Happy Father’s Day & Easy Inky Landscapes!

Well, now, it finally feels like summer! I went out to let the chickens out and it was warm and sunny! I was up last night playing with some of my new stamp show stuff and I made a few cards, they can be for Father’s day or a manly birthday:

I enjoyed making the sponged background landscape so much that I flipped on the video camera and filmed the technique. A card like this is great to have on hand for a guy’s birthday! PS the car and gas pump stamps are by Local King Rubber Stamps.

Here is a close up of the card I made in the video:

At first I wanted to do the background with the new Crafters Workshop cityscape stencil but it seemed a bit busy, what do you think?

I had some old tourist maps that I cut for the background panel on this card, I also used the map to make envelopes, sorry no picture.

I hope you have a fun Father’s day and til next time happy crafting!

WOYWW: A Giveaway & Double Pocket Card Tutorial

Howdy folks! Today I have a rubber stamp giveaway for you but first since it is What’s on Your Work-desk Wednesday here is a pic of my desk:

I am right in the throws of making a batch of double pocket cards to sell at the Spring Fair next month. Here is the first one I made using beautiful stamps by About Art Accents. You can win this set of stamps, just leave a comment and I will chose a winner next Wednesday.

That’s it, no strings, pretty easy eh? It’s almost as easy as making this card, I made a quick 3 minute video tutorial to show you how:

I think these would be excellent Mother’s Day cards, especially with the seed packets, you could even include a gift certificate to a nursery so your mom could get some gardening supplies and plants too. I hear spring is on it’s way, tell that to the foot of snow we got yesterday!

Thanks so much for stopping by and don’t forget to leave a comment on this post for a chance to win these gorgeous stamps from About Art Accents. If you want to see more crafty desks visit Julia’s Blog and til next time happy crafting!

AAA Giveaway & A Question for You!

EDIT: This giveaway is closed, check back every month for a new About Art Accents Giveaway!

Well, I spoke too soon. I officially have a cold. I am stuffy and cranky and even the dog wants no part of my company which is just as well. I am holed up in my craft room with a cup of tea, Netflix on my Kindle and my markers (neener-neener). OK that is all the self-pity I can muster, on with the show!  Lookie what I colored. It was fun AND I get to give away this stamp by About Art Accents! All you have to do is leave me a comment and I will draw a name next Monday.

I am a curios sort though,  so,  I have a question for you (since you are commenting anyway): What tutorials would YOU like to see on my blog? Be specific or be general. What crafty stuff do you want to learn more about. Let me know and I may do a tutorial on it. That’s it, no strings, just leave a comment and good luck! You will also get the smaller matching stamp as well. The stamp is deeply etched red rubber. I just used a bit of double-sided tape to attach it to my rock-a-block and got a beautiful impression. I find that when I use a curved stamp mount I rarely need cushion on my stamps saving me storage space and money. I love that the stamps from About Art Accents are so deeply etched that I can still get all of the detail without the cling-cushion.

This is an easel card, it stands up like this for display but folds flat to mail in an ordinary envelope. I tried to keep the embellishments to a minimum so it would not be too thick to mail.  I colored the fairy with a combo of Promarkers, Copics and Spectrums, they all play nice together LOL! In fact, I’m thinking of just mixing all of my markers up in one rack or bin by color, marker intergration…a big marker party, Copics, Trias, Prismacolors, away with original packaging! Can’t we all just get along?

Well then, I’d better stop before I start considering resorting my paper by pattern instead of color…that’s just nonsense. Til next time happy crafting!

And don’t forget, leave a comment on this post to win stamps from About Art Accents! If you want to do some shopping there use the code Lindsay10% to save 10% on your order!

A Staz-On Solution, WOYWW {early}, & my 1000th Post!

Wow! Can you belive this is my 1,000th blog post?!? Four years ago I decided to start a little crafty blog, who knew I’d stick with it this long? Thanks to everyone who commented and read my posts, you make me feel like a million bucks! OK enough of the sappy stuff. You may have heard me complain about Staz-on ink in person, on my blog or in a video (A necessary evil I think I said…) well, I got a lot of well-meaning comments about what might be wrong with my ink: replacing the inner plastic seal (yup, I do that),maybe the environment is to dry (nope, I work in a basement-plus it is alcohol based not water based so I doubt that has much effect) add that to the fact that I reink the pad every time I use it and I was completely stumped…until today! I stamped this tag with my newly revamped Staz-on black ink pad:

The fix for my Staz On ink was so simple, and it was the comment on humidity that was my ah-ha moment. I didn’t need more ink in the pad, I needed more solvent. The solvent for alcohol ink is denatured alcohol, I dumped about a tablespoon of denatured alcohol on the inkpad, let is sit a minute and stamped, it was perfect!

