random.on purpose.

Happy Mother's Day!

My own mother is off on new adventures unfettered by the bonds of this mortal existence, so I didn't make her a card, but I did make one for Greg's mom:

Stamps: Stampin'Up! Fresh Vintage and Messages for Mom; Ink: SU! Pretty in Pink; Papers: Georgia-Pacific white, Close to My Heart Sunkiss Yellow; Accessories/tools: Martha Stewart butterfly punch, Cuttlebug textile embossing folder, Colorbok gems, Offray ribbon, sewing machine

It's a relatively quick-and-simple card because it was sort of a last-minute thought.  I've been somewhat ambivalent about Greg's family for several months, so I wasn't sure I was going to make a card (although I did bring some chocolates back for his mom from Utah - See's Candies are the best!).  Since she's nearly 92 years old and this could very well be her last Mother's Day, I decided to face down the demons and make an appearance, and I thought I should have a card to bring with me, since she knows I make them...

ANYway - I just did some random stamping and a bit of stitching and embossed a punched-out butterfly and added some gems to its body and tied a bow and that's that!  She likes yellow and pink, so that drove the color choices...  I think the card still needs something (but I don't know what), and Greg declared it "fine" (which in man-speak means, "can we just go, already?"), so I said "fine", too, and we went!

I hope you're enjoying your day, whether you are a mother or just have a mother, and thanks for stopping by!

A Little Diversion...

I really can't justify any time that I spend doing anything except sewing (for work), since I'm a couple of weeks behind, but I took some, anyway...  I can feel myself teetering on the verge of depression, so creativity is my go-to remedy for that.  Justification enough, yes?

I took an hour or so last night to carry on with the stamp indexing project, then scoped out the "Free for All" challenge this morning on Splitcoast Stampers.  It was to make a 3 1/2" x 6" card - a size I've never tried before, and it fits in a standard envelope, so I gave it a go.  I even incorporated Wednesday's sketch and yesterday's challenge to use birds and came up with this:

Stamp: Inkadinkado; Ink: Close to My Heart Grey Wool; Paper: DCWV Green mat stack, CTMH Twilight; Accessories/tools: Bic MarkIt markers, Micron pen, ribbon, sewing machine

The stamp is sort of a solid-type - as opposed to an outline - so I stamped it in gray, then colored it with markers and added outlines with a Micron pen.  The sketch challenge hostess (Korin) had stitching on her cards, so I followed suit, just 'cuz I liked it so very much!  I had to color some white ribbon with a marker, too, since I didn't have the right color.  I guess that pretty much sums it up...

I think I'll probably be using this size to make a Mother's Day card for Greg's mom, too.  I really like it!  I brought a box of chocolates from See's Candies back from Utah for her (just 'cuz I'm cool like that...)  I'll be sure to post if I manage the card to go with the chocolates.  Thanks for stopping by, and have a great weekend!

Home again, home again...

...jiggety-jig!  I just got back from Utah, where I was getting to know the most recent addition to our family - grandson Marcellus:

(I'll - hopefully - be more photogenic in my next life..  Good thing Marcellus is so cute, eh?)

One of my favorite pics is after his first bath (check the hair):

He's changing so fast!  Here's a two-week pic:

He's all of three weeks old already, and has gained over two pounds and more than an inch in length!  Healthy, beautiful baby boy, he is!  Becca (my daughter and the proud mommy) sent me this cutie last night:

The TSA folk thought that I was crazy, because I had my sewing machine in my carry-on (sans needles, of course - they were packed in the checked luggage along with my staple gun and other tools).  Why did I feel it necessary to haul my gear across the continent, you may ask?  Because some friends gifted Becca and Tyler (the papa) with a glider, but it was in need of reupholstering.  Grandma to the rescue!  Here it is all refurbished:

Whilst I was out in that part of the country, I connected up with a long-time friend from Internet encounters.  We first met in a Close to My Heart online group back in '05 or '06, and have followed each other's blogs and emailed and called and all.  She is Erin from Inky Smiles, and she is FABULOUS!  I forgot my camera in New York (which explains the poor-quality phone pictures I've posted here), but Erin has a for-reals one and snapped a few pics of us.  I stole this one from her blog post:

Why does my nose always look so much bigger in pics than in real life?  One of the great mysteries of my "Sue-niverse"...)

