Verve Stamps Project Parade: It's A Girl Thing

Over at Verve Stamps blog they are having a spring Project Parade to celebrate the women in our lives. I have to admit that this project was done before but not with Verve style. So I reworked it.

My memories of my mother are many but you cannot believe how many of them were with her in a kitchen. She dreamed of being a stay-at-home mom and providing meals to her family. The dream of staying at home with all of her children didn't quite make it through all of us growing up into adulthood but she undoubtedly fed us well with a Sunday meal after church and then throughout the week when she could. If she wasn't working up a meal for us at home she was heading up all kinds of receptions and potlucks at our church for the people of the congregation. If you have ever wanted to see a person serve others literally and spiritually this was my extraordinary example. I love my mom for that.

While I've been fond of her meals from childhood it wasn't until adulthood that my interest peaked for the recipes to those meals. I collected the essential memory meal recipes and compiled them into a recipe book for my mom's 75th birthday. I mailed it off to be passed around at a special open house at her church. Over 100 people came to celebrate my mom's birthday one afternoon.

While I made this recipe book the rest of my siblings contributed with bouquets and corsages, cake and punch and the most important, attending the event while some of us sat in our homes states away just wondering how it all went (thanks Ran and Jen, and Pam).

I hope you visit the Verve project parade that started a few days ago. It's nice to read about the design teams design and who they are celebrating. Join the fun in celebrating! If your a woman celebrate yourself and your accomplishments. You are the best you there is!

God bless...

Details: I used Mojo Monday's Sketch 84. Sentiment is from Verve's Because of You set from the April release inked up in Stampin Up Creamy Caramel. Patterned paper is from a Making Memories Basics Neutrals 12 x 12 pack. I used Stampin Up Creamy Caramel and Old Olive cardstock, and dark red and cream from my LSS stash. The Accessories are Chocolate Chip grosgrain ribbon (SU), scallop and circle Nesties from Spellbinders, flower and leaves from Cuttlekids 4 piece die set, Martha Stewart Frond punch and regular hole punch on a frame die from Sizzix Tween Bigz Die which I sponged with Close to Cocoa, and a full sheet of chipboard for the back. I printed the pages on my HP Color LaserJet 3220 mfp (husband's employer benefit). I printed "Treasured Recipes" on cream cardstock using the RGB values monkeystamps blog with the typeface "Unnamed Melody" from Kevin and Amanda's free scrapbook fonts.

UPDATE: The cover was laminated with my GBC Creative Laminator (Warning! Don't run a layered cardstock piece through this laminator unless you are prepared to tug it out the other side. I thought it was going to burn my cover because it got stuck so many times.). I used my father-in-law's comb binding machine that I'm conveniently storing at my house to assemble the book.

Thanks for stopping by!

Most of us feel the same way about Blogging...

Hello,

I've run across a blog that is just amazing. I scanned a few posts but be sure to realize she is having a blogaversary giveaway.

She has a wonderful Profile comment that describes most of us who blog about our crafting activities, but she does it almost out of necessity. Her name is Debbie and she seems to be a VERY sweet woman.

Go check out her blog sometime. If you are interested in her giveaway go NOW. Just a day away and the giveaway will be given away.

Thanks for stopping by.

I'm still creating...just stock piling to post it

It's Mojo Monday and I realized I'm behind. I'm in need of some Mother's Day cards and decided to use that as an excuse to catch up on Verve challenges. So here they are.

I started off with the Viva La Verve April 5 challenge which had the {twist} to use springy colors. I like the colors so much that I used them again for the Mojo Monday 83 challenge. The details are on my SplitcoastStampers gallery if you're interested.

Just a quick post, I hope.

This card is for the Viva La Verve Week 4 Sketch challenge. The twist was to create your own designer paper or patterned paper. I made it into too hard of a challenge and stayed up way too late. After about 4 attempts I finally use the first one I made.

I started with a light mint green paper and then went from there. Going Grey cardstock was nearby from a Verve Release Challenge card so I grabbed the same color ink and started inking up the green paper with Stampin' Up Retired Etruscan set.

