Ladybug Ink Blog Hop: Secret Garden

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.

Happy Stampin'
~Cita

Ladybug Roll Call!

Ruth Norton http://ruthsstampingcorner.blogspot.com/

Amber Wilson http://amberladybugink.blogspot.com/

Nichole Gonzales Jaramillo http://nicholesu.blogspot.com/

Kay Jantz http://ktmyldyandlife.blogspot.com

Liz Kay www.kraftasticmrskay.blogspot.com

You're Here: Carmelita Wasson http://carmenacita.blogspot.com/

Cassie Rogers http://lucyslovelies.blogspot.com/
Michelle Carrion www.ilovecrafttime.blogspot.com

Breaking the Rules

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.

Happy Stampin'!
~Cita