I had a lot of ambition today, but as the day progressed, lost the will to do much. I really need to get started on the album for our friends’ new house, but I’m not completely sure of the type of album I want to create, so keep stalling.
I watched a video of a woman using scraps to make a card and think I’ll make one of those, but the video was made by a Stampin’ Up rep, and she talked non-stop about how great she treats her customers, and even went into detail about their rewards program and incentives, and that’s when she lost me. I really like watching videos for the sake of the video, and if you discuss a product that you sell, that’s great…..just don’t tell me about how good you are to your customer and the things you’ll do to give back your incentives. Am I whining too much? I do realize that they use YouTube to supplement their income and to encourage their customers to buy more product from them, but I just can’t handle the extra sales pitch. It’s similar to watching a YouTube video where there is advertising placed every five minutes in the video. I don’t think anyone wants to have a video interrupted for the exact same advertisement in five minute intervals. Maybe I’m just out of touch, but isn’t one advertisement at the beginning of a video sufficient? Just my two cents on things. I need to take a break from watching videos, as it’s making me cranky.
I had so much crafty fun today. I finally made the Glue Dot video showing all of the different types, sizes, and uses for them. It was so much fun, and those types of videos are my absolute favorites to make. Then I went on to make an impossible card. They are all the rage on YouTube right now, and I thought I would make an impossible card even more impossible, by stamping and embossing on acetate…..(Clear plastic for those of us who prefer everyday terms instead of “big girl words.”) It’s not extremely difficult to stamp on acetate, but you may get an imperfect image (I found), because the plastic will not show all of the detail the stamp has. It didn’t matter to me, because I was just stamping an antique car with black ink and covering it with black embossing powder. Of course the black embossing powder hides all of the imperfections of the stamping below, and it’s the reason I used it. I’m not a fan of black embossing powder, as it’s very difficult to remove all of the small specks that are left behind. I spent a little extra time wiping and blowing on it to get rid of the excess, and then started heat setting. I knew it would be easy to melt, and did melt my first attempt…..I made sure to show the melted image, so you know it’s OK to melt yours (as long as you have spare plastic). I used plastic from stamp sets I’d purchased and encourage others to do the same. You can buy heat resistant acetate, but why bother, when the free plastic works just as well. We’ll assume I know and have used the plastic you can purchase, which I haven’t.
Second attempt worked perfectly, no melting or warping. I really liked the end result of the more impossible, impossible card, and hope all of you will too. Rich has a couple videos he needs to upload first, then you’ll see how fun and easy the impossible card really is. In case you’ve never seen a video of one, it’s one piece of card stock that looks like several. Whoever came up with the idea were really creative, and my hat goes off to them. It’s not a hard card to make if you don’t layer papers on it, but if you do, it’s not quite as easy. I recommend that your first attempt should be with some patterned paper that is heavy enough to hold up to all of the different folds this card requires. After that, the center focal image is where you can spend your time. It shouldn’t be hard to do and has a big impact. This is one of those cards that will make the recipient ask, “How did you do that?” I love it when people ask…
I thought before I’d discuss my plans for today that I’d give you my review of the movie “Chappaquiddick.” I liked it. It was sad, and it seemed that she didn’t drown, but ran out of air as he just left her there. He did bring others back to try to get her out, but by then it was too late. The local funeral director noted that when they pressed on her lungs, water didn’t come out, and he said he’d seen a lot of drownings and that it looked like instead, she’d suffocated from lack of oxygen in the car. Of course no autopsy was done, and they did everything possible to protect the senator. I was ten when it happened, and didn’t realize that a man walked on the moon the same weekend, so they used the momentum from the space walk to distract Americans from the story. Obviously, it’s a movie, so we’ll never really know the true story, but it was sad for her and her family.
Back to plans for the day. Since Rich is now caught up with me, darn it, I have some cards to make. I am going to try stamping and coloring on acetate, and making a manly card for a friend’s birthday. I’m going to work on the box I decorated with Shelli and Linda, as some of the video files were corrupted from that day, so I’m going to need to add more footage, so the video makes sense and helps others if they want to try to redecorate something. I have a few more video ideas, but if I finish my plans for today, I think I’ll be doing good.
On a crappy note, it’s snowing and I can’t see the grass again. April 17th, not sure it’s ever going to turn to spring. We still don’t have any buds on our trees. I hate it when we have a very short spring, as it seems like it’s a blink of the eye and winter again. Sorry for the whine….
I’ve been wanting to make a card with envelopes as well as large business envelopes, so this is my first attempt. All of the info to make this project is below:
I started with 9 1/4″ tall by 8″ wide scored on the 8″ side at 4″ white Recollections heavyweight card stock (from Michaels) to make the card 9 1/4″ tall by 4″ wide to fit in our business envelope.
