Inspired at last

After a long dry spell, I'm beginning to get my stampin' fire back. I just love the new Big Blooms set from the SU Spring mini (see it HERE - available till the end of June. What's that? Why yes, I am a Stampin' Up! demonstrator. hee hee). Anyway, I'm loving those big honkin flowers. So many fun things to do with them. Here are some of the things I did today.

The striped flower was made by applying a marker directly to the rubber, 'huffing' and stamping. The center is a circle of C/S popped up with a dimensional. The colors I used were Ruby Red, Pumpkin Pie, and Cameo Coral.

The layouts were mine, but I got the striped flower idea from this great blog tutorial. Thanks Alli for the inspiration!

Look Katie this one is orange! Well, Pumpkin Pie actually. I really like doing monochromatic cards. I'm also trying to use more white card bases with added scrap accents and stamping for color. I really love how this one turned out. The coolest thing is that the petals are punched out! I stamped the big flower on the white square, cut out the middle, and then slid the slit punch in from the middle to punch the petals.
I can't take credit for the punch idea - I got that from a card on SCS by corysnana1.

I decided the big gaping hole in the middle needed something, so I used the big circle from Simply Circles - stamped on white and cut out. I stamped the little circle over the previous stamping for a little extra color. The ribbon is tied through some 1/8" holes and the whole center is popped up. The Linen stamp is used on the background.

Since I'm on a roll - I'll share some more. Using the same pattern from my stamp class last week, I made another one of these card tote purses. I made all 4 cards, the purse tote, and the spiral notebook cover from a single sheet of 8.5" x 11" White C/S decorated with Mixed Bouquet (one sheet wonder). I used Ballet Blue (my favorite), Real Red, Marigold Morning, and Glorious Green. To soften the background I wheeled across with the jumbo Rough Texture inked in Marigold. It's a "thank you for volunteering" gift for my daughter's Catechism teacher.

I did this a few months back. After looking at my chipboard ATC album (from Stampin' Up! of course) just sitting there so sad and um, chipboardy, I finally decided to decorate it.
Of course it had to be blue cause I just love blue and I added some yellows so it would look good displayed in my blue & yellow stamp room. I love the name frame idea and thought I'd incorporate that here. I'll have to upload my son's name frame and my "idea board" later for y'all to see. I like how it turned out, but next time I'd use the matte mod-podge instead of the glossy. Now I just have to fill it up with really cool ATCs showing lots of different techniques and specialty products. I thought it would be nice to have ATCs to show customers the difference between canvas & linen, or dry and wet embossing, or vellum and cardstock vellum, etc... All in once place and easy to find (I can never seem to locate cards when I need them).

Oooooh. And BIG NEWS on the scrapbooking front. I have completed an album. YES! That doesn't happen very often since most of mine are works in progress (school and dance) and as soon as I get caught up (haha) more pictures come rolling in. I finished MattMan's cub scout album! Woo hoo. Aaannnd, I organized all his Boy Scout photos that we have so far into a plain photo album so I can keep the campout locations and dates all straight. I added little journalling squares between the "events" and will keep adding details so that when I get time and motivation I can sit down and speed-scrap it :).

Oh oh oh. I also re-did my On-board 5x7ish Art Journal. I had covered the front of it using paper I didn't really love then the mod-podge made the ink run a little and the whole thing just didn't thrill me. So I ripped it off (gasp!). It left the chipboard kinda rough and ugly so I removed the covers and used some designer paper to cover it again (around the edges this time). DH says it looks like it was done by a professional. I told him I AM a professional :).

I used my handy dandy spiral punch to punch the holes (after making a complicated little fold on the edge to allow for the thickness of the chipboard) but it came out great. I'll show it off when I get inspired to actually decorate the front of that lovely paper with something. It is going to be a journally book all about ME! so I wanted to really love it.

In other not so fun news, MattMan was sick all weekend (please don't be strep, please don't be strep) and my aunt passed away yesterday after struggling with congestive heart issues for a long while. So it was good for me to hole up in my stamp room and actually get my mind off things.

Canvas vs. Linen

Someone asked me yesterday what the difference was between the SU Canvas and Linen background stamps. She wanted to know which one was better, did she need them both, and which one did I use the most? I told her though similar, they give much different effects. I tend to use the canvas more often but that may be because I've had it longer and haven't had much time to play with the linen yet. The canvas can be either funky or rustic depending on the color and how it is applied (fully inked or light and spotty). The linen background really softens an image and looks best with watercolored solid images I think.

Anyway - it got me playing with them both. I want to make ATCs (artist trading cards - 2 1/2" x 3 1/2") showing both of them. I got the linen one done but was distracted by my funky and fun new Big Blooms set from the spring mini. So that's what I did with the canvas. The canvas ATC will have to come later.

Getting in the Groove

Lately I've been in a rut creatively and haven't done much unless it is a) for somebody else and/or b) has a deadline attached. So, I think I need to MAKE more time to do something fun. My goal is to work on something totally fun and just for me for a minimum of 10 minutes a day - at the end of the week that's over an hour's worth of progress which is better than none. And hopefully it will get me motivated again and back 'in the groove'.

To get things going, here are a few of the projects I've been doing in the last few days, weeks, months...

I found this cool book at a cute little quilt shop in Louisville Colorado when I was up there visiting my brother's family for Thanksgiving. It's made from a placemat folded in half (cool huh?). So so fast and that's what I need right now in a project. Instant gratification is good when time is limited. Now I just need to make a non-valentine one. I did get one finished for a secret pal gift at M's Jr High, but that photo is on another camera so it'll have to wait.

The book is called Simple and Sensational Purses from Placemats by Ricki Bremer (www.tallmouse.com)

I was in charge of Leader Appreciation gifts for my Girl Scout service unit this year. I had to come up with something inexpensive and not too complicated. I saw some bottlecap pins and thought that would be perfect. I ordered the uncrimped bottlecaps from www.edps.com for next to nothing and smashed away. I am still amazed that the edges turn under like they do to make that cool little frame thing. I learned my lesson using the "cheap" 3D crystal laquer though. When it dried, there were bubbles all over Juliette Low. Next time I'll pay the few extra dollars for Stampin' Up!'s crystal effects. It really is better. I used a magnet on the back instead of a pin. Everyone seemed to like them, or at least they were very good at being nice :).

I have a great group of ladies that come to stamp once a month - I call them my "Daytimers". I try to come up with some clever projects for them to try. This is the cute little card tote that folks have been making over at SCS. I think the original pattern came from March 06 issue of PaperCrafts magazine. We are going to make a full sheet of the Roses in Winter stamped images then cut it up to acccent the tote and cards. We will end up using 1 sheet Whisper White, 2 sheets Mellow Moss, and 1 sheet Regal Rose with a few scraps of ribbon and white CS for accents. I will definitely have to make more of these. Wouldn't they be cute teacher gifts filled with more cards and tags for them to use?

So I'm jumping in

Yeah, I need to start something new like I need a hole in the head. But I thought this would be fun and give me a place to show off my creativity. It will have a lot of stampin' stuff, maybe some quilting stuff, a few scout projects, and perhaps a few other miscellaneous things I dabble with. My plan is to keep it fast, keep it simple and not go overboard with the tech-stuff. (Me? go overboard? only aways). I sometimes wish I had fewer interests and could really focus on one of them and actually get great at it or even (gasp!) make a profit doing it. But, the fact is that I keep finding fun things to do and jump right in heedless of the fact that I already don't have time to do the stuff I'm doing now. Ah well, it's better than being bored.