CoronaCrafts - Just say no...

I was going to talk about stencils today, but that will keep.

Today is not a good day.  I know the virus is not done, but I am.  Officially.

...and no-one says it better than a baby groundhog.

Groundhog:  Rubber Hedgehog
Sentiment:  Mary Engelbreit for Rubber Moon

CoronaCrafts - He's pretty, but...

I took a blogging break this weekend because a) it was gloomy and being productive when it's gloomy is just impossible, and b) the craft theme of the weekend was FINISH THINGS!

Here's the first of the cards I finished:

I used a the Collage Windows die from Scrapman as a mask and inked over it, then stamped Monsieur Coeur from Carabelle Studio, and added a sentiment with a stamp I had custom made a bunch of years ago.

This is not a complicated card, but I got stuck on it the other week for a stupid reason.   After I inked and stamped the main panel, the card wanted to be 4-bar size (about 3.5" x 5"), rather than A2 (4.25" x 5.5").  I wanted to use a frame die for the panel so I had 90º angles everywhere, but I convinced myself that running the panel through my diecut machine with an A2 die twice, or using my paper trimmer, which produces only mostly clean, straight lines, would fail and I would ruin everything and the world would crumble and disaster would ensue.  I mean, it's possible that I would have ruined the card panel, but in the calm view of many days later, I could have just remade it, right?  This is a thing I have to remind myself of over and over again.  In this case, I threw money at the problem instead.  I found a set of Lawn Fawn 4-bar frame dies and ordered them.  They arrived Friday, and worked perfectly for the card.  The world was saved.

One of the best parts was that after I made this card, I had the inked die I'd used as a mask nicely colored and ready to use on another card.  I went for even simpler this time, adding just a small sentiment from Mama Elephant's Tres Amigos in one of the die openings.

Tomorrow:  Fun with stencils.  Eventually.

CoronaCrafts - Day 10

Happy Friday!  I'm making a cake, sitting outside as I write this post, and listening to some great dance tunes - not bad for my quarantine-like existence.

Today's card was built from a background I had made who knows when at a moment when I was experimenting with emboss resist techniques.  I used two of my favorite Distress Oxide colors:  Chipped Sapphire and Seedless Preserves and a favorite background stamp, French Script by Darkroom Door.  I did the blocks of color side-by-side, and didn't know what to do next, so I set it aside.  Here's what I came up with the other day.

I have a whole list of Jane Austen quotes to make into stamps someday, but this is one I found on Etsy from a store called Makistamps out of Germany.  The image comes from Blank Page Muse and has the descriptive title Lady and Man Clock with Writing.  So it is.

The card came together pretty quickly, but at the last minute, I decided that both the quote and the image needed a black mat to help them stand out against the background. I cut the mat for the quote, but couldn't face my diecutting machine, with which I have an adversarial relationship, again that night, so left it for the next day.

When I've been sending out these cards, I'm doing a little bit of stamping on the envelopes.  Here's a perennial favorite:

I've had this stamp for ages.  It's appropriate for every occasion.  It was originally made by Rubber Poet, but is now available from StampaFe.

What are you working on this weekend?  I'm making more of my Dangerous Business cards and have one more person with snarky quote card ready to go.  Something will happen tomorrow.

CoronaCrafts - Day 9

It's a beautiful, sunny day in my little village, and it took me less than an hour to do my grocery shopping this morning, so things must be looking up!

Today's card is one of my fastest on record...

Maybe like many card-makers, I'm always coming up with stamps I wish existed: an image I would love to work with, or more often, a quote or a phrase I want to put on a card.  I keep a list of stamps to make someday when I have unlimited time and money and suddenly develop the design skills to make something graphically interesting and useful.  I know there are companies out there who make stamps for cardmakers, but the prices are often outside my budget.  I had a bunch of stamps made locally in 2016, but I used a shop who did a fine job, but just doesn't know from deep-etched art stamps.  I can and do use the stamps I had made, but I have to stamp carefully.  Late last year I found another company online who had good prices and an easy, online stamp set-up process, so I tried to have another stamp made.  The results were the same as the first situation - fine job, exactly what I paid for, but not the same quality as the art stamps I love using.   But I'm going to use the stamp anyway - just stamping lightly and many times to get a good impression. 

The day the stamp arrived, I pulled it off of the wood block, cut it into two strips, mounted it on cling foam and tried it out on a pre-printed card I'd gotten at some point from Concord & 9th.  Here's the result:

I didn't come up with this line.  I read it on a Cup of Jo blog post two years ago and have been hanging onto it ever since!  I don't know who actually said it, and as I'm not selling or distributing anything with this quote on it, I'm not going to track down the author and ask for permission to use it, but I'm so glad I have it in stamp form.

Someday I'll spend real money and spring for some custom art stamps.  What do you want to see in rubber stamp form?

Tomorrow:  more fun with quotes and writing

CoronaCrafts - Day 8

I got a bit stuck in my card-making yesterday.  Over the weekend, before I got distracted by the coffee and tea shop dies I wrote about yesterday, I started two cards, and came to a stopping point on both of them for different reasons.  I mean, I will finish them, but I have to figure out how, and that feeling of not knowing how to get out of the rut was starting to take over, combined with that feeling of dread that if I don't make a card, and don't send it, I'll have nothing to blog about, nothing to post in Instagram, and by skipping one day I will get out of the habit of sending and writing and I will have failed miserably.

I'm tired of this disruption to my life, can you tell?

I took a deep breath.

And I tried to remember what the heck I was trying to do with this project to begin with - send cards to friends I can't see right now, use bits of things cluttering up my craft table, and try out some ideas and use products I've been meaning to forever.  Oh, and it's Woodblock Wednesday coming up.

