Patina Birthday

Last weekend my lovely cousin came down for the day and I showed her how to do a bunch of different techniques.  I'd been wanting to try out this fauz patina technique for a while, so this was the perfect time to do so.  I loved it!  We were super impressed with the lovely gradient of colours, and the embossing powder gave it a lovely vintage feel.

Today is the 18th birthday of one of my best friends and I wanted to make her a nice card but I wasn't really feeling any of the ideas that were swirling around in my head.  Then I noticed this panel sitting on my desk still and I started to envision something suited for a young woman of her age.  She's not really a kid anymore so I wanted the design of my card to reflect that.

Since I had the panel made already, this card actually only took me about ten minutes to make.  I layered it with some distressed Pool Party and then stuck them onto a base of Soft Suede.  I love these little rolled roses and the extra dimension they give a card.  And of course I needed ribbon.  The Victoria Trim was a no-brainer.

I'm looking forward to hearing from my friend tomorrow morning about how a house full of teenagers goes.

Punch Art

Next week I've got my monthly workshop and I decided to focus on punches.  I love to show all the different ways you can use products, and the versatility of punches especially.  This one was really fun to make, and super simple to make.  I find that I'm always struggling for a design for manly cards, but this certainly fits the bill!

Hand Stamped Sentiments #130

Quick entry before I go for a run.  Hand Stamped Sentiments is using the new In Colours for this week's challenge.  I usually stick to 2 or 3 colours on a card so this was a bit of a challenge for me, but I'm happy with the result!

What do you know?  More sponging! I'm still on a bit of a kick with this technique.

So Many Candles

 On the weekend, my friend Christa and I decided we're going to train for a 10k run in October.  Apparently you can learn to run this far in only 13 weeks (training 3 times per week).  We'll see.  Anyways, we're off to a good start.  We did a 7km walk on Saturday, and then our first day of training on Monday.  For something to do yesterday some friends and I hiked up into the Trophy Mountains.  It was AMAZING.  And 12km long.  Uphill (the way in was anyways).  So today, I told myself I could do absolutely nothing.

 So, this morning, while working hard at doing nothing (aka - surfing the internet for two hours) I saw a facebook post in which my very best friend posted a pic of a card she made.  I love the fun papers that she used.  I think it's a perfect cake for a little guy.  I stole her idea and made it a little more grown up.  Thanks Jen!

This is a perfect way to use up all of those little scraps of paper you've been hoarding.  I cut mine to 2.5" high, and they were probably about 2" wide.  I used a BBQ skewer to roll them up on, then loosened them a little to get the depth I wanted.  For the wick I used some hemp twine and shot a little bit of hot glue in the top to hold it all together.

Mosaic Stamping

A while back I posted this entry about mosaic stamping.  After I made that card I went in a little binge doing a bunch of cards with emboss reveal and the mosaic.  I love the effect it gives you.  This weekend, my dear cousin Amber came down and we had a little craft-o-rama on the afternoon.  One of the techniques I showed her was how to make this mosaic stamp.  It's a great way to use all that left over rubber.  If you don't have one of these made already, I suggest you do so.  You'll love it!

 

After a nice jog with a friend this morning followed by a few cups of coffee, I headed out to the room to see what I could come up with.  There were bits of rubber all over the place, so I decided to make myself another mosaic stamp.  Then of course I had to play with it, so here's what I did.  I took my Old Olive, More Mustard, and Pool Party re-inkers and blotted them directly onto the rubber.  Then I spritzed my stamp with some Stampin' Mist to make the colours run a bit and to get the ink to space out a bit.  I stamped the ink off once on a window sheet so I could squish the stamp down to get the ink to fully cover all of the blocks.  Then I misted it again and stamped it onto some Very Vanilla cardstock.

I then decided I wanted some texture, so I ran it through with the Chevron EF before matting.  At first I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with it, but then I had a moment of inspiration and pulled out Daring Adventure.  I love the effect it gives since the ink doesn't completely get into the depressed part of the paper.  Finally topped it off with a sentiment and voila!

New products!

I love it when we get a new catalogue.  Crisp new pages just waiting for post its to make everything that I need to get.  Today marks the release of the new Holiday Mini.  It's bigger than it used to be, and there are LOTS of goodies in there!

If you're a regular customer of mine, I'll be giving you a hard copy, but if you're not - or you can't wait - there's a flash version to keep you happy for now on my sidebar.

As with the release of each new catty, I will be running a ribbon share to coordinate with some of the DSPs.  Here's what I'm offering on this round.

Snow Festival Ribbon Share:  Includes 2 yards of each of the shown ribbons.   $13

Candlelight Christmas Ribbon Share:  Includes 2 yards of each of the shown ribbons.   $11

Be of Good Cheer (from main catalogue):  Includes 2 yards of each of the shown ribbons.   $7

 Please send me an email (mrslangton@shaw.ca) if you'd like any of these shares.  Shipping within Canada is $1.50.  American ladies are welcome to participate but they jacked up postage costs so it would be $5.00 for you.  I can fit up to 5 shares for this shipping price.

Sponge Sponge Sponge

I was surfing around in blogland the other day when I came upon a woman who does most of her cards either with sponges or a brayer.  I've been on a bit of a brayer kick lately, so I thought I'd pull out my sponges and try that technique as well.

The only thing that I don't like about using the brayer is that unseemly line that you can get sometimes.  You know the one.  And once it's there, there's no going back.  With sponges, however, you are much less likely to have such an issue.

I used Wisteria Wonder and Elegant Eggplant for this one, but then went back in and added a bit of Perfect Plum for warmth.  It's still quite cool, so I'm thinking I might try again today with a little hint of one of the pinks in there somewhere.

Ugh.  You know when you make a beautiful card only to wreck it with your inky fingers?  Yep.  After I made the first version of this card (which, of course, I liked more) I picked it up with my apparently inky finger and left a little black smudge on the top left.  ARGH!!!  Then, I made this one and the image didn't come out very clear so I grabbed my stamp-a-ma-jig to line up the image to stamp again, but it was smaller than the area that the handle covered and it left a shadow impression.  ARGH!  So as a last resort I look my marker and filled in the spots that we're coloured evenly.  Alas, the result is not perfect.  You can see (in person) where I had to colour it.  GGRRR!!!  Whatever.  I'll send it to my 84 year old aunt.  She'll be delighted to received it and won't notice.