Time has slipped away from me again.  If you asked me when was the last time I blogged, I’d tell you I probably missed one day, not three.  I’m sorry that I haven’t been on top of this, but then again, I haven’t been in my craft room either.  I’ve really been obsessed with Ancestry.com and working on my family tree.  I had made the tree several years ago, and had a lot of dead ends.  But since then, so many new people have joined, and really put the work into 1500-1700’s, which is where my dead ends occurred.  I’ve got one branch of my tree to go all the way back to the 600’s AD in Norway, and probably could have gone a lot further with it, but I was more interested in where the other legs of my tree would take me.  I anticipated a lot of England, and that’s what I’ve been finding.   It’s fun when you find things like a family member who went to Oxford in the 1500’s.  That’s pretty cool.  I also found some family members from my DNA chain..They said I was second cousins with these people, so I sent them an email (if they didn’t have a family tree, and gave them my parents and grandparents’ names, to determine how I’m related to them.  Two of these women have gotten back to me and one talked about my grandmother and how much she loved watching her cook, and that this lady still makes turkey like my grandmother did.  She would put the turkey in a brown paper bag.  And that’s all I remember about it, the brown paper bag.  I think I’ll be asking her to give me the specifics on how grandma made the turkey, as I was too young to remember when she stopped cooking for the family.

I think I’m really interested in my family tree because the family I grew up with was very small.  My father had one sister and my mother was an only child.  So I have a grand total of three cousins, and my sister and her family, that are still alive.  It’s not a very large group, that’s for sure.  Once you look at your family tree, and realize how big it gets and how far around the world it spreads, it can get to be addictive.

I guess I’m amazed at the accuracy of the DNA results, and how they found my second and third cousins and beyond.  I wasn’t really interested in 4th – 6th cousins, as they wouldn’t have anything in common with me, since there’s no way they would remember my grandmothers or grandfathers.  I wanted to interact with people who could tell me stories that I’d never heard about my family.  Maybe I’m being too shortsighted, but I am more interested in the stories than in the connection.

As for my craft room, I promise that I’ll head there and make some cards this afternoon.  I think I need to let my family tree go for a few hours and head back to the craft room.  After all, the family tree will still be there tomorrow.

I’ve been talking to some of my viewers whose hands shake, and I’ve been trying to come up with ideas to possibly help them continue to make cards. Some of the ideas I’ve come up with have not worked well, so I’m hoping this could be an option for them.
I started with a big beautiful background stamp from Rubbernecker called Daisy (here’s the link) http://www.rubbernecker.com/product-p/699.htm and the sentiment came from a Stampin’ Up set called Painted Petals. I used a peg stamp from Rubber Stamp Tapestry called small Chamomile (here’s the link to it https://pegstamps.com/chamomile-flower-small.html
I used Ken Oliver’s Liquid Metals in Yellow Gold, Metallic Amethyst and Mandarin. You can find them at DickBlick.com for a set of six $17.69.
The first step is putting a donut of washi tape under your card front and attach it to your table, a cutting matt, or in my case, a plastic cutting board I bought at the Dollar Tree. The cutting board allowed me to move the image around when I needed to turn it to color in a different area. I stamped the daisy background with Versafine Onyx Black ink and used Ranger clear embossing powder to cover the design and then heat set it. The embossing is a great way to contain your ink.  I used cream colored Recollections heavyweight card staock and cut it to 4 x 5 1/4″.  My card base is the same card stock and it’s cut to 8 1/2 x 5 1/2″ and scored in the center of the 8 1/2″ width at 4 1/4″ to make an A2 size card that is 4 1/4″ x 5 1/2″..
You can take a small piece of clear plastic (2 x 3″) and put some ink or watercolor on it and smoosh this on your image. The embossing powder, once heated, will help the ink stay where you put it and won’t allow it to seep outside the embossed lines. Instead, I found it was easier to use my finger and paint with it instead. I simply put a drop or two of the Liquid Metals onto a piece of plastic and dab my finger into it, then dab my finger onto the card. I used an alcohol marker to draw the green stems and leaves and a brown one to color in the centers of the flowers on the card and the envelope.  With the black ink and the embossing powder, you really don’t need to color the leaves and stems, as they look fine with the black ink, so if you do shake, you won’t need to do this step.