After the grey images were down on paper I went back over the larger stamped areas with VersaMagic Chalk Cloud White ink to give it some depth, then sponged to fill in the empty spaces. I stamped an extra larger image onto some more paper and cut it out with a craft blade knife, then used dimensionals to pop it up off the card.

I took some white organdy ribbon and laid it down on a scrap of paper, then used my broad tip SU Going Grey Marker and colored my ribbon. I rubbed a cotton ball along the ribbon afterwards to blend and get rid of any extra ink. I'm sure other's already knew this, but I was just tickled to think I came up with it.

The sentiment is Verve's Thanks stamp which came along with a past order. I used Stampin' Up's Etruscan set for the designer paper. A few rhinestones and layered paper and the card was finished.

Have a great Friday!

Smile Sunshine!

I've been busy catching up on a few house chores and getting re-acquainted with my family since lasts weeks surge of Verve card making for the Release challenge. That sure does take it out of me for a few days.

I don't know for sure if my children realize that I stay up all night and do fun papercrafting things, but they sure do know that some mornings mommy just needs that extra sleep in time (thanks to hubby of mine) and a strong cup of coffee...or two. So how appropriate is the sentiments on this mojo card for me?



I don't smile much on those particular mornings and I'm not looking much like sunshine.

Card inside:


This card was so hard for me to get together. I started off with a technique with some creative license from the ribbon frame at Splitcoaststampers.com with direct credit to Claire Brennan. I chose to make knots in the ribbon at the corners of the frame instead of along the side of each side which meant I needed three holes per corner instead of one as in the ribbon frame above. So after practicing that a few times, I started on my black cardstock. I decided it looked too flat so I embossed. From the square cutout I used that as my size for the white paper image. Thank I was stuck on what to do with the rest of the Mojo sketch. As you can see it came out okay.

Some words of wisdom: If someone tells you "I've heard..." always test it on a scrap of paper the same color you intend to use on the finished card. I was told, "I heard.." using rubbing alcohol sprayed on the paper before embossing will give you a crisper emboss. Yep, it sure does, however on dark paper it looks like a ghosting on the back of the paper and also on anything else that was near it while being run through the emboss machine. (Look closely at the inside photo and you'll see what I'm describing. You might need to click on the image to see a larger image.)

If you didn't notice this card uses two sentiments that were not available last week. That's because I waiting so long to finish this card that I was able to use the new release Verve stamps that arrived today. Now there's incentive to finish a card.

Thanks for stopping in and listening to my long, drawn out, past due to stop post.
{wink} Stop by again soon. I'm still working on my sneak peek from last week (I'm having hardware issues), and I'm working on the last April Viva La Verve challenge.

Two quick notes...

My watermark is officially approved! I can use the clean and qwerky typeface from Amanda over at kevinandamanda.com.

I stayed up all last night mesmerized by all my cardmaking tools and materials. So much so that I didn't stop at my personally induced stoppage time (lol) while making the Verve Release Challenge Contest. Now some of you know what I'm talking about when I say that those sketches are high quality. I just had to keep making the cards no matter how tired I got.

Let me just say, I'm very exhausted right now. If I didn't need to take care of my kids right now I'd be sawing logs. That's beside my point of the post. Back to Verve Release Challenges.

This is how I felt with each card.
CARD 1: Fresh, robust, with a plan.
CARD 2: Can't keep my eyes open "must stay awake", drained of energy and wanting to quit so I'll make the next card quick.
CARD 3: Blinded from card 2. Need something quick. Better yet. Quicker than the last card.
CARD 4: "Do I have those colors or do I just find something that has one of the colors in it and git 'er done.

Well after all that posting, here are my cards for the Challenge. You can get the details at my SCS gallery anytime I post a card here. Thanks for stopping by.

Hope to "see" you at the release party!

I'm Mojo happy right now

I am so completely stunned. I got a call from my sweet mother-in-law around noon today and this is what I heard, "You won!". I couldn't figure out what she meant so I was silent. She continued, "I went to MojoMonday to get some more sketch ideas and saw your name in the winners list...".

Okay. I won. Wait. I was one of the 7 picked for Mojo Monday Challenge. Wow. How completely amazing!

