how big the image is too, sometimes I will use sticky notes and other times any scrap paper will do. Yes sticky notes won't keep their sticky forever but that is ok ........ I normally have one of those repositionable tape things that you just have to roll on handy so if I need to restick something I just use that. It also depends what it is I am masking ............ how big, etc ............. some things will stay put on their own ....... although having it sticky is a big help so it doesn't move.
Don't forget too when you are making your masks ..... to cut just inside the line not outside it ....... this prevents getting a halo effect ......... which is unwanted white space you might somethings get.
For a while I didn't think I would actually stamp today, but the lure of having to create a tag card for the DD challenges got the better of me. This challenge was hosted by Yvette and while creating a tag card may sound easy there was a twist to this challenge ......... which was that we were only allowed to use one stamp set! After a little thought I decided to use my unfrogettable set as it has all you need to create a card ...... images, sentiments ...... it is all there.
It has been a while since I have done a proper scenic type card so I also decide to go that way with this card.
To create my tag card I cut my card 9 inches c 5 1/2 inches and scored at every 3 inch interval. The white panels I just card a 1/4 inch smaller than the green piece so they are all 2 3/4inches x 5 1/4 inches.
One of the things I like about using SU sets is that when I create a mask for an image in that set, I just pop that mask into that set with the stamp so that next time I want to mask something using that stamp I don't have to create a new one or search my book I have that holds many of my other masks ........ so easy!
Recipe:
Stamps: Unfrogettable - Stampin' Up
Paper: White; Dark Green
Other: Black Ink; Celeste Blue Impress Ink; Cloud Stencil; Tria Markers
Playing Card Boxes:
A number of you have asked for instructions on how to make the playing card boxes I have had on my blog a couple of times. I will work on a tutorial on how to do this next week ...... by then I should have recovered from the excess stamping I have done this past week with the DD challenges.
Deb M in BC asked: "what adhesive do you use, Frances, with all of the layers you do?"
I normally just use double sided tape. I think adhesive is really a personal preference, I know people who swear by craft glue but every time I attempt to use this on cards I just create a big sticky mess.
My new High Hopes stamps arrived this afternoon just before Roxie uploaded the sketch challenge for this week on SCS, so of course I wanted to try and use one of them for my sketch card this week. I decided to go with this cute this duck, this is a fun sketch and I enjoyed creating this card.
I started by cutting my yellow card to the size I wanted and then cutting out the oval shape in the middle with my creative memories oval cutter (I seem to be using that even more these days ...... which of course is a good thing!). I then cut off my corners on the top left and bottom right hand sides and then embossed this using my tiny bubbles embossing folder. Next I layered to the black card and trimmed around the edges where needed. From there is was pretty easy to put together!Recipe:
Stamps: Duck & Verse - High Hopes Stamps; Weave B/G - Cornish Heritage Farms; Corner - My Favorite Stamps
Papers: Certainly Celery - SU; Yellow, Black & White
Other: Black Ink; Certainly Celery SU Ink; Orange Brads; Creative Memories Oval Cutter; Word Window Punch; Foam Tape; Tiny Bubbles Cuttlebug Embossing Folder
Ok I was able to get another card made today for the DD challenges, this is likely to be the last for today ..... I have done 3 out of 4 of today's challenges so I am happy with that ..... but I liked #4 so might do that tomorrow if the mood strikes. I still want to do the weekly sketch challenge this afternoon.
This one covers 2 challenges which are mytime's "sketch" challenge & Jami's "fall back on black" challenge ........ the idea was to include black in your card to make it pop .......... I do this a lot, I like black for layering as it works most times so that part wasn't hard. Actually this whole card was really quick to make.
As you can see I haven't bothered to put my Garden Whimsy set away yet and combined it with my scarlet letter (recognition) Basic Grey DP ....... I am loving this paper ...... think I might need to make another Basic Grey shopping trip pretty soon!
Recipe:
Stamps: Garden Whimsy - Stampin' Up; Verse - Papertrey Ink
Paper: Real Red - SU; Black; White; Scarlet Letter (Recognition) - Basic Grey
Other: Black Ink; Real Red SU Ink; Marvy Marker #96; Black Grosgrain Ribbon; Word Window Punch & Photo Corner Punch - SU; Black Brads
Well today is the last day of the DD challenges, it has been fun but it has also been lots of work trying to get through as many challenges as I could. Of course I haven't finished just yet as there are still a couple of challenges I want to get done .... one I mightn't get done today .... so I might try that one tomorrow.
The challenge for these two cards here were for Julie's "Single Layer" challenge and if we wanted to do a little extra we could also include window which I did for the Olive a party card above. As Julie is known for her love of Appletinis, I thought this one was appropriate for her challenge ;) And this week has been a little like a party, well almost! The ribbon was originally white and I colored it using my alcohol markers.
I also had to have a tiny play with my new garden whimsy set (my watermark is fading out the stems of the flowers on the right. It has been a long time since I have done single layers, way back when when I started stamping about 20 years ago that would be mostly what we did, layering came later ....... I think I would be happier with this one if it was layered onto a couple of other colors but ....... I can't do that for this challenge ;)Recipe: Olive a Party Stamps: Simply Circles & Simple Shapes - Stampin' Up; Martini Glass - Vap! Scrap
Paper: White
Other: Black Ink; Olive Pastel & Burnt Sienna Fluid Chalk; White Grosgrain Ribbon; Scallop Circle Punch.
Garden Whimsy: Stamps: Garden Whimsy - SU; Grass - Hero Arts
Paper: White
Other: Real Red, Ballet Blue, Cool Caribbean & Summer Sun SU Ink; Marvy Marker #96; Red Grosgrain Ribbon
Here is a photo of what I put on my wheel ....... I have a feeling this girl will be doing a lot of spending ;) !
