Pencils on Black

The other night, Rachel stopped by with her new dog, Toby.  Toby is a pit bull, so I know he may scare some people.  Our Hoss is a Rottweiler and weighs around 180 pounds, so he can also be scary.  Once you get to know them, though, you realize that Toby and Hoss are two of the sweetest dogs you’ll ever meet.  They’re both very gentle and laid back.  Rachel & Jon wanted to see how the two would get along.  They’ve been together before, but it was outside on the front porch, so we all wondered how they’d do in the house.

After the initial sniffing (mostly by Hoss), they got along great.  Toby was, of course, curious about things, and Hoss had to follow him around to be sure he didn’t get into anything he shouldn’t – like the kitchen.  But they never snarled, growled or showed any other type of aggression.   Toby almost fell into the pool, and our backyard bunnies will never be the same.  Hoss sees them and decides it would take too much energy and effort to chase them.  Toby, however, didn’t have those reservations.  So our normally complacent bunnies have to be on their guard now.

It was interesting having two large dogs in the house, but everything went very well.  I can understand why pit bulls used to be “nannies” for children.  Toby is as protective of Rachel as Hoss is of Jon.  They’re not mean, they just stay by their “person” and won’t let anyone else next to them until they’re sure the other person is ok.  It was funny last night, because the kids were using their laptops at the dining room table with a dog on each side.  I’m sure they felt very safe!  The only altercation was when Toby decided to sniff Hoss.  Hoss has to be the dominant male, so he doesn’t like being the sniffee.  He just gave a little warning, and everything was fine.

I saw another tutorial the other day about using pastels (not our chalk, but pastel crayons) on black card stock, and thought I’d try it with some of our products.  Here’s one using Stampin’ Up!® watercolor pencils.

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Stamps:  Bordering on Romance, Tiny Tags; Ink:  VersaMark, Poppy Parade classic; Paper:  Basic Black, Very Vanilla, Poppy Parade card stock; First Edition specialty designer series paper; Other:  Silver embossing powder, watercolor pencils, Labels framelits, Itty Bitty Shapes punch pack, basic jewels – rhinestones, crochet trim – Victoria, vintage trinkets, jewelry tag punch, paper piercing tool, mat pack, Adorning Accents edgelits, Big Shot, stampin’ dimensionals, corner rounder punch

I stamped the flower on Basic Black with versamark, then embossed with the silver powder.  After I colored the image with pencils, I cut it out with the label framelit.  If you lightly trace around the outline of the frame, then cut out the parts that will be outside the frame, you can place the cut outs on top of the frame so they won’t get cut off.

I was a little surprised when I held this card up to the light.  While I was working on it, it was hard to see, but when I held it up – wow!  I love the way the pencils look on the black.  I’m going to try another one with our Stampin’ Pastels.  I think it will look a little softer than the crayons, but still should show up really well.

Have a great day – and thanks for stopping by!

Let There Be Light!

My dearest husband is, among other things, a licensed electrician.  We own an electrical contracting company.  And, if I do say so myself,  he’s the best around.  My older son, who works with him, is right behind him in skills.  They’re both very neat and make sure everything works perfectly and is the best it can be.  They can go into a house and do a job, and no one would know they were there until they tried the new device, or whatever it was that the Quality Electric guys did.  This amazes me, because they can walk through any room of my house and leave destruction in their wake.  But that’s another story.

There are good things and bad things about being married to an electrician.  I know that our house is very safe as far as the wiring goes.  And we sometimes have the coolest gadgets around.  But, like the shoemaker who has barefoot children, after you’ve been electrifying all day, you just don’t want to do more when you come home.  So our house is, um…on the dark side.  I want a light over my piano – smack dab over the keyboard.  But my electrical advisor says it would look stupid.  I don’t really care.  I just want to see.  Our kitchen had a light over the sink when we moved in.  It turned on every time the main light came on and my electrical advisor didn’t like that either.  So he disconnected the sink light.  Now we’re lucky if the dishes are clean, because it’s very difficult to wash dishes in the dark.

We also put in all new devices (i.e. switches and plugs) when we moved to this house 25 years ago.  Previous owners had painted over the old ones, and that drives the man crazy, so he changed them.  Unfortunately, he ran out of cover plates, so there are several switches in the house that don’t have plates over them.  My mother swears one day she’ll get electrocuted.  I told her, “Just turn the light on or off.  Don’t stick your finger in the hole.”  After 25 years, I’m kind of used to it.

