PaperFections

Raspberry Vellum Butterfly

I love when a project turns out exactly as I envision it in my head! I had been wanting to try die cutting and embossing vellum for quite some time and was very pleased with my results. I used Spellbinders Butterflies 2 die and the great thing about all Spellbinders dies is the embossing feature -- it turned out gorgeous on vellum, leaving a slightly white color to the embossing! Only Spellbinders dies has the embossing capability. I enhanced the embossing on the butterfly wings with Star Dust Stickles. The butterfly is attached by its body being glued with Beacon Adhesives' Zip Dry Paper Glue to the card and the wings left to flutter about! The image underneath the vellum butterfly is the coordinating Spellbinders Butterflies 2 stamp image that was stamped with Ranger Adirondack Cranberry dye ink onto Stampin' Up's Vanilla smooth cardstock. The image was then die cut with Spellbinders Classic Circles and the Reverse Stenciling technique used -- this is simply attained by inking the die with Adirondack Cranberry pigment ink. The ink is then transferred to the cardstock during the cutting and embossing process (be sure to clean your die afterwards!). Then I heat embossed the... Read more →

Happy Birthday Nestabilities!

To celebrate Nestabilities tremendous first year, Spellbinders will be giving daily sneak peeks of many of the new die designs debuting at the upcoming Summer Craft & Hobby Association Show --- in addition YOU have an opportunity to win some great prizes! Each day a different Spellbinders Design Team Member will introduce one of the soon-to-be-released dies! Blog visitors can sign up during specified times for a chance to win that day's featured die. So be certain to visit all the blogs and become eligible to win the Grand Prize: A new Raspberry Wizard Die Cutting & Embossing Machine and $500 in dies!!! To learn more about this opportunity please head over to Spellbinders home page for the list of blogs, the prize information and other fabulous details surrounding this grand event! Also, if you would like to be notified directly by Spellbinders regarding future product releases then click on the link below and sign up for new information to be delivered to your email box. I'll be doing my sneek peak reveal on July 10, so be sure to check back for a chance to win. The fun all starts TOMORROW, Monday, June 30th at my buddy, Debbie Olson's... Read more →

400K Giveaway Winner!

(First of all, please pardon any wierd, small or otherwise strange formatting of the text here . . . Typepad has changed some settings and I'm not sure how this post is going to look!) Drum roll, please . . . the winner of my 400K Giveaway was chosen by Random.org: Here are your random numbers: 266 Timestamp: 2008-06-27 16:11:44 UTC Thanks a lot for making me count almost all the way thru the 328 comments you all left, LOL! That makes the winner: "Congrats, Sharon!! :o) I agree with many of the previous comments, featuring a product or tips on your fave products would be awesome!" Posted by: Emily| June 25, 2008 at 12:42 PM from http://waterpixie.blogs.splitcoaststampers.com/ Congratulations, Emily -- please send me your mailing address and I'll get these out in the mail to you . . . enjoy!! And thanks to everyone for your suggestions -- I will certainly be implementing many of them and doing some new features here on the blog! Be sure to check back in next week, I'll have my May Spellbinders gallery projects to share with you. Many of you commented that you'd like to see more projects using Spellbinders dies, so... Read more →

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... Read more →

400K Giveaway!

Wow, we passed over 400,000 hits here on the blog in the past 1-1/2 years I've been blogging and I'd like to say thanks to all of you who've found me in cyberspace and keep coming back! My goof is your gain . . . somehow in my excitement over the Just Rite Stampers (you can see one used in my previous post), I ended up with doubles of these goodies, so I'm passing them along to one of you lucky readers! Here's what you'll get: This type of stamper is the hand-held wooden kit you see in the back which includes the Special Occasions fancy cursive font (large and small). The rings in the front two packages can also be used on the stamper, for a different look. One is Damask Borders and the other is Library of ... Kitchen of ... Desk of ... borders set. You'll be able to ink these on your regular ink pads, too, or use dye-based markers on them. All you have to do to be entered in the random number generator drawing for this gift is give me an idea of a feature you'd like to see me do here on the... Read more →

