Work of Art - that's what this stamp set truly is!

You might have seen me use this stamp set fairly often. It's just that it is so versatile. I love the brush stroke look of the stamps!

The colours used in the card are So Saffron, Tangelo Twist, Lost Lagoon, Tip Top Taupe and Memento Mall Black ink.

This card was inspired by Marsha Lavoie and we made this at my friends party. My first draft was this rounded corner one (I personally don't care for the rounded corner look, but I happened to have the So Saffron layer pre-cut and pre-rounded, so I figured I'd use that and ended up rounding all the layers.)

So I decided to make a second version, same, but using straight corners and I also switched the orange layer into Tangelo Twist (the original was Pumpkin Pie, but I realized I don't have a new foam ink pad version of that same ink, so I needed to switch the colour)

The third version was made to display the new Thick Whisper White card stock. It's a really nice material to use as a card base without any layers.

Other stamp sets used in these cards are Sprinkles of Life (greeting) and Wetlands (birds).

Couple of new gadgets in my studio

As some of you might know, I'm working on starting my own online craft store in the next little while. Yes, I know that is very broad expression, but I have no exact launch date set. I still need to work on to create more items to display on my store (ETSY based). For this, I needed to get some new gadgets for my craft studio.

First, I needed a photo cube. A 15"x15" light box, where I can take better pictures. Okay, this limits the size of objects I can photograph but I'm working on a set up to take pictures of larger items than the cube allows (toddler dresses tend to be longer than 15"....), but the cube should house my nursery mobiles.

Foldio - foldable studio from Photojojo

The cube has 2 LED light strips at the top and the brightness is easily adjustable. The cube also comes with 4 back drops: white (shown in the picture), green, black and grey.

Some of the images in my previous posts have been taken in this cube. The light reduces shadows and gives a neutral background for the object. I love my new 'Foldio'.

An other gadget I needed, was a drill guide. For the life of me, I cannot drill straight holes in wood :-)
the drill always goes here and there. I did find a drill guide from Lee Valley, that would guide my existing power drill straight down, but that's all it would do for me. So I did some research and ended up ordering a Dremel 'mini drill' and a matching stand from Amazon.
Note: the prize of a smaller Dremel drill from HomeDepot would have been approx. the same price and the stand would have been double price. These shipped from Montreal for FREE!

The drawback with Dremel is that I can only drill small holes (at least I haven't been able to find larger drill bits for it yet), but I can make the holes (that are now straight!) larger with my regular drill. What Dremel gives more, is all the other features like cutting and sanding!

So give me few days, and I can display some items I have made with this Dremel :-)

I scream for ice cream!

Okay, my FAVOURITE treat is... you guessed it... ice cream! I love Italian Gelatto and I find Finnish ice cream is pretty close - Gelatto is milk based and also in Finland you get a much larger variety of milk based ice cream (rather than cream based).

So, to get back to crafting... I just loved making these two cards - both with ice cream ;-)

The colours on on the first one are Rose Red, Whisper White, Soft Suede and Crumb Cake. The patterned paper is from Love Blossoms Designer Series Paper Pack (from the new Occasions catalogue) and the stamp set is Sprinkles of Life. 
The Ice cream part is punch out with the matching punch set. I also used a little bit of 'the Wink of Stella' on the ice cream highlight spots to add some sparkle

The second card has definitely more layers. This card was cased from Carolyn King.

The colours on this one are Whisper White, Mint Macaroon, Pink Pirouette, Tip Top Taupe, Delightful Dijon and Cherry Cobbler. The stamp set again is Sprinkles of Life and the pattern papers are from Love Blossoms and Go Wild designer series Patterned paper stacks.
I also used the Happy Heart Embossing folder (on Whisper White card stock) and added some sparkle with the Wink of Stella)

Zoo Babies - My favourite kid's birthday card stamp!

I just love this stamp set!
I have here 3 different cards made by using this set.

The first card was inspired by Susan Hornand is also using the new Balloon Celebrations stamp set and matching punch.

The colours on this card are: So Saffron, Delightful Dijon, Smokey Slate, Bermuda Bay and Calypso Coral.

