Odds and Ends

Still crazy busy at school; I guess it's just going to be one of those years. I haven't colored in a while, but I did finish up some projects this weekend. Check out my Charm page for an update with the rest of the "Human" theme and the first of the "Patriotic" Theme. I finished my Patriotic charms yesterday;  now I need to get the packaging done. It's our last swap. I have really enjoyed doing this swap, but am glad to take a break. I think that 6 is my limit for members of a charm swap; more is a chore.

We had our last Spirit Doll swap yesterday. I gave this doll to Elaine. Check out the bottom of my Beading page to view all of these treasures. I can't believe the work Anita did for my baby!

What is going to be our next challenge swap? Let's schedule it for January, please; I have Christmas to plan.

I have been spending a bunch of time on Pinterest; check out my boards: http://pinterest.com/celliott53/

Charlotte really wanted to be a part of our swap - actually, she wanted the yummy carrot cookies that Anita made.

 

Charm Swap Update

Earlier this month I shared my July "Heritage" swaps before I sent them on to Anita for mailing. I have received some of this month's creations and am waiting on the Palm Coast group. Check out my Charm Swaps page (scroll down under July) for updates as the remainder arrive. This beauty is from Tobi; it is her last month joining the swap and I am going to miss her beautiful work.

MFT Thank You

The "Cult" had a wonderful time at the MFT Boutique this past Friday. Brianna was our instructor for a flip book make-and-take. She did an awesome job and was so patient and gracious. We definitely enjoyed our class and shopping visit. I made her this "Calendar Card" as a thank you. I fogot to add the year to the card; but it starts now until next June.

All images are stamped on white neenah and stamped in black memento. The cardstock card base is from SU. The images are all mounted on one the MFT Vertical Greetings  dies. The images are colored in copics, paperpieced and fussy cut. The calendars were printed onto white cs at 55% from calendarlab.com.

The first image for summer uses the new PI release: Surf Chick. The paper is from Authentique: "Fresh". Additional MFT dies were used for the sand and waves at the bottom.

Her skin is E21, E11, E13 and R02. Her hair is E97, E08 and E15. Her board is shadowed in W1. The red in her suit is R14, R24 and R27. The teal is BG72, BG75 and BG78.

The fall image is Li'l Pumpkin. The paper is from My Mind's Eye: Indie Chic in "Citron." Her skin is E50, E00, E21, R20 and R00. Her hair is Y21, YR23, and E35. The pumpkin is colored in YR12, YR15 and YR18. The pumpkin stem and her shoes are done in YR23, E35 and G82. Her dress is shaded in G82. Crystal effects was added to the heart in her dress and her hair barette. Pearls were colored and added at the bottom.

2013 starts with the PI image: Love You with All My Heart. My Mind's Eye collection of Lost and Found in "Blush" is the paper used. Stardust Stickles is added to the heart and barette. SU seam binding in Crumb is the bow at the base. Her skin is colored in E50, E00, E21, R20 and R00. Her hair is E35, E37, and E59. Her shoes and dress are colored with R83, R85 and R39.

Spring is represented by the You're So Tweet image and paper from Memory Box: Viola. Skin is colored with E000, E00, E01, R20 and R00. Her blonde hair is E30, YR21 and E42. Shoes and dress shading and band are colored with BV00, BV02 and BV04. Turquoise spica adds glitz to her hair the heart. The little bird is Y13, Y15, and Y19.

This is a regular card size (cut 4 1/4 x ll and scored at 5 1/2) with the fold at the top. The "easel" measures 3x6 and is scored every two inches. The sits very nicely and is so easy to change. The flaps of the easel just tuck under the top layer of paper.

REMEMBER not to glue across the bottom when layering your card so the easel will slide under the paper.

Heritage Charm Swaps

Here are my creations for this swap. The cameos are from Webster that I found at a local stamp store. I am keeping the seahorse - it doesn't match the theme as well as the others.

Anita has requested the blue butterfly and Elaine likes the purple flower. Let me (or Anita) know if you have a preference before they are distributed. I will post all the swaps when they arrive.