TECC21: Dragonfly Hi

I don't know what rock I've been living under (probably just a blonde moment!), but I just recently discovered Taylor's weekly Cupcake Challenge is simply a sketch challenge and you don't have to use a cupcake image to play along! Well, you know how much I love sketch challenges, so I thought I'd participate this week . . . Even though I have a few cupcake stamps, I decided to use a little bit older Lockhart image I've had that hadn't seen ink yet and discovered this Dragonfly is a simple, quick pleasure to color and perfect for a summertime hello! I stamped her (it has to be a she because of all the pink, right?!!) with Tsukineko's Memento Rich Cocoa ink on Poison Ivory cardstock and colored her with Copic markers R81, R83, E15, Y21 & W2 for shadowing, to match this BasicGrey Sugared paper. Her flight path was pierced and then highlighted with Star Dust Stickles. The Stickles also accents the dragonfly's polkadots, head and the flowers on the "Hi" circle: For the sentiment circle, I was determined to finally use the Just Rite Stamper I've had for a while. I really wanted to use the C45's outer... Read more →

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... Read more →

Carousel Girls

This Spellbinders gallery project was also a design team challenge to use a die in a different way than originally intended. I used the Horse & Rocker top (just the horse, not the rockers) and the rod from Charms & Rod to create this carousel horse! He is popped up on foam tape, for added dimension. My oldest daughter has always loved carousel horses and we've traditionally gotten an annual photo of her on the beautiful carousel at our state fair. This visit was our youngest daughter's first ride (she was just a little over 1 year old)! Spellbinders alphabets used were Julius & Whimsy. The Carousel lettering and horse's embossed parts were accented with purple Copic Spica glitter pen. Nestabilities Large & Small Classic Circles were used for the mat for the horse. WorldWin DoubleMates (textured) Cardstock in Deep Groovy Grape-Rich is the 12" base. Other cardstock used was ColorMates Deep & Medium Groovy Grape, medium/dark/deep Terrific Teal and Deep Ocean Blue. Gold metallic cardstock from Stampin' Up was used for the carousel horse rod, to match the ones in the photos! Patterned paper is from Fancy Pants' Kewl collection. The journaling tag behind the right photo was made... Read more →

CPS69: Lockhart Hawaiian Father's Day

Well, half the week is over and I'm just now getting around to posting the Father's Day card I made for my husband . . . such is the slow life of lazy summer! Thank goodness CPS69's sketch was up early Sunday morning, so I could quickly get this card made before our afternoon family gathering. That really made this card come together quickly! I already knew I wanted to use Karen Lockhart's Hawaiian Shirt for hubby's card because those loud tropical print shirts are what he constantly wears in the summer, especially on vacation! I started by stamping the shirt with Tsukineko's Memento Rich Cocoa ink onto Neenah Classic Natural White cardstock -- I really like using this cardstock most of the the time with my Copics. It's a softer white, not a bright white and not quite a vanilla/cream color. I used these Copic markers & Spica glitter pens to color the shirt: You can also see by this closeup that I crumpled the shirt and adhered it to the tag with dimensional foam tape to keep that crumpled shape . . . after all, that's pretty much what your clothing looks like out of the suitcase when... Read more →

WSC52 Picnic

A week sure has flown by quickly since Beate's last Weekend Sketch Challenge . . . especially since this was the first full week of summer vacation for us! << Here's this week's sketch. So in honor of summer time and Flag Day tomorrow, I thought Karen Lockhart's new Picnic stamp would be appropriate for this week's sketch . . . . . . here's what I came up with: I stamped the Picnic image with Tsukineko's Memento Tuxedo Black ink onto Neenah Classic Natural White cardstock and colored with these Copic markers: The image was cut out and matted with the same navy print from BasicGrey's Boxer 6x6 pad that is the far left vertical strip of the sketch. The red print is from BasicGrey's Cupcake line. These two prints were machine stitched to the card. A little bit of paper piercing at the bottom of the Memory Box Holly Berry notecard and some Flame Dew Drops finish this card. I hope you'll try this sketch this weekend and don't forget about Ellen Hutson's Friday the 13th sale going on today. You can see this post for all the details. Everything in Ellen's store is included in the sale,... Read more →

Friday the 13th Sale & Newsletter Sneak Peek!

