Tuesday, March 31, 2009

I've got news...

The lucky new 13 DT members for GCD Studios have been selected but not announced. I didn't get a call, so while I don't know who they are, I know who they aren't. :(

But, all is not lost, they are having a fabulous blog party this Monday to announce the team and there will be MORE GIVE AWAYS! And they are posting the names of who made the list for: 4 Guest DT gals, 40 Spotlights, and 21 Product Testers. So stop by their blog on Monday!

Also, stop back here tomorrow, because I've got news that I've been waiting to spill for over a week and tomorrow I can finally tell!!! :)


GCD Studios Call Day

GCD Studios had a DT Call, they got 471 entries! They are doing some fun giveaways tomorrow as they make the calls to the selected DT members. So check out their blog tomorrow for fun for all! Well...except maybe for those anxiously waiting by the phone ;) Good luck everyone!

Monday, March 30, 2009

Tattered Angels Featured Artist...

I love Tattered Angels products, so I was very excited and honored when they invited me to be their featured artist for this April. In the feature, I used some of my past projects (primarily last years holiday cards), but I also made a number of new ones last week. I'll just show you some little peeks at the new projects, I'll post them all here after April 1 - only a couple of days to wait :)

**Update - Full project images are uploaded here**

Sunday, March 29, 2009

No Worries...

That's the name of the collection from GCD Studios that I used to make the cards below. They have such fabulous designs, it makes it easy to make great cards! And I'm in love with the Pink Paislee Fashion Script, my favorite letters stickers right now.

Products: Blank Card Base: Paper Source; Patterned Paper, Chipboard: GCD Studios; Ribbon: Crate Paper; Letter Stickers: Pink Paislee.


Products: Cardstock: Bazzill; Patterned Paper: GCD Studios; Chipboard: GCD Studios; Paint: Making Memories; Pen: Signo Uni-Ball.


Products: Cardstock: Bazzill; Patterned Paper, Chipboard: GCD Studios; Flower Diecut: DCWV; Letter Stickers: Making Memories; Acrylic Drops: The Robins Nest; Ink: Clearsnap.


Products: Cardstock: Bazzill; Patterned Paper: GCD Studios; Flower Diecut: DCWV; Paint: Making Memories; Pen: Signo Uni-Ball.


And here's a couple cards using GCD Studios Whoop De Doo Colection.

Products: Blank Card Base and Cardstock: PaperSource; Patterned Paper, Chipboard: GCD Studios; Letter Stickers: Pink Paislee.



Products: Blank Card Base: PaperSource; Patterned Paper: GCD Studios; Chipboard: Maya Road; Ribbon: Offray; Flowers: Prima; Acrylic Drops: The Robins Nest; Letter Stickers: Scenic Route; Ink: Clearsnap.


Products: Blank Card Base: PaperSource; Patterned Paper, Chipboard: GCD Studios; Ribbon: Maisy Mo; Acrylic Drops: The Robins Nest; Letter Stickers: Making Memories, Pink Paislee.


I have so much more to post, but have to run right now, be back soon, thanks for stopping by today!

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Spring Cards...

Here are a few Spring/Easter cards. These are mostly made using the Making Memories Garden Party Collection - the little chick in this collection is adorable, always makes me smile. :) Also, I love all of the decorative edges on the papers, they add a lot of interest to the card. And speaking of Easter, I'm starting to think about how to decorate eggs this year...last year I used a lot of scrappy supplies on them. Do you have a favorite egg decorating technique? I'm looking for inspiration...


Products: Card Bases: PaperSource; Patterned Paper, Diecuts, epoxy sticker: Making Memories; Felt Chick Sticker: Sandylion Essentials; Ribbon: American Crafts; Grass: left over from easter decorating kit; String.


Products: Card Bases: PaperSource; Patterned Paper, Diecuts, Epoxy Sticker: Making Memories; Ribbon: American Crafts, WYLA, Inc.


Products: Card Bases: PaperSource; Patterned Paper, Diecuts, epoxy sticker: Making Memories; Ribbon: Crate Paper.


Products: Card Bases: PaperSource; Patterned Paper, Diecuts: Making Memories, Letter Stickers; Buttons: Autumn Leaves.

I actually have a few more projects done that I will try and post soon. They include a few journals that I customized with stamping, some more cards and a mini-album (my first one!).

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Crafty Storage...

I love to have everything organized; I might even be a tiny bit obsessive about it. ;) But I find that I make better use of what I have when I can find it. :)

I’ve spent a good bit of time organizing my stash. I keep trying different methods of organizing until I find something that works. We all approach the creative process differently so I don’t think there is one way to set-up a studio that works for everyone. But over the next month I’m going share some of the insights I gained while experimenting and what worked and what didn’t work for me. So, today I'm going to talk about ribbon and stamp storage.

So, let me start by saying, one of the primary features I need in storage is space-efficiency. I am fortunate enough to have a small studio space in the house, but it is also the guest room/home office. So, the better I am at saving space, the more stash I can have. :) The other thing I struggle with is keeping the manufacturer name attached to the items. If you ever submit for publication, you need to know this information about the products you used.

