My friend Terrie asked me if I would try out the layer floral stamps from AliExpress so this is my first attempt.
What I found was that even after cleaning the new stamps, the ink pooled up on the stamps if I used a squishy foam ink pad. I had much better results with Stampin’ Up ink pads that were felt and not good results from the Color Box inks from MFT that were foam and squishy.  I had much better results using the Cheese Puff from Ranger that was a felt pad as my first layer (which should be the lightest shade you will use.)  The second stamped layer is Stampin’ Up Really Rust, and the third layer that is primarily lines, is Stampin’ Up Basic Brown.
The next layer I stamped backwards and stamped the stem in basic brown first and then stamped leaves in Distress inks that were Bundled Sage and Forest Moss and although I gave a third green ink, I used the basic brown instead.  I wasn’t sure what to do with the background so used Stampin’ Up Pumpkin Pie Dye ink and used the 1″ chip brush from Harbor Freight Liquidators that I trimmed 3/4″ off the top to make the brush have a straight edge.  I used the brush all over the bottom of the card and anywhere below and beside the roses.  Then I used Peeled Paint from Distress Inks on the upper portion of the card and then spritzed water on it.  I used Spiced Marmalade Distress Ink and colored over the Pumpkin Pie on the bottom then dried it with my heat tool.  I used Forest Moss Distress ink and pressed it onto the back of an ink pad and added water to it and then flicked it over the top portion of the card with a paint brush in the area that was already green.  I used the Happy Birthday Die from AliExpress and cut it out of the green on the top of the card and put a piece of washi tape behind it so the letters I put back would have something to attach to.  I pressed Happy Birthday into the  Forest Moss Distress ink to color it darker than the card.  I pressed the happy birthday into the card and made sure it was well adhered to the washi tape and added a little bit of wet glue to the letters as well to ensured it would stay where I placed it.  Then I used the dreaded foam tape to the back and used my Creative Memories corner rounder and rounded the corners on the card front and on the moss green card base and laid the front onto the card base.  The card is 5 1/2″ x 4 1/4″.  I decided it needed a little something else, so I used G Glitter Glue and made little raised dots all over the front of the card.  I also used my Spectrum Noir glitter marker and accented the edges of the roses and the leaves with it.
I decorated the envelope with peg stamps, large brambly rose and small brambly rose, evergreen branch, delicate fern, pointy serrated leaf, wavy delicate sprig and flowers, three ripply.  I used Stampin’ Up pumpkin pie ink for the roses as well as Distress inks, Spiced Marmalade, and the same Distress ink greens I used earlier.  I made a rectangle with the large brambly roses so the name and address would fit inside, then stamped the rest of the stamps in the same shape and then stamped the back with the smaller brambly rose stamp.  I used the orange chip brush and colored in the large brambly roses to make them stand out more on the front of the envelope.

Today, we went to our third picnic in three days and I have to say, I’m not used to this social whirlwind, haha.  I’m so tired and really glad that tomorrow is the 4th of July, as we go back to our normal life of inactivity.  We just aren’t used to so much fun.  Isn’t that pathetic?  I think if I was an animal, I’d probably be a sloth.  Slow pace, a lot of sleeping and eating, yes, that’s me.

After I got home from the picnic, I started working on a new video series I’m going to be making on my favorite tools.  One of my viewers thought it was time for me to make one and I thought it made perfect sense.  I started making a list of the things a new card maker would need, and tailored it to the products that work best for me.  I really like this idea, as it makes sure that I’m always staying current on the products that I really enjoy using.  I had made product videos and almost every one of those is now outdated by a product I like more than the ones I chose a year ago.  No wonder Jennifer McGuire does her favorite things videos every year.  Things change so quickly, and product innovations make it so that I really need to stay current on my recommendations.  I thought I’d make the first video on necessities for the new card maker, then the next one fits into my embossing powder idea, then on to die cutting etc.  I’m really happy with this series as I think newer crafters will really benefit from these videos.  It also gives me a break from coming up with new and different card ideas.  I do have a few of them already made so that I can alternate card and tool videos.  Rich will really love the videos on products, as I don’t require a ton of editing on those.  All in all, this works out for both of us.