I am so honored to be one of the 7 to be picked. I just love doing these cards and Julee's stamps make it so easy to put together a fan-tabulous design.
Congratulations to all the Mojo winners.

I've got another reason to post and a more exciting one at that. Julee of Verve is putting on a Verve customer contest. Just link a recent Verve stamped project on the shopverve site and you may have a chance to win a HUGE gift certificate. Go see for yourself.

Since I've just won a terrific gift card I decided to just show off my collection of Verve Plain Janes that I've used on a project that's not complete. I've been working on this project for awhile at a monthly craft night where I get the needed uninterrupted time to put it together. I won't show the whole of it, but you can see the Plain Janes I've used in the picture below. It's going to be a gift to someone very dear to me and I just don't want to give away what it is until I've got it completed and it's being sent off in the mail. I'm hoping to complete it in the next month so stay tuned and you'll be able to view it soon.

Here's my project sneak peek.

I just love my Plain Janes. You can see a sneak peek of some new ones over at Verve's Blog.

Thanks for stopping by.

I CASE'd my Mother-in-law!

It's amazing how once you've seen something it sticks in your head and you just cannot get it out. My sweet mother-in-law does a local craft night at a craft chain store and I'm not sure if its common, but this time around she came home with a sheet of pattern paper that she needed to use up. She has come up with quite a few stunning cards. One of which she used the sketch from week 81 at Mojo Monday Blog.

Since that post the color combo has stuck in my head so I just had to use it.

Here's my MIL's card over at SCS (Splitcoast Stampers)

Here's my card where I CASE'd the color combo of Black and Real Red, and embossing idea. I would have done the sketch, but I already did the Mojo81 sketch.




I did use the Viva La Verve Week 2 sketch. It was a {twist} of background stamps.

In case you didn't know what CASE means, Copy And Share Everything.

The World of Illustrator Markers

...in the craft realm.

Sidenote: I might have promised a post about the projects I completed over the weekend but for some reason I didn't complete the other Viva La Verve Challenges and the one I'm going to talk about in this post. But you might be interested in my journey with illustrator markers. Read on.

I've been dabbling in coloring with markers for my card images. I love all the Anya's and Milo's out there, but I needed to make it relavent to any projects I might have in my to-do box. I have a stack of photos that were so nicely sent to me of my mother's 75th birthday celebration at her church. I am suppose to make a scrapbook of her day. My sister and I sent two bouquets and a corsage that had beautiful blue delphinium flowers and I wanted to have that as the theme throughout the scrapbook.

So I started with my set of Chartpak markers from college. Most of them are dried out, yep that's how long I've been out of college. I ran across a B12 set of Copic markers at the LSS (Local Scrabooking and Stamp) store that were on sale. That set didn't have enough markers to blend with in the same family colors. So when I went to the art store for some major Elmer glue supplies (think Cold Porcelain Clay recipe) I ran across Prismacolor markers. List price they were about $4.20 and with a 40% coupon they were just right for testing. I bought 6 colors.


Blue Violet PM-42
Imperial Violet PM-127
Copenhagen Blue PM-40
Blender Pen PM-121
Light Olive Green PM-26
Dark Olive Green PM-28

It was quite an experience. I decided I would just play and learn how to use alcohol based markers. Of course these colors are meant to be used for the blue flowers in my mom's bouquets, so I penciled a flower on white cardstock and just went for it.

Okay so what do you think?

What did I learn from this playtime?
Use colors that are closer together in shade = so more markers need to be purchased.
The blender pen looks blotchy and almost like a bleaching effect on my cardstock.
Alcohol-based pens blend into eachother very well. A blender pen is not necessary except to take away a color.

I need to do some more searching on tutorials and find out what I might do better with the markers I have. I can't buy more markers until I'm certain I like doing this coloring method. I can easily do this type of coloring with wet watercolor so if it doesn't start getting easier its not for me.

The Turbo Fans are gone!

