Archive for March, 2010

Hi everyone!  This is a quick post so I can get my card in for Moosetrack Monday’s Freebie over at Paper Popsicles Blog (here).  This is such a cute digital stamp from Cheeky Radish and it was free on Paper Popicles Blog.  I’ll come back and give you a breakdown on how I colored it (with Copic’s of course) and the colors I used, but be sure and take a close look (click on the picture to make it larger).  That is acetate that has been run through the CB and the edges painted with acrylic paint.

We’ll follow back-up on this one once you get through seeing the new post on “Let’s Monkey Around”.

Thanks for looking and be sure and leave me a comment, I would love to hear from you!

My IT guy (my SIL) worked on trying to fix it so I could post some pictures but we discovered there is an issue with the server and we have put in a ticket to get it fixed.

I’ll keep checking through the day and as soon as it will let me load the pictures I’ll post.

Hi everyone!  We got back yesterday from my Uncle’s funeral and were really tired.  I’ll try to get a post up for tomorrow but wanted to thank everyone for their prayers.

We did not have any trouble and my Mother made the trip with flying colors!  We got caught in the closing of Hwy 75 for the new overpass that they are installing but thankfully I bought a GPS that helped directed us around the detour and got us back on Hwy 75 quickly.  You have to love technology…….sweet.  My Mother was amazed by the GPS, my Ipod that played music through the car stereo but mostly she loved the “bum” warmers (LOL!).

Red was looking out for me too, he got the hot tub up and running.  Nothing feels quite as good after a long trip as hydro jets working out the kinks, a star lite night and golden oldies playing.

Thanks again, and check back tomorrow.

By the time you read this we will have already been on the road …..to Starbucks before we head out.

Back in February on our girly trip with my BFF down to Waxahachie, TX (here), I found two Advent Calendar’s by KaiserCraft (see post here).

This is 50 of the little boxes that I will be decorating for my two GKs (one’s a boy, one’s a girl).  Unfortunately, when I opened the kits there were no instructions on how to put them together (the little boxes or the kit).  I’m going to show you how to put them together but I think KaiserCraft should have included a set of instructions, not everyone is mechanically minded and it would have been very helpful to see where everything went (I guessed and they came out great).

So, when I get back I’ll start the step by step instructions on how to put the Advent Calendar together from beginning to end.  But the first thing I’ll be showing is the little Money card and the second will be new way to make flowers……….ok the Advent Calendar construction will have to be the third thing!  Whew, I’m going to be busy!

Hi everyone,  just wanted to let you know that my Uncle Donald passed away Thursday and I will be taking my Mother (it was her brother) to the funeral.  The funeral is on Monday and so I will not be posting for a couple of days.

Maybe by that time my SIL will have told me what I’m doing wrong on posting my pictures to my blog.  I have the cute Monkey card done and a new style of flower to show you how to make.

Be sure and check back next week somewhere around Wednesday or Thursday.  Thanks for understanding and pray for us as we will be traveling.

Shucks!  I am having all kinds of trouble getting my pictures off Picasa onto my blog.  It tells me that they have uploaded and posted but when I go in to pull them into the post, they are not there.  They are hanging out in cyberspace somewhere.

Unfortunately, my IT guy (my great SIL) is not available until next week.

So, I’m posting items of what is already uploaded to my media files.  Aren’t these stamps so cute and they only cost a $1 each at M’s.

Click the picture and take a closer look.  I will tell you I do not walk into M’s that I don’t search out where the $1 stamps are and check out any new ones.  They (in my opinion) are a steal at a $1 for the quality.     Thanks M’s!

As most of you know I have a “Woman Cave” full of Jet Max Cube.  I was so excited when I walked down an aisle at M’s and found the dividers for the Jet Max Cube drawers.

They come looking like this but it is pretty obvious how to put them together; however, they also have a page that gives you the instructions.

They make the drawers look so nice and neat and they really do help keep all those little things in their place.

What better way to use such an awesome drawer than for all the “Distressed” stuff from Tim Holtz.  Now everything I need is right in one drawer.  Yeah, I don’t have any of the new colors but when I get them I’m just going to stack them up in the like color cubes.

I almost have the little monkey card done (it is so cute).  I was going to upload some pictures and make it a two part posting because it is a little long, but Picasa is not working tonight (ugh!).  I don’t know if it is because of my laptop or Windows 7 or something else but I can’t get the pictures uploaded.  I’ll try again tomorrow.

Hi Everyone,

Unfortunately, the host of my website had a hard drive crash and that is why you were not able to get access yesterday.  That also meant I couldn’t get in to post anything.

I’m working on a real cute card with a monkey and hopefully I will have it ready by tomorrow.

I took the image from the stamp image and shrunk it down a little.  If you look closely you can see that this image is colored a little differently than the larger image I showed yesterday.  Just click on the picture to get a larger view.