She gave me a tour of her home (it's lovely), introduced me to her fur-baby Sadie (she's a very sweet dog), and let me play for a bit in her craft cave.  She actually taught me some soldering basics and made a pendant for me!  She also gifted me with some baubles/charms from a swap at Creative University, where she has taught for the past couple of years.  One talented chica, that Erin!  Behold:

Pendant front

Pendant back

Baubles/charms

It's next to impossible to see in the above picture, but that teeny, tiny bottle has a silhouette of a fairy and the word "wish" on the outside, and two dandelion seeds inside (or, as one of my daughters always called them, "wishblows").  Pretty cool, eh?

And that's the end of the story (or at least this chapter)!  I'm still recovering from my red-eye return flights. I got on a plane in Utah at 11:29 pm Saturday, had a 3-hour layover at JFK airport in NYC, then flew from there to Syracuse, where I de-planed at 10:39 am Sunday morning.  One long night, I can tell you...  Additionally, my digestive system and I are not currently on very good terms, my head is heavy and achy, and my throat hurts.  Hmmm - I think I need a nap!  I'll be back sooner or later with more...  Thanks so much for stopping by!

 

Slow Down

I've been running  crazy and burning the candle at both ends and trying to get several weeks' worth of work done in several days, etc.  I've been in this pattern for close to two months now.  You may have noticed my absence here, if you still check back from time to time to see if I've posted anything.  How appropriate, then, that my daughter sent an email to me with the link to the following YouTube video.  I hope that you will slow down and sit for a minute to watch it.  It's a great reminder!

I hope your day is truly a gift and that you recognize it as such...  I'll be back soon, I promise!

Four for Friday

Hey!  How's the weekend going so far?  I know we're just a few hours into it, but still - TGIF!!!  I've been working on a variety of things, as you'll see in this post - a little organizing, a little gift-ing, a bit of Valentine-ing - fun times!

Somewhere recently I saw the cutest idea for a Valentine treat.  I thought I knew where it was, but I was mistaken.  I can't find it now (sorry), but I used the idea.  She even had a printable topper, but I made my own - mostly because I wanted to use my Cuttlebug embossing folder for the bunny blowing heart bubbles:

I embossed white-core cardstock (Close to My Heart Holiday Red and Pink Carnation) so I could sand the embossed image to reveal the white outlines.  The "kisses" is from a Stampin'Up! wheel, the "Valentine's Day" is from a CTMH set, and the rest is stamped letter-by-letter with Stampendous' Small Typewriter Alphabet.  Good thing I only had to make six of them, eh?

I wanted to add a bit of Valentine to my dining room shelf, too, so I spray-painted some bottles white and glitzed them up with some ribbons and stickers and gems, then grouped them with some red and silver items I already had, along with some little Hallmark figures from "back in the day" when my children were young 'uns:

Jaclyn (one of the owners of the company I sew for)  had a birthday last week, but the girls are celebrating tomorrow night.  I made her some etched plates and wineglasses for previous birthdays, so she requested dessert plates for this birthday to go with them.  I obliged her on that score, but that didn't seem like enough, so I made some wineglass charms for her, too:

I stamped the chandeliers (Inkadinkado) on some opaque shrink plastic, trimmed around them and hole-punched them before shrinking.  After they were all cooled down, I coated them with some Ranger Glossy Accents and left them alone overnight.  They were kind of lackluster before that, but now they're glossy (duh) and the black is more...intense?  I used jump rings through the punched holes to string them onto the ring, and used seed beads and rondelles to add some color to the charms (as my husband said - all the chandeliers looked the same to him).  I trimmed a piece of pretty cardstock from DCWV's Luxury Stack, punched a few holes, and "sewed" the charms to the card with that stretchy "string" intended to use to string beads for bracelets.

I'm still finishing up the organization in my "new" studio/workroom, and tripped over a handy thing.  My mother-in-law once gave me a tea chest with all kinds of yummy teas, which are now gone.  The chest is wood, and pretty, and I was mulling over what I could possibly use it for when the light bulb went on:

Yup - those little embossing folders and dies fit in here beautifully!  I trimmed some cardstock down to serve as dividers, and just hand-wrote the categories on them.  What a happy day, eh?

Okay - that's all four of the things I have for you today!  Random, I know, but that's how I roll!  Have a great weekend, and thanks for stopping by!

Well alrighty, then!

It seems like it's been a couple of forevers since I did anything creative, let alone posted here!  I had some time last night to play with some of my stamps, though, so I made THREE cards!  Well, more accurately, I finished an almost-done one, and made two more...

