Monday, July 21, 2008

What I am drooling over...


I would love to own one of these Mini Stackables from Best Craft Organizers. To see the details, scroll down till you see Kit C in Maple...only I'd chose black drawers instead, and add the inserts to the 2" drawers. I would keep my assorted wood mounted stamp collection in the 1" drawers.

I already own four of the above PortaInk units from the same company and I loooooove them. I had great service from them and they are actually Canadian, based in BC...cool, eh?!

My mission over the next month is to sort through all the outgrown clothes/toys/gear from the boys and sell it all...proceeds will go to my mini stackable!!

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Yes, I bribed them!!!

Well, Jeremy (he's 2) didn't take much convincing...all he had to see was a lawnmower stamp and he was all for making a card for Emily's A-muse-a-palooza Challenge #7. Jeremy chose green stickles to finish off his lawnmowers, and we used the Happy Birthday sentiment so we could present this card to Aunt Kathryn at her birthday party tomorrow. Woohoo!!

Paper: SU old olive, PTI white
Ink: palette hybrid noir
Stamps: a muse (lawnmower, simple wishes)
Accessories: stickles, metal dot by colorbok



Now Trent on the other hand (he's 4), was adamantly NOT going to sit and do crafts. Not even for candy or chocolate!! But when given the chance to use my copic airbrush (which he has been oh-so-curious about since he spied it wayyyyy up high on my shelf), there was no hesitation!! Combined with a muse's rocket stamp, he was in his glory! The sentiment from Lizzie Anne Design's Out of This World set was a perfect choice for Aunt Kathryn's other card...

Paper: SU summer sun, PTI white
Ink: palette hybrid noir
Stamps: a muse (rocket), LAD (out of this world)
Accessories: copic airbrush (ABS-1), stickles, brad by MM

Now my only hope is that they don't decide to help themselves to all my goodies and create some "mess-terpieces" while I am not looking!!

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

cards for kids


Yet another A-muse-a-palooza challenge (I am hopelessly addicted)...this time from Emily to make kid's cards. I love A muse's stamps for this! My neglected SU punches were dusted off for this one...I used the spiral tab punch and the arrow punch. The arrow is accented around the edges with a red copic marker. The bella baubles are coloured (underneath) with copics to change them from clear to red and the announcer's hat and boots are glittered up with black stickles.

The other part of the challenge is to have your child make a card using A muse stamps...we'll have to see how that goes...Mr T. is not much into arts and crafts...may have to bribe him with a few swedish berries!!

Stamps: A muse (announcer and ahhh-nouncing)
Ink: palette hybrid noir
Paper: SU basic black, kraft, real read and bayou blue
Accessories: copics, SU arrow and spiral tab punch, pop dots, black stickles, bella baubles

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

A work in progress


I have been playing somemore with my copics and with my a muse collection...can't put them away! They are a fixture on my desk right now! I recently got myself an airbrush (ABS-1) for my copics through Ellen Hutson
Once I opened it up to try it out, I couldn't get it to work despite reading and re-reading the instructions...so I emailed Ellen. She was amazing...ended up chatting on the phone and she got it all figured out for me! Love her!

Anyways, back to my picture of Lancelot protecting his castle...I am still trying to decide whether to try airbrushing a background or to try a neat technique I saw on Marianne's blog (see the background around the tree with the tire swing? Could you see cobblestones from that????).

He is stamped using palette hybrid noir and coloured with copics. I did 2nd generation stamping for the castle to make it seem more distant. I also stamped the castle on a transparency first and played with positioning, then used my SAMJ for precision placement. I masked Lancelot using Eclipse tape...awesome stuff! Can't recall where I got it from though...

I'll post the final outcome soon...hope I don't ruin Lancelot...I kind of love how he's turned out so far!

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

A-muse-a-palooza polka dot challenge



Here's my polka dotted card for AP08POLKA. I used the chocolate kitchen 4 bar notecards that I won in Geeta's colour challenge as the base.

The rest of the card came from my scrap pile! When I first got my copics, I played around a bit and coloured in the circle tote stamp by A muse. When I read the challenge, I hunted around in my scrap bin (I use a stamp storage box from SU) and dug it out! I dry embossed the green layer using my cropadile. How to do that? You just set the CAD to A1 and squeeze it onto your paper...easy peasy! I marked where to squeeze lightly in pencil and erased it afterwards...you could also line it up more perfectly with the large holes in the SU mat pack piercing template.

Stamps: A muse (circle tote, simple wishes)
Ink: Palette Hybrid Burnt Umber, Ranger Distress Fired Brick
Paper: A muse chocolate kitchen 4 bar notecard, SU very vanilla and purely pomegranate, green by SEI
Accessories: cropadile, copics, dimensionals, ribbon from Michael's, SU word window punch