As I'm very slowly unmounting my woodblock stamps, and incorporating all of my cling stamps into my main catalog, I have occasion to look through my stamp drawers, which I love doing.  I was getting out another stamp when I found this one by Stampers Anonymous: 

I have no idea when I got it.  I don't think I've ever used it.  I know this font is one of my favorites (what is it called?  do you know???), and I'm drawn to every stamp that uses it.  As soon as I saw it, I knew it was perfect for my CoronaCrafts cards.

I went for simplicity, and the original tenets of the project.  I pulled out a bunch of background stamps I've been wanting to use, dug out the notebook pages where I'd jotted down some of the Distress Oxide combos I wanted to try, and diecut a bunch of panels.  Here are my first two cards in the series:

 

Top:  Background - My Favorite Things Marble Background; Colors - Tattered Rose, Abandoned Coral, Seedless Preserves

Bottom:  Background - Simon Says Stamp Circle Doodle Background; Colors - Shabby Shutters, Peacock Feathers, Faded Jeans

When I make more of these in the next day or so, I'm going to use the technique from the top card:  Ink the panel, and then stamp the background stamp using the lightest color from the background.  Because the ink has pigment qualities as well as dye ink properties, the light color will stay visible on top of the darker shades.  Unexpected!  I think it makes a better, subtler backdrop for the words.

And I had no idea until I told my husband about these cards that this phrase is really a paraphrased quote from Tolkein.

Tomorrow:  Super-quick cards!

CoronaCrafts - Day 7

I started working on one card over the weekend, got stymied by something, got excited about something else, and ended up with a card I didn't expect.  This card is all about a thing I love doing, and which someday, we'll get to do again: meet friends for coffee.  Or tea.  Or dinner.  Or drinks.  You get the idea.  In the topsy turvy vein, here's the front of the card, which is the last thing I made...

Background Stamp:  Love of Coffee by Picket Fence Studios; Sentiment:  Coffee Talk by Joy Clair

This card front makes me think that I've learned a thing or two from all of the cardmakers out there, and all of those hours I spend watching card-making videos.  I made an A2 card base, and cut an A2 panel.  I stamped the background image in gold on the panel  (I should have embossed it, but as this was the last stamping step of a long card-making session, I was happy this bit turned out as well as it did.).  I used my MISTI to stamp the sentiment on the card base, and then again on the panel so I would know exactly where to cut the window in the center so the sentiment would show through.  Then I was able to trim a bit off of all four sides of the panel before mounting it with foam tape on the card base. 

Here's what happens when you open the card...

Both of these dies are from Hero Arts as part of their My Monthly Hero release in 8/2018.  I didn't want the whole kit - I really only wanted the café die (on the right), but as it wasn't sold separately, I contented myself with the Tea Party die, which I bought at some point, and promptly never used.  Recently, I got to thinking about that café die, and wondered if maybe, by accident, I could find it on Ebay for a not-exorbitant amount of money.  I could!  I did!  It came on Saturday, and this card idea was born:

Contrasting scenes - one coffee, one tea, different color schemes, and different backgrounds, seen side-by-side on the inside of the card. 

The dies are the perfect size for A2 panels, and cut beautifully.  The hard part for me was deciding on the background.  I looked on Pinterest to see how other had used these dies and didn't find a ton of examples.  I was about to go for just a colored background when I remembered two cityscape stamps I have from Technique Junkies:  Watercolor NY (retired, on the L) and City Watercolors (on the R).  Perfect!  I stamped each city image with light ink on a white panel, added color with blending brushes, roughly following the lines of the image, and then stamped the image again in black.  The tea scene uses Aged Mahogany, Tattered Rose, and Spun Sugar inks; the coffee scene Vintage Photo, Tea Dye, and Sea Glass inks.

Once the backgrounds were done, I adhered a diecut over each, and then glued them to the inside of the card.  To write my message, I slipped in a plain, white card.

I love how this card came out!  I kept holding my breath waiting for something to go horribly wrong, or for me to spill something on one of the panels, but that just didn't happen, for once.  These dies make me so happy!!  I'm so glad I now have both of them!!

Tomorrow:  Woodblock Wednesday, and an unexpected, timely find!

CoronaCrafts - Day 6

Of all the Tim Holtz Distress Oxide combos, there's one I return to over and over:  Antique Linen, Victorian Velvet, and Seedless Preserves (okay, anything with Seedless Preserves works for me.  You see the background color of this blog, right?).  Here are a few different cards I've made in the past few years with that set of colors:

Image:  Tim Holtz Cityscapes

Tim Holtz Floral Layering Stencil; Sentiment:  Altenew Signature Words

Images:  Oxford Impressions Jane Austen Collection

Today's card using that color combo came out of a day of exploration with watercolor block printing.  I love this technique for simple one-layer cards, and often stamp botanical silhouette images over the color blocks.  This card is a little more involved.

I'd made the print, stamped Hero Arts' Small Newspaper Skyline (retired), and trimmed it down to size a long time ago.   I loved it mounted on black, but wanted to add some interest to the background.  I thought about adding a background stamp to the back panel for a subtle tone-on-tone look, but instead went for Cuttlebug's Old Paris embossing folder (also retired) to add some texture. But when I put the two pieces together, something was still off.  I had a scrap of glitter paper lying around that was in the right color family, so I added that to the bottom.  I liked how the glitter paper broke up the monotony of black in the background, but adding it threw the balance off.  But, like magic, adding the sentiment from Miss Ink's Decaf Background set, fixed everything.

Tomorrow we stay in the city and celebrate café life, which we'll someday be allowed to have again.