I had gotten decorated envelopes from my friend Rhonda and thought I could use them on my card, but they were just too big. Bummer!
I made envelopes that were 2 3/4″ wide by 2″ tall. To make them, cut a piece of card stock (scrap) to 2 5/8″ by 1 7/8″ tall for the piece that you will be using in your envelope and then discarding. If you measure the card on the diagonal, you should have the measurement be 3 1/2″ (roughly), then add 1 inch to that to make your total 4 1/2″…You’ll cut paper square to 4 1/2″ by 4 1/2″. I used a paper pad from Hobby Lobby that I don’t think is still available, but any lightweight paper will work for this. Put the scrap that you cut to 2 5/8″ by 1 7/8″ tall, into the center of the square of paper you cut to 4 1/2″ on the diagonal like a baseball field. Center the scrap, and wrap your paper on the sides and fold them in, then fold the bottom up and the top down and press for clean folds. Take the scrap out and trim out the little corners that you’ll have where your folded paper overlapped itself. I like to trim the corners so they look better, with whatever corner rounder you like. I have a Kadomaru Pro that I got from Amazon, and here’s the link. http://tinyurl.com/yd9nffm2 The reason I like it so much is that there are three sizes of corners you can round, small, medium, and large, so it works no matter how big or small your paper is. Plus I can easily press the lever.
After rounding the corners of each envelope, glue it so the sides and bottom are glued down….don’t glue the top down. I took twine that matched and wrapped it (about 18″) around the envelope after putting the “open” on the twine about halfway down the length of twine. I used MayMay’s set called “Action” for stamping “open” on small price tags that I punched with a Fiskars punch and used Gina K’s ink called Blue Denim for my stamping. I punched a hole in it with a hole punch by putting a small mark where I wanted the hole, then putting the hole punch upside down so I could see the mark, then punching the hole. The hole punch I used came from Hobby Lobby as well, but couldn’t find it on their website, so maybe they don’t sell it any more, but any hole punch should work.
For the words I wanted to put inside my envelopes, I printed them from my computer using, “So sorry we missed your birthday.” I typed two words on a line using a larger font that looked size appropriate for the envelope.. I rounded the corners of the scraps I had left over from my envelopes and cut them to 2 1/2″ by 1 3/4″ tall and glued the words to the papers then put them inside my envelopes. After I placed the sentiments in each of my three envelopes, I wrapped the twine with the “open” sentiment on them around the envelopes, then hot glued them to my card. Be careful to make sure you put the words in the right envelopes so they make sense when removed.
I used Gina K’s BubbleGum Pink ink for stamping along with her Blue Denim Ink and used a small flower and a sprig to stamp along the sides of the envelopes and inside the card where I stamped my sentiment from an old Stampin’ Up set of stamps that had a nice birthday sentiment. I also stamped them on the business envelope I used for mailing my card.
I added my made by Sandy Parker stamp on the back. I often get asked where I got it and here’s how you can get one too. I looked online for coupons for Stampanda, and Groupon had a great discount. They currently don’t offer one, but Stampanda shows a 40% discount code when you go to their website (Hello2017 is the code) and in square stamps found the “Molly” with the swirl and changed it to say what I wanted it to say. Here’s the link to the one I bought. http://stampanda.com/product/molly/?attribute_pa_ink-color=licorice-black. I typed in on one line “Made for you by” and on the next line “Sandy Parker.” I saved a lot of money by going through Groupon, otherwise this stamp is around $45. Hopefully the code will give you a 40% discount so it will end up being around $27. I wish it wasn’t so complicated for you, but I tried to make it as simple as possible.
I’m a little worried about the videos we shot yesterday, as some are coming up as faulty, so will probably not play. I’m not going to look at them until later, as I don’t want to ruin my day…Instead, I’m taking one of my closest friends out for lunch for her birthday, and then Rich and I are meeting college friends to go to a movie. Rich and his male friend are going to see “Rampage,” not my kind of movie…Gorilla’s get huge and there’s a huge flying alligator, so I’ll pass. The wife of our friend and I will be going to see Chappaquiddick. I was really young when that event happened, so I’ll be interested to hear how they depict the events of that evening so many years ago. I’ll be sure to let you know what I think of it. The four of us went to see a “Quiet Place” last week and we really liked it. They had so many innovative ideas about how to handle aliens that can’t see, but can hear everything, and that was so much fun to watch. Especially as she was pregnant and had a baby…you keep thinking, how will they handle keeping the baby quiet, and of course, there’s a great plan that you never really figure out until they show you. I’ll say this, the movie wasn’t the only “Quiet Place,” as the theater was completely silent for the entire movie, like every person there was holding their collective breaths, and I think they probably were. Emily Blunt was amazing, and so was her husband, who also directed it. You could see every expression play out on their faces, as the number of spoken words in the movie were less than fifty. An amazing accomplishment, and so scary….you definitely should go see it in a theater if you can, because it’s so funny how the crowd buys into the complete and total quiet.