I spent a lot of the day working on a wedding card for a close friend who just got married.  I really wanted to make it special, but the more I worked on it, the worse it got.  I’m not sure if I liked it in the end, or was just so relieved that it was finished that I thought it looked better than it did.  It was just one of those days.  Stamping the sentiment in the inside of the card took three card bases, if that tells you anything.  By that point I was ready to throw in the towel and just hand my good friend a gift card and say “good luck.”  It was that bad of an experience.  Of course I videotaped it, and naturally that was a disaster as well.  The camera shut off at one point, then the battery ran out, then the memory card was full….You just can’t make these things up.  It was the most frustrating, time consuming experience.  And the funny thing is, the card is really very simple.  You’ll probably wonder how I could turn a simple card into a four hour ordeal, but I did.  It was almost funny.  Almost.

Rich and I had picnics yesterday and today, as well as one tomorrow.  I’m not used to so much social activity so close together.  This is going to sound pathetic, but I’m not cut out for a social whirlwind (as if three days worth of picnics is a whirlwind.)  Honestly, I’m exhausted and it’s only the second day.  By tomorrow night, I’ll probably be in a stupor, begging for a few days of rest.

I spent the evening finishing the video on tape runners, and boy is it going to be a long video.  I think I covered all of the things people would want to know when it comes to tape runners, but we’ll wait and see.

I had the first negative comment about my hands (in a video), and although I’ve been bracing myself for this for a year and a half, it still hurt.  I found the girl who wrote the comment, and she’s young, in her teens, but it still leaves a mark.  She said something along the lines of she liked the idea of the video, but “her hands are creepy.”  I tried to be really constructive with the response as I wanted her to know that she hurt me and that my hands could be attached to her mother, her grandmother, or even herself.  I don’t know if I said the right things or not, but I tried to make it a learning experience for her and took that approach in my response.  After all, we were all kids once, and said and did stupid, thoughtless things, but in this world of instant communication, it’s so easy for kids to put negativity out into the world with the touch of a keypad and never think about how it lands.

If you want to read the comments, they are attached to the video I’ve linked below.  I’d really appreciate your thoughts as to whether I handled it the right way or not.  Since I’ve never had kids, I don’t really know how to say things so they sink in.  I just hope she did take something away from what I said, even if it’s something small.  Here’s the link.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C2f4xDKWzE&t=78s

 

I can’t believe one month of summer is already gone.  It’s never like this in the winter, as a month of winter lasts about five summer months.

My girlfriend and I went to some garage sales and then to Home Depot so I could buy some magnetic register covers for extra die storage.  They were less than $5, but have three sheets that are pretty long compared to the ones that come in the magnetic die storage system that they sell to crafters.  I’d just like to make sure that my dies are easily accessible and don’t fly everywhere when I open whatever system I’m using.  I’ll be honest, I don’t really like the box system that crafters came up with, as the box is heavy and the magnetic sheets are weird shapes and hard to get out of the box.

I have a bunch of videos I’m going to start making.  I’m going to do one on the essential tools for every card maker.  One on my storage system for dies, another on storage systems for inks, etc.  I could do one tour of my craft room again, but to show every component of it at once, just takes too much time.  I think it would be smarter to focus on each individual component so I can take as much time as I need with each item.  First will be the tape runner video, then the embossing powder video, then one on embossing powder techniques and then all the ones I mentioned above.  I might lose the interest of some of my watchers because I won’t be doing much in the way of creativity, but these videos are all really important to me.

 

I spent the afternoon researching my tape runners, lowest costs, etc.  I know it sounds like I spent an unusually long time doing something so simple, but finding the lowest price for several tape runners does take some time.

We also had to take Bella to the vet because Honey doesn’t know how to play like a young lady…she is more like a ninja, sneaking up on poor Bella and biting her on her neck.   It happened a day or so ago, but it must have bothered Bella, because she used her back foot to scratch it until she had big open sore on her neck.  Because this is a holiday weekend, we normally have big dog issues on weekends, so we decided to do a preemptive strike and take her to the vet before she could do any more damage than she already has.  The vet shaved the area, gave her a shot, an antibiotic, and some steroids, and sent us on our way.  Since Bella’s afraid to ride in the car, Rich rides in the backseat with her so she can tuck her head under his arm and shake like a leaf.  It breaks our hearts when we have to take her in the car, but she’s always comforted knowing Rich is there to hold her, while I drive with one eye on the road, and one on my poor shaking dog.