I removed the little bee and the expression marks from the image. Tip: I used a correction tape runner to remove the items I didn’t want and then re-scanned the image.

I made the bee so it could be 3D.  I bought a stamp from M’s for $1 not too long ago and it had the bee and a saying “bee well”.  I stamped it twice; one time to get the bee with wings attached and the second time I stamped it on vellum  to cut out a second set of wings .  I took the first stamped image and colored it and stickled it and let it dry.  On the vellum wings I used a glue glitter (not Stickles) that was a holographic white and set it aside and let them dry.   Once dry I cut out just the bee and cut off the antennas, we’ll make them out of thread, and I cut just the wings out of the vellum stamped image.

Once everything is dry I covered the bee with Glossy Accents and then stuck the vellum wings into the Glossy Accents and made sure they were sticking up.

I created the antennas by taking a piece of black thread and folded it in half.  I placed a drop of Glossy Accents on the back of the bee and laid the thread down into the Glossy Accents.

I then cut the thread to the length it needed to be for the bee.

I raised the finished bee up on foam to give it a little lift, this along with the vellum wings gives the bee the feeling that he/she is flying over head and of course that little gray bunny is watching.

I also added a trail of a flight pattern up the side and across the top.

The image did not come with grass so I added it by starting out with a zig-zag stitch in green using Sulky thread and then  added addition color using Copic Markers.

This added some additional interest and texture to the card.

This is the back of the stamped image.  As you can see the color of the Copic Markers are bleeding through.  According to everything I’ve read this is a “good thing”.  It shows how well you have saturated the image.  Yeah, the purple egg is really saturated because I was having trouble getting it to look like I wanted it.  Which brings up a great things about Copics is you can add more color or use the blender pen to take away color and work it until you get just where you want it.

I also wanted to show you the back so you could see the zig-zag stitching.  When you look back at the previous picture it shows you how much the Copic Markers add to the stitching.

Here is the finish project.  I used Stampin Up’s ticket punch (with the corner guides removed) to cut the small half circles in the pink mat.  This helps keep the ribbon in place on the mat.  I also used the Swiss Dot CB embossing folder on the pink mat.

I used various colors of Tim Holtz’s Distressed inks to ink the edges of the card and mats using the foam applicator.  By the way you can use that foam applicator to achieve the same look with any stamp pad.

The inside was done very similar to the outside except I distressed the edges of the yellow mat with the edge of my scissors and then inked them.

Yep! That’s ducky that I had colored earlier.  I just cut him out and glued him right on top.

He was the perfect color and a cute surprise when you open the card (remember I colored him on watercolor paper).

I love the way this turned out and these little bunnies are a combination of using the Copic Markers and Prisma Color Pencils using MCPT (Magic Color Pencil Technique).

The yellow bow is in the upper right side to represent the sun.  I think it came out so cute.  Yes, I know there is a lot of work in this project.  Unfortunately, I agonize over getting these things perfect and I can’t help but put in all the little details and get the coloring just right.

Thanks so much for stopping by and please leave me a comment I would love to hear from you and what you think!

First let me say, I don’t know what is going on with this post but I couldn’t get the images to spread out like I wanted them.  Oh well!

Because most pens need to be stored horizontal I came up with this idea.  One of the things that makes this nice is that you can make it as large as you need it and you can add to it as your collection of pens grow.  You know that it will grow especially if you get into Copics.

You can find these cylinders at the Container Store and they run $1.59 each.  You can have a storage of 10 for around $16.  Because they are plastic they will have a tendency to slide so I purchased Self-Stick Rubber Pads, you get 18 pads for about $3.00 at the Container Store.  You might be able to find them cheaper at Wal-Mart.

I remove the lid and put it in my stash to use another way or time.  I then added 4 pads to one side of the cylinder.

As you stack the cylinders up this will keep them from sliding around.

Since my stack of these cylinders is getting pretty large (I have 20 of these) I’ve started using little binder clips to clamp them together ever so often.  This helps gives a large collection of cylinders added stability as the collection grows.  This also creates a nice storage for my small binder clips ( I use these as clamps sometimes for things I need to hold in place until the glue dries).

Because the cylinders are clear it makes the area feel open.  I’ve been very happy with this storage system and have invested somewhere around $45.00 over a period of a couple of years.  The storage I’ve seen for pens usually runs around the same price, is large and bulky and does not have 20 slots for your pens.  The other nice thing about this storage, especially with Copics, is I can put like color hues together rather than color coding (BG – Blue Green, RV- Red Violet).  I more interested in what colors can be combined together to get a nice graduation of color and storing them together makes me think about colors differently.

Hope this gives you an idea to create your own storage.  When you go into a store look outside the normal storage items and see if you can find something that fits your need to a “Tee”.