After the card front was dry, I used a corner rounder and rounded all of the corners of both the card front and card base.  I attached a piece of fun foam beneath it with an ATG and Tombow Mono wet glue and adhered it to the card base.

I took a 1″ wide clear gold ribbon and attached it to the center of my card, then used glue dots to make sure the center of the ribbon laid flat on the card.  I had die cut the sentiment for the front of the card, and used the chamomile stamp on it and colored it with paint brushes and the same Ken Oliver Liquid Metal in Yellow Gold to color the chamomiles used the same gold metallic to color the envelope flowers.  I put the sentiment on foam squares and laid it on the ribbon.

Rich and I spent the day at the college that we attended.  I volunteer to interview graduating seniors, and I like to do a seminar with them first to prepare them for interviews, which I’ll be doing next week.  After the seminars, we went out to lunch with a friend then shopped a little bit for grocery type things.  Nothing big, but all of these little activities turned into an afternoon of things to do.

I came home and caught up on emails and by then, the day was pretty much over.

I’ve been getting really great responses from the dog card, and so many terrific stories of animals saving their owners from life-threatening situations.  I am so amazed what these animals have done.  From a dog who has a strange bark when he sees someone with cancer or M.S., to a couple of different scenarios with dogs waking their owners with sleep apnea, when they stopped breathing.  I guess we can never discount the bond that our animals have with us, and I hope others, after hearing Norma’s story, will be more attentive to what their animals are saying to them.  I know I will be.

Happy Valentine’s Day!  Rich and I didn’t do anything special today, but we’ve never really celebrated Valentine’s Day like some couples do.

I spent today working on my family tree on Ancestry.com.  For Christmas, Rich bought me the DNA kit so I could find out where I originated from.  I really liked the information that they give you…it not only includes all of the percentages of where my DNA originated from…but also who I might be related to. I thought that was the fun part, finding people that I never knew, who are related to me.  They only found second to fourth cousins, but it was still pretty interesting, finding that they were 100% accurate.  There were only three or four of them that had a family tree that I could check, but every one I found, had a person whose name I recognized from my grandmothers.  Tell me that’s not cool?  I was amazed that it worked so well.  So here’s my DNA make up.

Great Britain 47%

Europe West 27%

Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) 7%

Scandinavia 5%

My friend Cath hadn’t contacted me since before Christmas and I was worried that either she or her husband were ill, so I emailed her. Cath said although she was fine, her sister was not. She said her sister, Norma, has adopted a one-eyed chihuahua from a rescue center and the dog normally preferred to spend it’s time with Norma’s husband. Recently, when Norma would lie on her bed, the dog would lay with it’s head on her chest and cry. It wasn’t just one occasion, it was several times. Since Norma hadn’t felt well, she went to her doctor and told her the story about the dog. Her doctor took the dog seriously, and ran tests.  They found that Norma had breast cancer.
I wanted to make a card for Norma, featuring a chihuahua, but the only chihuahua stamp I had was from Tim Holz Crazy Dogs stamps. I asked Cath if that would be ok with Norma, and she said she thought Norma would like it. I made the card and wasn’t thrilled with it and wrote about it in my blog. A reader told me I should use the word HOPE on the card, and once I made that change, I’m really happy with the end result.
To make the card, I started with kraft colored cardstock 8 1/2″ x 5 1/2″ scored on the 8 1/2″ length at 4 1/4″ to make an A2 size card that is 5 1/2 x 4 1/4″. I took Recollections Heavyweight 110 lb. white card stock that was 4″ x 5 1/4″ and scored it on the 4″ width at 1/2″ intervals to go the whole 4″ every 1/2″….Then I took four Distress Inks, Walnut Stain, Pumice Stone, Hickory Smoke and Gathered Twigs. I rubbed the Pumice Stone all over the paper first, then the other inks I tried to rub in the pattern of a wood grain, up and down and used the inks from light to dark. I sprayed it with water and dabbed it off, then used my homemade Gesso on a fan brush to lightly brush the Gesso over the front of the card.