Now to interpret our next theme: "Human." I have an idea in my head, now if I can only pull into reality.

April Stamp Challenge

The challenge for this month's stamp club is the theme "April Showers." I created this card using an image from My Favorite Things. I must admit that I fell for this image because of the dachshund. I used my copics for coloring, but didn't make an index of colors but have included a picture of the markers that I used. When working on a project, I like to keep the markers that I am using in a mug near at hand so I don't lose them on my work station.

I also finished making the sample for my "Alice in Wonderland" charm swap that is due on May 1. I have four done and even have an idea for the packaging. Actually the packaging idea came first because of the stamp that I found at Stamp Fest in Clearwater this past February. Do you remember the role of the flamingo in this story?

Post #2: Flower Charm Swaps for March

I shared the packaging for my flower charms on an earlier post. I have the beautiful flowers from the girls in town and we should be receiving our out-of-town swaps any time; I can't wait to see them. Be sure to check out the Charm page - scroll down to "March 2012" - to see the latest additions.

Holiday Weekend Playing Catchup

My sister came over from Ft Myers and we had a nice visit catching up with each other's lives. After she left I caught up with some projects: made a waitress apron for Grace; cleaned up some of the creative mess in my sewing room and prepared for my notebook cover class next weekend (see my "Quilt" page for some pictures) at the quilt shop; I even did some mending for Grace.

Next on my list was finishing my charm swap -the theme is "Flowers" - before the Mar 1 deadline. Not only did I finish them, but I also created the packaging using some lettering techniques that I learned from taking Joanne Sharpe's "Letter Love" online class. I have enjoyed the daily inspiration from her class and from our facebook group. There are so many talented people taking the class. The class has daily instruction for the month of February; Joanne is on Day 20 and I am on Day 4. Work has a way of getting in the way of my fun. I am going to create a new page for my website to share my love of lettering.

Happy New Year

I can't believe that it's been so long since my last posting. I have been busy visiting and creating, just not posting. Since school has been out, I have been finishing up several tags from Tim Holtz's 12 tags of Christmas; making Christmas presents (I can't post them til next week because we aren't exchanging til Saturday); visiting our son and girlfriend in south Florida;  playing with Grace who was home for a few days and spending time with Cait and Tony (They loved their quilt and it looks great on their bed). I finished my December daily journal. (I plan to take more picture and update the slideshow) I really looked forward to writing in it each evening and I am trying to decide how I want to continue journaling in the new year. I think I am going to add a diary or calendar section to my smash journal - which still needs a cover and binding. I bought more Christmas scrapbook paper to make journals for presents next year when Jan and I spent a whole day shopping all the craft, bead and quilt shops for sales. I even broke down and ordered the "Noel" and "reindeer" dies from Blue Moon Scrapbooking.

For the past few days I have spent lots of time preparing for a new class at the quilt shop: it's for a fabric covered notebook. I have had a great time making book covers for everyone. I will post a slideshow as soon as I finish the last one and take the last picture.


It's charm deadline time again: I finished mine last week. This month's theme was "Oz" and it was a challenge for me. I like the finished look. All the components are Holtz influenced: the green globe (florist marble) is glued to a Holtz charm; the picture is a fragment; the shoe is shrink plastic that was shrunk in a melting pot of utee. Holtz does a great video for this technique as part of one of his tags. Ellen Hudson took his technique a bit further: she puts the charm back into a hot, empty pot and sprinkles on glitter when the utee softens. It worked great - the whole house sparkles. I love how the packaging came out: the Holtz brick wall embossing folder is perfect and of course I had to use blue gingham ribbon.

Now I have to get my brain to settle on a floral expression for the next exchange.

