I have four of my stamp designs available exclusively at The Rubber Cafe in honest to goodness real red rubber! Here is one of the stamps (I designed the poppy) on a card made with the sketch over at 2 sketches 4 you:
Stamps: The Rubber Cafe, Cardstock: GP, PP: K&Co., Other: Hot glue "pearls" Tool: Scor-Pal, Scor-bug
Here are the others:
The 3 other stamps I designed for Thre Rubber Cafe!
They are red rubber stamps mounted on E-Z Mount foam that will cling to your acrylic blocks so you can see where you are stamping and it saves storage space too which is great for me 😉 I drew these stamps last fall and they are just coming out now! I am so excited to have such an awesome company produce my designs!
I stamped the Inked Poppy in waterproof black ink then loosely colored them with watercolor crayons and blended them with a blender pen, it is a very quick way to color something!
Color the stamped images loosely with the watercolor crayons, the blend with a damp brush or blender pen.
If I need to sharpen my crayons I do so over a reusable plastic palette so I can save the shavings. Spray them with water and you can paint with them! Great for blending and getting into tiny spaces. BTW the “pearls” are just little dabs of hot glue that I dusted with pearl ex, for a tutorial click here.
Save those shavings! watercolor crayons shavings make great paint, I sharpen mine with a craft knife.
Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!
Happy Thursday everyone! I’m feeling the busy July wind down and I am so ready for a lazy August. I had some time to design a few new stamps for the Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff shop, here are two of them:
Digital Stamps: Lindsay's Stamp Stuff, Pattern Paper: K& Co, Rubber Stamps: Thanks (SU!) Sweet: Studio G, punch: Fiskars (border) Martha Stewart (bird), Die cut: SCAL/Cricut
Irises are one of my favorite flowers so naturally I needed an Iris digistamp!
And, well, you can never have too many cupcakes and at least this one is calorie free! Don’t forget you get a free stamp for every $5 you spend in the shop! (I’ll ask you what you want for the freebie when I email you your order;)
Speaking of free, one of my wonderful design team members has a brand new Lindsay’s stamp to give away and it is out of this world! Check out their blogs to see there fabulous work and to find the hidden freebie! Also a huge thanks to Erin Bailey our Guest DT this month!
No, I don’t mean “tres chic” I mean Tray Chic! I am painting a tray table for the Maine Discovery Museum to be auctioned off this fall. I thought it would be fun to document my painting process on my blog…for those of you not into painting you can just smile and nod 😉
Here is the painting I designed for the top of the tray table, I will add more detail later...or not.
I want to give a BIG thanks to the M. Graham & Company for donating the paint for this project, I’ve used their watercolors for years and their acrylics are perfect for this project, good color strength and blendability (trust me, I was painting outside on a 80 degree day!
Mmmmmm paint! {yummy paint from M. Graham & Co.}
The first thing I did was make an acrylic “stain” for my table since it was new wood and I didn’t want to cover the grain plus it would seal the wood and make it easier to paint on. I mixed equal parts burnt umber paint and acrylic gloss varnish and a squirt of burnt sienna acrylic. Spray the table with clean water and apply the stain quickly blending as you go with a large natural bristle brush, use a small bristle brush to get paint in the grooves.
the stained table. This is my least favorite part of a painting project, I hate the prep work!
Here is how I set up my palette, for acrylics I use a Masterson Palette seal (but you can do the same thing with a large flat Tupperware container. I placed damp paper towels on the bottom of my plastic container, put a sheet of waxed paper on top and weighted the corners with flat marbles then squeezed out enough paint for this part of the project (the tray insert) the damp paper towels will keep my paint moist while I paint and if I don’t have time to finish the painting I can snap on the cover and the paint will stay wet until next time.
When using artist quality acrylic paint you don't need a lot, this is more than enough to paint the table top!
I designed the pattern for the inside of the try buy cutting a piece of paper the same size as the bottom of the tray then I folded it corner to corner to equally divide up the halves then I sketched a calla lily motif in a big and little triangle and transferred that design to the table (you can make out the white lines of the transfer paper in this photo:
one quarter of the design painted!
I think this might make a nice digital stamp too;) Here is a pic with two sections painted in, since I repeated the pattern for the other half of the table it is balanced and easy to paint.
Half-way there! You can do this too!
I have a lot more work to put in to this piece, this is just the tray that sits on top after all, Here is a look at the painted tray on the table base:
Not bad for a first tray...er, I mean try!
I’ll post the next installment of this project next week, thanks for reading {or just smiling and nodding} through this long post, till next time happy crafting!
Just popping in for a quick post and to remind you to join in the fun at the Caardvarks blog! They are giving away your choice of a card kit (they are brand new and super cute) from Creative Cuts and More, You have until Midnight on August 3rd to enter a baby or bridal shower themed project for your chance to win!