More recently, my dearest had to turn off the kitchen light “5 times in one day.”  I don’t think that’s excessive.  I’ll often go into the kitchen and start cooking, then work on my laptop at the dining room table while the food is cooking.  I’m not in the kitchen, but I’m cooking, so I leave the light on.  The mister doesn’t like that.  (I refrained from pointing out the number of times I’ve turned off the family room television after he’s left the room for an extended period of time.  He’s responsible for the electric bill, so if he wants to pay for unwatched TV, that’s his choice.)  So yesterday, he had Jon put a motion sensor light in the kitchen.  If you take two steps into the room, the light comes on.  Sometimes I don’t need the light on.  If I’m just getting something out of the fridge, or grabbing a cup of coffee, there’s enough light from the dining room to see what I’m doing.  But now I have a light.

Here’s the down side.  It takes 10 minutes for the light to turn off after you leave the room.  That’s 10 minutes the light wouldn’t be on if it was on a normal switch.  And if you’re in the kitchen and aren’t moving a lot – like if you’re eating breakfast, not dancing around – the light goes out in about 1 minute.  I haven’t figured out how it knows when I’ve left the room and it should turn off in 10 minutes, and when I’m just standing there so it turns off in 1.  I have to wave my hand like “Stonewall” Jackson or develop some other twitch so I’m not standing in the dark with my toast.  It’s very annoying, and so far, the only person who likes the light is Mike.  Hopefully when we get the next electric bill, there either won’t be a significant difference so we can go back to normal, or it will be such a huge change that we’ll all love the extra money we saved.  And the three of us who are resistant to change will get used to it.

This has nothing to do with light or electricity, except that my stamp room has lots of light and it’s my happy place!

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Stamps:  Fifth Avenue Floral; Ink:  Jet Black StazOn; Pretty in Pink, Melon Mambo stampin’ write markers; Distressing Essentials kit – blue distressing ink; Paper:  Pretty in Pink, Melon Mambo, Rich Razzleberry, Daffodil Delight card stock; Watercolor paper; Patterns designer series paper – brights; Other:  Regal Rose 1/4″ taffeta ribbon, Adorning Accents edgelits, Manhattan Flower embossing folder, 2-way glue pen, Galaxy glitter stack, Dazzling Diamonds glitter, brads – Brights, stampin’ dimensionals, paper piercing tool, mat pack, Vanilla Shimmer smooch spritz

This design was a sketch challenge this week, and the technique on the flowers was my take on a technique tutorial on splitcoaststampers.com.  I stamped the flowers in stazon, then streaked the petals with markers.  Then, I used the blue distressing ink from the Distressing Essentials kit and smeared ink all over the flower.  I spritzed it with water (the more water you use, the more your flower shows up), then cut it out when it was dry.  Finally, I spritzed it with smooch spritz, but it blotched a little more than I wanted.  For the most part, though, I really like it.  It’s very shimmery and sparkly!

Thanks for stopping by.  In case you were wondering – the mister and I have a wonderful relationship, and I love and respect him very much.  But for over 20 years, I was on the receiving end of a lot of his “sermon stories,” so now it’s my turn to get even.  And after 30 years, I have to say if I had to choose all over again, I’d choose him – even knowing all I know now.  Have a great day!

Triple Treat Flower

Ever since I got this card from my friend Linda Wicks, I’ve been wanting to do something similar with the Triple Treat Flower stamp.  I love the layering that she did.  So – I was playing around with my stamp and punches tonight, and here’s what I came up with.

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Stamps:  Thank You Kindly, Triple Treat Flower*; Ink:  Lucky Limeade, Always Artichoke, Soft Suede, Pool Party classic; Paper:  Everyday Enchantment designer series paper*; Confetti Cream, Always Artichoke, Lucky Limeade, Pool Party card stock; Other:  Big Shot, Designer Frames embossing folders*, Pool Party seam binding ribbon, Eyelet border punch, 5-petal Flower Punch, Fancy Flower Punch, Modern Label Punch, basic Jewels – pearls, 1/2″ circle punch, corner rounder punch, Stampin’ Dimensionals; permanent marker (*you can get these products FREE during Sale-a-bration!)

I had stamped and punched several flowers, and somehow, the frame with the 5-petal flower punched out ended up on top of the Always Artichoke one – and I loved it!  The peach pearls were colored with a permanent marker.  The best part about this card?  All the stamps were FREE!  I got Thank You Kindly last year (or the year before; I can’t remember), and Triple Treat Flower is one of the catalog stamps you can get free with a $50 order.  You can also get the Designer Frames, if you’d like.  Or the designer paper.  Or…I love Sale-a-bration!

I’m off to pack for tomorrow’s workshop.  Have a wonderful day, and thanks for stopping by!

Another Swap Card!

I was getting that last 10 minutes of sleep this morning – you know, the 9 minutes after you hit the snooze for the “last time.”  It was so warm and nice in bed, the house was quiet, and it was a lovely way to start a Monday.  And then – the door burst open and Mike said, “Did you have my keys when we got home the other day?  Where are they?”  He was supposed to meet someone at 8:30 and was running a little late because his truck keys were missing.

