ISCC6

Well, I am back from my vacation (yes, I did finally get packed) and life is good. My MIL arrived today and I'm getting ready for Troy's birthday party on Saturday. (Baked the McQueen cake tonight.)

I am attending a farewell tomorrow for a wonderful new friend. Her husband was supposed to retire, but the Air Force decided they needed him still so now they are off to new adventures. Here is the card I have made for her. She is a crafter so I really hope she enjoys this card!

This utilizes ISC' card sketch#6 and the colors for tomorrow's farewell (black, white and yellow for a queen bee.) Well, I don't have any ISC bees so these flowers will have to do for this card. (Hey Betsy, can you help me out with my lack of bee stamps? ;D )

I did CASE this from Lisa on ISC's blog, just scroll down a bit and you'll see her awesome card. Thank you Lisa for the inspiration!

The white layers are all shimmery white, which helps to add some pizazz. I did add a bit of dimension by using one pop dot under the bottom flower and two (one on top of the other) under the second to give a little more dimension. I may add some stickles but I'm not sure where. We'll see what it looks like in the morning. ;)


Stamps: Friendship & Nature Silhouettes I (ISC); Ink: Onyx Black (Versafine); Paper: Shimmery White & Basic Black (SU); Accessories: Nestabilities, Cuttlebug, paper snips (SU).

Starving Artistamps Blog Candy

You know I don't advertise others' blog candy often (if at all) but this one looks pretty juicy! Starving Artistamps (SA) is a wonderful company that I have purchased from several times (at one time they sold my friend Kristin's line of stamps.) Their stamps are great as well as their customer service!

Well, they are giving away a NEW Doodle Factory Tropics and TWO sheets of Tropic Sentiments! Scroll down to the second half of the posting to see the stamp sheets for this giveaway. What great images and some really awesome sentiments. If I had to only pick one I think it would be "You are treasured".

Click on the title of this posting and it should take you straight to SA's posting so you can check it out!

Why Am I Stamping Instead of Packing?

Yes, you read that right! My DS and I fly in the morning and I haven't finished packing yet! BUT. . . . today I received my FREE Innovative Stamp Creations stamp that I won on their blog and I looked at it longingly, thinking I wouldn't be able to play until I returned. Well, I HAD to have a Father's Day Card to take with me since we will be with DH all next week, vacationing in the beautiful State of Virginia (okay, its a commonweath, whatever that means! LOL!). That led me to stamping instead of packing.

I remembered the Techno Stamper's Sketch Challenge #21 and decided to use it to make DH's card. I also remembered ISC's color challenge AND I had two stamp sets I wanted to use. One from Artistic Outpost, My Knight and the other my brand spanking new Nature's Silhouette I from ISC. So, TWO cards were born!

First is DH's card using the knight.

This is just a quick card with no real embellishments. I did use my brand new Nestabilities rectangles that I bought at the Gateway Rubber Stamp Getaway this past week-end. Since this is going to a man and I know his appreciation level of hand made cards I didn't feel pressure to dress it up any more than I did.

Stamps: My Knight (Artistic Outpost); Ink: Onyx Black (VersaFine), Basic Black Marker (SU), VersaMarker; Paper: Wild Wasabi, Real Red, Basic Black and Cool Caribbean; Accessories: Nestabilities Large Rectangle, Cuttlebug, Stamp-A-Ma-Jig.

Now for my next card using the Nature's Silhouette I I used the same sketch just changed up the stamps and used a larger Nestabilities rectangle, added some pearls (bought at Archivers) and distressed some of the edges. I did increase the size of the middle layers slightly, which allowed me to use the larger rectangle.


Stamps: Natures Silhouette I (ISC); Ink: Onyx Black (VersaFine), Basic Black Marker (SU); Paper: Wild Wasabi, Real Red, Basic Black and Cool Caribbean; Accessories: Nestabilities Large Rectangle, Cuttlebug, Stamp-A-Ma-Jig, distresser (SU), Pearls.

Now off to pack I go!

Friendship Box with Insert Tutorial

I tried out the box at ISC for their ISCC4 and filled it and gave it to Troy's soccer coach last night. Big rush (no surprise there!) so no picture, but I only used designer paper and stamped some soccer stamps I have from SU. It was simple, but nice! I did have some problems with where to score so I had been pondering this box.

Then late last night I came up with an idea. What if you used acetate for the box, then you could stamp an insert. You could actually make up a couple of these boxes and have the inserts already trimmed to size then just stamp when you needed them! Okay, probably not a new idea, but hey, I was excited! So today I started work on my idea to see if it was feasible.

First I made the acetate Friendship Box. It is acetate, so it is a bit difficult to take a good photo of when it is empty. Also, I am using my new portable lighting studio that I bought a couple of weeks ago from Radio Shack; (it was on sale for $19.99!) I'm still learning how to best use it. :D

I did use mini glue dots (from SU) to adhere the acetate together. I just love those little dots! Now the obvious question is can you see the dots? Yes, but since they are only located on the sides of the box you don't really notice them.

The next thing I did was figure out my size and score lines for the insert. Now I had a bit of a problem with scoring my box and had to cut off 1/2" from the "bottom" (that becomes the front of the box without the lid) so my calculations may differ if your box uses that 1/2". :)

Insert size: 8.5" x 4.75"
Score: ETA: .5" along both long sides then score along short side .5", (move forward) 3.75", (move forward again) .5".
You will not have any insert for the front portion of the flap.

I actually messed this up when I scored this insert and did the last 1/2" at the end of the insert instead of after the front fold so I had to fix it when I figured it out. (So ignore the faint score line at the bottom of the insert here.) ;)

Then I cut the bottom half of the sides since I didn't need it to overlap. Here is my insert (upside down.) I hadn't realized that my last 1/2" score was in the wrong spot yet. The score lines are pretty obvious here. I also trimmed out the extra corners for the lid and cut slits for the bottom. (This was when I finally realized my mistake.)

Now comes the fun; you get to stamp your insert. I tried Michelle Zindorf's technique of embossing stamped images and then brayering over them. My colors came from SCS's SCSCC167 of Sky Blue, Certainly Celery and Night of Navy. TIP: When you are stamping this remember that part of your insert will be upside down so you need to figure this out BEFORE stamping! Fortunately, I realized this before I stamped.

After I finished stamping and embossing I then used my foam brayer (to have a softer Night of Navy) to brayer color on the insert. I gently wiped away the ink from the embossed images.

I folded on the scored lines and placed the insert into my Friendship box!

Oh, I did round the corners of the lid to allow it to insert into the box a bit easier. I think that because I used acetate it was a bit stiffer than cardstock.

Please let me know what you think of my "bright idea"! Thanks!

Stamps: Friendship & Summer Flair (ISC); Ink: VersaMark, Sky Blue, Certainly Celery, Night of Navy; Paper: Whisper White; Accessories: Clear Emboss Powder; heat gun, mini glue dots, brayer with foam attachment, acetate.