A New Beginning

I want to start working on some new projects, something other than cards.  Though I will never give up cards completely.  But before I can even think creatively I have to re organize and re design my art room.  This is my workspace.  Actually, it was cleaned up some before I took the picture.  I usually only have about a 12" space to work on. 

 This is my die cutting table.  Not too bad, but still pretty crowded.

This disaster is my heat embossing table.  Unfortuantely it has collected a few other things too.

So, we went to Walmart tonight and picked up another 6' table, and put it where the die cut table is, and moved the die cut table to the right of the table here..

There is a file cabinet and an iris cart here that I moved under the tables.  Then I shifted a lot of the stuff around and while I'm not done yet, hopefully tomorrow I will be and I'll post an update.  I made some good progress tonight.

Fabric Flowers

This one is done using TH's Alterations die cut Tattered Florals.  There are four differnt size of flowers in this die.  Only three are used here, the fourth is quie a bit larger.  The rose is done with the same technique as the other roses, but it looks a little different because of th weight of the flower.  There are four layres in the rose, 3 in the daisy and three in the little one.

Each petal of each layer has distress stickles added.  I have a pair of hemostats left over from my doula days and it worked perfectly for holding the petal and rolling it slightly to dry with the heat gun.  The bottom side of the daisy petals are inked, but I found out you have to be very careful because I pulled two petals off doing that.

The base is embossed with a cuttlebug embossing folder and inked with Spun Sugar Distress inks and the blending sponge tool.  Happy Birthday sentiment is Inkadinkado.  I think it took a couple hours to do this card with all the prep work on the flowers.

Frugal Cardmaking

You know when you buy the little dollar stamps at Michaels and JoAnn's?  They have a thin clear acrylic liner on either side of the stamp.  One I keep to cover the stamp in my notebook where I store my clear stamps, the other one usually gets thrown away.  But, with my Vagabond (you can use any die cut machine), I cut flowers (3 in this case) from each one.  Then I laid it on a piece of paper and put drops of Adirondack alcohol inks here and there and used compressed air, like you use to clean your computer to spread the ink around.  I used Raisin, Raspberry and Pink Sherbet.  The I set the ink with my heat gun.  To make the petals curl I very carefully "dove" the heat gun closer and pulled it away quickly so it didn't turn to a hard clump of plastic.  Then I used a Red violet RV19 copics pen (which is also alcohol ink, so it works well on shiny surfaces) to edge it in the places where it actually came out clear, just to give it a little definition.  Pierce the center and applied this cute little BoBunny brad.  The background script stamp is Inkadinkado.  Edges of that piece is sponge distressed with Victorian Velvet  Distress Ink. 

But that wasn't the end of the frugality.

I've always just hated wasting the center part of the mats when you only see 1/4 inch of it.  So, from each mat I cut the flourishes using a Sizzix die. Because of the type of die it was, the sizlet, it leaves the base cardstock a little wavy, but I just put it  under my glass mat for a few minutes and it laid down nicely.

Remember, I said that I laid the flowers on a piece of paper to blow the alcohol ink around?  I started out using a piece of scrap copy paper.  When I do bank deposits for work I have to print out four copies and it only uses a small portion of the copy paper, so I usually turn it over and use it again for the next deposit.  But that still leaves a good portion of the paper, so I keep those and use them in my art room for "whatever."  But then as I was doing this card, I looked at paper underneath and got another idea.  I got a piece of scrap white cardstock and used that instead.  So what looks like pattern paper here is actually the overspray from the alcohol inks coloring of the acrylic flower. 

Then I used a mixture of perfect pearls and water and misted it to give it a sheen.  I LOVE the way it turned out.  The stamps used are Close To My Heart.  Title is heat embossed on black.  Butterfly is highlighted with a jelly roll sparkle pen and cut out.

I finished off the card by cutting the border with an EK Success border punch and inked the base card with the Victorian Velvet distress ink and added the ribbon.  It was a fun way to spend a couple hours on Christmas Eve!

Fun card

I have envisioned this card for a long time.  The background pattern paper is Colorbok.  Latice is an EK Success punch.  Blue flourish is cut with a sizzix die on my Vagabond and airbrushed with copics.  Florwers are cut with Tim Holtz Alterations die, layered, rolled, attached and misted with perfect pearls and water.  Jeweled flourish is from the dollar rack at Michaels.  Label is cut with Spellbinders die, airbrushed with cool grey copics and outlined with the same copic and and a fine line of black chalk in to set it off from the background.  It took a couple hours to make this card, but it was well worth it.  It's actually much prettier IRL. 

Though the roses are not exactly as same as in the tutorial, I think they still turned out well.  I used the same technique for the small flower.  Each rose has four layers, and the smaller flower is two layers.

Playing around

Been wanting to try the cut for the label, so instead of sitting in front of the tube with the puter in my lap, I decided to get up and play last night.

The label is cut with the Tim Holtz Alterations "on the edge" die (on my new vagabond :)).  I cut one side, then turned it around and matched it up with the first cut to get the oval shape.  The flower flourish is a Stampendous one that I've had for a long time and not used..  Coilored with Copics.  Don 't know if you can see it, but it is also shadowed with the lightest grey around the flower and flourishes.  Really adds a nice touch.  I haven't used the technique much.  Background is embossed with Tim's embossing envelopes.  I airbrushed the background with Copics and then used darker distress ink with Tim's distressing tool.  The label is also inked on the edges with distress inks.  It was with milled lavender but actually looks more yellowish, don't know why.  Sometimes inks look very different when using the direct to paper method.

Ahhhhh....

Christmas cards are all done, shopping is all done.  The only thing left for Christmas prep is buying the ham and fresh fruits/vegies.  We are celebrating on the 26th this year, as it is the only day that my remaining Washington family can get togther.  I got a really cool surprise gift from Panda.  If anyone doesn't know who Panda is, here he is:

 Isn't he about the cutest little thing you've ever seen?  This was right after his grooming, it only takes a couple days for him to start looking rag-tag, but he's even cute then!  So anyway, on to the nice surprise.  "Panda" bought me a Vagabond die cutting machine, THE Coolest die cutter ever made!  Can't wait to get started created more cards and goodies with it.  Will be posting more projects as they are completed.  I hope that you all enjoy them, and that you have a wonderful and glorious Christmas!

Cactus

I was so happy and surprised to see that this guy was blooming.  The blossoms are huge!  4+ inches across.  It only has 3 buds, but I am so pleased.

More Christmas fun

This first card is a one layer that I dry embossed the cover, then applied gold embossing powder to the ridges and heat embossed.  The die cut is "quilted" with 1/2" strips of an embossed pattern paper.  A couple years ago I bought a pack of this paper and split it with Christy and I still have lots of it.  I ran the die cut base through the xyron so there wouldn't be a lot of gluing and just trimmed the edges when done. 

 The white looking part of the snowflake is actually die cut on the car itself.  The white showing through is actually the inside of the card.  I glued three other little die cut snowflakes on top of that and added the bling.  The white "frame" is actually the trim on the die cut that I used on the inside of the card below.

I just love my little jellyroll glitter pen.  The little flourishes on the snowman are outlined with the jellyroll pen.

 The front of this one is dry embossed with one of my new Sizzix embossing folders, then I die cut the snowfkaje abd added the embossed snowflakes and bling as with the other card.

 Though it doesn't show well, this is the inside of the last card.  The blue snowflake on the left side is actually the "positive" of the die cut from the front, and the stamped image "jellyrolled" is on the right.  These were all quite time comsuming but I like the results and it is something just a little out of the ordinary.