May cards...

Did you miss me, all two of you (or sometimes 3!)?  I participated in a mail art project for the first 4 weeks in May and essentially stopped making cards and blogging about them.  It's taken me a few days to get back into the card-making swing of things, but I'm glad to be back!!!  I'll write more about the mail art experience soon, but I wanted to share the cards I did make this month.

I had to send not one, but two sympathy cards this month.  In the spirit of my overarching card-making goal of using the bits I have lying around, I used a panel made with a Tim Holtz Floral stencil and Mother of Pearl Nuvo Mousse I'd made forever ago and a sympathy sentiment from Altenew's Wildflower Garden set mounted on a piece of text paper I've had for ages.

This card accompanied a packet of much-beloved-but-never-used teapot postcards I sent to a friend who is posting pictures of her daily themed tea parties on Facebook.  I borrowed an idea I used a couple of months ago, but this time set the tea party in a garden.  The die is the Tea Party die from Hero Arts, the background stamp is Country Road from Impression Obsession, and the potted plants and flowers courtesy of various peg stamps from Rubber Stamp Tapestry.

Out of the blue, a friend sent me a jigsaw puzzle!  Like so many, I've re-kindled my love of puzzles during this time at home, so I've started rebuilding my collection.  For my thank you card, I added a Mama Elephant thank you sentiment to a background made with a stencil watercolor technique using the same Tim Holtz stencil as above and Distress inks.  I adhered the panel to another sheet of cardstock to make it a little sturdier and cut the whole piece with a jigsaw die from Impression Obsession.  I took the puzzle apart and sent the pieces in a small envelope.

Hopefully I'll make a few more cards on these last days of May, but this card is my entry into the Spring/Summer 2020 Coffee Loving Cardmakers extravaganza.  CLC does these events twice a year, and every single time I swear to myself I'm going to make so many cards because I have so very many tea- and coffee-related stamps.  In the end, if I make and enter one card, it's a miracle.

I recently got a whole bunch of coffee stamps from Impression Obsession, including this one called Coffee Talk, and I've had this coffee sentiment from Rubbernecker for a few years (This is half of the sentiment.  The other half says, "I said, honey, it's Monday, don't even play."  These two stamps together suit me to a tee and continue my tradition of sassy women and snarky things to say - yup, still not tired of it. 

I couldn't face the idea of coloring the image - coloring is not my forté - so I decided to watercolor the background - also not my forté.  This card is my fourth attempt.  First I tried to color the background without masking the image and it was okay, but not great.  Then I fussy cut a paper mask (I have no masking paper - failure) and tried again because I wanted a different shade of blue and an ombré effect going from light to dark.  The ombré was great on try #2 but some of the paint seeped under the mask leaving the women with blue faces - artful, but not ideal.  For attempt #3, I fussy cut another mask out of plastic.  But I warped the plastic when I tried to heat it a bit to dry the ink, but I forged ahead and not surprisingly, the painting was a disaster.  So I went back to the first idea of just painting carefully around the image.  Because I was able to paint without tears, I decided to quit while I was ahead and give up the ombré effect, though it would have been better with.

In the end, I like the card, but it's not in any way exciting - rather typical of my work.  I might do another version with a painted background and the image mounted on top.  I don't know why I was fixated on a single layer, but I was.  Or I could try coloring the image with pencils or markers.  Or I could get masking paper and make a grown-up mask.  Or I could throw lots of money at the problem and get some kind of Scan-n-Cut and make a mask and stencil at the same time (throwing money at craft problems is always the best solution, right?????)!  Or I could move on.  Stay tuned...

Anyway, it's fun running on about cards again.  What are you making this weekend??

CoronaCrafts - Fun with Organization...

I once read that if you're any kind of crafter, you really have three hobbies, not one:  making whatever it is you make, shopping for and buying craft supplies, and organizing your supplies.  That's me for sure.  Some days I feel like doing one of these sub-hobbies more than another.  Now with the plethora of online everything, I like to have some craft projects I can do that don't require intense concentration so I can listen to the concert, or whatever, and still keep my hands busy.  This week's project has been color combo tags focusing on two stamp sets:  the Papertrey Ocean set I wrote about last time and the Altenew Nature Snippets set.