3 treat cones from one die cut, frugal goodness 😉Isn't this cardstock cool? I love how the color is different on the inside!We can't forget the girls! Die cut, tape: Creative Cuts And More
Here are a couple more favors I made, this time with a baby shower in mind (little sis is expecting a boy!) I made these with the 11 1/2″ mini scallop circle die out of double-mates cardstock, I love this stuff because you get two colors for the price of one…well it may be a couple of cents more LOL! The bigger cones were made with half of a scalloped sheet and the standard cones were made with a 1/4 sheet. Don’t be afraid to try making these, even for a big shower because they only take minutes to make. Be sure to try Killer Red Tacky Tape when you assemble these, I even used them to hold on my lace and ribbon! No more burned fingers from the hot glue gun, YAY!
Speaking of burnt fingers I think my new bead kiln is ready for another firing! Till next time happy crafting!
…Or maybe I should say “hottest” craft! For the past two days I have been obsessed with making fused glass in my microwave!
Can you belive I made this in the microvave!?!
I am NOT kidding, my sister (who is the most awesomest sister in the world) remembered that I saw an ad for a microwaveable bead kiln in a magazine and bought me one for my birthday! She gave it to me Thursday! I love this thing, it is made by a company called Diamond Tech and the brand is Fuseworks, she got me the beginners kit that came with some colored glass rectangles, glass shards, foiled glass, millifeori slices, the kiln, kiln paper, glass cutter and heat resistant gloves. Now, I have an old wimpy microwave so I was very skeptical that it would work since it recommends a microwave with a wattage of 800-1200 but it worked! I just had to nuke it longer! Here is how it works:
Place a piece of kiln paper on the kiln and lay your staked glass on top. Place it in the microwave for 2-4 minutes.
Here are some glass scraps on a peice of kiln paper 😉
Put on the gloves and peek under the lid to see if it has melted yet, if it had take the kiln out and set it on a trivet to cool for 30 minutes (no more peeking under the lid!) If not heat it for 30 seconds to a minute at a time until it is melted.
Let's Take a peek in the kiln. Yes, it glowing, it's that hot!
After cooling for 30 minuted remove the lid and let it cool some more, trust me the glass will still be hot and hot glass looks just the same as cold glass (don’t ask me how I know)
Remove the glass from the kiln and enjoy!
After a few beads I knew I was hooked so I went on-line to see where I could get replacement glass and kiln paper and no surprise It was pricey, a small bag with a couple of glass scraps was $6 so I found some old glass I had leftover for a stained glass project and tried that in the kiln and it worked just fine! I even sandwiched some glass slivers between a microscope slide and that melted too! I also found that if the kiln paper was still intact you could use it over again, try to remove the bead without disturbing the paper, I got 4 firings from one piece of kiln paper. The kiln paper keeps the hot glass from sticking to the kiln. After experimenting with random glass I decided to visit mt friendly neighborhood stained glass supplier where I bought a jumbo coffee can of colored glass scraps and a 18″x18″ sheet of ultra thin kiln paper fro under $15. The lady at the stained glass shop was familiar with the kiln, she even had one of the Fuseworks kilns. The glass I got from her was 95 COE (coefficiency of expansion) and the stuff in the kit was 90 COE but they both worked just fine. As for the ultra thin firing paper I had to use two layers of it but I could get multiple firings if I was careful and as a bonus it left the back of my glass and edges a lot smoother.
This is so much fun! I am glad you can use off brand supplies with it although the beginner kit gives you a lot to work with, I approve of this kit and if you shop around on line you can likely get a good deal on it! I saw them for $95 various places.
Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting…now what can I melt today….
I was playing with scal and my cricut and made this card:
Design by Lindsay Weirich, Stamps: About Art Accents, Ink: Kaliedacolor, Paper: GP
It was so easy, I used a free dingbat font called butterflies I think, selected a butterfly and clicked “blackout” and “weld” in scal, then copy and pasted it, flipped the second one and rotated it and placed then on the mat touching at the top of the wings. Make sure both parts are welded before you cut. After it was cut I stamped butterflies and text in clear ink and heat embossed them then used a brayer (A soft rubber roller) and a rainbow inkpad to apply ink over the butterfly and the embossed areas remain white. I stamped the fairy (About Art Accents) with SU! black and watercolored it with M Graham &Co paint, trimmed and mounted it to the bottom of the card. Easy and fun!
Tomorrow I will introduce you to a “hot” new craft, til them happy crafting!
I’ve seen the future and it is great! I just got word that Craft Edge has just released a new version of Sure cuts a Lot software. So like any good reporter I decided I should have a “look see” and find out more about it. In a word it’s AMAZING! It does everything that the old software does and more. For instance with SCAL 2.o you can work in layers (multiple pages in a project) like you can in Cricut Design Studio, you can select all parts in a design (instead of resizing each part individually) and the best part is that you can convert clip art right in the program and cut it! to test it out I clicked the “Trace image” button (it looks like a tree) and selected a jpg clip art file, clicked OK and viola the shape appeared on my cutting mat ready to go! I also tried it with a gif file and it worked great. You can save the files as svg if you like as well. No fussing with inkscape…I think I’m in love!