We’ve always dreamed of spending our winters in the south somewhere, maybe the Myrtle Beach area, but getting our dogs there is a mystery.  I told Rich we should find someone with a Winnebago type vehicle, who would be willing to just drive us there (with our dogs) and pulling our car behind them, and then come back and pick us up once the winter is over.  Of course we’d pay them, but it still seems like kind of a stretch…Seriously, who would want to drive people with their two big neurotic dogs (we won’t do this until after Aggie’s no longer with us), and pull our car behind their Winnebago type vehicle… I did say it was a dream, didn’t I?

I needed to make another graduation card, but wanted to make a card that you could use for almost any occasion, so am making a shaker card.  I started with 110 lb. Recollections white card stock that is 8 1/2″ long and 5 1/2″ wide.  I scored it at 4 1/4″ and 4 3/8″ (sorry, I gave the wrong measurement in the video), so I would have extra room for my shaker pieces.  You’ll need to cut a little piece off of the bottom to make sure the back and front are the same length once you fold on both score lines.
I used a star die set by Nellie’s Multi Frames and used the largest three dies so that I have an extra piece to insert into my frame.  I stamped inside the star with one of the sentiments from the stamp set with Color Box black Archival ink.    I wanted to put gold stars all over the front of the card and used Versamark ink with a star stamp from the same stamp set, and stamped them all over the front of the card.  I used some older gold embossing powder that didn’t work well, and ended up using some gold embossing powder that I had in my stash (with no name) and covered the old powder to even it out.  I used a heat tool to melt the powder.   I took the star that I cut out with the dies and pressed it into the Versamark pad.  Make sure you use a thick card stock to do this or you could rip the paper.  After making sure the entire surface was covered, I used a no name gold embossing powder all over it and then heat set it.
I used Koi watercolors number 15, which was as close to navy blue as possible.  I added a little water to it and colored the front of my wet card, using a thicker brush.  In the end, I didn’t love the look of this blue as it wasn’t dark enough, and once it was dry, went over it with one of my Touch 5 markers to make it navy blue (with marker #69.)  I also colored in the word “grad” on the inside of the card with this marker.
I put tear tape over the back four sides of the card to glue the plastic to it.  I then put tear tape 1/8″ on the back of the gold star and put it on the acetate.  Then I added foam squares all around the star making sure there aren’t any gaps for my shaker elements to fall out.
I put some shaker elements, sequins, table confetti, etc. into the star and went around the edges of my foam tape with the anti-static powder I used for embossing, so the shaker elements won’t stick to the foam tape inner edges.  You’ll also want to put foam tape around the edges of the card so it holds its shape.
I closed the card so it’s sealed closed and then took another piece of card stock (doesn’t have to be 110 lb.), that was white 8 1/2″ x 5 1/2″ scored at 4 1/4″ and put tear tape on the front of it to adhere it to the back of the card I just made.  Then I stamped a sentiment inside from the same stamp set in Night of Navy Ink from Stampin’ Up.  I trimmed both cards once I adhered them to each other with tear tape so you can’t see the other card.
I stamped some stars and a diploma on the flap of the envelope with Versamark and used the same gold embossing powder and heat set it.  I colored the diploma with my #69 blue Touch 5 marker.
I thought the card was a lot of fun to make and hope you’ll give it a try as well.

I have to get serious about graduation cards as I need two more, and both need to be extra special because they are  both for relatives. Our great niece just graduated from high school and is going to college to become a nurse.  I found a really cute house mouse stamp of one mouse checking the heart beat of another mouse, and thought it would be perfect for on her card.  The other card is for our cousins’ son (Hi, Shelli!), and I didn’t know the colors of his high school, but know where he’s going to college, so built his card around his college colors.  I don’t think boys are overwhelmed with a card, but his mother will get a kick out of it, because I thought it would be fun to make him a shaker card.  I wonder if he’s ever had a shaker card before?  Anyway, so that was my plan for today.