I've written before that choosing colors is not a thing I'm confident about.  It's dawning slowly that others may feel the same, even the crafters who make the fancy videos.  The key thing for me is giving myself permission and time to try a bunch of color combinations, even if I have to throw away some of the poor choices (I think the fancy video people might do this, and just not show it, or they might just have a great eye for color, which is why they are fancy video people.).  What I've decided to do when I can is make a bunch of color swatch samples for different stamp sets.  This way, when I go to use that set, I'm not constantly stressing over which colors to use.  I'll have a head start, and can make adjustments as necessary.  So while Karen Axelrod was playing the piano the other night, here's what I was doing...

I scoured the internet for card examples using the Nature Snippets set.  Whenever folks actually included the ink names in their post, I wrote them down and gave them a try.  I made 20 samples in all for this set, and am still collecting more ideas.

I die cut each sample with a tag die, and wrote the ink names on the back.  I did the same for the Papertrey Ocean set the other day.  I am so happy to have these as a reference!

Here are some of the cards I made with the Nature Snippets set this week (plus one from last year).  AND, I'll put the pink colors in the caption beneath each picture!  There were others, but I forgot to photograph them before they went out the door...

Altenew Inks:  Artic, Sapphire, Silver Stone

Altenew Inks:  Iceberg, Fresh Leaf, Sunray

Altenew Inks:  Ultraviolet, Jet Black, Volcano Lake

Altenew Inks:  Minty Mint, Just Green, Cotton Candy

Altenew Inks:  Coral Bliss, Heartbeat, Soft Lilac

CoronaCrafts - Call of the Sea...

Ugh!  I've been so good about blogging regularly during this time at home, and then boom, a week goes by.  Silly me for trying to take more time away from this little screen...

Last week, I was looking at Ebay, like you do, and searching for Gibson Girl rubber stamps, like you do, when I came across one I didn't have - which seems almost impossible.  As I was considering making the purchase, I looked at the seller information.  The seller turned out to be a rubber stamp store that used to exist in Connecticut.  When I had extra time on my way up or down the NE corridor, I would sometimes take a detour and visit that store.  The last time I tried that, which was several years ago now, they were gone like so many.  But here they are again on Ebay, no doubt selling off their inventory.  Before I purchased my Gibson Girl with Hat stamp, I decided to look at their other offerings.  I mean, who can resist the siren song of combined shipping???  My one other purchase:  a Van Gogh quote about the sea in my favorite almost unreadable scripty type by East Coast Art Stamps, a company I've never heard of that I know is long gone.  The two woodblock stamps arrived on Friday and I was inspired to use the quote stamp immediately.

I knew I wanted to pair this quote with an ocean image, of which I have many, and I chose this layering set by Papertrey Ink:  Text & Texture:  Ocean, which I hadn't yet tried.  I always struggle with choosing colors, so over the weekend, I took a few hours and just tried this stamp set a bunch of times with various shades of green, teal, and blue. 

I did something novel and even wrote down the color combinations so I could have a visual aid for next time.  Crazy, I know.  I went with two shades of teal from the Altenew Sweet Dreams set:  Teal Cave and Galactic Stream (the names make the colors extra special...).

My plan for the quote was to stamp it on white translucent vellum, let the ink dry for a million years, run it through my sticker maker thing, because all pieces of tape and drops of glue are visible through vellum, and then put the whole thing together.   Such a simple plan, really.  I stamped the quote on two pieces of vellum just to be sure I had an extra when I screwed up one of the pieces.  PS, I messed up both pieces in different ways.  After waiting about three hours, I ran the first piece through the sticker maker and smudged all of the ink.  After waiting about 15 hours, I tested the ink on the second piece, and smudged it.  Time for another plan.

I cut another couple of pieces (this is when I discovered I was down to my last sheet of white vellum), ran them through the sticker maker first, then stamped, and then clear heat embossed the pieces so I could finish the card before quarantine ended.  But alas, clear embossing, while it made the piece usable, thickened the text, making it more arty than readable. 

I still like the concept, and still sent the card - if it was a disaster, the card would still be in the house - but I plan to remake it.  Next time I will try a) using dye ink on the quote, which dries faster, b) waiting at least 24 hours before touching the vellum, c) positioning the quote closer to the bottom of the card, and d) adding more color to the sky - you almost can't see it in the photo.

The quote calls the Mediterranean Sea the color of mackerel, like a mackerel sky, I guess, but meaning changeable in color.  Maybe I'll try get some of that color variation into the ocean...