Giving Thanks

I am thankful that I didn't have to get up and go to work at 5:30 this morning. Instead, I woke up at the regular time and then played with my toys. I made a set of Christmas cards for my daughter, Grace. "Peace" was stamped with jeans distress ink and then clear embossed on SU  shimmer paper. I wish the nice and quiet Ranger heat tool worked better for embossing, but it just doesn't seem to get hot enough; my dog hates the noise of the other tool and tries to attack it when I turn it on. The snowflakes were inked with distress stormy and then spritzed with pearl mist before stamping. The image was cut from decorative paper and cardstock using my cricut (I think it was the "Groovy" cartridge that I picked up at Walmart for $15). I spritzed this too and added a bit of bling before popping it off the card with dimensionals. The envelope was stamped and then spritzed with blue storm mist.

Kitty shared her pattern for making a very elegant "Tree" box. I will post a picture as soon as I finish. I can't believe that she cut out everything for us. Elaine also showed us her new "smash" book and it inspired me to challenge our group to make one only using supplies that we already have. We can't buy anything, but we can shop in a friend's stash. (Stop whining; I know it's time to get ready for the holidays, but it's my role to lead you on new adventures!)

I also worked on a new storage book for my Nestabilites die cuts. I have had them in CD cases, but these slide all over the drawer. For my new storage I used an idea from August when I created Anita's birthday book.  First, I covered one side of a piece of 5 x 5 1/2" cardboard with paper (one that I received on our cruise) and the other side was covered with an adhesive magnet sheet. Before gluing on the paper, I inked the edges of the cardboard with corduroy distress stain - it went on fast and covered it perfectly. I am using binder rings so I can add pages if (when) I buy more die cuts. The title letters are cardstock covered with glossy accents. Anita uses this technique all the time, but I haven't had much success until I used the tiny bottle of glossy accents - it is much easier to control the flow. Now I want to make another book for my other thin metal dies; but I am thinking that it will have to be larger.

Be sure to check out the Charms page; our November "Bird" swap finally came in and are so pretty. I love seeing the variety of materials that everyone uses to interpret the theme.

Fun in the Fall

So much has been going on--First, the Holtz cruise was just wonderful! I am putting up a separate page just for the cruise. You can check out Tim's blog for some pictures of the projects that we did. (No, mine are not done). Anita and I made mugs for all the Cultists and didn't take time to finish the journal or tray (besides, this way we can stretch out the cruise fun a bit longer). It took me two weeks to catch up at work from missing a week for the cruise. I can't believe that it's the end of first quarter and that quarter grades have already been entered.

Last weekend was time for being lazy and reading. I also caught up with Jennifer McGuire's online class that I had registered for and that aired the week before the cruise. I really enjoyed the course and recommend it to anyone interested in stamping techniques; the information was clear and well-organized. Some of the techniques were familiar, but with an interesting twist. Here is the tag that I made using several of these techniques. I plan to share more about it on the Tags page (as soon as I have a bit more time).

This weekend is for play (and cleaning up my craft room, organizing cruise pics, and updating the blog) The hot weather finally turned cooler the weekend we returned from the cruise, but then it rained constantly. At last it's just warm and dry; perfect weather to ride with the top down on my Miata or ride the bike. Friday evening Michael and I rode the bike down to Ormond to the Iron Horse Saloon to people and bike watch at Biketober Fest. It was definitely an eye-opening experience because of the costumes (or lack thereof) and interesting tatoos.

Yesterday, I cleaned off my craft table and put away most of the great stuff we received from the cruise class. (You will be able to see the piles of class supplies in the picture). In the afternoon, I worked on my charm swaps for Tobi's bird theme. I really like them. These are for plan B. (Plan A was a different model, but it was overly ambitious and I had to move on.) My next bird was made of zipper tape and Tim's rosette ribbon that I died with Distress Stains. A blue pearl is the egg. I have had the blue bird beads for several years; they are leftovers from when I made a Cinderella bracelet for my niece.