These fans are the best white noise makers. By the end of the first day (Monday) I was a nervous wreck. My hubby had to turn them off to be able to make popcorn on our gas stove because it blew so much wind into our kitchen the flame wouldn't stay strong enough to heat the WhirleyPopper. The next day I convinced myself to keep them on so we could get them out of our house as soon as possible (meaning day 2). It was a pleasure to be somewhere else in the mornings, but by dinner time it was just about enough. So today was the last reading and they are out of my house. Yipee!
http://www.amazon.com/3-Speed-Turbo-Carpet-Floor-Dryer/dp/B000QCM758

Now onto the dreaded task of getting the hole in my ceiling fixed.

I'm off to bed. Tomorrow I'm going to sit in front of a serger and figure out what to do with it, go find an Easter - slash - flower girl dress for my daughter and do loads of laundry.

Thanks for stopping by.

Floral Music

I think I really like this card. If I can say so myself!

I had made a quick basket with the Haiku DSP and a scrap of it was still laying on my table when I decided to start putting this card together. There was just enough to make all the rectangles. I used just about every new gadget I've gotten this year. Nestabilities, Martha Stewart glitter pack, Verve stamps with images and some Stampin' Up designer paper at a garage sale.

Pssst....did you notice my new watermark? I just threw it together. I downloaded a font called smiley monster from this really adorable website for free. I still need to email them and make sure I can use the font this way, but for just this once until I get the okay....Ta - dah!

Pssst....pssst....here's the cute basket. I got the directions from Monica Gale and her youtube video.

Happy Easter!

I just couldn't help myself when I saw the woven basket tutorial over on splitcoaststampers dot com. Yes, it is made out of paper!

Well, I have been typing and deleting. Repeat this a few times and its now 1/2 hour later. I really want to write something about the special meaning of Easter to me and the memories of my childhood, maybe even of recent, but I am too tired to keep my eyes open. I must get some small amount of sleep for my busy day tomorrow.

I hope you enjoy this short post. I'll be catching up on a few things this weekend and hope to have a few things to show you on Monday!

Blessings!

Janelle

Simply Fabulous and Fast

This card was fast! I needed to get away from it all tonight so after tucking in my son and checking on my husband's agenda for the night (we usually have a Lost or Heros to watch) I got to run away to my craft room.

Right now we have two turbo fans blowing towards the ceiling in our kitchen eating area because there is a whole nicely cut 5 by 6 feet wide! We had a cold water pipe leak and my dear 3 old daughter exclaimed from the lunch table yesterday, "Mom, there is water coming to the floor from the ceiling." I've been dealing with a plumber, claim adjuster, and recovery service men for two days and now we wait for the wood to dry. So, I needed to run away and create.

This card is for Viva La Verve's April sketch with a {twist} of sentiment only. I chuckled when I read this challenge because that is all I've had of Verve stamps and told myself to break out the images even if it wasn't a Verve stamp.

I used an already punched SU Top Note die cut lying around and an extra File Folder tab punch. So from there I grabbed bright and cheery colors, some Diamond stickles, my Cuttlebug and embossing folders and began to combine everything.

The embossed cardstock (I don't have a name for it but it looked like that color was in the bottom pattern paper) is with Perfect Paisley emboss folder and then I used a small scrap of sponge and began sponging Only Orange, Ruby Red and then Tim Holtz Walnut Brown Distress Ink all over. The purple flower paper and orange bottom paper is from my DCWV Pocket Full of Posies stack paper pad. I punched the purple flower paper with the SU spiral punch and sponged walnut brown ink around the edges. The ribbon? Well I assume its another Michael's $1 bin find. My sentiment comes from Verve's Beautiful Kindness in Perfect Plum punched out with a SU circle punch. Then I cut another scrap of sponge and dabbed Ballet Blue and Lavender Lace onto white cardstock. die cut it with my Nesties second smallest Classic scallop die once, then twice in the same die for the embossed scallop edge, lastly turned it over and sponged, you guessed it, Walnut Brown ink over it. I dabbed it over the edges of the scallop as well. I embellished with Diamond stickles on the Perfect Paisley emboss, scalloped circle and dotted the green file folder tab.

I'm glad I ran away to the craft room tonight. It was fun putting this card together. Now off to bed.

Have a great Wednesday!

Play with Clay Part 3

NOT!

I took my freshly dried plaque to my craft night out tonight. I showed it to the ladies at my table and my SU Demo/friend. She thought it was some type of a rubber pad and bent it.