Originally, I was going to finish the research for the tape runner video, but I spent part of last night finding prices and writing the information on each tape runner, and it got really boring really fast.  So today I decided to take the day off from research.  Tomorrow’s another day.

I have one more card that I need to make by the weekend, a wedding card for a close friend.  I think I’ll use the heart dies I just got from AliExpress as they might really be fun.  Other than the heart die, I have no idea where to go from there.  I seriously need to get started on a plan, because this is my oldest friend and next door neighbor as a kid, so it’s important that I do something special for him.  He and I were so close, he was sad that Rich didn’t ask him to be in our wedding.  Of course Rich didn’t know him well and I didn’t know until after the wedding that he wanted to be part of it, so always felt bad about it.  Fast forward fourteen years later.  He and his then wife, met Rich and me in Las Vegas for a long weekend.  It was over our anniversary and we saw that one of the wedding chapels had a drive thru ceremony and thought it was hysterical, so we decided $25 was definitely worth it to get re-married there.  My neighbor acted as the best man for Rich and man of honor for me.  He was thrilled.  We had so much fun watching people taking photos of us “getting married,” as they thought we were seriously getting married.  I’m sure people do it every day, but we did it for fun and it definitely was.  The minister said “Love is like a rose that blooms” and then he stopped and said, “Oh, you already know that.”  We could have paid for a “borrowed” bouquet or bride and groom t-shirts, but the experience alone was priceless.  Oh, they also offered to have us pay to have our photo taken in a limousine, but not go anywhere in it.  We declined.  That’s Vegas for you.

I started to work on my tape runner video and I’m starting to worry that it’s going to be horribly long.  I have a box that’s two feet long, full of tape runners.  Granted, some of them came in sets of three, so they all won’t be on the video, but regardless, I still have a lot of tape runners to share.  I wanted to cover the widest number of brands that I could, and I think I’ve accomplished that.

I did finish the rose card today and I think it came out pretty well.  I had a small mishap when I used my diecutter to cut Happy Birthday out of the card.  The little pieces of paper in the loops of letters just seems to disappear, so I had to rig a few more.  They aren’t a perfect match, but what can you expect?  I did use a lot of the dreaded foam tape and I’m really getting close to the end of the roll.  This could be a great time for me when I finish that roll.  I could be jumping for joy, or at least thinking about jumping for joy when it’s gone.

I have all of the things I need to make my embossing powder video as well, so this should be a busy week.  Rich has finally caught up with me on videos, so I’m a little bit nervous that I’m going to have to get really serious about making videos so I can have a few in the bag.  It’s kind of crazy that I’m so obsessed with making sure I stay ahead of him, I think if I let him catch up, it means I’m lazy, so that’s why I push myself to stay ahead.  I know, it makes no sense, but whoever said I made sense?

I wanted to try something fun with watercoloring and making note cards and thought I’d like to try decorating my envelope with peg stamps.  I chose to make it as easy as possible, so used pre-made note cards from Michaels.  I used a stamp set from W Plus 9 called Kind Soul for the sentiment “hello” and the large floral stamp.
I used a couple pieces of clear plastic and used Distress Inks Carved Pumpkin for my orange card and a mixture of two green Distress inks, Peeled Paint and Forest Moss, and smeared each on their own plastic piece.  I added some water to make the Distress inks more watery then used a waterbrush and colored my stamped image.  I stamped the patterns with an Archival black ink from Color Box before coloring them.   The note cards are 5 1/2 x 4 1/4″ so I cut my white layers 5 1/2″ by 3″.  I stamped the inside with the same archival black ink.  I adhered the layer with tape runner to the note cards.
To stamp the envelopes, I used peg stamps from Rubber Stamp Tapestry.  I used  Bitty Peony, Chinese Privet, 3 Ripply Flowers,  Foliage Leaf, Sopanaria Solid, Bunch of Daisies, single daisy, dainty floral, 7 petal group solids, tiny apple open and two ferns.
I used Stampin’ Up inks to stamp on my envelopes.  You need to determine where you want to write your name and address and outline the area with stamps, then try not to stamp inside that area.  I tried to stamp enough that the stamped area looks almost like a wreath.