PaperFections

Taylored Expressions Cupcake Challenge #22: July Calendar

I was bouncing in my chair Monday when I received an email from Taylor telling me I won her Cupcake Sketch Challenge from last Friday!  That means I get to join her regular Cupcake Girls and be the Featured Cupcake Sampler on her blog this week, by providing a sample for her sketch.  Thanks so much, Taylor, I'm very honored! 

Since June is coming to an end and I remembered I hadn't made my July calendar page yet (if you are new here, you can read about my calendar pages and holder here and view all of them in the Calendar Photo Album over in the right sidebar of my blog), I decided to use the sketch for that and it worked perfectly! 

So don't be afraid to join along in a sketch challenge and use it for something other than just a card!  And remember, you don't have to use a cupcake image to play along in Taylor's Cupcake Fridays -- it WAS my intent to do so today, but then I got the idea for this 6" x 6" calendar page:

I flipped the embellishment part of the sketch to be over on the bottom right instead of the left.  It's an Inchie (of course!) -- stamped from a portion of Karen Lockhart's larger Picnic stamp with Tsukineko's Memento Tuxedo Black ink directly on Inchie Arts' White Inchie Square and colored with these Copic markers:

  

The colors I chose for the Inchie match those in this BasicGrey Sugared paper -- I really liked the deeper shade of red.  I also chose this stamp because of the sweet little American flag snuggled in the bouquet of flowers . . . I thought it was perfect for July!  The flag and baby's breath in the bouquet are accented with Ranger's opaque white pen.  I stamped and cut out another flag and centered it on the calendar, then sponged the edges of the calendar with Ranger's Antique Linen Distress Ink.  The calendar is a computer generated one I made and can be downloaded from this post.

 

The Inchie is matted with Spellbinders Nestabilities Classic Scalloped Square (smallest of the large set).  The July lettering is cut from red paper with Spellbinders Excalibur Alphabet and adhered to a gold Tags 5 die cut tag.  Striped paper is machine stitched with chocolate thread (all paper is BasicGrey Sugared).  The scalloped green (upper horizontal "awning") and scalloped gold (lower horizontal strip) papers were cut with Spellbinders Mega Nestabilities Scalloped Long Rectangles (largest of the large set) -- I love that this die expands over a full 6-inch page!

Stampin' Up chocolate taffeta ribbon and brown Cindy brads finish off this calendar.  Head on over to Taylor's blog to see the sketch and wonderful samples by Taylor's fabulous Cupcake Girls . . . I hope you'll play along!

Don't forget to check back in a little later . . . I'll announce the winner of my 400K Giveaway by noon Central time.

Sharon

WSC53: Inchie Index

For Beate's Weekend Sketch Challenge this week, I decided to use the sketch on my Inchie Arts Inchie Index book that I hadn't yet altered.  Granted, this little book is a lot smaller than the sketch, but this is my squattier version!

 

This little book measures a petite 3.5" square and you use it to record the Inchies you collect.  Here's what the inside looks like:

Then you can number the Inchie on the back with its corresponding number from the Index and store the Inchies in your Inchie Binder . . . It's a great reference tool!

When I was coloring my Inchie, this Webster's Pages paper immediately came to mind but when I got it out to cover this tiny book, I realized not much of the large pattern would show on such a small book.  Then I happened to glance over at the Webster's catalog that had come with my order and noticed all the scaled down prints in it, which lets the consumer see what all of their papers look like.  This little snippet of the Sweet Charity paper was just the right size to cover the cover of my Index book!

After un-binding the book and covering it with the papers (using Beacon's Zip Dry Paper Glue), I inked the edges with Ranger's Antique Linen Distress Ink and added the chocolate braid trim.

Karen Lockhart's sweet little Itty Bitty Birds now have an egg filled IB Nest home!  I stamped them together with Tsukineko's Memento Rich Cocoa ink directly on Inchie Arts' White Inchie Square and colored them with these Copic markers:

 

I used the Antique Linen Distress ink to ink the edges of my Inchie and matted it with chocolate cardstock cut with Spellbinders Nestabilities Scalloped Square.  Lori challenged me to turn my Inchie on the diagonal, so here it is!

I hope you'll check out the blogs of  Beate, Cambria Turnbow, Charmaine Ikach, Jenn Balcer, Laurie Schmidlin, Lori Craig and MaryJo Albright for some more wonderful inspiration for this sketch!  Have a wonderful weekend!