My homemade gesso recipe:
1/4 cup Plaster of Paris
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup cheap white craft paint
1./4 cup Elmer’s white glue

If you don’t have Gesso, you could use white paint or a white gel pen. I also added lines with my white gel pen and smeared them vertically, then went over the image again with Gesso to make the gel ink look less defined.
To color the chihuahua, I used Touch Five markers and the numbers are listed on the video.
I used a die to cut out the dog and the sentiment and used a Stampin’ Up marker in Soft Suede with a blender pen to add a floor under the dog. I glued the barn wood panel to fun foam and then attached it to the front of the card. I added the dog to the middle of the card with ATG and wet Tombow Mono glue.
I couldn’t find a sentiment that I liked so made my own, and it said “Miracles come in all shapes and sizes, I’m so glad you found yours.” I typed it on my computer and printed the sentiment on cardstock on my computer. I die cut it and put it on the inside of the card. I have a die that cuts out the alphabet and I used it to create the word HOPE and put it on a piece of black and brown striped paper that I lined with a piece of craft card stock behind it, then laid it on foam stamp and added it on an angle beside the dog on the front of the card.. I stamped “Made by Sandy Parker” on the back of the card and stamped dog paws on the envelope and it was done.

I wanted to clean my work area today, but I decided not to approach it like I have been.  I get overwhelmed and give up before I finish, so I thought a new approach was in order.  When I worked at the bank, I had a system where I would only touch something once.  If I opened my emails, I did whatever needed to be done with them before going on to the next task.  I decided that it would take a lot longer, but ultimately, touching things once, will be different than moving things from one spot to another.  So I started by finding new stamps and dies, and putting them into cd cases and labelling them, then putting them into the storage based on what types of stamps they are.  I made up labels for animal, flower, sentiment, outdoor, holiday etc., type stamps.  That way if I’m looking for stamps of a dog, I know exactly where to look for them.  Once I finished that, I went to my closet and arranged everything in there so I don’t have to move things again in the future.  Then I found some backgrounds I’d made in the video where I made the blue sparkly card.  I had four of them and two new layered dies, so made cards out of them and put them in my storage box.  I know this is going to take me a long time to finish, but I really do feel a lot better about the progress I’m making.  Normally I would have put the stamps into a pile or a plastic box and not put them into the cd cases as I would have done that on a different occasion.  I would have put the backgrounds that I’d made into a box to address at a later date…Those things just keep piling up and it’s so frustrating when you never seem to make much progress.  So today I did.

I also re-shot a lot of the video for the woman whose dog found her cancer.  I had made a great wood grain background on the first video ( I think I talked about this yesterday,) and I had almost all of the background out of the video frame, so you saw virtually nothing.  I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about how that was the centerpiece of the card, and you really can’t see it…I feel so much better now that it’s re-shot.  At least now the wood grain background is a technique that everyone can use, as they’ll definitely know how to make it.

My card is going live later tonight and I made a big dent in my craft room mess.  Life is good!

I had talked about a card I was making and how it needed a little something on the front. One of my blog readers sent me a note and suggested the word “hope.”  I loved the idea and went back in and revamped the card and the video to include it.  I really like the look of the card, but the video is another story.  At the beginning of my videos I’ve been showing the sign my girlfriend made for me for Christmas.  On this video, I forgot to change the setting of the camera, so for the whole first segment of the video, it was zoomed in, so that you miss a lot of what’s going on.  I feel completely terrible about it and am not sure if I should even show the card.  I really like the end card, but the first ten minutes of video are so far out of frame that it’s embarrassing.  Even worse, Rich and I just had a conversation about how I shouldn’t zoom in so much because I’ve been having trouble staying in frame.  I completely forgot to check the camera after the opening segment and that’s all my fault.  I’m so mad at myself, because there’s a great technique showing how to make what looks like barn wood, but you barely get to see it.

I made another card as I’ve been having conversations with viewers whose hands shake, and I was trying to come up with a technique that they could do.  I ended up doing finger painting…It was a lot of fun and I hope it’s something that these ladies can try.  But at the end of the video, I accidentally ran out of battery and didn’t realize it, so I’ll need to re-shoot the end of the video.  Sometimes things just don’t go well for me…Drat!

