christmas in july class

I'm teaching a class on Wednesday, July 25, at Your Stamping Cottage - both 12:30pm and 6:30pm. Ramona wanted to do Christmas in July, and I wanted to do Fancy Folds - so I came up with a Fancy Folds Christmas. There's a card with a flipping panel, one using a new set of dies I got, one with a folded frame, and a simple step card (that I sent out to several people last Christmas). I'll also be providing written instructions for people to take home. Call Ramona to reserve your spot! 859-581-0690

On the subject of Your Stamping Cottage... Ramona is closing shop very soon. She wants to be able to spend more time with her family. I wish her the best of everything (enjoy that new grandbaby!), and want to thank her for the opportunity to be part of her stamping community. I have met the nicest bunch of people!!! Ramona may continue to have an occasional class at her house, and I may be able to continue giving classes there!

resist 2

These are the cards we're making in my upcoming Resist 2 class at Your Stamping Cottage on June 28 (12:30pm & 6:30pm). I'm going to have people make their own stamps to create the mosaic look.

The first card is made with an SU set called The Open Sea - kind like you're viewing the ship through a cracked spyglass. The next card I designed with a black and white background so people could color their flower any way they wanted. This flower, and another one they can choose, is from SU Fifth Avenue Floral. The last card is a wax paper resist. The stamp is from Rubber Nature, and the sentiment is from an SU set (can't remember which one).

fun with embossing

Playing around with some gifts from friends. Phyllis gave me this absolutely gorgeous stamp set from Artistic Outpost (I kind of won it for a silly comment I made on a photo....). Marian gave me some silver Cloisonne granules from Stampa Rosa - it's a chunkier embossing powder. She showed me a really cool technique - sprinkle some on your project and heat from underneath to create a spray of shiny dots (see close-up pic below). When Marian did it, she had a much more delicate look; on my first try I was more heavy-handed with the granules. I'll get better at it. It appears this particular product is no longer available for sale, but the larger granules reminded me of UTEE, so I tried the same technique with some gold UTEE I have and it worked just fine! (UTEE = Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel; readily available)

For these cards, I stamped the image with black StazOn onto a thick vellum, then added color to the back side - marker for the house and sponged Distress inks around. Then I sprinkled the embossing powder on the front side and heated from underneath (silver on right-hand card, gold on the left). The frames are cut with Nestabilities dies, and the punch is from Stampin' Up.

new and improved

The other day Susan (aka Brad) gave me some really cool stamp sets from 7gypsies. One of them has all sorts (64 stamps!) of phrases like "Viewer Discretion Advised", "Some Assembly Required", "Exhibit A", etc., etc. So many fun ways these stamps can be used. For this card, I paired up some of them with some stamps from VLVS (if you're having trouble reading the words under the lady, click on the photo... it's worth the look).

Here's a picture of the stamp set. It's called Disclaimer. I put a yard stick next to it so you can see how large the set is. (I can't figure out how to rotate the photo; I had it going the right way when I cropped it in my editing program, but it flipped back over... hmm....)

more perfect pearls

This is another Perfect Pearls card I made. Just playing around with the stuff - it's so much fun. I can never get a good photo where you can see how shimmery the metallic colors are. The stamp set is Beautiful Beach by Stampin' Up. The torn mat is actually a crumpled gold paper. Wrapped with black twine.

happy valentine's day

Here are a couple of quick cards I made for my guys for Valentine's Day. For hubby: the birds are from a small clear set of stamps from Inkadinkado. For the boy: the little dog who's surprised that he's farting sparkly hearts is from Viva Las Vegastamps.