The CAS challenge yesterday on Splitcoast was a theme challenge: hearts.  Tough one, eh?  Here's my card:

Stamps: Verve Hundred Hearts, Stampotique Hanging Hearts; Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black; Paper: GP White, Paper Studio black, scraps of pink and green; Accessories/tools: Fiskars funky heart squeeze punch, Bic MarkIt markers

The hanging hearts stamp is just one row of them, but I stamped it multiple times (no kidding, right?) to make a background.  Then I just matted that onto a black card base and added the sentiment and punched hearts.  I went around the edges of the hearts with a black pen just to make them stand out a bit more and to fit in better with the card.

I stamped Kraftin' Kimmie's Perfect Poison on Saturday night and colored her and everything, but didn't come up with a card that I liked until last night:

Stamps: Kraftin' Kimmie Perfect Poison, Inkadinkado Maison Alphabet, Autumn Leaves Cool Girl Borders; Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Close to My Heart Hydrangea and Watermelon; Paper: Provo Craft dp, GP White, Paper Studio Black; Accessories/tools: Fiskars apron lace border punch, Bic MarkIt markers, CTMH journaling marker

The Kraftin' Kimmie stamps are rather large, so this card is a bit bigger than I usually make - 5 1/2" x 6 1/2".  The letters for the "Love Potion" looked a bit...unfinished, so I outlined them with a journaling marker to make them look a bit "more"...  I really love that heart-and-crossbones border (it actually inspired this card), and it was in a set with four or five others for $1 at JoAnn's!  Had to be bought...

The last card is kind of basic, and was just because I wanted to use my Stampotique Moth Fab stamp.  It'd never seen ink, and I love her, so here she is:

Stamps: Stampotique Moth Fab; Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black; Paper: Stampin'Up! Rich Razzleberry, GP White, Paper Studio Black; Accessories/tools: Martha Stewart scalloped heart border punch, Cuttlebug D'vine Swirls embossing folder, Bic MarkIt and Prismacolor markers

Like I said - pretty basic, but she doesn't need much...

And that's it for me!  I have a painting job to go tend to, and a slew of pillows to deliver, so I'd best get a move-on, eh?  Have a great day, and thanks for stopping by!

Just Jinglin' Along...

Okay - I promise my most excellent promise - this will be my last Christmas card post for a couple of weeks!  It's just that the current Jingle Belles challenge was so completely irresistable, that I HAD to make a card for it!  The challenge was to make a card inspired by the beautiful banner that Lauren created for the Jingle Belles blog, which looks like this:

Isn't that the coolest?  I love sooo many things about it!  I couldn't quite capture it, but this is as close as I could come:

Stamps: Close to My Heart Speckled Backgrounds, Inkadinkado Holiday Words and Holiday Silhouettes, Studio G sentiment and dot border; Ink: Stampin'Up! Baja Breeze and Basic Black, Versafine Onyx Black, Versamark; Paper: Stampin'Up! Naturals Ivory and Real Red, DCWV Aqua textured cardstock; Accessories/tools: White embossing powder, JoAnn glitter chipboard sentiment, Coats & Clark button thread, unknown heart sequins and jingle bells, CTMH journaling marker, Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher

Happily, the color combo of red and aqua (or turquoise) is also one of the weekly challenges for the SCS group I've joined!  I promise - that really is aqua ink and cardstock on that card, in spite of the fact that it looks bright blue in the photo.  I need to read up on my camera settings or something...  We were also supposed to use a flourish of some kind on our card, so my snowflake flourishes totally qualify!  Woo hoo - a two-fer!

My jingle bells started out brass, but I held them with my tweezers and blasted them with my heat gun until they were warmed up pretty well, then dumped white embossing powder over them and re-heated so they'd be smoothly coated.  They're (obviously) too small to decorate like the ones in the banner, so I opted to tie them with red thread instead of white, and add some heart sequins in between...  I got to use my Tim Holtz tiny attacher for the first time, too!  Fun stuff!

