Framed Becky Card

A couple of weeks ago I shared a card I made using the two stamps to make the front and back of a little girl. For this card I am using those same stamps along with my Cricut! Now she can either look out the window or from a picture frame!

Stamp Becky (Art Impressions stamp UMT1519) using Stazon ink on 140 lb. cold press watercolor paper and color her with Tombow watercolor markers. Cut her 2 pieces out and glue them together.

Using the Cricut die cutting machine and the Fancy Frames cartridge cut a matching pair of frames at 2".

Cover the front of an A2 card with pretty printed paper. Beacon 3 in 1 glue is great.

Check to see where to place the frame inside the card, according to where Becky can stand.

Trace the inside of the frame, to show where the first matt knife cuts should be.

Slightly enlarge that window using scissors.

Glue the inside frame in place.

Glue the matching outside frame in place.

Glue Becky looking outside the window.

If you like glue a picture across from Becky, so she will have a background behind her as she looks outside.

A few Becky cards!

Stamped Water Color Painting

 

I love to work on water color paintings. Using art Impressions stamps, I get passed the drawing into the painting. For this I used the following stamps and supplies:

1. Art Impressions stamps: U-1917 and UM 3521
2. Marvey Uchida Le Plume 11 Markers
3. 140 lb. cold press water color paper
4. Water Brush
5. White plastic palette
6. Winsor and Newton colorless art masking fluid for water color
7. Pink rubber eraser

Steps:
Using Marvy Marker #40- brownish grey, ink the back of the U-1917 stamp and stamp the image on your paper. Allow to dry.

Apply liquid mask to window frame, to save the white and let dry.

Now for the color. On the palette mix a wash of #45 Sepia with the water from the brush and paint across the window glass. Leave lots of highlights.

Ink the back the flower pot from the UM 3521 set and stamp it next to the steps filling in the space.

Remove the Liquid Mask by rubbing the pink eraser across the unwanted mask.

Complete pots by stamping greenery with "Foliage" from the UM-3521 set.

Use the palette to put bits of color from the markers and pick the color up with the water filled brush. Remember to leave white areas of highlights. Try deciding where the light is coming from. My light comes from the right and so my darker colors are on the left.

Trim and mount on a colored background and adhere to a card base. Sign your name and date your work. Well done!
For detailed instructions check the "Watercolor the Art Impressions way!" The book uses many of the scenic stamps the company puts out.

Family Pop Up Cigar Boxes as Holiday Gifts

My lovely granddaughter with her cigar box pop up. It was given to her for her 12th birthday at Thanksgiving dinner.

My granddaughter was in the performance of the Nutcracker Ballet last year. The picture used in this pop up was from that performance.

This is the box we sent my sister-in-law for Xmas. It is a picture of  my husband's sisters playing when they were little.

Machine Embroidered Christmas Cards

I recently gifted a friend with several Christmas machine embroidered cards. I used my Brother SE 350 embroidery/sewing machine. I bought the cards at Michaels to be used as bases. I do think better high quality cardstock with longer fibers, would have been a better choice, but I'm happy that what I did worked out.

Supplies:
4" x 5.5" cards that fit within my 4" x 4" embroidery hoop
Polymesh cut away embroidery stabilizer
505 Spray and Fix
Embroidery machine and hoop
Machine embroidery thread
Digital designs
         Use designs that are more open and not thickly stitched with fill for best results. There are designs online that have been digitized specifically for cardstock. Quick stitch designs are good for this. The one color redwork designs, with a low stitch count sew up really fast.

Hoop the stabilizer firmly and spray 505 inside where the stitching is planned. Press the inside flap of the card onto the stablizer.

Embroider the design using a size 11 or smaller sharp needle. The higher quality cardstock won't rip or tear, but the pack of cards I sewed, worked. The needle did cut through the cards, but I noticed that designs with less fill and coverage work best.

Following the embroidery, remove the stabilizer from the hoop and trim the excess away from the card.

Trim off all the jump threads.
To prevent the card's design from popping out and from showing the back of the design, cover the inside of the card with decorative printed paper.

“Operation Write Home”

Designing new cards and learning various techniques is my latest challenge. But along with each of these new techniques, comes dozens of homemade cards! So what do you do with all these small pieces of art?

 You can give some with gifts to relatives and friends, but then there are way too many that could surely be put to good use. Recently while surfing the Internet, I found Operation Write Home or OWH for short. Basically, American crafters throughout the country hand-make cards, then send them to a shipper who packages them and sends them to our nation's armed forces overseas, who use them to write home to their relatives and friends.  The handmade cards are blank inside. The cards can be use for birthdays, holidays or general greetings, and all can be put into service in order to help our people far from home communicate with their loved ones.  

What a great idea! For information on this worthwhile cause, go to: 

http://operationwritehome.org

Bundle your cards off to our service men and women and help them to communicate with their family and friends. Check information on the website for Operation Write Home.

One last tip: If you are designing cards to be used by our service men and women for Christmas, they must be sent to the shipped by Oct. 30 at the latest.

My Work is in a Magazine!

I got the mail the other day and found that my Steampunk (paper by Graphic 45) Cigar boxes are in a magazine! The magazine is Just Cards presents Just Steampunk Vol. 2. I have a small picture of a box on page 55 and all page 56. Check me out!

These will be included in my inventor, when I participate in a special juried show next Saturday. The show is called "Fashionable Transitions," and is a yearly undertaking by the University Women of Flagler, who award scholarships to qualified female high school seniors residing in Flagler County, Florida. This organization also supports Take Stock in Children, an additional scholarship for at risk children, in grades six through nine.

The afternoon consists of boutique tables like mine for shopping, lunch and a fashion show by Chico's.

You can go to www.uwflagler.org for more details.

I'm looking forward to showing off all my art work, next week.

Collage Scrap Cardmaking

Since I got into scrapbooking and cardmaking, I've amassed a giant amount of paper scraps. Many are too big to just throw away, so I decided to do something with my favorite ones. I made some lovely quick and easy cards, using a white card base and combing Graphic 45's "A Ladies' Diary" and pieces of inexpensive doilies. The scraps of coordinating papers and the doilies, overlap making an interesting collage for most any occasion card. I love to use them for birthdays and anniversaries.

Try it yourself with coordinating papers and bits of doilies or even lace or ribbon to embellish your collage card.

Have fun...enjoy.

One Beautiful Stamp Several Lovely Cards

Great Impressions makes this great rose trio stamp number G454. I have had the stamp for awhile but what I really wanted was to color it in red using my Tombow Markers and I finally got the exact right color and love the finished card.

Before I got the chance to color these roses in red, I used my orange and it looks lovely too.
I have already showed you the lovely pink card with lace and the Stampabilities, ballerina silhouette number GR1160, I have to show it to you again.

It's lovely and so perfect for a little girl's birthday!
One stamp or maybe two, but great looks, with a bit of a change! I love versatility...don't you?