Do you know what tomorrow is? The only Friday the 13th of the entire year! And that means it will be a good day for you over at Ellen Hutson LLC. Ellen is having another one of her infamous Friday the 13th sales. For 13 hours between 6am & 7pm PST, you will receive a 13% discount on your ENTIRE order! If you didn't receive your Ellen Hutson LLC In Touch special event emailed newsletter this week that detailed the sale & special promotion code, you can go to the bottom of Ellen's homepage and sign up to receive future newsletters. For this sale, just be sure to enter promotion code 131313V3 when you reach the checkout page. You can use this discount code on ANYTHING in Ellen's store . . . those 31 brand new Lockhart stamps, Copic markers, Nestabilities, you name it! As long as it's showing in the store, it's on sale! Then be on the watch for the next edition of the Ellen Hutson LLC In Touch educational newsletter to appear in your inbox on June 15th. Here's a little sneak peek of a project I prepared for the newsletter: I love that Lockhart Electric Fan!... Read more →

Herb Garden

Earlier this year, I found this iron holder with metal flower pots on sale at Hobby Lobby and thought it might make a good altered project down the road. That time came in April when I was designing my monthly Spellbinders gallery project. The pots were already this rustic white color and I decided to dress them up a bit with a technique one of the Spellbinders Design Team members (Heidi Blankenship) did the previous month. (Here's a link to Heidi's gorgeous bird feeder!). First, I used Spellbinders Daisy Delight die to cut & emboss craft foil flowers. You can find the foil either directly through Spellbinders or Ellen Hutson carries it, too. It's thicker & sturdier than regular kitchen aluminum foil and comes in different colors, which reverse to silver. I used the silver side for the flowers. Next, I glued the foil flowers to the metal pot using Beacon Adhesives Dazzle Tac Jewelry Glue because it said it was incredibly strong and would hold well with all kinds of metals/jewelry -- and they were right! (Click on photos for a larger view). . Then I gave the flowers a few coats of cream acrylic paint that matched the... Read more →

Video Instruction for using Spellbinders Dies

Everything you need to know about how to use Spellbinders dies is now available in step-by-step videos on You Tube made by Stacey Caron, Co-owner of Spellbinders. Because Spellbinders dies are universal, that means you can use them in almost any leading die cut machine you may already own: How to use Spellbinders dies in your Cuttlebug. How to use Spellbinders dies in other manufacturers' machines. Because Spellbinders' Wizard die cutting & embossing machine is universal, that means you can use almost any other manufacturers' dies in it: How to use other manufacturer's dies in Spellbinders' Wizard die cutting & embossing machine. I've also put these links on my left sidebar, under "Spellbinders Links", for quick & easy reference! I'll be back a little later with another Spellbinders project -- it's just taking me a little while to write it up. Read more →

WSC51: Rose Bud Cupcake

Beate's Weekend Sketch Challenge #51 went together very quickly and is one I'll use over and over again -- I loved it and hope you'll try it, too! I'm bouncing in my chair over this darling new Lockhart flower cupcake stamp image -- I think this is the one I was most excited about of Karen's 31 new images that were released this week! Here's what I came up with: Memory Box Raspberry note card is the base of this card that matched the bright pink flowers in the BasicGrey Sultry paper perfectly. Papertrey Ink's Spring Moss satin ribbon carries out the top horizontal element of this sketch and Spellbinders Mega Nestabilities Long Scalloped Rectangle die cut the Raspberry strip at the bottom, for balance. Karen Lockhart's sweet new Rose Bud Cupcake (just released this week) is on Neenah Classic Crest Natural White cardstock and was colored with these Copic markers (W2 used for shadowing): The cupcake image was cut and matted with Spellbinders Nestabilities Classic Ovals dies (large & small sets), given a little bling-bling of pink crystal gemstones, and is popped up on dimensional foam tape. Copic Spica glitter pens in clear and pink accent the rose buds... Read more →

Digi & Karen Lockhart New Release!

I know I promised another Spellbinders project for yesterday, but with the final days of school this week, I've been busy! I'll try to get that up for you later today or tomorrow. In the meantime . . . did you know The Shabby Princess (digital scrapbooking site) offers a free computer desktop calendar each month? (So after you create and save this, you can install it as the desktop or wallpaper for your computer). You can download it free here -- from their blog. Here's this months' I put together: I've just barely started dabbling in digital scrapbooking and this free page each month has helped a bit -- it's easy to just pop your photos into the frames and pre-made page. I hope you'll try it out, too! June 1st brought a huge release of 31 new stamps from Karen Lockhart! You can check them all out here, at Lockhart Stamp Company (a little easier to see all the images in one spot), or these categories: 14 new Itty Bitty's 9 new Words/Sentiments 8 new full-sized stamps All the stamps are already available for sale at EllenHutson.com. I hope to have some samples for you as soon as... Read more →