Birthday Card using my latest toy...

For Christmas this year I bought myself a Silhouette SD. It's sorta like a Cricut but you just hook it up to your 'puter and it will cut anything you tell it to....fonts, images, line drawings, anything you want. Love it!!!



I wanted to make a birthday card for my friend Carol Vann, and I had this idea in my head.



Turned out pretty much as I pictured it...which is saying a lot for me. Usually I have a very hard time translating what I see in my head with what I can actually make the paper and ink do. KWIM? The machine had a wee bit of trouble with tiny ends of the branches, but I just needed the main parts to mount the flowers on. Looks sorta like cherry blossoms.

Happy birthday, Carol!!



Enjoy!

Haitian Relief

We've all been touched by the images coming out of Haiti. Scenes of devastation but also of unbelievable miracles. In order to assist in some small way with this disaster, Stampin' Up is donating $2 from the sale of every I {Heart} Hearts set to the American Red Cross.

In addition, I'm donating my entire commission on ALL sales through January 31st. I will be placing one large order on Thursday, January 28th or you can order any time through my website.

Our prayers go out to everyone affected by this tragedy.

Scroll down to see more posts as this will remain on top of new posts until next month. Thanks!

Control Freaks Blog Hop!

Howdy! Weren't Wendy's creations awesome?!? She's so creative. If you came here first, make sure you go back and check out Wendy's blog: Wickedly Wonderful Creations.

Continuing on with our theme of Valentines, Love and other mushy stuff (as my DS says), I've come up with a couple of ideas to share with you. The first is this adorable card:

I wanted to make more of masculine card for this one. I started out by using our Heart to Heart punch twice on a piece of Pretty in Pink cardstock. Next I applied adhesive all over the back and stuck on several pieces of our gorgeous new 5/8" satin ribbon to cover all the punched openings. Here is a close up:

I really liked the effect this created. You could create more texture by varying the type of ribbon used, using several different colors, or by running the ribbon on the diagonal. I'm still getting the hang of our new Pinking Hearts punch... :)

For my next project, I knew I wanted to make a treat holder. My kids have outgrown giving Valentine's Day treats to their friends, but these are so fun to make I just might make some for MY friends!

I started off by running a piece of Pretty in Pink cardstock through the Big Shot with our exclusive Fancy Favors XL die. Punch out the heart with the large heart punch and wheel over the bottom half with I{love} Love jumbo wheel in Real Red. Then I ran a strip of Real Red Textured cardstock using the same die. Glue the real red strip the the box and finish assembling it. Voila...easy-peasy treat boxes!

What's a gift without a card, right? I found the cutest idea on Karen Burniston's blog (she designs most of Stampin' Up pop-up dies for Sizzix) for a pop-up heart. You can go here to get the directions for yourself. I would suggest that you practice making the heart with some scrap paper before you try doing it with our nice cardstock...there is a bit of a learning curve.

Here is the inside of the card partially open...

and fully open.

Now it's time to skip on over to Cindy Major's blog. Ba-Bye!

Shimmer Paints Are Staying Put

Good news--Stampin' Up! just announced that the Shimmer Paints are carrying over to the next mini catalog.  So they'll be available at least through April 30th, 2010

Dormant Stamp sets retiring on January 4th

The following stamps sets aren't in the current catalog but are available for purchase on the dormant list.  However, after January 4th they will no longer be available.  Unless you have last year's catalog, the best way to view them is thru my online store.  Go here, click on SHOP NOW and type the item number in the search box.


113407 Back Woods

114492 Beautiful Baby

114486 Birthday Wish

113200 Branch Out

114496 Celebrations

113732 Central Park

113206 Classic Sketches

113226 Classy & Fabulous

114498 Flowers in Silhouette

113405 Font of You

113216 For the Bride

114494 Forever

109425 Friend by Definition

114488 Fun Flowers

113716 Garden Greetings

114490 Glad Friends

111580 Grand Soiree

113242 Hit the Road

113710 Lexicon of Leaves

113236 Man's Best Friend

114423 Ocean Commotion

113728 Playful Petals

109276 Polka Dot

111544 Putt Putt

113240 Quilt Quips

113754 Really Retro

113403 Sip by Sip

113726 Sweet Stems

113250 That's Funny

113688 Wonderful Watercolors

114028 Para la novia

114032 Acuarelas Maravillosas

Tutorial: Embossed Foil

As promised here is a short tutorial on how to make the foil background on this card.

What you'll need:

• Cardstock
• Adhesive
• Aluminum Foil--heavy duty works best
• Stampin Up! Textured Impression Embossing Folder
• Big Shot machine and required plates

I started by deciding how big I wanted the foil layer to be.  It's much easier than trying to cut it down later--the foil tends to tear and you'll just be frustrated!

Once you've decided on the size, cut out a piece of cardstock in whatever color you have laying around. I used a color that I don't like because you can't see it anyway on the finished project.  You'll need a way to cover the entire piece of cardstock with adhesive.  Stampin Up's sticky pages work great for this.  However, I was out of that so I just ran it thru my Xyron.

On your aluminum foil there is a shiny side and a dull side.  Since you want the shiny side to show on your card, place the sticky side of the cardstock onto the dull side of the foil.  Trim the excess foil with scissors (did you know that this will also sharpen your scissors at the same time!?!) or fold the excess to the back of the cardstock and tack down with adhesive.

On the Textured Impression Embossing Folders there is a positive "mountain" side and a negative "valley" side.  You want to place the foil piece into the folder so that the foiled side is facing the positive "mountain" side and run it thru the Big Shot machine.  Carefully remove the embossed piece from the folder. It can stick and you don't want to tear the foil.

I found through trial and error that it helps to run a brayer over the finished piece to smooth out the foil.  If you decide to do this step, do it lightly so you don't press out the embossing.

Here is a close up of the embossed foil.

Now just complete your project.  This would make great backgrounds for masculine cards.  Give it a try!

My Digital Studio Tutorial: "Cutting Ribbon"

OK, I'll admit it...I'm addicted to the new My Digital Studio program! However, I'm not a straight ribbon girl. I like the ribbon on my IRL (in real life) papercrafting to have a sparrow tail end on it. But there's not really a way to do this with MDS, so I came up with my own way.

Disclaimer:  I haven't printed this out yet, so I don't know what it will look like on "paper".  It could look like what it is--an orange arrow on brown ribbon.  So don't send me a bill if you do this and end up with 10 cards with arrows and ribbons!! :)  But it looks good on the screen so it's worth a shot....

Here is the finished product:

Read on to see how to do this in MDS.