Yes! It broke. I gave her a hard time about it, but it was SO easy to do I'll be making another one. I even have leftover of the colors I mixed together.

I think I'll make a smaller one and then attach it to a cute basket I saw over at Splitcoaststampers. It will be a paper version of Longaberger's Collector's Club baskets.

Jen Tapler Blogoversary

I'm posting a short one, I'm suppose to be off to a craftin' work night, but I just felt like I wanted to get this card done. I've been trying to get it done since I found out about it at Jen Tapler's blog.

My dad has Parkinson's so I can empathize with Jen and the Alzheimer's disease in her family. So that said, I had to do a card to send to her challenge/auction stash.

To get all the details take the link to her blog above and check out the details. Psssst...there is a blog candy giveaway involved, but that isn't the reason I'm coaxing you to go over there and check it out. She seems like a wonderful lady and she needs her crafting buddies some help to raise money for Alzheimer's Association.

Okay, I'm off to my worknight...need to check my list twice before I leave. It just bothers me when I forget something.

Thanks for stopping by.

Update: I used MojoMonday Sketch #80 to get this card started. Check out the gallery at the Mojo Monday blog or Splitcoaststampers gallery.

Play with Clay Part 2

Two days later and I'm impressed with this homemade clay! Look at it now.

On Wednesday evening I checked it and the top was pretty dry but the bottom was still as fresh clay so I turned it over. I took one picture to show and then laid a small box on top of it to lay it flat. The next day I was going to post it and it was out of focus. Bummer. It doesn't look much different than the first day, but I think it looks crisper in design.

How much did it shrink? Take a look.

If you look across the bottom of the stamp and clay I aligned them with the lines that touch the text. It looks a little off to me but that is close enough to see how much it shrinks. The back is till not totally dry but I don't think it will add to the shrinkage.

Pretty neat. What do you think? What should I use it for? My patent answer is a card. Maybe glue ribbon on the back and tie it to a treat bag full of treats.

I take no credit for this idea. I got my visual instructions at Craftstylish . This website talks about using it for necklace pendants.

UPDATE: I didn't complete my credits. While I used the visuals from Craftstylish I used the recipe from here.

Watercolor Bloom

Hello There!

I felt like I was getting behind on my challenges. Now isn't that just silly? All the card challenges that I've been doing from Splitcoast Stampers are just for fun, and are self imposed. So I guess that makes me a deadline addict or maybe I really just want to win some new Verve stamps. I'll never tell.

I was going to do a quick card tonight and here it is almost 1 a.m. Okay here's the details on this card.

The sketch is from Mojo Monday #79. I had to move the sentiment on the sketch because it was just too big to nestle it in to the right of all the paper and image elements.

I used the color scheme from Color Challenge 49 at Splitcoast Stampers. Stampin Up (SU) colors: Almost Amethyst, Sage Shadow and Chocolate Chip. I didn't have all these colors in card stock so I found something on hand that was close. So I used Close to Cocoa and a violet cardstock. I stamped the flower with Sage Shadow on the leaves and the blooms in Almost Amethyst. I used an aqua pen to add the Close to Cocoa on the background of the image. Then I went back to add a few darker elements with SU markers and accidently pulled out Mellow Moss. So I just used that on the sentiment and the ribbon.

I used my all-time favorite tool the Cuttlebug (CB) machine and embossed the violet with D'vine Swirls and the extra white cardstock with Birds and Swirls. I carefully die cut the sentiment out with the CB slider die and backed all these elements with Close to Cocoa cardstock and then used my Martha Stewart Scallop Lace Edge punch on the bottom.

I had some fun on this card and didn't feel like I had to hurry to get it done. That must be why it's so late!

I'm off to bed!

Playing with clay

I've decided to play with my homemade Cold Porcelain Clay and see what it does in the process of drying.

I'm excited to see how this experient will turn out and I wanted to share it.

This is an impression from Stampin Up stamp and I colored the clay with re-inker. It's fresh clay so it will shrink up to 30%. I'm not sure what else will happen but I thought I'd have you join in the ride. Let's see what it does over the next day or two.

Thanks for stopping by!