 Frugal Alert! Denatured alcohol (an undrinkable form of *Ethanol) is available by the quart at a hardware store for about $7. Denatured alcohol Ethanol is also what Copic clear blending ink is about $7 an ounce. Talk about price mark-up! If you live outside of the US denatured alcohol is also called methylated spirits, people also use it to clean windows 🙂 You can use this with your colored alcohol inks to blend or thin them or make lighter colors or custom mixes. Use proper ventilation etc, etc, blah, safety, blah, blah 🙂

Edit: Don’t use markers that you reinked in denatured alcohol with an airbrush system due to the additives to the ethanol. See PS below:)

DIY Staz-on Cleaner!

• If you clean your stamps straight away you can use a 9 part water to 1 part Simple Green in a spray bottle. I use it to clean all of my rubber stamps. Not recommended for clear stamps (but I’ve used it on the clear stamps and I have not noticed any damage)
• Use Simple Green full strength if the ink has been sitting there a while.
• For stained stamps coat the rubber with glycerin (or embossing ink) and let sit over night then it will wipe right off with stamp cleaner.

FYI Simple Green is available in the Automotive section of Wal*Mart for about $5 a large bottle.

WOYWW

 Julia at the Stamping Ground started this whole What’s on Your Workdesk Wednesday phenomenon (I like to think of it as my own personal craft hoarding enablers group) and it is fun to snoop at all of the desks of crafters around the world. Here is mine after I finished my tag:

 

There is a lot going on here! That nasty cup is from my homemade carrot, apple, celery, grape juice  I made today (I’m doing a juice fast this week and I am full of vim & vigor!), I have my Inktense watercolor pencils out that I used to color the entire tag before I inked the edges with some TH tumbled glass ink, then I used my Rollagraph crackled stamp and clear ink to go over the whole thing and then I just brushed brown chalk on with a pom-pom anywhere I wanted the crackle to show. I love that trick because I can sneak in a patterned background and I don’t have to mask!

That’s all for today, thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!

PS I got an email from a Copic Certified instructor saying that the Clear blending solution is Ethanol, not denatured alcohol so I looked up the difference and this is the definition I found:

Denatured alcohol – found in bottles at the hardware store or the drug store – is also ethanol. But it has been poisoned to keep people from drinking it. It turns out that ethanol is a good solvent, and also useful as a fuel. And it is pretty cheap to make it. But if you sold ethanol for $2 a gallon at the hardware store, lots of people would be drinking it to avoid the “sin taxes” on beer, wine and whiskey. So they poison the ethanol and sell it without the sin taxes. Source: How Stuff Works

Now, I don’t want to hear about anyone drinking their Copic blending solution LOL!

Easy Masking & Cats Wearing Hats!

I have several stamps in my collection of dressed-up cats…and mice, there is just something about animals wearing clothes that makes me smile  🙂  I grabbed this set of Party Hat Cats from Lost Coast Designs at the stamp show I went to because they were too cute to pass up. I put them on postcards:

Since I was working on a postcard I needed to keep the card one layer so it could mail without stuff getting ripped off of it. When you want to make a one-layer card like this you need to mask, don’t worry, it is quick an easy. See how in my quick tip video:

One of my favorite tricks for putting glitz on a card it with clear nail polish. It dries quick and you can even sprinkle more glitter in it if you like, just seal it with more polish after!

One last tip! When working on photo paper don’t heat set it or heat emboss o it of the paper will crack. I took one for the team figuring that out LOL! I intended on white embossed words on the card but ended up with a tiny crack in the glossy coating of the paper…so now you know-don’t heat the photo paper LOL! Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!

It’s Finally Here!

Last summer I designed a stamp set for Pink Persimmon and it is finally available to buy! Being mainly a digital designer I get the instant gratification of designing a set one day and listing it that evening but designing physical product is a whole new ball of wax but oh, it sure is sweet pressing that stamp to paper! Here are some ideas using my new Cupcake Party Stamps I designed for Pink Persimmon:

For the full instruction on making this party set please see the March 2012 issue of Scrap & Stamp Arts!

I was also able to use the new Cupcake party stamps along with other fabulous stamps from Pink Persimmon to design a party set for Scrap & Stamp Arts Magazine. It is the Stamp-A-Party article in the March 2012 issue on newsstands now, check it out!

It was really fun to design a set I know would be stamped, rather than printed. You can see the stamps below, you simply stamp a cupcake wrapper section four times next to each other and you get a perfectly sized wrapper! You can use whatever color you like and mix and match the patterns if you want. You can also use the wrapper for stamp kissing since you get a sizable swatch of pattern on each stamp. It is such a fun set!