Another challenge for the SCS group was to make a CAS card that didn't require extra postage.  I made two:

Stamps: Stampin'Up! Warm Words; Paper: White, Stampin'Up! Ski Slope dp; Ink: Stampin'Up! Riding Hood Red; Accessories/tools: Cuttlebug die and embossing folder, Marvy Uchida scalloped square punch

Stamps: Stampin'Up! Holiday Blocks, Inkadinkado Warm Holiday Wishes; Ink: Stampin'Up! Riding Hood Red, Bermuda Bay, Old Olive, Crushed Curry and Rich Razzleberry, Memento Tuxedo Black; Paper: White, black; Accessories/tools: Silver cord, Liquid Pearls, 1/8" round hole punch

I guess I still had jingle bells on the brain when I made that second one...  Even though both of these cards use foam tape for some dimension, it's only 1/16" thick, so these cards are still  under 1/4" thick, envelope and all, so no extra postage is required!

Okay - that's it for this Christmas edition!  Next time I hop on here will be to share Valentine-y stuff!  I've been working on some things, but none of them are ready to share yet.  Plus, I did have to get that Jingle Belles card "out there" while the mojo was flowin'...

I hope you're having a great weekend so far!  Catch ya next week, most likely!  Thanks for stopping by...

I love that there are people in the world who can articulate emotion

...and what to do with it, and how to evoke more:

Today's gem from Alexandra Franzen: Add to the Love in the world

I'm working on about eight different things right now - I'll post some of them later, k?  Have a good one!

(image source)

With a nod to Lauren...

I know, I know - you thought Christmas had come and gone and I could stop making cards and sharing them with you, right?  Uh...bad answer!  Not only am I playing along with the Jingle Belles again this year, but I've also joined another weekly challenge group!  I promise to limit my Christmas posting to once every week or every other week, though, k?  That way you won't be inundated with Christmas, and we can also celebrate whatever the current occasions might be!

Now that we've got that out of the way, I do have a couple of cards to share with you.  The first one has been "on hold" since last October (seriously!) when the Jingle Belles challenge was "Not a Creature Was Stirring", and we were to use a "creature" of some kind on our card.  Lauren (one of the hostesses of the challenge, and a fellow blogger/friend) has a fondness for "monstahs" and her Dymo label maker, so I pretty much ripped off two of her signature moves to make this card:

Stamps: Recollections; Ink: Stampin'Up! Basic Black; Paper: Provo Craft dp, DCWV cs; Accessories/tools: Dymo label maker, sewing machine, Nestabilities Labels Four, Prismacolor pencils, Gamsol, Tim Holtz wonky scallop border die, Martha Stewart snowflake punch, Cuttlebug snowflake die, Stampin'Up! pearls, unknown spiral clip and ribbon

I colored my monstahs using the Gamsol Magic technique, then cut them out.  I did that in October, and they've been waiting patiently ever since for me to bring them to life...  After I got all the pieces/parts ready to assemble, the whole thing looked way too...vanilla.  I decided some black was in order, so I inked edges and stitched zigzags and matted things and ended up with what you see here.  Ta da!  (Just kidding, but it did take waaaay longer than I'd planned - always does...)

I'm considering this card as my contribution to the current challenge for the other group I'm in (it's a Splitcoast Stamper group) to make a card using non-traditional colors.  Mission accomplished on that one, eh?  I'm also linking it up in the gallery for the humorous cards - not so much because it's funny, but it does bring a smile, so...  I've titled the card "Family Portrait", so it does get a wee bit more amusing...

I've made one other card for the Splitcoast group.  We were supposed to use a branch or something on our card.  I opted for mistletoe, and made this:

Stamps: Inkadinkado Cool Christmas and Paperwork Greetings, Studio G; Ink: Stampin'Up! Garden Green and Real Red; Paper: DCWV dp, SU! Garden Green and Real Red; Accessories/tools: Nestabilities hearts and scalloped hearts dies, EK Success small scalloped circle punch, 1/4" and 1/8" round punches, EK Success perforating wheel, ribbon

Pretty much self-explanatory here...  I used a couple of punches and a perforating wheel to make my tickets look more authentic and fussy-cut the mistletoe before tying a bow around the stems.  Some foam tape and pop dots for dimension, and done!

Okay - I've not done one single solitary worthwhile thing today, and Greg will be home soon, so I'd best be applying myself to something productive!  Catch ya later, and thanks for stopping by!

Stamp Organization and Index Update

Since I've been moving my studio/workroom from the attic to the main floor, I've also been re-thinking some of the ways I store, organize and index my "stuff". 

I thought that I had shared my new stamp storage method, but I can't find a post in my archives, so maybe I was waiting until I finished, instead of sharing mid-project or something.  If this is old information, I apologize - consider it a reminder, I guess...