I got my fingers inky this week. I showed Kitty how to stamp with textured wallpaper and made a card using distress inks and perfect pearl misters. The words had to be restamped and mounted on top because the pearl misters made it had to read (the pearls bleed through the ink unless you've embossed the black). To make this I lightly rubbed three shades of distress inks (including the lovely new seasonal distress purple that I was able to purchase on the cruise was one of them) onto a piece of textured wallpaper (from samples at a hardware store like Lowe's). Spritz a few times (three or four) and then press onto a piece of cardstock. You can respritz and stamp again for a second generation softer look. Overstamp with selected images and black ink. I masked the flamingo for a cleaner look. Tim has more info and a video on his blog showing the three seasonal colors for fall. I can't wait to see the winter collection.

Beach Charm Swap for September

I survived the first week of school. Actually, it went much smoother than I expected; however, I was as tired as I expected and didn't get much done outside of school work this week. Yesterday I played. The day started with breakfast out: Michael and I drove the Miata down A1A to see the waves from Irene on our way to eat in Ormond (yummy apple fritters at Peaches) and then came back through the tunnel of  trees in Tomoka. Anita had to run an errand in Jacksonville so I went along for the ride. We made the round of shops: Small Cleverness (found the new rolled flower punch and picked up the die cuts and journal stamps that I had ordered and a new Zentangle book that I really like); next stop was Country Crossroads for some quilt fabric; lunch at Chilis; then on to the PIT scrapbook store (some Ranger mists and more binder rings). We arrived back home to find that Michael had decided to trade in his pickup for a new Jeep Wrangler. We drove it to St. A for dinner at the Mexican restaurant. I don't find it comfortable to drive, but it's his car. My diet is shot today-eating out three times! This morning I decided to concentrate on finishing my September 1 charm swaps (instead of school work), expecially since the deadline is just around the corner.
Like most "Ocean" themes, I had too many ideas swimming around in my brain and it took me a while to decide how I wanted to interpret this theme. I found the perfect shells last weekend when I took the earring class with Elaine at the Bead Bar in Orlando. I had the shell chain in my stash, made the sample last weekend and spent this morning making loops and dangles. The charms are all done, now the challenge is to figure out how to package them-to look nice and to keep them safe.
As soon as I receive the rest of the swaps I will post a picture on my new Charm Swap page.

Cards, Swaps and a Tour

I have been a bit slower posting because it's back to school time. I have some cards and the packaging of my cruise swaps and even a tour of my craft room (while it's mostly clean). For the last week I have been in my classroom cleaning and organizing there; maybe I will inlcude a tour of it one day.  On my last day of freedom, I accomplished one of my summer goals: I finished the monster quilt top and backing. It's off to the shop for quilting because it's too big for me to enjoy doing on my home machine--it's 110 in square. I can't show you yet; it's a Christmas present. 

These are two of the cards I made using the blended background stamping. Directions are on the Stamping page. I like this style card. The base of the card is the underneath and the flap is only the area of the background/message with an additional paper inside for the message.

Next I have my last ATC design for the cruise swap. I rubbed and spritzed straw, lipstick and concord on a craft sheet and dragged the tag and string through to blend the colors. A key charm from my stash (and Jan's) was tied to the string. The stamped images are mostly from Tim's designs. I accented the heart with stickles for a bit of bling and the crown is a Tim die cut design cut from grunge board that I "rusted." To do this you apply embossing ink to the grunge and emboss with distress powder (vintage photo). After rubbing off the discharge crystals apply distress ink. I think I used rust (or maybe vintage photo).  

 I used a Holtz stamp design for the labels on the back of all my ATCs; computer generated the info, stamped complimentary images from my collection and blended the edges with distress ink.

 I packaged the charms in a little matchbook style box. (I am concerned that the flip-flop beads will break in transit.) Basically this is made from the directions for the nugget box from splitcoaststampers and edited for size. I attached the charms to tags that I made from paint chips. I used the slit punch and a small circle to hang the lobster claw. I stamped palm trees on clear acetate with stazon for the wrap around.








Next is the tour of my mostly cleaned craft room-minus members of the "Stampin Cult" that are often present.

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Our next 'cult' project is designing group tee-shirts using a technique that Anita learned from a class several years ago. I loved my first shirt and was sad when it didn't fit anymore (but not sad about loosing all the weight)