Nifty Gifties & a Freebie!

Howdy folks! Can you believe it is May 2oth already? Wow in a few weeks out kids will be home for summer vacation! Why not make some end of year teacher gifts to show your children’s teachers how much you appreciate them. Here I have made a few containers that my children can fill with home-made goodies, I use the new School Papers, Uptown Houndstooth papers, Envelope bonanza, 3-D Posies, School Rules Stamps and today’s freebie from Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff.

All supplies: Lindsay's Stamp Stuff

I used the sketch from 2sketches4you and the challenge at Gingersnap Creations to use a quote, and the black, white + another color at Magical Crafts. the tins are for the Anything but a Card challenge at One Stitch at a time

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A Super quick card! Simply trim the paper from the school papers collage sheet, wrap with ribbon and adhere it to a 4.25" square card, color the teacher quote stamp, cut with mini scallop scissors and adhere over, die cut 2 flowers from Posies SVG set, curl petals and attach with a brad.

The tins were great fun to make, I bought a new can opener that cuts the can slightly under the lid so there is no sharp edges and then the lid sets right back on as neat as you please. The can opener was the good cook brand and I bought it for $8 at the grocery store. I painted the tins red (use spray paint, the acrylic paint I used will scratch off easily, live and learn:) then wrapped them with strips of paper from the Uptown Houndstooth and School Papers set.

on this can I cut 3 flowers from the 3-d posies set and curled the petals, I put foam tape between the layers for extra dimension.

Tip: To print the papers change your printer setting to 8.5×11 borderless and switch the orientation to landscape, then choose center on page and print at 100%. You will get a borderless sheet of paper and the 11″ strips will more than wrap around the tins and you will have leftover paper for other cards. I printed the paper on cream cardstock and it is designed to use little printer ink 😉

A strip of printed twill tape and a few stick pins add a nice touch, I'm keeping this one!

It was fun to round-up found objects to use as handles on the lids. Spools, blocks or other toys work great for this! Before I glued the objects on the lid I Cut circles from the bingo cards in the school rules kit to adhere to the lid for a funky base.

Funky, no?

If you are a little pressed for time here is a quick little gifty, I used the ATC envelope from the Envelope bonanza kit to make a easy gift card holder, who wouldn’t love a gift card to Starbucks or a book store?

Quick, cute and easy, gotta love that!

And now for the freebie!

I have no idea who said this but I think I hear Tom Sellec say it on a public servise announcement once:) Click the pic to download. Enjoy!

Well, aren’t I a windbag today? How about we turn it over to the fantabulous Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff DT, let’s see what they have cooked up for us this week:

Cheryl Gorka DT Coordinator

Shannon Neparko

Margie Visnick

Lisa Jurecek

Tracey Allen

Melissa Craig

Leanne Garner

Tamara Bennett

Cindi Hooks

Rebekah Doak

Karin Martin

Jennifer Bliss

Rhonda Walker

Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!

Back on the Wagon!

Happy Monday folks! I hope you had a fab weekend 🙂 It is a bit ironic that I am writing a post about being “on the wagon”  while doing a challenge from the Drunken Stampers blog LOL, they have challenged us to make a card using only black and white, I took the challenge and used the sketch from 2sketches4you to make this “cheerful” birthday card:

Stamps: Inkadinkado (chandelier), SU! (happy birthday), EB folder Tim Holtz, Rub on: Royal, Buttons: Rebeca Sower, Punch SU!, Cardstock: Bazzil, GP

Here is a head on look at the card:

So the “wagon” I am refering to is the craft supply buying vairety. I do not need any more paper, dies, stamps, eb folders, ribbon or inkpads but I am always tempted by a good deal (note the brand new eb folder in this card and yesterday’s crafty loot) to make matters worse a good friend of mine was selling all of her full size SU! inkpads for a song and I always wanted them so I jumped at the chance! Honestly I am glad I did because I found awesome plans on the Rebel Inker blog to make a inkpad holder from foam-core and hubby made it for me for mother’s day!

Check out my bodacious ink pad holder:

The plan for this holder is from the rebel inker blog, click the picture to go to Stacey L King's blog for the pattern.

So now I am back on the wagon, no more new crafty supplies for me for a while (trading and borrowing is OK) but no more buying! I am always suprised how creative I become when I am forced not to get any new stuff, not to mention that my craft room stays more organized!