Thanks for stopping by and sharing my excitement! Til next time happy crafting!

Cute Owl Gift Tags

My girls were invited to an Owl themed birthday party yesterday and I made these tags for the gifts:

 

I love to use solid image stamps (stamped images that you do not need to color) for quick tags. I used the Wise Old Owl, Small Banners and Carnival Alpha (small) from Pink Persimmon. I love how the owls stamp in pieces so I could make the wings open up to hold the banners. The birthday girls’ mom liked the stamped owls so much she asked if she could borrow the owl stamp to make thank you cards! And of course I said “yes!” 😀

Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!

Give a little, get a little…

Happy Columbus day to all my friends in the US! It is a holiday so the kids were off school today so my sister and I took our kids to the children’s museum and had a great day! I want to share a project I did for a mingle (it is like a swap but you send your creations to one person and you get someone else’s work in return) and also I want to share what I received. The artwork was done for the Oriental Stamp Art Faux Postage Swap. The requirement was that you make 10 fake postage stamps and you get 10 in return as you can see we both had so much fun we could not stop at 10 stamps 🙂 Here are the stamps I sent out to Linda in Canada:

 

And here are the stamps I received from Kim McKinney:

 

These will be so fun to use on my cards as embellishments because her style is so different than mine and I don’t know if you can tell from the photo but they are so rich and sparkly! I also made a card for the lady I sent my stamps too, she has gotten it in the mail so I want to share that with you too:

 

I simply stamped a plain card base with postage stamp style stamps and layered paper on top. To to the multi toned stamping on the ginkgo leaves I just sprayed my stamp with water and colored the rubber with watercolor crayons and stamped, misted it again and stamped again then I chose the version I liked best. After the card was assembled I stamped the chinese postmark over the layers. 90% of the stamps I used are from about Art Accents/Art Neko.

I hope you are inspired to try a mingle or swap yourself. If you don’t know where to sign up for you can find many stamping groups through Yahoo groups or try Splitcoast Stampers or the Stamp Shack. Thanks for stopping by and happy crafting!

New Stamp Storage and Mounting Idea!

I have been playing with the idea of separating my sentiment stamps from the sets they came with for a while now. I liked the idea of being able to see all of my greeting options at once instead of having to rifle through all of my stamp sets to find the saying I wanted. Here is what I came up with:

These generic jenga blocks were $5 for a set of 48...bargain!

I mounted my small unmounted sayings onto “Jenga” blocks. I put a thin coating of rubber cement on the block and on the back of the stamp and let it set for a couple of minutes then pressed the stamp on the block. But first I stamped the stamp on the block so I would know what stamp it was at a quick glance. Also note that I double and triple mounted the stamps (I put 2-3 happy birthday stamps on one block) to conserve space. Then I placed the newly mounted stamps in a printer’s tray I found at a yard sale last week:

I just love the cubbies! I can put most of my sentiments in here and it is so nice to grab the sentiment I need and go!

I love cubbies!

This is for my everyday stamps, all of my holiday sentiments are with that holiday’s stamps and any sentiments that only went with the set they came with I left with their sets. Also my clear stntiment stamps and my sentiments that were too large for the Jenga blocks went in CD cases based on theme, I only filled 5 cases, I thought I would have more but really, how many ‘thinking of you’ stamps does one need LOL? All in all I love this system, the first time I stamped a “thank you” on a card it was all worth it. Speaking of cards I want to share a card I made today. I used the layout challenge at Oriental Stamp Art to create this Z-fold card:

I love how a simple fold can make a card seem so much more fancy, it is easy though, you just cut a sheet of 4″x11″ card and score it at 2.5″ and 5.5″ but you can change the dimensions and where you score for a different result. I used a Stampin up border punch (I’m so lame, it is the only edging punch I own)  😉 on each end and on the ribbon and mat element. The fancy square is a Martha Stewart punch. The background peacock feather stamp and “friend” are from a Fiskars clear stamp set, the Ribbon is from Hero Arts and the detailed butterfly is from About Art Accents. I used a Kleidacolor inkpad (Berry I think) as my ink. I stamped the background 3 times to get it to stretch across and it was easy to line up. To make the dye based ink stick well I rubbed the clear stamp with a pink eraser and cleaned the stamp before inking. It really helps ink stick to the clear stamps!

This card qualifies for the following challenges: Aud Sentiments Challenge, The Rubber Cafe , All That Scrap Wednesday Challenge, Flutterby Wednesdays, Kelley Kid’s, My Mum’s Craft shop, Simon Says Stamp, The Paper Variety , 365 Cards, and of course the scetch challenge at Oriental Stamp Art.

Well, I did not intend to write a novel today! Thanks for stopping by and til next time happy crafting!