The 'fox' is actually a designer series paper from Sweet Li'l things




The second card was cased from Stasia Sloma and is using the Go Wild Designer Series Paper stack. 

The rhino is stamped using Tip Top Taupe and the zebra is stamped with Memento Black ink. The greeting is an Expressions Natural Elements embellishment inked with Tip Top Taupe.

The third card is also using Sweet Li'l things Designer Series Paper and the colours on this card are Island Indigo, Delightful Dijon, Blue Sky.

I stamped the giraffe with Delightful Dijon and the greeting with Island Indigo. Then I used my paper snips and cut roughly around the giraffe's head (be careful not to cut 'into the circle' (might help if you punch out the shape from vellum paper and use that as a template). 

Once you have a rough cut around the head, push the image through your punch (I used the 2-1/2" circle) and help the giraffes head through the centre, so that it does not get cut. Then punch out the shape. You can also do this with framelits - just lift the part you don't want to get cut on top of the framelit.

Valentine's Day greetings

I was looking forward to this 'going global' stamp set from the new Occasions 2016 catalogue - and the matching designer series paper and embossing folder.

Then when I finally went to make a card (cased from Carole Parsons) I realized I'M MISSING A 2" CIRCLE PUNCH!!! No, it was not stolen - I HAVE NEVER ORDERED ONE!!!
to be honest, I never even knew Stampin'Up! has added this punch into their selection... oh my!
So guess what is on the top of my next wish list??

So then I had to improvise on the compass - I ended up cutting it free hand - just try it... cutting perfect circle free hand.... impossible. So I had to destress the edges to make it like I started with a perfect circle but wanted to make it imperfect - hehehe

I used Lost Lagoon card stock to emboss the world map to the top part of my card, and added two rhinestones marking 'Ottawa' and 'Helsinki' - my two hometowns.

The bottom of the card has a piece of designer series paper from 'going places' stack.

The sentiment is stamped on vellum paper with StãzOn black ink and embellished with rhinestone.

Bokeh technique

This is a technique that has been very popular for the past year. I never really liked it... I guess it was all about the background and seemed like a lot of work that could easily be achieved with designer series paper (patterned paper). But when I got this limited time Sale-a-bration (FREE) stamp set 'Hello' (available only until February 15th), I thought this would work perfectly on its own on a bokeh background. So I did my research and found an excellent tutorial by Diane Dimich.

So I won't go into details on how to make this card - you see it all on the video above.

The colours I used in my card were So Saffron, Calypso Coral and Crumb Cake, and the sentiment is stamped with Versamark and embossed with white embossing powder.

Sale-A-Bration stamp sets

I know, I know... it has been a while since I posted last, but this does not mean that I have not made any cards :-)

When I make cards for a party or a class, I don't like posting them on my blog ahead of time, and as I was not 100% sure which cards I actually end up using in my events, I could not post any of them

So now I decided to start with these Sale-A-Bration stamp sets, and you might ask 'why?'
well... let me tell you why:

One of them is made with 'The sky is the limit' stamp set, which is only available until February 15th as a Sale-a-bration exclusive (and FREE) stamp set.

I used Crumb Cake card stock and white corrugated paper as the base of this card. The clouds are stamped directly on the corrugated paper. The ribbon is Striped grosgrain in Crumb Cake colour. I cased this card from Dianne Sisneros. And I used Memento Black Ink on this (I think it would be safe to say that if I don't specifically mention using another black ink, you can assume I have used the Memento Black Ink). You can read more about my experiment on black inks on a December 2015 posting here.

I don't usually advertise other products, but I will mention here, that if you go on Pinterest and search for Dies by Dave, you can find different kind of frame lit dies made for Stampin'Up! stamps, I mean other than what Stampin'Up! makes. He for example has a die for this plane (I just got it in the mail today, so haven't had the time to use it yet).

This is my other card made using a Sale-a-bration stamp set 'Flowering fields'. Now this one will be around until the end of the event, which is March 31st 2016.

I stamped this with Memento Black Ink (every flower is it's own stamp) and coloured them using classic ink pads and blender pen.

I was inspired by a card made by Mary Fish. 

Sale-a-bration is a sale event, where you get to choose one FREE item from a sale-a-oration catalogue for every $60 you spend (before taxes and shipping).