A while ago, I helped out at a women's retreat for church. Actually, I co-led it, which is why I didn't have a card prepared for the craft time at the end of the retreat. (bad Carmelita!). So, I made one up on the fly. I grabbed a few supplies as I was walking out the door, and ended up with the Raining Flowers stamp set, random colors of paper, like Perfect Plum and Wisteria Wonder, and the scallop border punch. Hey, it's a SIP (stamps, ink, and paper) card! (I wonder why I didn't grab any embellishments).
This just shows how you can make a nice card with minimal supplies and little time. Just take a little SIP!
Hello, and welcome to the first Ladybug Blog hop of 2013! I hope you have recovered from the holiday season and are taking seize of 2013. I can't believe we are already more than half way through January. 2013 is shaping up to be a whirlwind of a year.
Anyways, my project this month focuses on the Secret Garden suite in the new Spring Catalog. I generally stay away from flower sets because I have so many of them, but I couldn't say "no" to the Secret Garden set because it comes with coordinating framelits. Excited is an understatement as to how I felt.
And then I got this crazy idea as I was walking through the dollar store and spotted a magnet picture holder. The magnets were not strong magnets, but thin enough that I felt comfortable sending through my Big Shot with the framelits. Plus, I love making magnets. It's becoming as addicting as making cards. Disclaimer: Framelits are not recommended to be used with anything
other than paper/cardstock. You can damage your framelits or get
undesired results when using framelits to cut other materials. Consider yourself warned. Now on with the project!
These are more of decoration magnets due to the strength of the magnets that I used. But they are so pretty!
The size of my magnet sheet was 4"x6". I was able to cut all five flower shapes from the Secret Garden Framelits.I put these to the side for awhile and turned to stamping. I should also mention that no framelits were harmed in any process of this project.
I stamped all five flowers from the Secret Garden stamp set on Raspberry Ripple cardstock. I then embossed each flower. For lined flowers, I used silver embossing powder. For "colored" flowers I stamped the flower using the Foam pad Raspberry Ripple pad and then embossed it with clear embossing powder. I love how you can use the new pads for embossing. They work great! Next it was time to use the framelits again to cut out each flower.
My craft area is a mess!
I love how you can run all the framelits through the Big Shot at once. It helps save time.
Look at all my Secret Garden flowers. I didn't make these all into magnets. Actually, I layered many of my flowers on top of each other to give them dimension. Also, using a bone folder to curl the edges of the flowers upward gives them dimension.
Thanks for stopping by. Head on over to Cassie's blog, who I believe has a cute project for you as well.
Check out this amazing new kit for men designed by men. It's a simple kit that encourages men to create hand-made gifts that are quick, simple, and easy. Of course, us women will most likely get our hands onto this thing. Check it out though.
The kit includes everything a guy needs to make a handmade card:
Four wood-mount stamps (double-mounted) with the perfect sentiment for every occasion
Twelve 4" x 6" postcards in four different (manly) colors
Twelve gray envelopes
A Basic Gray Classic Stampin’ Pad
An instructional guide (for the most novice stamper!)
Check out the kit in action.
Ha! Real Men Build Cards! I love it. I think I'm going to go post this video on my husband's Facebook page. :)
Head on over to my store, or send your closest man over to my store, to purchase this manly stamp kit.
So remember how I entered my Book Buddies scrapbooking layout into the current My Digital Studio challenge over on MYdigitalstudio.net? Well, I didn't win, but I got an honorable mention, which made my day. Check out the blog entry, the challenge winner, and the new challenge over on the MyDigitalStudio blog.
First of all, I'm totally biased, but I think my daughter is absolutely adorable. :) What do you think?
Ok, back to business.
This week, I entered my first My Digital Studio challenge over on MyDigitalStudio.Net, the website for all things My Digital Studio. This site has amazing samples, video tutorials, forums, and challenges all related to helping you make the most out of MDS.
This week's challenge called for an entry using any download released in December 2012. I remembered seeing the Book Buddies download and thinking that it would be a great set to use for all my pictures of the Booger reading books, in particular this set of pics of her and the daddy reading "Go Train Go!", which is one of her favorite books. The download is advertised as book marks, but comes with 8 embellishments and 3 stamps that can be used in more ways than for book marks, as I did in this page.
What's more, I used two "new" features that allow you to make the text wavy, as I did with the white text toward the bottom of the page. Holly Linford has a great video tutorial to show you how to do this.
Another great feature of MDS2 is the ability to crop embellishments or stamps. See those stack of books? Here's the original embellishment.
I cropped the fox out of view and then copied and pasted the result to get a pile of books. You can't see it very well, but if you look closely, I was also able to recolor several of the books. MDS2 is amazing. I love playing with it.
Anyways, check out my entry on the MDS website and like it. I'm hoping that there will be many more challenges I can participate in this year. You don't have to be a demonstrator to participate. If you don't have MDS, check out the 30-day free trial. You won't regret it.
One of my favorite tools these days are the framelits. I'm getting a little greedy with framelits. I think I am even starting to prefer them over punches. I love how you can precisely position the framelits over stamped images, and of course, they are super easy to use along with the Big Shot. Stampin' Up! recommends that you use the framelits only with one sheet of paper/cardstock; however, I broke the rules with this project and used my framelits with a magnetic sheet. Disclaimer: Framelits are not recommended to be used with anything other than paper/cardstock. You can damage your framelits or get undesired results when using framelits to cut other materials.
With that being said - I did not damage my framelits (although I knew the risk), but it was quite a task cutting the magnet sheets. I had to run the framelits with the magnet sheet twice through the Big Shot to get a full cut, and the cut wasn't as clean as if I was cutting paper. Needless to say, I got my shaped magnet (I used the Labels Collection Framelits). What's great is then I used the framelits to cut the perfect sized/shaped paper to decorate my magnet.
I made quite a few of these magnets, but gave away several. I love using the Trust God stamp set to stamp inspirational sayings and verses on the magnets. Here are two of my magnets on my already cluttered whiteboard. I since have given one of these magnets to a coworker and the other one is holding up some paper at my work office.
Have you done any nonconventional projects with your framelits? I would love to hear about them.
What a great way to start a new year - with a new Stampin' Up! Catalog! It's here, with awesome bundles, more framelits, and the cutest stamp sets around. Take a look and then head over to my website to make you Spring Catalog purchases!
I hope this year is brings you blessings, adventure, and lots of time to stamp and papercraft! :)
To celebrate the new year, Stampin' Up! if offering this cute January desktop calendar MDS download for FREE. Head over to my SU! website to download it!