CoronaCrafts - In haste...

This is not a real post, only a hurried post as I attempt to figure out if a virtual sedar is in any way possible and fun...

I mean, don't you have badgers in your collection?  And why wouldn't those badgers be drinking tea.  Badgers care nothing for your social distancing nonsense...

Corona Crafts - the Layered Look...

In a fit of self-preservation, I ordered a new stamp-and-die set last week.  They arrived Wednesday, and within an hour of them hitting the mailbox, I opened the package and started playing.

The Ton has started making layering stamps sets that a) are the easiest stamps to layer ever, and b) have you stamp and then die cut several images all at the same time, and c) are beautiful.  The one issue I have with them is that, in all of their ingenuity, they are expensive.  Knowing this, The Ton just came out with a smaller set that works the same way.  I hemmed and hawed over it for a while, but then happily snapped it up.  Here's a screenshot from their website of a bit of the Floral Bits set, just to show you how it works:

The top image is the bottom layer of the flowers; the bottom image is the next layer that adds shadows and details that you stamp in a darker color.  There's a third image too that adds even more detail, and two stamps for the solid leaves layer, and the leaf details.  The cool different thing are those squares.  If you align the squares when you're stamping, it takes the guesswork out of getting the detail layer in exactly the right place.  I'm getting better at this, but it's still a thing I struggle with.  Here's an example of my almost-but-not-quite layering:

This is an older set from The Ton called Toned Squares.   I love this set, and I've had it for a while, but when I actually sat down to play with it the other month, if you click on the photo above to look at a larger image, you can see that the squares, especially the orange version, are a little out of alignment.  Not in a terrible, unusable way, but in  a way I wish they weren't.  Those alignment squares in the new Floral Bits set really make a difference (not that I still can't mess things up somehow, of course...), and best yet, when you use the die to cut out the flowers, the alignment squares are gone anyway.

I stamped a bunch of flowers with some Altenew ink sets and made this card:

For a background, I used The Ton's Modern Plaid stamped with Impression Obsession hybrid ink in Banana.  The teacup diecut is from the Cups Duo dies by Cat's Pajamas, and the sentiment from the Blooms Turnabout Set from Concord and 9th.

Even for me, this card came together very quickly, and I plan to make more in a similar vein soon.  Now if only The Ton would re-release some of their older sets with alignment squares, it would be a beautiful thing.  I can furnish a small list...

This weekend I hope to play with some other new-ish floral stamps as well as get some time in the garden!

CoronaCrafts - 4 o'clock somewhere...

One of the silver linings I pretend there is with this being at home all of the time nonsense is that there is the potential for afternoon tea every day!  Now if only someone made me tea sandwiches every day, my joy would be complete, but in the absence of that, I can make cards featuring tea images. 

This is one of the cards that I started and set aside for a while, and finally put in the mail a couple of days ago.  I love tea time images and always want to find more excuses to use the Tea Time and the Celebrations sets from Altenew.  I stamped the images, clear heat embossed them, colored them with watercolor markers, and cut them out with the coordinating dies.

I have long wanted a stamp that says 'Surely it must be 4 o'clock somewhere,' but it's not to be found.  Someday I'll have it made into a stamp, but until then, I decided to take the radical approach of printing it onto card stock, and using that on my card.  Crazy, I know.  This led to the first delay in finishing the card (well, the second - the first was waiting for the watercolor to dry) because I had to find the perfect font, find the perfect size, decide on regular or bold text, etc.  Decisions finally made, then I had to decide how to arrange all of my elements (I almost just wrote arrange all of my elephants...), which always brings on a moment of panic, but I forged ahead.

I used an Impression Obsession Cover-a-Card stamp on a purple scrap, trimmed that to size, and used some corners from the Greetery's Cozy Cup Coaster Die for a table cloth.  In a perfect world, I would have printed the sentiment right on the card base, but I didn't trust myself to get the placement exactly right.  Instead I cut it out and mounted it on black so it would stand out.  Luckily, the tiered stand, teapot, and teacups fit perfectly across the card. 

There are a couple of things I'd change about the design next time, like shifting the table cloth pieces a bit to the left, but in general, I'm happy with how this came together.  Plus, purple!

Tomorrow:  a new look at layering...

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.