The downside is that it is for use with Windows only so if you have a Mac you will need to run the old version or wait until the mac version comes out later this year. There is a $30 fee for the upgrade {It will go up to $35 after the intro period} and you need to verify that you have version 1.16 to purchase the upgrade only. After they verify that you already have scal they will send you the coupon code so you can get the upgrade for $30. You will get the code immediately, instant gratification! If you don’t have SCAL yet you can get version 2.0 will all of the bells and whistles for $75.
Here is a page with die cuts I cut with Sure Cuts a Lot (scal) software. The star clips on this page can be downloaded from yesterdays post, you can snag the baseball svg here. I cut the title with fonts already on my computer! The background paper with the baseball words was done for free at http://www.wordle.net.
If you don’t have scal and want to make the baseball cut a circle from white cardstock and cut an arch from each side with pinking edge scissors then mount it on a larger red circle, the red peeking through under the deco-cut area will look like the stitches in a baseball 😉
SCAL version 2.o questions: Here I answer some questions you may have regarding the new SCAL upgrade.
Can I run the new scal on two computers? yes
Can I keep both versions of scal on my computer or does the new upgrade overwrite my original scal? You can run both versions, SCAL 2.0 does NO overwrite your original scal software (version 1.o15 or 1.016)
Can I open scut files I created in my old SCAL in Scal2? Yes, you can open the scut files that you created in the old version with the new one (scal 2.0) but you can not open scut files from scal 2.0 with the old scal, probably due to the fact tst the new scal allows you to work with multiple pages in a project and multiple layers within a page. I will keep my old version if I am designing a scut file to share to be sure everyone will scal can use it 😉
Can I convert black and white clip art to cut with my cricut in SCAL.20? Yes, it easily converts single color clip art to an svg file, for paper piecing with multiple colors you will still need to use another program such as Inkscape but for simple conversions it is fast and easy and does a terrific job!
Can I cut all the fonts on my computer? Both versions of scal will let you cut true type fonts and dingbats with your cricut.
Can I cut images from cricut cartridges with scal 2.0? No, that’s illegal.
Can I use SCAL 2.0 on a Mac? Not yet, a Mac version of scal 2.0 will be out later this year. Scal version 1.016 works with a mac though (be sure to select the Mac version!)
The best way to learn the software is to try four yourself, anyone can download a free 10 day trial here. If you cut with SCAL in the trial mode it will cut lines through your project until you pay for it but at least you can see how awesome this software is!
If you have questions about the new scal upgrade or scal in general leve a comment and I will answer each one I promise!
Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!
Yes it’s that day of the week again where you can add to your digital stamp collection with a free stamp from Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff, but wait, there’s a catch you need to find it 🙂 it is on one of the design team members’ blogs. Here is the stamp you get for free this week, Primitive house:
Digital Stamps: Lindsay's Stamp Stuff, Pattern Paper: Basic Grey, Rubber stamps (little letters) Studio G
I printed the house on White cardstock and quickly colored it with my Prismacolor pencils and blended it with a dried-up blending pen filled with goo-gone {gotta love recycling!} Then I printed my Doodle Daisy stamp really tiny and colored it, punched it out and mounted it on a heart shaped clip I designed:
one of the clips you can download below
You can download this set of clips I designed for free!
grab these handy clips for free in both svg and .cut!
For a Cricut Design studio version using the George Cartridge click here. Each clip is on it’s own layer but on a diffrent spot on the mat so you can cut them all from one peice of paper and it is baby bug compatible 😉 You can cut this with the free trial of Design Studio if you have the baby (6″x12″) cricut.
For a printable version click on the image above and right click to save the image. You can print this directly on the back of the cardstock or patterned paper then cut out the inside of the clip with a craft knife then cut around the clip with the scissors.
Ready to hunt for that primitive house digital stamp Freebie? Well just check out the fabulous LSS design team, you get to be inspired and get something for free, that sounds like win-win to me!
Today is my 8th wedding anniversary, I have the most wonderful husband 🙂 we went out on Saturday to celebrate and what a fun time we had. Every year I make a quick scrapbook page for the wedding album telling what we did to celebrate, it is key to do this the next day so you don’t forget. Here I Incorporated the movie ticket stub and the photo booth pictures and tickets from the machines in the arcade. All the accents were cut with my cricut using scal software.
Paper: American Crafts, Stamp: Crafty SecretsCheck out the price of the movie, $3, gotta love that!
Thai food, and arcade and a geeky sci-fi pic, what more could a girl want? Love you honey, Can’t wait to see what the next 8 years bring!
Till next time happy crafting (and make sure you give your honey a squeeze too!)
The Frugal Crafter Blog 