Thanks for reading my ramble today, til next time happy crafting!

Lets Crop!

I have met so many cool crafters over the years online and I wished we could all get together for a craft night, well now we can! Next week in Celebration of the Lindsay’s Stamp Stuff 1 year Anniversary I am having my first ever virtual crop and I hope you will join me:

All you need to do, if you havent already, is join the MyGrafico Community then when accepted you can join the crop room {a virtual classroom} and you can crop with me next week! It is free of course and you can win fabulous prizes so what are you waiting for, sign up now 🙂

Digital Stamps: Lindsay's stamp Stuff, Rubber stamps: SU!, Inkadinkado, Paper: DCVW, Sketch: 2s4y

I was looking for some inspiration this morning so I popped over to 2 sketches 4 you and mad 2 cards using both Laura’s sketch #49 and the bonus sketch. This card uses the bonus sketch and the “Baby” theme from Caardvarks:

The chick digi is from the cute easter stamp set from Lindsay's stamp stuff. See stamping tip at the end of this post 🙂

There are some fun techniques on this card. I stitched 4 pieces of 2″x7″ tissie paper together, fringed  and crinkled it (I got that tip from Johanna on Leah Fung’s blog) and hot glued it to my card, fun! Also I embossed the little dots on the scallop circle with my Crop-a-dial just by placing my paper in the eyelet setter part and giving a squeeze.

All of the die cuts were done with Sure Cuts a Lot  (SCAL) software using fonts! You can save 10% on scal until the 14th with coupon code: 8774959 SCAL lets you cut fonts from your computer with your Cricut machine, cool huh!

I colored the scissors from the Sew Pretty set with copics.

Here is another cool tip from Johanna, look at the little bow, all you do is fold a scrap of ribbon in 3 and tie it with thread, saves time, money and look how cute!

I had a bit of trouble stamping the “it’s a girl” on the tall card, the ink kept beading up on the cheap-o clear stamp so I scuffed it with an emery board (fingernail file) and now it works so well:

Use a fingernail file or fine grit sandpaper to improve a cheap clear stamp! Please note, this if for the silicone cheapos that you find in the craft store (like the dollar stamps) high quality clear stamp will not need this step. Stamp first, scuff later:)

Boy that was a lot to get through! Thanks for sticking with me and til next time happy crafting!

Feeling a bit Challenged today…

…but in a good way! I had a chance to play in my studio this morning with my new pile of “rubbah” from About Art Accents (I so needed to get inky) and I got 2 challenges done! The first is this weeks sketch over at 2s4u:

Stamps: About Art Accents, Sketch: 2 sketches 4 you

I know the simple sketch would showcase the beauty of these stamps. Isn’t the bamboo lovely? The rectangle with the blossoms on it is from this plate of lovelies. The bamboo and sentiment is from this plate. You will notice that I cut the english word and bar apart from the calligraphy, that is the cool thing about unmounted stamps (or clear for that matter) you can cut them apart to suit your needs. I will write the meanings of the caligraphy on the back of the stamp (and the orientation) so I don’t forget! All About Art Accents stamps are REAL RED RUBBER so they take ink really well for a perfect impression every time, try them you won’t be disappointed;) They are a good deal too 🙂

Stamps: About Art Accents, Tool: Cricut Die Cutter/SCAL software, Cart: Storybook, Font: DB Asian Serenity

Over at Oriental Stamp Art they challenged us this week to use a panda in out artwork. Can you believe I don’t have a panda stamp? (I probably just need to look harder LOL!) so instead I used my Cricut and Sure Cuts A Lot (SCAL) software to cut this panda dingbat from the font DB Asian Serenity. I sized the panda to 3″ and cut it in normal mode from black, then cut it from white with the shadow blackout mode on and pieced it together. I love how I can cut the fonts and dingbats on my computer with SCAL, it is perfect when I just need a little something for a card!

The mat is from the Storybook cart, it is a sneaky peeky shape, press the key that says “from” and make sure the accent shadow button is lit up and there it is, I thought it looked Asian 😉 This is my first time using this cart as I just bought it on sale for $24 last week, yay me!

All the stamps on tha panda card are from About Art Accents as well. thanks for stopping by and till next time happy crafting!