I am not and have never been a morning person.  I don’t just wake up, happy and cheerful and ready to start the day.  If I get to bed at 1 a.m., it’s an “early night,” so when I wake up at 7:30 or so, it takes a few minutes to get my head “unfuzzy.”  I need coffee.  Copious amounts of coffee, actually.  And I need a peaceful, calm atmosphere – not heavy metal music, not people rushing around, not a bunch of questions – until after the coffee.  After the 3rd or 4th cup of coffee, I can handle just about anything.

So when Mike came in the room, all I could think was, “Who is this man and what’s he doing in my bedroom?  Keys?  What keys?”  As my mind de-clouded, I remembered.  We had gone to Costco Saturday night and I was helping him carry in some of our supplies.  He came in through the garage…I checked my coat pockets to make sure I hadn’t slipped them in there.  Nope.

The longer I thought about it, though, the more I started remembering (Saturday night was about 36 hours ago!) – we were in separate cars and I got home about 20 minutes before Mike.  I used my keys to unlock the door and never even saw his.  By the time I got this far in the thought process, though,  Mike had borrowed Jon’s set of keys and had left, still probably thinking I had stuck his keys somewhere.  I did, however, remind him when he came back.  “Remember…you went back to your truck to get your stuff from the office.  Did you check your briefcase?” (At the same time I said this, he was already reaching his hand in the case and pulling out his keys.)  I felt very vindicated.  And tired.

I said all that to say I didn’t stamp much today.  My stamping time was spent looking for lost keys, and the rest of the day was spent practicing and playing for lessons.  So here’s a swap from my friend Marsha Reed in Iowa.

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Stamps:  My Friend; Ink:  Basic Black; Paper:  Calypso Coral card stock; Everyday Enchantment designer series paper; Other:  mini brads, Big Shot, Adorning Accents edgelits, blossom punch, Boho blossom punch

My sincerest apologies to Marsha if these aren’t the right supplies.  She sent a list, but I cleaned off the table so we could have dinner yesterday, and, well, the list is missing.  I love the monochromatic look of the card and flower – with the splash of designer paper.  This will be a great card for the fundraiser I’m doing!  It’s nice and simple, but very pretty and elegant.  And it’s not too bulky, so it won’t cost extra to mail (always a plus!).

Have a wonderful day, and thanks for stopping by!

Tea and Books

Ah – two of my favorite things.  And right now I could use a good book and a cup of tea!  It’s been a very rewarding day, but it’s been jam packed!  Our Winchester Stamp Club met this morning; what a wonderful group of stampers I have!  Nancy is the hostess this month, and she brought these amazing pecan cookie thingies.  Oh, my!  I’m going to have to stay away from the office until Wednesday, or the other half of the group won’t get to see how yummy they are.  Seriously – they’re right up there with Wendy’s yule logs.

After club, I visited with my parents for a little while.  Mike & Jon were target shooting, Dad was studying for a lesson he’s teaching tomorrow, and Mom left soon after we got to her house to “do” my great aunt’s hair.  Mom visits my aunt in the assisted living facility each week, and while she’s there she cuts and sets her hair for her.  This is just another of Mom’s many talents.  There’s really nothing she can’t do if she puts her mind to it and decides she’s going to learn.

While everyone was busy, I straightened up Mom’s stamping corner.  Now, my stamp room is a disaster, but it was really fun organizing Mom’s.  It’s kind of like cleaning someone else’s kitchen.

When we got home, I started cooking.   Jon’s birthday was Wednesday, but we’re celebrating with family tomorrow, so I wanted to get the basics started.  I always let the boys choose what they want for their “birthday dinners” and the kind of cake they want.  Jon chose to have taco salads, which is easy for me!  It’s mostly just assembling everything and letting everyone fix their own salads.  And, of course, they can choose beef, chicken or vegetarian.

For Jonny’s cake, he wanted lemon with lemon icing.  His exact words were, “a really big cake.”  I realized it’s kind of sad to have your favorite cake, but after sharing it with 10 other people, you only get one piece.  So, soft-hearted Mom baked two cakes.  One for dinner and one just for Jon and whoever he wants to share it with.

In the middle of all this, I realized the dog was almost out of food, so he has a big pot of beans, rice and chicken on the stove.  Whew!  I’m ready for bed, I think.  But first, maybe a cup of tea…

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Stamp set:  Tea Shoppe; Ink:  Calypso Coral, Soft Suede, Pool Party, Lucky Limeade classic; Paper:  Whisper White, Calypso Coral card stock; Other:  circle punch, itty bitty shapes punch pack – flower, basic jewels – rhinestones, Calypso Coral ruffled ribbon, Everyday Enchantment ribbon & brad pack (Calypso Coral ribbon), White baker’s twine

Here’s the “teacup bookmark” we made today.  This idea is from demonstrator Sharon Armstrong.  Sharon keeps the supplies for these cuties in a large stamp box.  When she’s sitting “waiting” – at the doctor, in a coffee shop, at the mechanic, wherever – she pulls them out and has something to work on.  Smart!  It’s much better than the year-old magazines.