I wanted to make a get well card for the lady with breast cancer that was discovered by her dog.  I had this idea of making a barn wood background, then laying the dog over the barn wood in some type of die cut design.  I thought the sentiment should be customized for the card, talking about the miracle that is her dog.  I finished the card tonight and I have to say, I’m a little bit disappointed in the end result.  I’m not sure what I was hoping for, but it’s just a little bit blah.  I think I need to put something on the front to offset the dog, but am not sure what that would be.

I was going to give the dog a pink collar for breast cancer awareness, but I have a girlfriend with breast cancer and she said she’s really gotten tired of the whole pink initiative, and feels like she’s almost branded with it.  That made me rethink the color of the collar.  Maybe my girlfriend is the only person who feels like that about the pink ribbon, but I didn’t want to take a chance.  I even talked about it on the video, but now I’m thinking I should have Rich edit it out, because I wouldn’t want to offend anyone or hurt their feelings by discussing something so personal.

So even though I think the card is finished, I really think I need to add something.  Maybe a one word die cut sentiment, but I’m not sure what would be appropriate.  Get well soon doesn’t seem right, but I do have the die for it.  I guess I’ll think about it a little bit more and hopefully I’ll be inspired to think of something that will make the card better than blah.  I don’t want to send her this card as it is, so I’m going to get serious about a way to make it frisky.  Frisky is definitely what I’m going for.

I wanted to send a card to one of my viewers, and she likes the color blue. When I started, I really didn’t know where I was going with it, so I’ve done a lot of different techniques. I started with the background, and used Distress Inks to create the background. I demonstrated with Fabriano hot press watercolor paper. I used Blueprint Sketch, Wilted Violet, Salty Ocean and Shaded Lilac and rubbed the ink pads directly onto the watercolor paper. You can use a waterbrush or a regular brush with some water, and smear the inks around to blend them. You need to make sure that you really dry the paper well before the next step. You can let them set overnight, or use a heat tool to do this.

I used the stamp set Peony Bouquet from Altenew and my sentiment came from Essentials by Ellen and was called Spread the Sparkle.

The next step involves embossing, so I used the corn starch filled pouch to rub over the front of the card and used Versafine Onyx Black ink to stamp all of the flowers then Ranger clear embossing powder and heat set the images. I laid my flowers inside the MISTI, but you can easily stamp these where you want them with an acrylic block.
After stamping the entire card, I used my Touch Five Alcohol markers in shades of purples and reds to accent the flowers, then took Distress Oxides with the next layers of the stamp set to give the flowers real dimension. I used Candied Apples, Seedless Preserves, Picked Raspberry and Abandoned Coral Distress Oxides to do this.
I used a micro-brush that I bought from Aliexpress in the make up area to fill in small dots on the berries.To find the brushes, I typed in micro brush make up and found these for around $2 for 50 of them.
I used a black Recollections heavyweight card stock for my card base that was 8 1/2″ x 5 1/2″ scored on the 8 1/2″ width at 4 1/4″, to make a 4 1/4″ x 5 1/2″ card. My card front was trimmed to 4 1/8″ by 5 3/8″ so there’s a very small border of black around the card. I lined the inside of the card with a piece of white card stock that was 4″ x 5 1/4″. I used fun foam to line the back of the floral card front and showed how to trim it to fit and used my ATG to attach the foam to the front of the card base.
I used Spectrum Noir Shimmer Pen to color all of the flowers, leaves and berries so the cared was very sparkly.

Sometimes I just lose track of days.  I think I’ve written in the blog in the last couple of days, only to find that I’ve not written in three or four days.  Where does time go?  I haven’t felt very motivated to make a card or go into my craft room.  I don’t normally watch much television, but I’ve been watching the Olympics and reading more.  I guess we all need a vacation sometime, and maybe in the future, I should tell viewers that I’m going to take a week off.  So that’s my future plan, but right now I’ll just apologize for missing a few days with the blog and not putting any videos up.  Rich is editing the most recent video I made right now, but it’s a long one, so I don’t anticipate it going live until tomorrow.  I’m hoping I’ll feel motivated to make another video soon so that Rich always has a video that he needs to edit.