Ribbon

I first got the Ribbon Ring system in April 2008, so I’ve been using for almost a year now, and I still love it. It has been really easy to maintain. I set it up on the back of a closet door with some inexpensive hooks. I have a ring for each color grouping. And so I can identify the manufacturer, I added a little label to each tag. I found the labels at the office supply store and getting all of the labels printed and attached took about an hour - it was totally worth it! And I keep some extras labels of each brand printed so they are ready to go when I get a couple pieces of new ribbon. And sometimes I just handwrite the manufacture on the label. It’s a very easy system to maintain.




Before Ribbon Ring, I stored my ribbon on chipboard cards within baskets (image below). This system worked for a while, but as I got more ribbon the baskets got packed tight making it hard to get the cards in and out and I was always sticking myself with the pins that held the ribbons on the cards. If space is not a problem, this is another nice way to store ribbon - it looks nice and tidy. I still have one small basket for the ribbon that is too wide to store in the ribbon ring system.



Stamps

Over a year ago I removed all of my stamps from their wooden blocks. Some them came right off with a little pulling, but some had to be placed in the microwave for 10-15 seconds. Once I had them removed from the blocks, I attached the mounting foam and trimmed it to the stamp shape. This really takes some time. You need a pair of Kia scissors and the adhesive on the foam is really sticky and you have to clean the scissors often. I recommend the thin static mounting foam for stamps that already have a layer of foam backing. If you use the standard-thickness foam on a rubber stamp that already has some foam backing, it can make the stamp too thick; especially smaller stamps and they have a tendency to wobble when you use them. (I got my thin foam at blockheadstamps.com). You are left with a lot of wooden blocks when you finish this process. I have used some in other projects, if you find a good use for these, let me know. :)

After you have the stamps prepared, you can store them a number of ways. The current method I use is CD cases. I've been using this system since June 2008 and it has been working very well. It is easy to see what stamps I have and the CD cases are easy to handle. To make the key sheets, I actually find the images of the stamps on-line or scan it from the package, the wooden block, or a stamped image. I assemble the images onto sheets digitally and print these onto to large sticker sheets that I adhere to the CD case. The low-tech version would be to just stamp the images onto the sticker paper. Either way, this is time consuming when you first set-up the system. But maintenance as you but new stamps is easy. I even put all of my clear stamps on these cards. So now I have a little stack of those printed plastic sheets that come packaged with the clear stamps. I'm saving them to use on future projects.





The first method I tried after the stamp were removed from wood blocks used a system of large clear envelopes with plastic sheets that were stored in baskets. I placed the stamps onto the plastic sheets and made image keys for each sheet so I could see what stamps were in each envelope. I stored stamps on both the front and the back of the card. The conversion to this from wood blocks saved a ton of space and made it easier to look through the stamps, I could flip though them like file folders.






The problem I found with the storage system above is that one envelope contained too many stamps. The sheets were large and they took a lot of room on my desk. And when handling them, the weight of the stamps would cause them to bend and sometimes stamps would fall off. My advice if you are thinking about this type of stamp storage is to make the cards a little smaller and only store stamps on one side. I still maintain a few of these cards/envelopes for the stamps that are too large for the CD cases. I keep them in a magazine file next to the CD cases.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Que Sera Sera...

Here are a couple of cards made with die-cut note cards from K&Company's Que Sera Sera Collection. These note cards so intricately cut, they add a lot of impact without a lot of work. I just trimmed the off the front off of a pre-made blank card, leaving just enough so I could glue the note card in place. Then I added a few embellishments (flowers, leaves, epoxy heart and chipboard greeting). So simple :)



Products: Card Base: PaperSource; Diecut Note Card: K&Company; Chipboard and Epoxy Stickers: Creative Imaginations; Silk Leaves: Offray; Flowers: Prima; Brad: Basic Grey.



Products: Card Base: PaperSource; Diecut Note Card: K&Company; Chipboard and Epoxy Stickers: Creative Imaginations; Transparency Diecut: K&Company; Silk Leaves: Offray; Flowers: Prima; Brad: Basic Grey.

Some hybrid cards...

I love the colors in the new K&Company Que Sera Sera Collection. For these cards I mixed the diecuts from that collection with the digital papers and elements from Doris Castle's For Everlasting Collection. I think that blues and purples in Doris's papers looks great with the purples and red in the K&Company Collection.


Physical Products: Blank Card: PaperSource; Cardstock: Bazzill; Diecuts: K&Company, Jenni Bowlin; Gems: MAMBI; Rub-on: Three Bugs in a Rug; Ribbon: Offray. Digital Products: Papers and Elements: For Everlasting by Doris Castle at ScrapbookGraphics.com.




Physical Products: Blank Card: PaperSource; Cardstock: Bazzill; Diecuts: K&Company, Jenni Bowlin; Gems: MAMBI; Rub-on: Three Bugs in a Rug; Ribbon: American Crafts. Digital Products: Papers and Elements: For Everlasting by Doris Castle at ScrapbookGraphics.com.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Happy Flowers Card Set...

These cards were made from a sheet of wall art stickers I got at a dollar store. Probably some of the most economical cards I’ve ever made! I powdered all of the stickers to get rid of the stickiness so I could curl up the ends to add a little dimension to them. Then I just arranged the stickers onto the cardstock, added a little ribbon, buttons and greeting rub-ons. I then glued each assembly onto colored card bases. Simple and sweet!



Products Used: Card Bases: K&Company; Stickers: Main Street Wall Creations; Buttons: Autumn Leaves; Rub-ons: Creative Imaginations; Ribbon: American Crafts, We R Memory Keepers, Offray, Making Memories.