ANYway - I was tired of having multiple methods and containers and what-have-you for the different types of stamps (photpolymer, rubber, etc.)  I read somewhere about someone using laminated folders, cut down to fit in envelopes, to store their unmounted stamps on.  That was the seed that grew into my current method of storing stamps.

I bought a slew of the laminated folders when WalMart was having their back-to-school sales and they were CHEAP!  I cut them down into 4" x 6" cards (about seven per folder) and bought these Iris photo keepers, because envelopes sounded like too much work to find something to put them in:

The "keeper" contains 16 individual cases, and each case will hold seven fully loaded cards.  Here's an example of what the cards look like:

I have them all organized by category, and each case is labelled (P-Touch labelmaker) with the category of the stamps inside.  When I took this picture, I still had some of the stamps in their sets, but have since split everything up - Christmas trees all together, Santas all together, snowmen all together, etc.

If/when Greg and I decide to be nomads and travel around in an RV instead of living in a real house, my stamps are now portable if I put them in the keepers.  In the meantime, however, I've done this with them:

This is a 60" shelf on the wall in my "new" room.  The "cubbies" are CD crates on their sides with a strip of molding (I think it's baseboard.  I found it in the garage, it was the right length and I was too impatient to get in my car and drive to Home Depot to get a real board - Greg doesn't know I swiped it...yet).  Obviously, the cases on the bottom row are taller than the CD crates, so a little ingenuity was in order.  I have an entire box (the file storage kind) full of blocks that were intended for mounting rubber stamps, and they will NEVER be used for that purpose, so I took a few that were the right dimensions to support the top "shelf".  Here are a few more details:

This CD crate houses small alphabet sets.  The blue and green box is Stampin'Up! Little Letters, the box below is a Hero Arts harlequin stamp set.  The three ammo boxes contain EK Success small alphabets (four different ones).  These little alphas work best for me on the little wood "pegs" that they're on, so this is my answer, storage-wise.  The clamshell case above them is my JustRite monogram stamper and one of the circle sets.

These clamshell cases contain background and other over-sized stamps.  Above them are three JustRite pre-inked stamp thingies, and a couple of eensy teensy stamps from Sweet Stamps that I haven't made up my mind about storage-wise yet.

I have most of my inks elsewhere in the room (stories for another day), but these are a few overflow Stampin'Up! ink pads and my Versamark pads.  The VHS case above them has some foam Christmas sentiment stamps that I'm convinced I'll get around to using for something someday...

Just inside the door of my room is a litle niche created when we bumped the wall out to expand our bathroom, and a DVD rack fits there  perfectly.  It houses my unmounted wheel stamps (no longer "wheels", obviously) and other border stamps that are too long to fit in the photo cases.  Large alphabet sets (Close to My Heart and Inkadinkado, mostly) are here, as well.  They are in the DVD-style cases from Stampin'Up!:

That's the scoop on the storage aspect!  Moving on to the indexing...  I have two notebooks that have pictures of every stamp set I own in them, arranged alphabetically by manufacturer.  I'm keeping those, obviously, but wanted an index that had the stamps arranged in categories to mirror the way they're stored now.  I got an idea from THIS GIRL, but tweaked it a bit.  She stamped each image on a separate card.  If I did that, I'd need about twenty notebooks - not happening!  I opted to do "like with like", with as many images as would comfortably fit on a card without crowding or making it hard to see each image easily:

Now I can see all of my options when I need a specific word or image, and compare them size-wise and style-wise to see which will work best:

I stamped them in gray because it's not quite as stark as black and it's easier to clean up, but it's still neutral enough to leave my imagination free to fill in with the color of my project.

Lest you think that I'm all THAT, let me assure you - I'm at the beginning of this indexing project, and have - to date - completed only TWO of the SIXTY-FOUR cases you saw on the shelves...  I'm doing the sentiments first because it's harder to find them (although, with this new storage system, it's pretty fast-and-simple, anyway), and they will take MUCH longer than the images.  The good news is that there are only eighteen cases of sentiments.  I'm planning to do one case each night that I have available time until they're done...

And that's the update for tonight!  If you have any questions, as always, feel free to ask!  I'm gonna go watch the Giants/Forty-Niners game to see who pulls off a win.  They're in overtime now...  I'll be back a different day with crafty stuff.  Thanks for stopping by and have a great night/week!