Wine Label

How about dressing up a bottle of wine for a gift?  That's what I set out to do with Spellbinders Antique Bookplate 1 die:

I cut & embossed a piece of Ten Seconds Studio copper sheet with the die and then rubbed a Stazon Timber Brown ink pad over it, to bring out the embossing and age it a bit.  Next, I stamped Karen Lockhart's Itty Bitty Grapes & Millinery Ribbon Vine onto Cryogen White shimmer cardstock and colored with Copic markers.  The edges of the white Inchie were sponged with Ranger's Vintage Photo Distress ink.  I cut out the image just shy of 1-inch and then adhered it to Inchie Arts' black matboard Inchie Square:

The matboard gives the Inchie image a really great dimension and gives it more presence on the label, I think.  The Inchie was adhered to the copper plate with a glue dot.  Holes were punched on each end of the bookplate with my Crop-A-Dile and ribbon ties it to the bottle of wine.  You could go a step further and write or stamp the recepient's name or a greeting on the bookplate, if you wish.

I hope this project will spur some ideas of your own for some gift giving you may have coming up.  How about Father's Day, college graduation, a wedding, or even just dinner with friends?  It would make any bottle of wine even more special with this hand-made added touch!

WSC48: Inchie Grape Birthday

Beate's Weekend Sketch Challenge provided me a great place to sneak in an Inchie!

Karen Lockhart's Itty Bitty Grapes were stamped directly onto an Inchie Arts' white Inchie Square with Tsukineko's new Memento Rich Cocoa ink and then colored with these Copic markers (even the pink background!) and accented with Copic Spica glitter pens (all performed beautifully on this museum-quality preservation matboard):

 

The edges were inked with the darkest RV17-Deep Magenta Copic marker and the same cocoa ink as above; it is popped up on dimensional foam tape.  Island Blossom Dew Drops balance out the Papertrey Ink Birthday Basics sentiment:

A Memory Box Raspberry notecard base matched perfectly to the dark pink in these BasicGrey Sultry papers.  All paper edges were inked in the same cocoa ink.  Karen Lockhart's Vine Millinery Ribbon adorns the vertical strip in this sketch.

All supplies except PTI sentiment available from EllenHutson.com.

I hope you will check out the samples made by these talented ladies (I missed stamping with you all last week!): Beate, Cambria Turnbow, Charmaine Ikach, Jenn Balcer, Laurie Schmidlin, Lori Craig and MaryJo Albright.  When you're over at Lori's blog, be sure to wish her a happy birthday this weekend!

It's been a busy week and I'll be back over the weekend to share some more projects!

WSC46: Best Cupcake Inchie

Wow, it's been all week since I posted  something -- sorry about that!  I've been busy stamping for deadlines and I hope to be able to show you some of those things soon!  How do you like this long, skinny sketch Beate put together for her Weekend Sketch Challenge today?  Lots of neat possibilities!  Here's what I came up with:

I was excited to get my new Spellbinders MegaNestabilities Long Scalloped Rectangles this week, and knew they'd be great for this sketch.  Here, I used the largest of the Small set, which is 5.75" at the widest point (My card turned out about 6.25" x 3.25".  I suppose I'll be making an envelope for it, LOL!).  All papers used are from BasicGrey's new Cupcake collection.

I popped up the squares on the left (cut with Spellbinders Nestabilities Classic Squares) and added some beautiful bling Gemstone Crystals to each corner.  <== Check those out ... Ellen has a bunch of new colors of crystals in the store.  The smallest ones in the sets are the same size as A Muse's Creative Candy Mini Dot Twinkle Stickers and then there's a larger size in the set, too (I used the larger ones here).

The popped up squares allowed space for a paper clip (this one is from a Spare Parts Alpha Clip by The Paper Studio that already had a mounting on it, so I just glued the Inchie to the mounting) to attach and hold this birthday Inchie that can be used as a bookmark or perhaps an embellishment for a birthday scrapbook page!

The Inchie is made from that wonderful new white matboard I've been using.  I stamped part of the Best Cupcake image directly on the matboard with Ranger's Adirondack Pitch Black ink and then colored it with these Copic markers:

I just dotted the markers onto the matboard to create the confetti background.  The Inchie is matted with Spellbinders' smallest Nestabilities Classic Scalloped Square from the large set -- it fits the 1-inch matboard square perfectly.  Another blue gemstone crystal tops the cupcake and a bit of Wright's yellow rick-rack finishes it off:

I hope you'll try this sketch this weekend and check out other samples made by these talented ladies:  Beate, Cambria Turnbow, Charmaine Ikach, Jenn Balcer, Laurie Schmidlin, Lori Craig and MaryJo Albright.

FYI note: I've changed the commenting on my blog -- now you don't have to verify and type in the Captcha letters.  I know how those can sometimes be a pain to read and type correctly, so we'll try this for a while!

Inchie ABC's - D & Matboard

I thought I would continue today with more of my Inchie ABC's.  If you have missed these so far, you can click on the Inchie Category from the list on the right sidebar of my blog.