Here’s the inside -

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It’s very simple to make.  The pocket is a 4-3/4″ x 4-1/4″ rectangle from Whisper White.  Score at 2-1/4″ and 4-1/2″ along the longer side.  I used one of the Adorning Accents edgelit dies for my first pocket, but for this one, is used the 2-1/2″ circle punch.  Punch the front, then fold the pocket, line up the punch with the previously punched semi-circle and punch again.  (You can’t punch two layers at the same time.  I can’t, anyway.  If you want, you can just punch the front and leave the back square.)  Fold the pocket in half, then fold the 1/4″ flap back.  Squeeze a thin line of multipurpose liquid adhesive along the flap and the bottom.  Press closed and hold for about 5 seconds.

I cut my teacups apart, because I doubt I’ll ever want three in a horizontal row.  If you don’t want to do that, just use markers to ink the stamp.  Be sure the stamp is clean and dry before you stamp the next cup so you don’t get any shadows on your pocket.

When I stamped the middle and top cups, I masked the cup below so they could be “stacked.”  And that’s really all there is to it.  Punch a few flowers, add some rhinestones and ribbon and stamp the bookmark and you’re finished.

Thanks for stopping by (and listening to me blabber!).  Have a great day!

Apothecary Gratitude

This isn’t the bookmark I promised, but everything is packed for tomorrow’s workshop and the bookmark is on the bottom of the bag.  So here’s another card we’ll be making this week.

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Stamps:  Apothecary Art; Ink:  Jet Black StazOn; Watercolor Wonder crayons (brights, regals, subtles), Elegant Eggplant classic; Daffodil Delight classic ink refill; Paper:  Confetti Cream, Wisteria Wonder, Elegant Eggplant, Pink Pirouette card stock; Other:  Itty Bitty Shapes punch pack (flower), Dazzling Details, aqua painter, Paper Doily sizzlit, labels framelits, stripes embossing folder, Very Vanilla seam binding ribbon, Big Shot, dimensionals, sponge

This is fairly straightforward.  I used the watercolor wonder crayons to color the flowers and edge of the label, and then I went back and sponged the edge with Elegant Eggplant classic ink.  This was inspired by these amazing Little Debbie blueberry roll-ups I bought the other day.  I’m still going to create a project using the original idea – white eyelet border with Wisteria Wonder background.  I had everything ready for white, then the Confetti Cream card stock slipped in.  I do like the look, and the Confetti card stocks hold up a little better to watercoloring than the Whisper White and Very Vanilla.

Here’s a final thought for you today.  This was on the Stamping Is My Business facebook page.  Cute, right?

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Have a great day!  Thanks for stopping by.

A Butterfly Hello

I love the little treat container I made yesterday, but I realized that a lot of my stampers aren’t as thrilled about treat containers as I am.  Since so many people are watching their sugar and fat intake and a lot of my stampers don’t have children, they don’t really eat or hand out sweets.  So…Back to the drawing board.  I decided to create a card that kind of mimicked the container.  Meanwhile, the other people in this house are thrilled, because now there’s a bag of candy up for grabs.

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Stamps:  Fresh Vintage, Elementary Elegance; Ink:  Poppy Parade, Peach Parfait, Baja Breeze classic; Peach Parfait, Baja Breeze, Pear Pizzazz stampin’ write markers; Paper:  Baja Breeze, Whisper White card stock; Everyday Enchantment designer series paper; Other:  Everyday Enchantment ribbon and brad pack, Fancy Flower punch, Labels framelits, Adorning Accents edgelit dies, sponge, stampin’ dimensionals, Big Shot

This uses basically the same materials as the treat container, and it coordinates well enough that I can send the card and the container as a gift to someone special.

So here’s a random thought.  I was doing laundry the other day, and the static electricity was causing everything to stick together.  I kept thinking, “I know I put a dryer sheet in here; I wonder where it is…”  Finally, I saw it.  I had hung one of Mike’s shirts up to keep it from getting wrinkled and the sheet was stuck to the side of the shirt.  I’m thinking they’re not the best I could have bought.

Tomorrow I’ll have another workshop project.  I think it will be a really cute little bookmark card (another idea from Stampin’ Success).  My stampers may not be “into” treat containers, but most can always use a bookmark.  Even though several have e-readers, I think they still have enough “real” books around their houses!

Thanks for stopping by.  Have a wonderful day!