I spent the morning continuing the “cleaning” of my craft room, before Shelli and Linda arrived. I have to say, I felt pretty good about its overall look, but Shelli and Linda seemed to have a similar opinion to Rich. Still not great. I’m still pretty happy with the results, but wouldn’t show it in a video, that’s for sure.
We had a terrific time crafting together. Ultimately, they decided to update the card storage boxes I’d bought, and that was perfectly fine with me. It took us several hours to finish them, and in the end, all three were completely different from each other, but all looked really updated and frisky. We had so much fun teasing each other, and the video will be a nightmare to edit, but I’m sure Rich will figure out a way to piece it together so it makes a little bit of sense (hopefully.) There were times we didn’t realize the camera had stopped, and others where we knew it had but kept going anyway. I think the video will be entertaining to watch, and we’ll make sure to fast forward through anything that is long or repetitive. It’s a lot of fun to be able to share my hobby with friends, and this afternoon was all about having fun. I wish I had more local friends with crafty interests, and the time to pursue them.
I had a great day today. We drove about an hour to meet my best girlfriends from college. I don’t know if it works this way for others, but I forget how much I miss seeing them until we spend time together. We talk like only old friends can, with complete and total honesty about everything from weight gain to health issues to our marriages. I always feel refreshed after spending time with them, and hope all women have the same kind of support network I have. These women make me laugh and make me cry, and I wouldn’t change one thing about either of them.
After we got home, I spent hours, and I mean hours, cleaning my craft room. It doesn’t look any differently to me, which is so disheartening, but I gave it a try. I’m going to finish (what I can) tomorrow AM, as my cousin Shelli, and her friend (and mine) Linda, will be doing some crafts together in the afternoon. We originally talked about trying jewelry, but while cleaning the craft room, I found two organizers for greeting cards that I bought at garage sales, thinking I would re-cover them so they look more pleasing to the eye. That was code for “they’re incredibly outdated and pretty gaudy.” I have a third box that I could play with, so that’s one option. Another is a bunch of things I bought on sale at the Dollar Spot at Target that can be redecorated to hang on a refrigerator or act as sort of an organizational system when backed with decorated chipboard, I think.
So that’s my plan for the remainder of today and tomorrow. I know Rich hasn’t put any videos up, and tomorrow is a new day. I know he plans to put at least one up tomorrow and hopefully, another on Monday. I’m sorry we’ve been lax with videos, and this is no excuse, but it was a really busy week for us, and that, my friends, is rare.
I spent all evening working on a birthday card for a close friend, and in the end, decided it needed to go into the trash. I wanted to use colors that coordinated with the birthday sticker set I had, so decided to make my own green pigment ink. I didn’t have a stamp pad to put the ink onto, so stamped directly onto a tile. I have stamp pads that are blanks but somehow thought this would work. The green was splotchy and uneven, and I just didn’t like it. The card itself really looked pretty OK, but the green really killed the look of it, and I decided I’d give her a card I’d already made instead. I hate to admit defeat, but this one was not going to make it. Rich really thought it looked great, if I could fix the green mess, but I tried, and there was no way to redeem it. Drat, I hate spending a couple of hours on something that goes into the trash.
I know we’ve all had days like this, but it’s pretty disheartening when you have an idea that should work but doesn’t. Tomorrow’s another day, and even better, it’s a garage sale day…..one of our first for the season. YAY!
I have three videos that Rich needs to edit and add music to, so I’m feeling kind of free and unencumbered. I think it’s nice to have a few days breathing room, but on the other hand, I need to keep pumping them out, so Rich always has something to do, haha.
I am going to make a card for a good friend whose birthday is this week, and I wanted to try making an acetate card, so that’s my plan. I’m not sure if it will work, but you never know until you try.
I’m also still trying to find the perfect papers for the album I’m making our friends who have built their new home. The problem I’ve been having is in papers. Although they make a lot of paper for new babies, they don’t make many for new homes. So far, I’ve got some Graphic 45 paper that I thought would work, but it’s mostly floral and vegetable themed, “Home Sweet Home.” I’m kicking that to the curb and trying to find other papers I like. So far it’s been a bust, but if any of you know of any paper that is focused around a new home, I’d really appreciate it. I’ve found a lot that say the word home, but most were a new home for a baby, or a new garden, definitely not what I’m looking for.
CraftingForAlmostEveryone.com 