D is for Dimension -- Pop up images and add layers to your Inchies:

Stamp credit: Lockhart Clothesline.

Stamp credits: 1-Lockhart Apples in Chintz, 2-Itty Bitty Dragonfly.

Dragonfly is glued by its body to the Inchie base, but its wings are flying free!  Notice where I Initialed my dragonfly Inchie?  Under its wings! 

You'll also see in the photos above, how nice and thick this black matboard is and that even the core is black -- all the way thru.  It makes for a very sturdy base for your Inchie art and is already cut into 1-inch squares for you!  More on this matboard below . . .

More dimension . . . below, I added a 1-inch page pebble over the fish bowl:

The white matboard I used for this Inchie (and the black matboard above) is the highest museum preservation quality.  The matboard is fade and bleed resistant & lignin-free.  I stamped this Itty Bitty Fish image in Brilliance Graphite Black ink directly on the matboard, heat set it, and then colored the image with Copic markers & Spica glitter pens with absolutely no bleeding whatsoever (and no warping from my heat gun)!

D is for Display -- Create a display for your Inchie artwork:

This is a Scrabble game tile holder -- perfect for displaying your Inchie collection(s)!  You should see THIS idea Karen Lockhart came up with . . . a piece of wood molding she covered with patterned paper -- beautiful!  I'll have some more display ideas for you in the next few weeks, as I just got some new product to play with!

As a reminder, you can find out more about Inchie art thru Ellen Hutson's new Inchie INKlings blog, devoted solely to Inchies!  New challenges will be posted on the 20th of each month.

Inchie Challenge

An Inchie challenge was issued amongst some of my blogging friends -- to see what we could come up with using Karen Lockhart's adorable new Spring Release stamps, Dottie Bunny and Organic Carrots. 

I wanted to try using shrink plastic to see if I could create an Inchie and here's what I discovered.  On the far right below is the Organic Carrot stamp and on the far left it is stamped and colored onto white shrink plastic:

Typically, in the past I've used StazOn ink with shrink plastic, but I knew I wanted to try coloring these images with Copic markers and knew the StazOn ink would smear.  So I used Palette Noir ink.  Now for impatient people like me, it was tough having to let the ink dry over night!  But since it still wasn't dry around 1am when I was doing this project, I decided to just call it a night and try again the next morning!  So the actual drying time might be a little less than over night.

Then I colored the images with Copic markers, still being a little careful not to touch very much of my stamped image.  I'm pretty bad at math when it comes to calculating what 45% of a certain size will end up, shrunken -- those are what the instructions on the shrink plastic says your image will shrink to!  So I just grabbed a Scalloped Square Spellbinders Nestabilities die and hoped it might be the right size for an inchie, after shrinking . . . and I lucked out! 

The size I used here is the third smallest in the Large Set.  That's the shrunk image in the center of the photo above, shown in the void of the shrink plastic where it had been.  At the widest point, this die measures 2.25" and it shrunk to exactly 1-inch!

Continuing to play with shrink plastic, I came up with these little charms that I put on a bracelet for my girls:

I tried using the 1-inch shrunken square images from the first photo, but they just weren't as cute as these cut out ones!  Still, Dottie shrunk to be 1-inch from extended paw to paw and the carrots are 1-inch tall!  Don't forget to punch a hole in your shrink film before shrinking, so you have a hole to hang it by.

So there's another letter for you in my Inchie ABCs - S is for shrink plastic!  If you haven't seen my other Inchie ideas, just click on this Inchie Art link or in the Categories section on the upper right sidebar of my blog and Ellen has some fabulous ABCs of Inchies on her blog as well!

Be sure to check out my buddies Cindy, Debbie, Michelle & Trudee to see what they came up with for this challenge and don't forget that Ellen is having a St. Patrick's Day sale in her online store tomorrow, Monday, March 17th for 17 hours -- 7am to midnight PST!  You'll need the coupon code that comes in her new newsletter.  If you haven't signed up for that yet, go to the bottom of her store's homepage and enter your email address and you'll receive the newsletter in time for the sale!  Everything in Ellen's store is included on the sale, so now might be a good time to get one of those "Gotta Have It All" packages Ellen is famous for putting together.  The sale also includes this month's Stamp of the Month kit which contains this cute little Dottie Bunny stamp I used above.

Also included in that slick new newsletter is a tutorial for soldiering an adorable Inchie bookmark.  I hope to try out soldiering something soon but in the meantime, you should see this fabulous teapot bookmark Cindy made, by using those newsletter instructions!

Tomorrow and next week I'll be showing you the first projects I've made this year for the Spellbinders gallery website, so check back in!